If control of the House is close, Jan. 3 could be chaos
WASHINGTON — Consider the following scenario: Following a contentious midterm election, the House gathers on the first day of the new Congress to organize itself. With an unpopular Democrat in the White House, the party appears to have lost its House majority. But something’s amiss.
In one state, it looks like the Democrats lost five tight races, but there are reports that votes from entire towns were never counted. Despite the irregularities, though, the governor certified the results, which would have tipped control of the House to his party … except the House clerk, picked by the Democrats in the lame duck, refuses to recognize the five disputed representatives-elect. And that tips the balance in the House back to the Democrats. Chaos ensues.
This might sound like the plot of a bad political thriller or the fever dream of a conspiracy theorist, but it’s no hypothetical. It actually happened in 1839, when House Democrats rejected five of six Whig representatives-elect from New Jersey who showed up with election certificates issued by the governor, who was also a Whig. As a result, they retained partisan control of the House during the months it took to resolve the debacle.
This would be nothing more than a historical footnote if it couldn’t happen again. But according to election law experts, it could.
—CQ-Roll Call
Elon Musk urges Twitter followers to vote Republican in midterms
The world’s richest man has a message for America: Vote Republican. Billionaire Elon Musk took time out from his chaotic takeover of Twitter on Monday to suggest that people should back the GOP in the midterm elections to provide a check on President Joe Biden’s policies.
“Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Musk tweeted. “Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!” he added.
Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has made billions building electric automaker Tesla, considers himself a political independent and says he mostly voted Democratic in the past.
He has recently become a hero to the far right wing of the GOP, which has cheered his plans to reduce content moderation to root out racism and other hate speech on Twitter.
—New York Daily News
‘If a billion doesn’t do it, then a trillion is not going to do it': Alex Jones lawyers argue over punitive damages in Sandy Hook case
HARTFORD, Conn. — Lawyers for right-wing provocateur Alex Jones and the families who won nearly $1 billion a month ago for being targets of his Sandy Hook school conspiracy theories argued Monday over another potentially extraordinary award of punitive damages for what was described in court as his “evil” and “reprehensible” behavior.
A Waterbury jury awarded the relatives $965 million in October as compensation for the decade of threats and harassment they suffered by members of Jones’ vast broadcast audience who believe his claims that the 2012 elementary school massacre was a hoax and they were actors in a scheme to outlaw gun ownership.
In its verdict, which Jones’ lawyer called unprecedented in Connecticut and perhaps anywhere else, the jury also awarded punitive damages against Jones after finding the harm his broadcasts caused the relatives of the shooting victims to be especially egregious.
Under state law, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, who presided over the trial, will decide what the victims get in punitive damages after weighing wildly disparate arguments from the parties Monday. Under one calculation given Bellis by lawyers for the relatives, combined punitive damages could approach $3 trillion.
—Hartford Courant
South Korea’s Yoon apologizes over crowd deaths as criticism grows
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued an apology to the nation over a deadly pre-Halloween crowd crush, with members of his government facing criticism over management of the incident that killed at least 156 people.
“I am sorry and apologetic to the bereaved families, who are facing tragedy that cannot be expressed in words, and to the people who share the pain and sorrow,” Yoon said Monday in a meeting with his Cabinet and outside experts to review national safety systems.
Yoon has called for large-scale police reform as well as a thorough investigation into the incident in the Itaewon nightlife district of Seoul, saying he wants to disclose to the public what happened “without a speck of doubt” and hold those responsible to account.
Yoon, who took office in May, is seeking to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors, who had sometimes been seen as too slow to respond to disasters. So far, it appears he hasn’t taken a major political hit from the Itaewon tragedy, with a weekly tracking poll from Gallup Korea on Friday showing his support dropping 1 percentage point to 29%.
—Bloomberg News
