The Miami Marlins have hired Kim Ng to be the team’s general manager, the first woman and the first Asian-American to hold that position in Major League Baseball, USA Today reports.

The 53-year-old Ng has been the assistant GM or similar roles with the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles and New York Yankees for nearly 30 years, between 1990 and 2011.  Since 2011, she has been the Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations for Major League Baseball.

Ng is believed to be the first woman to be named a general manager of a major league sports franchise in North America.

Her appointment comes just ten days after Kamala Harris became the first woman and the first person of Asian descent to be elected to the Executive Branch of the United States.

For years the Dems have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2020

More than 130 Secret Service agents assigned to the White House or outgoing president Donald Trump’s travel detail are being isolated because they have tested positive for coronavirus or have been in close contact with those who have, the Washington Post reports.

The order sidelines about 10% of the US Secret Service’s core security team, responsible for protecting the President and other VIPs.  The infections are believed to have been caused by lax precautions at Trump events, including rallies and White House events.

“Election-law experts say many of Mr. Trump’s legal claims amount to citations of common irregularities or unintentional errors by voters or administrators rather than election fraud, or intentional efforts to subvert the election. They say that fraudulent acts do occasionally happen, but they typically affect relatively few ballots. Disputes over procedures or errors are usually resolved by invalidating disputed ballots—typically a limited number that doesn’t alter the result—or modifying counting procedures. Courts only very occasionally have taken extraordinary steps such as ordering a new election.”

“In a Pennsylvania lawsuit over several hundred disputed ballots in Montgomery County, a state judge Tuesday repeatedly asked lawyer Jonathan Goldstein if he was alleging that fraud took place. Mr. Goldstein at first declined to answer, saying ‘everybody is coming to this with good faith.’ Judge Richard Haaz pressed: ‘I understand. I am asking you a specific question, and I am looking for a specific answer. Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?’ ‘To my knowledge at present, no,’ Mr. Goldstein said” – Wall Street Journal.

CNN: “There’s a renewed push to get Chad Wolf confirmed as Homeland Security secretary — a position in which he’s been serving in an acting capacity for a year — before Inauguration Day, according to two sources familiar with the discussions. In the past week, Homeland Security officials spoke to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office about bringing the nomination to a floor vote in the coming weeks – a move seemingly acknowledging both a forthcoming change in administrations and criticism that Wolf’s appointment was invalid.”

“The latest push is emblematic of how the Department of Homeland Security has operated for the last four years. Over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, DHS – the third-largest federal department – has had five secretaries, only two of whom have been confirmed by the Senate, and has run into a flurry of questions over the legitimacy and authority of those leading in acting capacities. As leaders came and went, DHS was thrust to the forefront of some of Trump’s most controversial policies, including the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, which led to the separation of thousands of families at the US-Mexico border, and a series of policies that have made it exceedingly difficult for migrants to seek asylum in the US, among other changes to the immigration system.”

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1327261163403448320

NY Magazine: “Though war metaphors are common in the language of sports, it appears that Tommy Tuberville, the incoming Republican senator from Alabama, didn’t learn much about World War II in his time coaching Auburn football. On Thursday night in Montgomery, Tuberville told his supporters about the sterling military record of his father, an American G.I. who landed on Normandy Beach in D-Day and drove a tank across western Europe, earning five bronze stars and a Purple Heart at the Battle of the Bulge during his deployment.”

“Despite being of an age at which American men pick up military history as if by osmosis, Tuberville did not seem familiar with the politics of the European theater: In his speech, the new senator described how his father took part in ‘liberating Paris from socialism and communism.’ While this may be an effort to compare his father’s combat experience to his own effort to halt ‘the doctrine of socialism’ in America, the coach’s political framework is off. When First Sergeant Charles Tuberville landed in France in 1944, he was part of a campaign to liberate the Allied power from the Nazis. Though socialism was in the name of the party that Hitler rode into power, the Nazis were, canonically, fascist. And for students of history, Tuberville’s gaffe could accidentally suggest that his father was involved in a different march into Paris in the 1940s.”

“Democrats should be forced to pay for every flipped election that’s because there never seems to be any suddenly discovered republican votes.”

– The current top comment on the PJ Media article “Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin: Here’s an Update on Team Trump’s Lawsuits and Recounts” posted Thursday night.

“Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm leading the Trump campaign’s efforts to cast doubt on the presidential election results in Pennsylvania, abruptly withdrew from a federal lawsuit that it filed days earlier on behalf of President Trump. ‘Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,’ the law firm said in a federal court filing. The firm’s withdrawal followed an article in The New York Times on Monday described internal tensions at the firm about its work for Mr. Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania. Some employees said they were concerned that the firm was being used to undercut the integrity of the electoral process. One Porter Wright lawyer resigned in protest over the summer.”

“Porter Wright, based in Columbus, Ohio, has received at least $727,000 in fees from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to federal election disclosures. The law firm on Monday filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on behalf of the Trump campaign. The suit, which is pending, alleged that there were ‘irregularities’ in the presidential vote across the state, which President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by more than 50,000 votes. The Democratic National Committee has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit” – New York Times.

Bloomberg: “Dominic Cummings quit as Boris Johnson’s most powerful aide and will leave the U.K. government by the end of the year, throwing the future direction of the prime minister’s entire political project into doubt. The resignation, confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, brings to an end 17 months of combative and often controversial influence of a small group of pro-Brexit officials over the British government. Cummings is the second key adviser to Johnson to go in the space of a day, after tensions blew up over the way the prime minister’s inner circle operates.”

“Cummings has been at the premier’s side since he took power in July 2019, and was the mastermind of the successful Brexit referendum campaign that catapulted Johnson into the front rank of British politics three years earlier. His departure will deprive the premier of his most important adviser and strategist, who has wielded huge influence over all aspects of government policy, from its pandemic response to Brexit and economic reform.”

Business Insider: “Donald Trump will not run to be president in 2024, contrary to recent reports, because he will be too scared of losing again to Joe Biden, according to his niece Mary Trump. The outgoing president is seriously considering announcing his intention to run in 2024, according to a The New York Times, partly because he believes it would give him an immediate advantage over other potential Republican candidates. Reuters reported that he could announce his plan to run again before the New Year.”

“However, Mary Trump on Thursday predicted that her uncle would not seek election for a third time, telling CNN that he ‘will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again.’ Asked whether she believed he would run again as widely reported, Mary Trump said: ‘No. First of all, and I know he’s said that he would and that’s weird because that’s conceding the loss now, but I think that was floated initially as a way to appease him and his ego, but he will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again. ‘Secondly, it would mean that for four years, he is playing essentially a supporting role, which will be very difficult for him to sustain.'”

AP: “China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to make few changes to U.S. policy in conflicts with Beijing over trade, technology and security. China, along with Russia, avoided joining the throng that congratulated Biden last weekend after he and vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris secured enough Electoral College votes to unseat President Trump. ‘We respect the choice of the American people,’ said a foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin. ‘We congratulate Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.'”

These states in question should immediately be put in the Trump Win column. Biden did not win, he lost by a lot! pic.twitter.com/ywiw6sPicI https://t.co/C1g9LZpMah

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2020

“Official sources called this election differently” sums up Trump’s reign nicely.

At 11:15 p.m. ET, NBC News called the presidential race in Arizona.  The win gives Biden 290 Electoral College votes.  CNN quickly followed the NBC call, giving Biden the win.

Around 11,000 votes are remaining to be counted in the state, with Trump winning about 52-55% of the remaining vote.  That’s not enough to overcome the 11,034 lead Biden has amassed.

Arizona has now elected two Democrats to the Senate and voted for the Democratic nominee for president.

The Associated Press and Fox News had called Arizona for Biden on Election Day, but no other major media outlets had joined their assessment.  Decision Desk made the call earlier today.  NBC becomes the first major network to put Arizona in Biden’s column.

The lawyers for incumbent Republican president Donald Trump have scored a small victory in a Pennsylvania court, which ruled that ballots from a small number of voters may not be counted because the voters failed to verify their identities before a November 9th deadline, Pennlive reports.

Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt ruled that Commonwealth Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar did not have the authority to unilaterally extend the verification date for the ballots, cast by first time voters in Pennsylvania who did not present identification when they voted or registered to vote.

Boockvar decided that the deadline to verify voter registrations should be extended by three days, to November 12th, to match a court order that said ballots could be received up to three days after the election if they were postmarked by Election Day. 

“At a meeting on Wednesday at the White House, President Trump had something he wanted to discuss with his advisers, many of whom have told him his chances of succeeding at changing the results of the 2020 election are thin as a reed. He then proceeded to press them on whether Republican legislatures could pick pro-Trump electors in a handful of key states and deliver him the electoral votes he needs to change the math and give him a second term, according to people briefed on the discussion” The New York Times reports.

“It was not a detailed conversation, or really a serious one, the people briefed on it said. Nor was it reflective of any obsessive desire of Mr. Trump’s to remain in the White House. ‘He knows it’s over,’ one adviser said. But instead of conceding, they said, he is floating one improbable scenario after another for staying in office while he contemplates his uncertain post-presidency future. There is no grand strategy at play, according to interviews with a half-dozen advisers and people close to the president. Mr. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure the continued support of his Republican base. By dominating the story of his exit from the White House, he hopes to keep his millions of supporters energized and engaged for whatever comes next.

Alaska GOP representative Don Young, the oldest member of Congress at age 87, has tested positive for the coronavirus, he announced Thursday, CNN reports.

I have tested positive for COVID-19. I am feeling strong, following proper protocols, working from home in Alaska, and ask for privacy at this time. May God Bless Alaska.

— Rep. Don Young (@repdonyoung) November 12, 2020

Young tweeted that he’s feeling strong and working from his home in Alaska.

Ashley Hinson, the 37-year-old Republican elected to Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, also announced Thursday that she tested positive for the coronavirus.

According to outgoing president Donald Trump’s statement before the election, the last day we should have been talking about the coronavirus was eight days ago, on November 4th.

Instead, we’re talking about another day when the United States set a new daily record for confirmed cases and hospitalizations.

The US recorded more than 150,000 cases on Thursday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.   The aggregator also reports that more than 67,000 people with coronavirus are hospitalized in the US.  Both are records.

The number hospitalized has jumped 26% in one week.  The seven-day moving average of new cases in the US has increased daily since September 26th.