ANALYSIS: TRUE. Every business is essential.

As Gavin Newsom dines at French Laundry and Andrew Cuomo collects Emmy Awards, small-business owners in their states are going viral for fighting back against the orders rendering their businesses not essential. That’s how the governors have justified the shuttering of thousands of businesses since March: you are not essential. As it turns out, the least essential workers happen to be the mayors of Denver, Austin, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York City, San Jose and San Francisco, all of whom violated the COVID restrictions they had imposed on their own constituents. When members of our media flatter the likes of Cuomo with giant cotton swabs and late-night appearances, here’s what they should be asking: what is not an essential business?

Which businesses are not essential to people? What defines a non-essential business? Every business that employs someone is essential. Every business owned by a private citizen on personal capital is essential to that person. In Los Angeles, a woman named Angela Marsden recorded a video of her bar, Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill shut down, including outside dining, which she had paid to have installed in the parking lot. In the video she shows a catering set-up for a movie production, showing the distance to be about 50 feet away. The clip went viral, garnering over five million views in two days. Rich and powerful celebrities (or podcasters) have been deemed essential workers in Los Angeles, but a small-business owner and her employees are not.

If podcasts are deemed essential, couldn’t every restaurant with an Internet connection do a vox populi segment interviewing their guests on how they’re holding up under the lockdown, upload it daily or weekly to YouTube or a streaming service, and claim they’re now podcasters who are simply providing catering services to their guests?

EXPLOSIVE: Texas Asks Supreme Court to Block ‘Unlawful Election Results’ in Swing States.

FEDERAL COURT SHOOTS DOWN PENNSYLVANIA BAR’S NEW ‘DISCRIMINATION’ RULE: As with so many such efforts, this one just happened to restrict protected speech. Weird how that keeps happening, huh?

Ultimately, the Court is swayed by the chilling effect that the Amendments will have on Plaintiff, and other Pennsylvania attorneys, if they go into effect. Rule 8.4(g)’s language, “by words . . . manifest bias or prejudice,” are a palpable presence in the Amendments and will hang over Pennsylvania attorneys like the sword of Damocles. This language will continuously threaten the speaker to selfcensor and constantly mind what the speaker says and how the speaker says it or the full apparatus and resources of the Commonwealth may be engaged to come swooping in to conduct an investigation. (Page 22 of PDF)

Disclosure: the plaintiff is my FIRE colleague Zach Greenberg, represented in his personal capacity by the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, as FIRE’s mission is restricted to higher ed.

DO TELL: Chinese boast of operatives ‘inside America’s core circle of power’. Plus:

Di Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, also suggested in a Nov. 28 speech that China‘s Communist Party helped Hunter Biden, a son of presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden, obtain Chinese business deals.

On influencing the United States, Mr. Di said, he could not provide further details about the work of Chinese agents without compromising their identities. However, he said President Trump‘s trade war with China upset decades of close ties between Washington and Beijing that the agent network facilitated.

Well.

UPDATE: Axios: How a Suspected Chinese Spy Gained Access to California Politics.

HMM: Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built COVID-19 dashboard. “FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger sent a statement confirming the seizure of computer equipment at Jones’s Tallahassee home and said agents are investigating.”

Missing from this story: Exactly what is being investigated.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Attack a Cop, Get Shot — Memorialized By BLM, Too.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is there anyone of color so violently stupid and aggressively self-destructive that BLM would wash its hands of them?

Answer: No, no there is not.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Antifa finally and officially comes out against everything good.
• Come see the ignorance inherent in the leftism.
• Lockdowns have you down? You’re not alone.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS SORT OF THING A MONTH AFTER AN ELECTION: Knoxville: Hundreds gather for rally supporting President Trump.

It’s now been over a month since the election, and the support for President Trump continues. Here in Knoxville, hundreds gathered to show their support as official election results continue to be finalized.

“We want to show that we support our president. We don’t believe that the elections in the swing states were carried out in a lawful matter, that there’s fraud and we just want to give out voice to the national support of that issue,” said rally attendee, Kevin Hill.

The rally was organized by Tennessee Senator Mark Pody. He says this rally had a dual purpose; to support the president, but to also encourage Tennesseans to go to Georgia to help campaign in the Senate runoff election.

“We’re not done yet. We want to make sure that all the votes are counted correctly and every vote that’s supposed to count, count and any votes that aren’t supposed to count, that they’re not counted,” Pody said.

There were apparently a few protesters outside who characterized the event as “celebrating racism” because of course. You want more Trump? Comments like that are why stuff like this is happening.

I should add that I think they could have gotten many more people. Most of my hardcore Trump-supporting friends in Knoxville didn’t know about this in advance. I had heard word of it, and would have gone and reported, but I’m currently out of town at a secure and undisclosed location.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Cornell offers ‘person of color’ exemption for flu vaccine requirement.

DISPATCHES FROM THE “IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN WE DO IT” PARTY: Top Biden COVID adviser cheered George Floyd protests despite pandemic.

REFILL THE SWAMP: Two Biden Cabinet Picks Were Reprimanded For Roles In Clinton-Era ‘Pardongate’ Scandal.

COLLUSION: Report: Columbia failed to disclose $1 million in funding from Chinese sources.

HARSH, BUT FAIR: Fact Checks, Combative Questions, and Other Journalism Quirks You’ll Miss When Trump’s Gone.

ELON MUSK GIVES IT A ONE-IN-THREE CHANCE OF WORKING: SpaceX to attempt major Starship SN8 prototype test flight Tuesday. Here’s how to watch live. At 11 am EST.

R.I.P. Chuck Yeager. A life well-lived.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

THEY USED TO CALL IT “THE BLACK HARVARD:” The Curious Case Of Howard Law School’s Peer Ranking.

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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Can’t Allow Democrats To Enjoy One Minute of Biden ‘Victory.’ “The Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media are still rending their garments over the fact that Trump and the faithful will not go quietly into Inauguration Day, which you all know I’m a fan of. Watching them flail throughout what should be their extended moment of triumph is rather delightful. I didn’t used to be this mean-spirited about politics but after what they did for the last four years I find myself a bit bereft of any charitable feelings for the Dems.”

WELL: Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules.

The State of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before midnight on Monday challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.

Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.

If the Supreme Court can revamp state legislative districting in the name of fairness, I see nothing to stop if from supervising state procedures for electing presidents.

MEET THE PLATYPUS, THE ALA CARTE MAMMAL: I’m betting you, like me, had no idea just how unique this odd looking creature really is. Is its assortment of features that seem borrowed from other animals a result of chance or purposeful design?

And why should you care? Because ultimately, freedom is just nothing left to lose when existence is all shaped by chance or materialistic determinism. Like they say, faith, philosophy and science are all three upstream from politics.

#JOURNALISM: “I see the pavilion was privately funded, but there’s a pandemic, so it’s supposed to be an outrage. That is, there’s a pandemic, and Trump is President. If the pavilion went up during the Biden presidency, the stories would be about Joe’s impressive physical fitness that inspires us all to keep in shape, which is so especially important in Covid times. And if Obama were President, the pavilion would inspire people of all colors to take up the ancient sport, heretofore associated with white people. But it’s Trump, so it’s reprehensible — unempathetic and… racist, because who can think of any black tennis players?” Heh. But sadly true.

DEMOCRATS HAD A PLAN FOR GEORGIA, REPUBLICANS DIDN’T:

The common denominator with Fair Fight and CTCL is that both set out to alter the structural electoral environment, rather than just throwing money at ads.

All of that work was out in the open, yet Republicans, taking Georgia for granted, were caught by surprise. And Georgia, as I keep saying, is a testbed for the real deal, which is Texas. That’s their big endgame. Take Texas, transform its electoral system, and secure every presidential election until doomsday.

Democrats went into 2020 with a lot of money but, more importantly, a plan. Republicans have a lot of infighting, but so far, no plan.

Read the whole thing.

And speaking of Georgia: Police Reports Shed Light on Warnock’s 2002 Arrest for Obstruction: ‘Extremely Uncooperative and Disruptive.’ Warnock repeatedly disrupted child abuse investigation, reports say.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT RUSSIAGATE:

As VDH wrote last year, “The locus classicus of Russian collusion, however, is Hillary Clinton’s effort in 2016. The facts are not in dispute. Using the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign paid a foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to compile a smear dossier against Clinton’s then-opponent, Donald J. Trump.”

Or as Julie Kelly wrote at American Greatness last month: The Obama-Trump Transition Was More Like Sedition.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: No, The Georgia Vote-Counting Video Was Not ‘Debunked.’ Not Even Close.

On Friday morning, a group called Lead Stories published a “hoax alert” falsely claiming to have debunked the security video. The Washington Post, Newsweek, and other outlets followed along, criticizing non-leftist journalists for giving the video traction. In fact, none of the claims made by the Republicans were debunked.

Lead Stories’ “fact” “check” says government officials told them everything was fine with the counting, that the ballots were in “containers — not suitcases,” and that “party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night.”

Leaving aside whether relying solely and uncritically on government officials’ claims constitutes anything close to a “fact” “check,” let’s look at the claim that party observers were never told that counting was over for the night. In Lead Stories’ regurgitation of the government officials’ claims, only the people who cut open the absentee ballot envelopes were sent home, while ballot counters and scanners were retained and kept working — and no one told the press or other observers they were done counting.

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that the newsmedia is awfully anxious not to look too closely into claims that suit their narrative.

SHOCKER: Noncitizens and illegal immigrants found in North Carolina voting and jury pools.