Another historic headline: the Supreme Court has rejected the absurd lawsuit by the state of Texas that was attempting to overturn the election results in battleground states Trump lost.

Adam Liptak, writing for The New York Times:

The court, in a brief unsigned order, said Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”

The order, coupled with another one on Tuesday turning away a similar request from Pennsylvania Republicans, signaled that a conservative court with three justices appointed by Mr. Trump refused to be drawn into the extraordinary effort by the president and many prominent members of his party to deny his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his victory.

The best response to the frankly insane lawsuit from Texas came, naturally, from Pennsylvania, who correctly accused Texas of sedition:

In a series of briefs filed Thursday, the four states that Texas sought to sue condemned the effort. “The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” a brief for Pennsylvania said.

Allen West, a single term congressman who once tortured an Iraqi detainee and is now, of course, the chair of the Texas GOP, issued a statement¹ that ended with what can only be read as a move from sedition to a call for actual secession: “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution”.

All of the idiotic, Trumpian theatrics aside, it’s useful to remember that this extralegal bullshit failed because the election wasn’t close. Twenty years ago, a much less brazen GOP, with a slimmer Supreme Court majority and less polarized cultural environment, was able to overturn the presidential election. It’s hard to celebrate this as a victory.

There’s a lot to be angry about with this story. The vaccines are being developed by private companies, who have pre-sold hundreds of millions of doses to world governments. That fact alone is something of an indictment of how our market-driven world works today but it is, for all its advantages and flaws, how the world works.

The Trump administration pre-purchased 100 million doses this summer — that’s enough for 50 million Americans since the vaccine requires two doses to be fully effective. The administration passed on the opportunity to purchase more doses and is now scrambling to get more, which may prove impossible since Pfizer has already pre-sold doses to other countries. The pan in pandemic means global, after all.

It’s the exact kind of colossal fuckup Trump has made a hallmark of his presidency — a complete self-own borne of his own rank stupidity, complete incuriosity, and total incompetence. He’s signing an executive order with basically no legal standing that will attempt to force Pfizer to sell the doses they’ve already pre-sold to other countries to the American government, in an attempt to cover up for his abject failure. It’s the kind of proto-fascism his base loves and will inject into their hate-filled veins instead of recognizing how much it’s literally killing them.

Moncef Slaoui, the top science advisor for Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed”, said he has no idea what the president is talking about regarding the “America first” directive.