And now we wait on tenterhooks to learn how the Supreme Court will rule on the suit brought by the State of Texas and 17 other states asking to throw out the election results from four other states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) on the grounds that they changed their election laws illegally. In general reaction to the suit has been along party lines.

I wanted to get my speculation about how the SCOTUS will rule on the books. I think the suit will be rejected on standings grounds.

Updated

The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the State of Texas’s injunction request. Seven of the justices rejected the motion to file, as I suggested above, on standings grounds. The two most conservatives justices, Thomas and Alito, would have granted motion to leave but no other relief. From Jonathan Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy:

This evening, a unanimous Supreme Court refused to grant Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton an injunction or other relief that would bar the selection of presidential electors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As detailed in the just-released order, seven justices would deny the Texas AG’s Motion for Leave to file a complaint, citing a lack of Article III standing. Justices Alito and Thomas, citing their long-standing belief that the Court lacks the discretion to deny the motion, would have granted the motion, but would have provided Texas with no other relief. In other words, not a single justice believed Texas deserved the extraordinary relief it sought.

Joe Biden will be elected president by the Electoral College when it meets.

The editors of the Washington Post are worried that violence may break out over “Trump’s lies” about the election:

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S lying about the election has become dangerous — and not just in the sense that it damages democratic norms. It also increasingly threatens to spur physical violence against Americans who have done their duty to oversee a free and fair vote.

Officials in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin have reported receiving threats or harassment. The Arizona Republican Party asked its Twitter followers Tuesday if they were willing to give their lives to overturn the election and “die for something.”

Armed “protesters” menaced Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and her family in their home over the weekend. “Someone’s going to get killed,” said Gabriel Sterling, a senior Georgia election official, as he detailed last week the death threats he and others have received. Yet, Mr. Trump continues to pour gasoline on the fire, tweeting Wednesday that “We will soon be learning about the word ‘courage’, and saving our Country.” Kim Ward, the majority leader of the Pennsylvania state Senate, told the New York Times that if she refused to cooperate with efforts to challenge the election result, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”

I’ve been warning about the potential for violence for some time and I don’t think it’s just over Trump’s lies although, obviously, his claims whether lies, exaggerations, misconceptions, or whatever aren’t helping. I have been steadfast and consistent in my view. I said days after the election that unless the Trump campaign were able to produce evidence that would stand up in court it was over and Trump lost. They have been unable to do so.

It’s a bit late to be complaining about norms. Al Gore didn’t concede the 2000 election until December 13. I thought that Gore-Lieberman was wrong to take the election to court in 2000 and I think that Trump-Pence is wrong now. Hillary Clinton has never retracted her claim that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president. It’s time for the president and his supporters to stand down and accept defeat. It’s also time for Joe Biden and his supporters to be gracious in victory.

Yet another news story of significance. A poll taken by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC is an old client of mine) finds that about half of Americans are willing to be inoculated against COVID-19. From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — As states frantically prepare to begin months of vaccinations that could end the pandemic, a new poll finds only about half of Americans are ready to roll up their sleeves when their turn comes.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows about a quarter of U.S. adults aren’t sure if they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly another quarter say they won’t.

Many on the fence have safety concerns and want to watch how the initial rollout fares — skepticism that could hinder the campaign against the scourge that has killed nearly 290,000 Americans. Experts estimate at least 70% of the U.S. population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or the point at which enough people are protected that the virus can be held in check.

The associated infographic, breaking down the responses by sex, age, and race, is interesting. Men are more likely to get inoculated than women; the old more likely than the young; whites more likely than blacks.

Maybe it’s of no importance since we can’t inoculate enough people to attain herd immunity over the next few months anyway and opinions may change as more experience is gained. But opinion may change in either direction and, as I have cautioned, how the initial vaccinations are handled by the media could have a substantial impact.

All of this supports my speculation that we’ll still be struggling with COVID-19 in 2022.

Here’s another story that strikes me as significant. The Associated Press reports that the higher ranks of the FBI have been skating despite having been accused of various sexual misconduct:

WASHINGTON (AP) — An assistant FBI director retired after he was accused of drunkenly groping a female subordinate in a stairwell. Another senior FBI official left after he was found to have sexually harassed eight employees. Yet another high-ranking FBI agent retired after he was accused of blackmailing a young employee into sexual encounters.

An Associated Press investigation has identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought this week by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents.

Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them.

Beyond that, federal law enforcement officials are afforded anonymity even after the disciplinary process runs its course, allowing them to land on their feet in the private sector or even remain in law enforcement.

Keep in mind that the FBI is the country’s premier law enforcement agency and the matters of these accusations aren’t just cases of boorish behavior but actually against the law. Who guards the guards? It looks like the complaints about a Deep State aren’t so far-fetched after all. Has the White House not known about the appalling misconduct or is it treating it with just a wink and a nod? Not only Donald Trump but Joe Biden as well has been accused of sexual misconduct. Will Joe Biden act where Donald Trump has not?

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission and all but a handful of states filed suit against Facebook for abuse of monopoly power. From Reuters:

WASHINGTON/PALO ALTO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc could be forced to sell its prized assets WhatsApp and Instagram after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and nearly every U.S. state filed lawsuits against the social media company, saying it used a “buy or bury” strategy to snap up rivals and keep smaller competitors at bay.

I believe this suit will prove to be an important development with many interesting and far-reaching aspects. For example, what will the Biden Administration’s attitude be? Will the Biden FTC end their participation in the suit? That wouldn’t stop the suit from moving forward. Will it impel changes in the behaviors of Google, Amazon?

My own view is that the suit is a mistake and would not be necessary at all if we didn’t have a do-nothing Congress (related: the House has scheduled a 101 day working schedule for 2021). If Facebook is split up, another company will stand up and do the same things Facebook has for the same reasons. What should happen is that Facebook’s business model should be made unworkable which isn’t that hard to do. The Europeans are already moving in that direction.

Facebook’s stock dropped a little on the news. Since its stock has been at all time highs it will be interesting to see if it has anywhere to go but down.

Offhand I’m guessing that not too many of my readers are also readers of the Ventura County Star but I thought that this column from the VCStar’s columnist Lisa McKinnon had resonance beyond Ventura County:

My first Café Society column in five months will be my last story for the Ventura County Star after nearly 29 years with the paper.

When I wrote back in July that I was stepping away from The Star indefinitely after filing a column about the corn burritos at Karina’s Mexican Food in Ventura, my life was already changing in profound ways.

On the outside, I was covering Black-owned food businesses in Ventura County, the impact of changing coronavirus restrictions on local food trucks and plans to open what will be the region’s second Black Bear Diner after the first one debuted in Simi Valley in May 2019.

On the inside, I was trying to figure out how to be my mother’s quarantined, 24/7 caretaker so she could spend her final months at home, protected from another spike in COVID-19 cases while we waited to see if a few rounds of palliative chemotherapy would slow the mass growing on her pancreas.

Read the whole thing. I believe that it will become increasingly clear that whether we contract it or not COVID-19 has changed most of our lives in ways that will only become fully apparent over time.

Two Brits have had severe allergic reactions after being inoculated with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine reports USA Today:

Two British people with severe allergies apparently had allergic reactions to Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, raising questions about whether it is safe for people with preexisting allergies.

In response, British regulators advised those with severe allergies to avoid the vaccine.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the allergic reactions. There are no preservatives or animal products in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which have been known to trigger reactions with other types of vaccines.

Allergic reactions were not a significant problem in the U.S. trial in which more than 20,000 people have received both two doses of the vaccine, but the U.S. trials probably kept out subjects who have had severe allergic reactions, said Moncef Slaoui, co-head of Operation Warp Speed – the government program tasked with developing, manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines.

Here’s the key graf:

“If you start issuing recommendations that anyone with an EpiPen doesn’t get vaccinated, that could be a showstopper for Americans,” he said. About 3 to 4 million Americans carry epinephrine with them at all times in case of allergic reactions, Hotez noted, and 50 million have less severe allergies.

Pfizer’s stock dipped a bit on the news. We’re going to need to follow two different threads for the next several days—the adverse reactions of those in the UK getting the inoculations and the reactions of the media to the inevitable stories like this.

The group No Labels has helpfully provided a synopsis of the differences between the $500 billion COVID-19 relief bill previously passed by the Senate and the $908 bill being promoted by the House Problem Solvers Committee (PSC) and nine senators. Here goes:

1. Small business relief is a priority in both bills.
2. Both stimulus packages include funds for COVID-19 testing and vaccines.
3. Both proposals provide direct assistance for schools to reopen safely.
4. The PSC bill includes funds for state and local aid, while the GOP bill does not.
5. The PSC package contains broader unemployment aid and rental assistance while the GOP plan does not.

The $3 trillion HEROES bill passed by the House was DOA as was the Senate’s response. IMO the prospects for passing the PSC’s bill in both houses are pretty good. Time is of the essence. And passing it would provide good practice in something the Congress hasn’t been doing for a while: compromise.

In his Guardian article Oliver Balch calls the demands for lithium created by electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids alike as “dirty little secret”. It’s not so secret for those of us who’ve been following the issue:

Lithium-ion batteries are used to power electric cars, as well as to store grid-scale electricity. (They are also used in smartphones and laptops.) But Europe has a problem. At present, almost every ounce of battery-grade lithium is imported. More than half (55%) of global lithium production last year originated in just one country: Australia. Other principal suppliers, such as Chile (23%), China (10%) and Argentina (8%), are equally far-flung.

Lithium deposits have been discovered in Austria, Serbia and Finland, but it is in Portugal that Europe’s largest lithium hopes lie. The Portuguese government is preparing to offer licences for lithium mining to international companies in a bid to exploit its “white oil” reserves. Sourcing lithium in its own back yard not only offers Europe simpler logistics and lower prices, but fewer transport-related emissions. It also promises Europe security of supply – an issue given greater urgency by the coronavirus pandemic’s disruption of global trade.

The article also goes into the prospects for lithium recycling. Lithium deposits are actually pretty common. It’s the 33rd most abundant element in the earth’s crust—less abundant than zinc, copper, or cobalt, more abundant than lead, tin, or tungsten. IMO the issue will be less one of finding it than the BANANA attitude of many in Europe and the United States who, ironically, also support EVs most strongly.