By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal agency on Saturday said it could start issuing citations to companies as soon as Jan. 10 for failure to comply with a nationwide mandate that they either vaccinate or test regularly for COVID-19, as a U.S. Supreme Court showdown over the policy looms.
The announcement came one day after a U.S. appeals court reinstated the Biden administration policy that requires large businesses to verify employees are vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing.
Another court in November had blocked the rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the legal battle is expected to continue to the Supreme Court.
On Saturday, OSHA said it would not cite companies for any kind of noncompliance with the rule before Jan. 10 "to provide employers with sufficient time to come into compliance." OSHA also said citations around COVID-19 testing would not begin before Feb. 9.
The OSHA rule applies to businesses with at least 100 workers and covers 80 million American workers.
The rule has triggered a significant backlash, particularly in Republican-leaning states. Republicans hope to make popular frustration with COVID-19 safety measures a central theme in political campaigns ahead of the November 2022 congressional elections, when Republican hope to seize control of Congress.
President Joe Biden has argued the vaccine mandate is essential for fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than 750,000 Americans and weighed on the economy.
Biden will announce new steps for fighting the pandemic on Tuesday, a White House spokesperson said.
The debate coincides with public health officials bracing for a "tidal wave" https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tidal-wave-omicron-could-put-us-covid-19-surge-into-overdrive-2021-12-17 of coronavirus infections in the United States as the more transmissible Omicron variant spreads rapidly worldwide.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by David Gregorio)
Washington (AFP) - Texas has begun building its own "wall" of huge steel bars on the border with Mexico, its Republican governor Greg Abbott said Saturday, accusing President Joe Biden of not doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
"Texas is taking what is really an unprecedented step by any state in the country," Abbott said, telling a news conference about construction of "a wall on our border to secure and safeguard the sovereignty of the United States and our own state."
Such a wall "is needed for one single reason, and that's because the Biden administration has failed to do its job," he said from Rio Grande City, speaking in front of a crane and steel bars.
The governor, who is said to have his own White House ambitions, denounced the "deadly consequences" of Biden's border policies.
"This border wall that you see behind us is a replication of the border wall that president Trump put up, same material, same concept," he added, referring to Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump.
Trump famously made the construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border a plank of his administration, though much of the 452 miles (727 kilometers) he managed to build over his four-year term was replacing existing barriers.
The work was halted when Biden took office in January this year.
The Democratic president has been criticized for his management of illegal migration, with some on the left denouncing what they say are the harsh policies still in place, and the right demanding even harsher ones.
Lucas Kunce is a Democrat running for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2022 in Missouri. He is by far the leading campaign fundraiser in his party, having amassed more than double the amount of his nearest opponent.
But when it comes to looking or sounding like a traditional Democratic candidate, that’s about the end of it. Kunce is the quintessential outsider, leaning heavily on raw populist messaging that in the Trump era has been hijacked in Missouri and elsewhere -- however disingenuously -- by Republicans.
“The theme of our campaign is to fundamentally change who has power in this country,” Kunce told Raw Story. “This race is not about left right, it’s about top bottom.”
Kunce is seeking the Democratic nomination to fill the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, who announced he will not seek reelection in 2022 after two terms in the Senate and 26 years total in Congress. If nominated, Kunce would face the winner of a wild Republican primary that has left GOP leaders fearful of producing a vulnerable candidate.
Kunce’s campaign prominently features his personal story -- growing up poor in central Missouri (he experienced his family’s bankruptcy as a youth) -- along with his military service. Kunce spent 13 years as a Marine officer, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and took part in arms-control negotiations in Europe, according to his bio, which notes he “worked to make our world a safer place with fewer weapons and wars.”
Kunce’s campaign website leads with that:
“IT’S TIME TO START NATION-BUILDING HERE,” its front page proclaims. He calls for a “Marshall Plan for the Midwest” to invest in jobs and infrastructure rather than “wasting trillion on war and nation-building overseas.”
And there’s plenty of populism as well with the other top priorities emphasized: “ending corporate monopoly domination of our economy” and “abolishing corporate PACs and safeguarding democracy.”
The populist message isn’t just part of Kunce’s campaign: It’s also his day job. Kunce is director of national security policy for the American Economics Liberty Project, a national not-for-profit group established in 2020 to “to help translate the intellectual victories of the anti-monopoly movement into momentum towards concrete, wide-ranging policy changes that begin to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power.”
So, it’s not coincidental that Kunce touts a grassroots fundraising effort for his Senate campaign. In the most recent quarter, Kunce says he outraised all other Missouri Senate candidates (of both parties), “without taking a dime from corporate PACS, not a dime from fossil-fuel company execs or Big Pharma or any of the other people who have been buying off politicians to strip Missouri for parts for many years.”
This is also a point at which Kunce departs from Democratic orthodoxy. He told Raw Story that while there are differences between the parties, they’re not so distinct when it comes to getting influenced by powerful donors.
“Every single member of congress --535 people -- run every single cycle on reducing prescription drug prices, and it never ever happens and it's because they're taking their marching orders from Big Pharma,” Kunce says. “In my opinion, that’s why Missourians have lost faith in the Democratic Party because too many people on our side having been selling out to fossil-fuel companies and Big Tech and Wall Street.”
Even when Kunce appears to toe the party line -- say, on the opposition to the filibuster -- he brings the topic back to the central “top-bottom” messaging. When asked about the subject, his response was anything but ordinary.
“What the filibuster does, is it magnifies every single dollar that these massive corporations are putting in and so you know they can focus on just like two or three people, they can buy them off,” Kunce said. “Their contributions are more powerful than anything that everyday people can do, so that's why I want to get rid of it. But it doesn't have anything to do with Democrat or Republican, it has to do with fundamentally changing who has power of the country.”
Similarly, Kunce’s Twitter account often doesn’t spare Democrats, such as when he has opposed members of Congress trading in stocks while in office, a major issue of his. On Saturday, for example, Kunce called out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s defense of the practice and his tweet gave equal billing to Senators Rand Paul, a Republican, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat.
Kunce maintains that level of partisan independence despite being locked in a tight race for the Democratic nomination with former State Senator Scott Sifton, a St. Louis lawyer. Sifton has amassed widespread backing by party regulars. Sifton’s campaign website is a stark contrast to Kunce’s, touting dozens of endorsements but nothing like Kunce’s fiery rhetoric.
But Kunce, who began his campaign just nine months ago, has outraised Sifton by the surprising margin of $1.75 million to $725,000 through September. Kunce also can lay claim to having been the top fundraiser in either party during the third quarter. His campaign claims that 98% of his contributions are under $200 and that the average donation is $36.
Kunce’s campaign has also been set apart by frequent national media appearances and coverage. Kunce has done numerous interviews on CNN and MSNBC, raised eyebrows running ads on Fox News and been profiled in major pieces ranging from Politico to the Washington Times.
It remains to be seen if that matters at home in Missouri. But there, Republicans are worried about the possibility that a wild six-way primary -- with all of the candidates pandering publicly to Donald Trump -- might not end well for the party.
The frontrunner throughout has been Missouri ex-Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in disgrace in early 2018 in the wake of multiple scandals (sex and campaign-finance related). Republicans fear that Greitens’ numerous rivals will split the anti-Greitens vote and leave him as an unpopular standard-bearer.
Among Greitens primary foes are state Atty. Gen. Eric Schmitt, among the most prominent Big Lie supporter about attorneys general in the nation, two members of Congress and lawyer Mark McCloskey who garnered party fame and a spot at the 2020 GOP National Convention (along with his wife) for having aimed an assault rifle at peaceful George Floyd protesters walking past his mansion in June 2020.
Most pundits have assumed Missouri is a solid red state for 2022, although CNN did list it as one of the “10 Senate seats most likely to flip” in October. The 2016 results in the state present an anomaly: While Trump carried Missouri by a massive 18.5% percent margin that year, the incumbent Blunt won his race by just 2.8%.
Blunt, who had won first Senate election in 2010 by a much healthier 13.6% margin, is a mainstream Republican who had maintained distance from Trump in 2016. As a party leader in the Senate, Blunt has refrained from criticizing Trump, but he did vote to certify President Joe Biden’s election and emceed the Inauguration.
If Kunce got the Democratic nomination and was able to make the 2022 race another populist standoff, it’s unclear whether he could change the Democrats fortunes. But the state was represented by Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill from 2006 to 2018, so it might be a sleeper on the national stage.
In its November 24 cover story about Kunce and his populist campaign, Politico observed that the race might have national implications.
“Slim odds notwithstanding, Kunce’s race is a test case for Democrats still struggling to absorb the lessons of Trump’s appeal and reverse their losses among working-class and rural voters, especially in the heartland. It’s also an experiment in reclaiming political populism for Democrats after the GOP’s near-takeover, and defining it with neither the anti-immigrant nationalism of Donald Trump nor the religious conservatism and anti-wokeness of (Missouri senator) Josh Hawley.”
Politico also noted some parallels between Kunce and Hawley:
“(Kunce) can sound remarkably like the more-famous Missouri populist who won a Senate seat with a similar-sounding message: Republican Josh Hawley. Kunce dislikes the comparison — he considers Hawley a “fake populist,” pointing to the senator’s upbringing (son of a banker, private-school grad) and votes to confirm “corporate judges” (he named Neil Gorsuch, though Hawley was not in the Senate when Gorsuch was confirmed). Don’t even get Kunce started on Hawley’s recent comments decrying video games and the state of American masculinity (Marines play video games, Kunce points out). But in rhetoric if not in backstory, it can be hard to tell the two apart. Although Kunce does not share Hawley’s worries about corporate “wokeness,” both men blame multinational corporations, Big Tech, China and elites for what ails America in general and Missouri in particular. Both of them, furthermore, went to Yale — though Kunce emphasizes that he did so with financial aid.”
But Kunce doesn’t focus on Republicans such as Hawley nearly as much as most Democrats do. In his Raw Story interview, Kunce did not shy away from the need for his own party to change its approach to winning elections in red states like Missouri.
“When I first started this campaign and I said we’re not taking any corporate PAC money, a lot of people told me it couldn’t work, you’re not going to raise any money,” Kunce said. “Well last quarter we outraised every Democrat and Republican because we have a true message we can believe in and we’re doing it grassroots style.
“I learned in the Marine Corps to lead by example. And so, when we lead by example on this, we’re going to show the Democratic Party that this is the way it should be. When you work to put a dent into this corrupt system that is not working for most of us -- a system everyone knows is broken -- you’re going to see it works when we speak to the everyday people out there.
“We’re going to fundamentally change who has power. We’re going to make the system work for the people.”
CHICAGO — The U.S. Senate voted early Saturday morning to confirm former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan, officially opening yet another act in a three-decade political career that has run through two White Houses, Capitol Hill, Chicago City Hall and, now, the American embassy in Tokyo. The Senate voted 48-to-21 to confirm Emanuel, with the longtime political operator receiving support — as well as opposition — from Democrats and Republicans alike. The vote came in the middle of the night after Democrats struck a deal with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who agreed to lift...
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced on Sunday that he will not allow President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda to go forward.
Manchin made the remarks on Fox News Sunday with guest host Bret Baier.
"I had my reservations from the beginning and I've been working diligently," Manchin explained. "I've done everything humanly possible."
Manchin blamed his decision to vote against Biden agenda on rising inflation and the Covid-19 Omicron variant.
"I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can't," Manchin said. "I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there."
"You're done," Baier pressed. "This is a no."
"This is a no," Manchin agreed. "I have tried everything I know to do and the president has worked diligently. He's been wonderful to work with."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
In a column for the New York Times, AEI fellow Matthew Continetti raised the alarm that Donald Trump won't stay "quiet" for the next year and his attacks on Republican Party candidates who refuse to back his election theft claims will cripple the anticipated GOP "red wave" in the 2022 midterms.
According to the conservative writer, the GOP "elites" would like to ignore the former president and run on a platform of policies opposed to President Joe Biden, but Trump's interference in campaigns -- as well as his endorsements of sketchy candidates -- may hamper potential Republican Party gains.
Of biggest concern to the columnist is Tump's desire to exact revenge on candidates who refused to do his bidding when he demanded they contest the 2020 presidential election results.
Case in point: Trump's hatred of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) which led former Sen. David Perdue (R) to challenge him.
RELATED: Republicans fear Trump will 'drive the car off the cliff' as they look at midterms: report
According to Continetti, "When he announced that he would seek the 2022 Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, challenging the incumbent, Brian Kemp, he did more than enter a primary race. He illustrated the dangers facing the G.O.P. in the coming year. Georgia Republicans are divided over former President Donald Trump and torn between mainstream credibility and the conspiratorial fringe. Mr. Perdue — an ally of Mr. Trump — has made these divisions worse. The beneficiary? The Democrat Stacey Abrams."
Pointing out that in 2022, "Republicans must net only five seats in the House and one in the Senate to seize control," the columnist pointed out that there are fears among Republicans that the former president will make it an uphill battle.
Writing, "Republicans have experienced hopeful times before — only to have the moment pass. They believed that disapproval of President Bill Clinton’s conduct would expand their majorities in 1998. They ended up losing five House seats. They believed that Mr. Trump would rally the base to support two incumbent senators during runoffs in Georgia last January. They lost both seats and control of the Senate," the columnist added, "Republican victories in the midterms next year are far from preordained."
"The former president was content to keep a distance in this year’s races for governor. He won’t be so quiet next year — especially if he concludes that a successful midterm is a key step to his restoration to power in 2024," Continetti continued. "A more visible and vocal Trump has the potential to help Republicans in solid red states but doom them in purple or blue ones. Yet control of the Senate hinges on the results in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire — states Mr. Trump lost in 2020."
According to the conservative, the Republicans would be doing themselves a favor if several GOP contenders for their party's 2024 presidential nomination came forward now with plans to run no matter what Trump does "reminding him that renomination is not guaranteed."
"But that’s not the world we live in," he lamented. "Republicans appear either unwilling or unable to treat the former president as a figure from the past whose behavior has done the party more harm than good. They take false comfort in the idea that midterm elections are 'thermostatic,' the inevitable repudiation, climatic in nature, of the governing party. They assume they will win next year without doing anything of significance. And they may be right."
You can read more here -- subscription required.
Donald Trump knows he lost the 2020 election, according to his niece, Mary Trump. But growing up in the Trump family, a loser was "one of the worst things you could ever be."
So when Trump was defeated by President Joe Biden, "he had to deny that reality immediately and the best way to do that would be to double down on the lie that it was stolen from him, that he's really a winner," Mary Trump, a psychologist, told CNN on Saturday.
"But the real danger here is that he's continuing to be allowed to say these things," she added, reacting to a clip of her uncle saying last weekend that former Vice President Mike Pence should have "sent those crooked votes back to the legislatures" on Jan. 6.
Donald Trump also said during an event with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly in Florida that he thinks Pence was "mortally wounded" within the GOP by his decision not to try to overturn the election.
"The only person who should have been quote-unquote mortally wounded by what's happened over the last few months is Donald's political future," Mary Trump said. "And yet we find ourselves at this point where American democracy is on the brink because over the course of five decades, one repellant, temper-tantrum-throwing bully has never been held accountable for any of the awful things he's done, including his numerous crimes against America. And now it seems the racism, the anti-semitism, the lying, are compulsory if you want to run for office as a Republican."
Mary Trump went on to say she thinks America is at an "incredibly dangerous crossroads."
"If our system can't respond swiftly to the threats this very weak and vengeful person continues to pose to the future of American democracy, then I'm afraid we might be irrevocably broken, so I really do hope that steps are being taken — real steps — to do something to stop him and hold him accountable finally," she said.
She also said she thinks he will run for president again in 2024 "if he's allowed" since "he needs the power and protection of the Oval Office to keep him out of the massive amounts of trouble he's facing."
"However, the real question should be, why is he being allowed even to consider it?" she said.
Watch the full interview below.
Mary Trump on CNN www.youtube.com
Taking to Twitter on Saturday afternoon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) raged at "clueless" Senate Republicans for not staying up all night and blocking judicial appointments made by President Joe Biden.
Senate proceedings went on until the early hours of Saturday as lawmakers attempted to wrap up business as the holidays approach. However many Republicans didn't stick around -- even in the afternoon -- to vote on judicial nominations with the controversial Georgia Republican insisting all of them should be blocked regardless of qualifications.
In her first tweet, Taylor Greene included a list of GOP Senators' votes -- or non-votes -- while writing, "What happened in the Senate last night was an abomination. If the Republican Senators had simply stayed at work, they would have beaten every nomination after about 3pm. Half the conference left. Pathetic. No excuses for this. But what do you expect with failed leadership?"
Still furious two hours later, she added, "It’s absolutely disgusting that @SenateGOP allows this to happen. Republicans in the Senate could stop decades of Marxist judicial tyranny but instead either don’t bother to show up and vote or actually vote to confirm Biden’s noms. R Senators are clueless about the R base!!!"
You can see her tweets below:
What happened in the Senate last night was an abomination. \n\nIf the Republican Senators had simply stayed at work, they would have beaten every nomination after about 3pm.\n\nHalf the conference left.\n\nPathetic. \nNo excuses for this.\n\nBut what do you expect with failed leadership?pic.twitter.com/UlxT3UF9FZ— Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1639842448
It\u2019s absolutely disgusting that @SenateGOP allows this to happen.\n\nRepublicans in the Senate could stop decades of Marxist judicial tyranny but instead either don\u2019t bother to show up and vote or actually vote to confirm Biden\u2019s noms.\n\nR Senators are clueless about the R base!!!https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1472186035777978368\u00a0\u2026— Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1639849186
A US federal appeals court Friday reinstated a Biden administration mandate that large companies require Covid-19 vaccines for their employees, after the move was halted in court in November.
President Joe Biden had set a January 4 deadline for companies with more than 100 employees to ensure full vaccination of their workers against Covid-19 -- a rule the administration said would affect more than two-thirds of the country's workforce.
The Friday ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals removes an earlier stay, allowing the vaccine order to move ahead, although the matter is likely to head to the Supreme Court.
Judge Jane Stranch did not rule on the ultimate merit of the order, but ruled that it had the potential to be found valid to protect American workers from the coronavirus.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across America, leading to the loss of over 800,000 lives, shutting down workplaces and jobs across the country, and threatening our economy," she said.
Therefore the earlier injunction was not lawful, Stranch said.
The ruling contradicts a decision last month from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which criticized the mandate as "staggeringly overbroad."
The opposing rulings between the two courts set up a likely appeals challenge at the Supreme Court from the case's petitioners -- which include five strongly Republican states as well as several private companies and religious groups.
Vaccine mandates have a long history in the United States but have generally been established by cities or states.
At issue in this case is the constitutionality of a US president initiating such a sweeping nationwide mandate.
"Vaccination is the single best pathway out of this pandemic," Biden has said of the order.
"Businesses have more power than ever before to accelerate our path out of this pandemic, save lives, and protect our economic recovery."
Mandates announced earlier by several major employers have had impressive results.
As of Friday evening, nearly 85 percent of US adults -- and 72.5 percent of the total population -- had received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
© 2021 AFP
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Democrats are delusional if they do not to pass President Joe Biden’s big social spending bill. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said it’s unrealistic for lawmakers to think Democratic voters will come out in force if the party fails to deliver on a raft of popular issues like free pre-kindergarten, the extended child tax credit and climate change. “It is actually delusional to believe Dems can get reelected without acting,” she said on Twitter, ticking off a list of progressive priorities in the $1.8 trillion Build Back Better plan. “We must act now.” Ocasio-Cortez ac...
By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 240 pro-migrant organizations urged President Joe Biden on Friday to terminate two border policies that block or reduce access to asylum in the United States, saying the policies violate U.S. law and international treaty obligations.
Biden, a Democrat, came into office in January promising to roll back the hardline immigration legacy of his Republican predecessor former President Donald Trump, but advocates - many who supported his candidacy - have grown frustrated with the slow pace of reform.
In a letter addressed to Biden and other top officials, the groups called the policies "illegal."
While Biden tried to end one of the policies, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a federal judge ordered reinstatement in response to a lawsuit. But advocates criticized the administration for then expanding the MPP program to apply to all migrants from the Western Hemisphere when it restarted in early December.
Under the MPP program, non-Mexican asylum seekers caught at the U.S.-Mexico border can be sent to Mexico to await U.S. court dates, potentially facing kidnappings and other harms in dangerous border towns.
In restarting MPP, the administration said it would add new humanitarian protections, like health screenings, access to COVID-19 vaccines and lawyers. But a report released on Thursday by the advocacy group Human Rights First said those promises had not materialized.
The organization interviewed 16 returned migrants and found most said they were never informed of their right to speak with a lawyer while in U.S. custody. The report also said U.S. officials had not adequately screened migrants for health vulnerabilities that might allow them to remain in the United States, among other criticisms.
A White House spokesperson said the administration was required to comply with the court-ordered restart "in good faith" and still disagreed with the policy.
As of Thursday, 161 migrants had been returned to Mexico since the MPP restart, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). All returns took place in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The other Trump policy left in place by Biden and criticized by the groups is known as Title 42. It allows U.S. authorities to rapidly expel migrants caught at U.S. border during the COVID-19 pandemic without giving them a chance to seek asylum.
The White House has deferred questions about policy to the U.S. Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which implemented it in March 2020.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Sam Holmes)
A doctored video that made the rounds on social media this week depicted President Joe Biden being handed what conspiracy theorists claimed was a vial of blood that he would later drink.
PolitiFact, which flagged the video, says that it first appeared on Twitter before then migrating over to Instagram, where it quickly racked up thousands of views before being removed.
"The video shows Biden meeting with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and his family after landing at an airport near the Kentucky-Ohio border," writes PolitiFact. "Around the 12:30 mark, the... video shows Biden slipping an unknown object to the young boy standing beside him, Beshear’s son Will, who then placed the object in his pocket. It doesn’t show a vial of blood, nor does it show Biden receiving anything from Beshear’s son in return."
READ MORE: Profanity-spewing anti-vaxxer denied service at Trump Grill for not showing vaccine card
A spokesperson for Beshear also confirmed to PolitiFact that the governor's son did not, in fact, slip a vial of blood to the president of the United States.
The video echoes the theme of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that the Democratic Party is run by a cabal of baby-eating Satanist pedophiles whom former President Donald Trump was working to bring down during his one term in office.
CNN on Friday reported that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's phone was used to send what so far has been the most damning text message sent to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
On November 4th, the day after the election, a text from Perry's phone sent to Meadows recommended taking an "aggressive" plan to stop President Joe Biden from being declared the winner.
"Here's an aggressive strategy," the message began. "Why can't Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other Republican-controlled state houses declare this is B.S. (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote."
READ MORE: Cop-assaulting MAGA rioter gets longest January 6th prison sentence yet
Perry, through a spokesperson, denied sending the text message, although the spokesperson had "no explanation" when asked how the message was sent from the phone of the former Texas governor, who also served as Trump's Secretary of Energy from 2017 through 2019.
CNN confirmed with "multiple sources" who had Perry's personal number that the text message did indeed come from Perry's phone.
Trump eventually would try a variation of Perry's strategy by getting former Vice President Mike Pence to reject election results from key swing states, and then send back the results to GOP-controlled state officials to determine the winner.
Copyright © 2026 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 |
Masthead
|
Privacy Policy
|
Manage Preferences
|
Debug Logs
For corrections contact
corrections@rawstory.com
, for support contact
support@rawstory.com
.
