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Donald Trump lost a challenge in federal court on Saturday in Wisconsin, while judges said yet another case being fought there “reeks of racism.”
The slaps came less than 24 hours after the abrupt dismissal by the United States Supreme Court of the boldest Republican attempt yet to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the election nearly six weeks ago.
But despite recent tough defeats and legal reprimands, Trump took to the skies in the presidential Marine One helicopter on Saturday en route to an engagement in New York and flew up a protest by several hundred staunch supporters in Washington DC, who persist in reinforcing their false claims that the elections were “stolen” from them by fraud and conspiracy.
This as the United States electoral college will vote on Monday to confirm Biden’s resounding victory, along with his Democratic vice president-elect, Kamala Harris.
And a trickle of Republicans joined leading Democrats in talking about the growing futility, but also the insidiousness of the lame president’s aggressive grip on power.
After the supreme court decision, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the Trump campaign’s challenges to the election result: “Now it’s really over. Trump and his acolytes must stop all efforts to deny millions of votes. “
More than 120 Republican members of the House of Representatives wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court last week in support of the lawsuit filed by Texas, joined by Trump, and aimed at overturning Biden’s victory in four states. key, that the court on Friday night abruptly refused to consider it.
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the effort “an affront to the country.”
“It is an offense to the constitution and leaves an indelible stain that it will be difficult for these 126 members to erase their political skin,” he told the New York Times.
In Wisconsin on Saturday, US District Judge Brett Ludwig dismissed one of Trump’s latest lawsuits there that asked the court to order the Republican-controlled state legislature to name him the winner, while in reality Biden won Wisconsin on his way to victory at White. House.
Even when Ludwig said that Trump’s arguments “fail as a matter of law and fact,” an attorney for the president, Jim Troupis, was busy arguing another case, before a skeptical Wisconsin state supreme court, a lawsuit that, if successful, it would disenfranchise hundreds of people. thousands of voters in the most diverse counties of Wisconsin, Dane and Milwaukee, where Biden won.
Trump is not contesting any votes in the Wisconsin counties he won.
“This lawsuit, Mr. Troupis, smells like racism,” Judge Jill Karofsky told Trump’s attorney at the beginning of their arguments.
“I don’t know how you can come forward in this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in American history … It’s not normal,” he added.
One of Karofsky’s fellow judges in that case, where a decision is now awaited, noted that Trump also did not make such challenges when he won Wisconsin on his way to the White House in 2016.
Trump and his allies have already suffered many dozen defeats in Wisconsin and across the country in trials that are based on unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud and election abuse.
Friday’s rejection of the Texas case by the U.S. Supreme Court, which asked the court to overturn Biden’s victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, came despite Trump’s nomination of three of the nine justices. , which has tilted the court drastically to the right.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who was among 23 attorneys general who asked the highest court to reject the Texas lawsuit, said in a statement: “The Supreme Court has denied Texas efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 elections, and Americans across the country can rest assured that the will of the people will be heard. “
James continued: “The court’s decision to dismiss these ridiculous claims ensures that the integrity of our elections is protected and that the elections cannot be annulled simply because we do not agree with the results.”
James will participate in the official confirmation of Trump’s defeat in the November 3 elections.
“On Monday, I and other members of the electoral college across the country will fulfill our constitutional duty and take the final step to ensure that Joe Biden becomes the 46th President of the United States and that Kamala Harris becomes the 49th Vice President. of the United States, ”he said.
Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, indicated that this should be the end of the road for Trump’s campaign to fight the outcome.
“What happened to the Supreme Court, that’s all, where they have exhausted all legal challenges. We have to move on, ”he told CNN.
Instead, he called on the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress to address the coronavirus crisis, which has never been brought under control and has killed more than 3,300 people in the past 24 hours, and to deliver the new one to them. vaccinate people.
The president’s dubious coat of arms on his Scottish golf courses, as Atlantic magazine has noted, may sport the slogan “never allow”- Latin means“ never to grant ”- but the mantra conveys less and less a sense of indomitability than dangerous despair.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and author of The Fight to Vote, said: “The courts have been very, very clear in rejecting Trump’s efforts to undo the US elections. 2020 … a very striking unanimity of sentences “.
Yet the implications of the litigation were troubling for American democracy.
“Clearly, there is a very strong and never before seen anti-democratic drive in the United States that can be activated too easily, and this is going to be a great fight for years,” he said.
He added: “It is just appalling what Trump and the Republicans have done.”
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