December 11, 2020

Judge Affirms Biden’s Victory in Wisconsin

Trump has now lost 56 court cases seeking to overturn the election results.

A Biden supporter in Milwaukee on November 7, after it was announced that Joe Biden defeated President Trump.Morry Gash/AP

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A Wisconsin state judge on Friday ruled against the Trump campaign’s last-ditch effort to throw out 221,000 votes in heavily Democratic Milwaukee and Dane counties and affirmed the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s 20,000-vote victory in the state.

“The court should do everything to ensure that the will of the voters prevails,” said retired Judge Stephen Simanek, who was appointed to hear the case by the conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

It was the latest in a long string of legal defeats for Trump and his allies, who have now lost 56 post-election cases seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in key states—including at least four in Wisconsin.

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to take up Trump’s efforts to invalidate Biden’s victory in the state. “Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again,” wrote conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who joined with the three liberal justices on the court to reject Trump’s lawsuits. “This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”

The Trump campaign has filed a separate hearing in federal court, but Trump-appointed Judge Brett Ludwig sounded very skeptical of its chances of success during a hearing on Thursday. Overturning Wisconsin’s election results would be “probably the most remarkable ruling in the history of this court or the federal judiciary,” Ludwig said.

Trump’s legal defeat in Wisconsin comes as the Supreme Court is considering an unprecedented lawsuit from the president, 18 GOP attorneys general, and 106 House Republicans to nullify the election results in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. As in Wisconsin, Trump’s bid is widely expected to fail.  

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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