Crackpots in Michigan
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had just finished wrapping string lights around her home’s portico on Saturday evening and was about to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with her 4-year-old son when a crowd of protesters marched up carrying American flags and guns.
About two dozen protesters chanted “Stop the Steal” and accused Benson, a Democrat and Michigan’s chief election officer, of ignoring widespread voter fraud — an echo of President Trump’s continued unfounded claims as he seeks to overturn the results of the election that President-elect Joe Biden won.
“She’s decided to completely ignore all of the credible, credible, fraudulent evidence that has been continually pointed out,” demonstrator Genevieve Peters said of Benson, as she live-streamed the protest in Detroit on Facebook. “We’re out here in front of the secretary of state’s house and we want her to know we will continue to be here.”
Vitriolic rhetoric has led bipartisan leaders to warn that Trump’s baseless attacks on the election are endangering election officials’ lives. Multiple Michigan officials have reported being threatened and harassed over the election results, as have officials in Georgia, Arizona, Vermont, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado.
Spreading the Joy (and panic!) in Arizona
For more than 10 hours last Monday, President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, convened in a Phoenix hotel ballroom with more than a dozen current and future Arizona Republican lawmakers to hear testimony from people who supposedly witnessed election fraud.
Giuliani and other attendees were shown maskless and not social distancing, and the Arizona Republican Party tweeted an image of Giuliani and lawmakers flouting guidelines to restrict transmission of the novel coronavirus.
That defiance of public health advice came to a head on Sunday when Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani had contracted the coronavirus. Hours later, legislative staff in Arizona’s Capitol abruptly announced a week-long closure of the state Senate and House starting on Monday.
The next day, Giuliani held a private meeting with Arizona’s GOP leadership, including state Senate Majority Leader Rick Gray, Senate President Karen Fann, House Speaker Rusty Bowers and House Majority Leader Warren Petersen, according to a tweet from state Sen. Vince Leach, who also attended the meeting. Leach posted an image of himself with his arm around Giuliani with neither wearing a mask. (😊 for the selfie!)
Unhinged . . . . jaw 😱
Nursing home high jinks
Last month, more than 300 people packed into a wedding near rural Ritzville, Wash., defying state restrictions. Authorities later traced more than a dozen coronavirus cases and two outbreaks to the ceremony — and warned that the fallout would likely get worse.
Now, health officials say the wedding also included some guests whose job is caring for among the most vulnerable to coronavirus: nursing-home residents. And at least six residents have now died of covid-19 at two nursing homes where staffers tested positive for the virus after attending the wedding, the local department announced in a Thursday news release.
The Grant County Health District said that it hasn’t yet definitively linked those deaths to the wedding, but the department now intends to do full contact tracing on the staffers who tested positive after attending the event, spokeswoman Theresa Adkinson told The Washington Post in an email statement late Sunday.
Health experts have long warned of the risk that “superspreader” events pose to the elderly and those with underlying conditions even if they don’t participate in the mass gatherings themselves. In August, a wedding in a small Maine town with about 65 guests sparked an outbreak resulting in nearly 200 infections. Six residents of an assisted-living facility who did not attend the party died of covid-19 complications after being infected in the outbreak, the state’s CDC director later announced.
Who is the sheep here?
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