Who is popular today?

‘An embarrassment’: Biden criticizes Trump’s refusal to concede
Pompeo promises smooth transition to ‘second Trump administration’
Conservative supreme court justices suggest Obamacare will be upheld
The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies
Sign up to receive First Thing – our daily briefing by email

9.32am GMT
While we are on the topic of alleged voter fraud, it is worth noting again that here are some of the key Republican talking points, and why they are wrong about them.
Mail-in ballots are perfectly legal: while the number of mail-in ballots in the 2020 election were at a much larger scale than previously, mail-in ballots have been part of the US election system for years. It has also always been the case that some states allow ballots to arrive and be counted after the election provided that they are postmarked and dated on or before election day. Trump’s contention that these are automatically somehow illegal ballots is completely false.
9.26am GMT
The New York Times took on the epic job of doing a ring-round of every state’s election officials to ask them about voter fraud, and found zip. Their piece is littered with choice quotes:
“There’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections,” said Frank LaRose, a Republican who serves as Ohio’s secretary of state. “The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant. For some reason, elections breed that type of mythology.”
Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota’s secretary of state, said: “I don’t know of a single case where someone argued that a vote counted when it shouldn’t have or didn’t count when it should. There was no fraud.” Continue reading...