In Brief: December 13, 2020

Electoral College critics push for popular vote compact

SALEM, Ore. — When the Electoral College meets Monday, its detractors hope it marks the beginning of the end of a system that twice this century has vaulted the loser of the popular vote to the presidency.

This year’s presidential race provides the latest motivation for change to supporters of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. While Democrat Joe Biden scored a decisive win over President Donald Trump in both the popular vote and Electoral College, the race came down to narrow margins in a handful of swing states.

If the results had turned out differently in some of those states, Trump could have lost the popular vote for the second election in a row but gained the presidency because of the Electoral College system.

“It’s an old, ugly mess that frankly should have been obviated some time ago,” said Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine, a Democrat who introduced a bill that would have Virginia sign on to the National Popular Vote movement. It would compel member states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote.

Levine’s measure passed the Virginia House earlier this year. Passage by the Senate would bring the movement 13 electoral votes closer to its goal.

Hunter Biden subpoena seeks info on Burisma, other entities

WASHINGTON — A subpoena seeking documents from Hunter Biden asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Ukraine gas company Burisma, according to a person familiar with a Justice Department tax investigation of President-elect Joe Biden’s son.

The breadth of the subpoena, issued Tuesday, underscores the wide-angle lens prosecutors are taking as they examine the younger Biden’s finances and international business ventures.

Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma in particular have long dogged the policy work and political aspirations of his father, Joe Biden, now the president-elect of the United States. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden’s work at the Ukrainian company is a central part of the federal investigation or whether prosecutors are simply seeking information about all his sources of income in recent years.

The person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

A lawyer for the younger Biden, George Mesires, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment for this story and a spokesman for the Biden transition team declined to comment.

Italy’s huge virus toll poses uncomfortable questions

ROME — Italy is reclaiming a record that nobody wants — the most coronavirus deaths in Europe — after the health care system again failed to protect the elderly and government authorities delayed imposing new restrictions.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Italy was the first country in the West to be slammed by COVID-19 and, after suffering a huge wave of death in spring, brought infections under control.

Italy then had the benefit of time and experience heading into the fall resurgence because it trailed Spain, France and Germany in recording big new clusters of infections. Yet the virus spread fast and wide, and Italy has added nearly 29,000 dead since Sept. 1.

From wire sources

“Obviously there needs to be some reflection,” Guido Rasi, former executive director of the European Pharmaceutical Agency, told state TV after Italy reported a pandemic-high record of 993 deaths in one day. “This number of nearly 1,000 dead in 24 hours is much higher than the European average.”

Italy added 649 more victims Saturday, bringing its official total to 64,036. According to the official British government total of 64,024, Italy did overtake Britain, though the Johns Hopkins University tally late Saturday still showed Britain leading Europe with 64,123 dead. Both numbers are believed to greatly underestimate the real toll, due to missed infections, limited testing and different counting criteria.

Charley Pride overcame racial barriers as country music star

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Charley Pride wasn’t country music’s first Black artist, but he reached heights that had not been available to early Black singers and musicians in the genre. And he did it by winning over millions of country music fans.

While Pride’s career path was paved by artists like Opry pioneer DeFord Bailey, the Grammy-winner’s success put him on par with his white peers, including Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell and Merle Haggard, in a way that had never been afforded to Black artists before.

Pride, whose hits include “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” died Saturday in Dallas of complications from COVID-19, according to his publicist. He was 86.

The pride of Sledge, Mississippi, was the son of a sharecropper who initially turned to sports as a way to a better life.

He was a pitcher and outfielder in the Negro American League with the Memphis Red Sox and in the Pioneer League in Montana.

Analysis: Short work by high court of Trump’s `big one’

WASHINGTON — It didn’t take the Supreme Court long to make short work of what President Donald Trump called “the big one.”

And as the court on Friday rejected a Texas-based lawsuit to overturn the election results, not even Trump’s three high court appointees were willing to rise to the defense of the president. Trump has been clinging to baseless claims of fraud in the hope of reversing election results that made Democrat Joe Biden the next president and deprived Trump of four more years in the White House.

For all Trump’s predictions that the court and his justices would make things right, he and his supporters were lacking one basic element: a strong legal argument that might plausibly attract some sympathy on a court now dominated by conservative justices.

A Republican senator, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, delivered a stinging summary of the court’s rebuke to Trump and his allies. Sasse said “every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court — including all three of President Trump’s picks — closed the book on the nonsense.” Sasse, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has been one of the few Republicans willing to criticize Trump.

Following a string of legal setbacks in battleground states he lost in November, Trump had pinned his hopes on a desperate Supreme Court lawsuit that no Republican lawyer with high-court experience would touch. The suit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and backed by 18 other Republican attorneys general and 126 GOP members of the House of Representatives. It asked the court to take the unprecedented, even outlandish, step of setting aside the 62 combined electoral votes for Biden in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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American Legion, Pelosi joining calls for VA chief’s ouster

WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest veterans organization and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday joined the growing calls for the ouster of President Donald Trump’s Veterans Affairs chief, under fire after a government audit found he acted unprofessionally, if not unethically, in the handling of a congressional aide’s allegation of sexual assault at a VA hospital.

“It is unfair to expect accountability from the nearly 400,000 VA employees and not demand the same from its top executive. It is clear that Secretary Robert Wilkie failed to meet the standard that the veteran who came forward with the complaint deserved,” the American Legion’s national commander, James W. “Bill” Oxford, said in a statement. He urged Wilkie and several other top VA officials cited in the report to resign because of their “violation of trust” of the agency’s commitment to not “tolerate harassment of any kind.”

Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wilkie “has lost the trust and confidence to serve, and he must immediately resign.” She said Wilkie “has not only been derelict in his duty to combat sexual harassment, but has been complicit in the continuation of a VA culture that tolerates this epidemic.”

On Saturday, the VA said Wilkie, who has denied wrongdoing, doesn’t intend to resign. “He will continue to lead the department,” said spokeswoman Christina Noel.

The demands for Wilkie’s resignation came a day after numerous veterans groups expressed similar outrage and sought Wilkie’s dismissal in the final weeks of the Trump administration. Those organizations include Veterans of Foreign Wars, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, AMVETS, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Modern Military Association of America, and they said they had lost confidence that Wilkie could effectively lead the department, which is responsible for the care of 9 million veterans.