Hasta La Gadget!

by Jim Malewitz, The Texas Tribune

The Houston-based organization that fueled President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that “millions” of people voted illegally in the 2016 election says it’s scaling back its effort to catalogue the fraudulent votes it alleged.  

True The Vote, a watchdog group focused on “election integrity,” says it’s short on the cash needed to complete a forensic audit of the 2016 election — an effort Trump applauded in his first days in the White House.

“As it stands, we do not have the funding to do what we want to do. We’ve gathered 2016 voter rolls, we’ve gathered information from thousands of [Freedom of Information Act requests], but we’re limited by the lack of resources,” Catherine Engelbrecht, the group’s founder, said Tuesday in a video message to supporters. “Next steps up are for us to sort of pull back on the national audit, and focus on targeted investigations.”

Just days after his victory, Trump caused a stir by claiming — without evidence — that he would have won the popular vote in addition to the Electoral College “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Trump later confirmed the source for his claim had Texas ties: Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission official who now works with True The Vote.

At the time, Phillips said his team had already verified more than 3 million non-citizen votes. When pressed for details, he said the group was still finalizing its audit. In January, Trump tweeted: “ Look forward to seeing final results.”

In March, Phillips told The Texas Tribune the final results were still forthcoming. But apparently, the audit is no longer taking shape. 

“We knew that this was a project that would take millions, but the major funding commitments haven’t materialized,” Engelbrecht said in Tuesday’s video.

Neither Engelbrecht nor Phillips responded to interview requests this week. 

A White House spokeswoman did not directly respond to True The Vote’s announcement, but told the Tribune in a statement: “President Trump has expressed concerns regarding possible voter fraud and he wants to ensure that the integrity of all elections, which are the cornerstone of our democracy, is preserved.”

The statement said Trump’s “Election Integrity Commission,” formed in May, would “assess the situation.” 

Election experts call proven cases of voter fraud rare, and civil rights groups fear Trump’s commission — chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and vice-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has championed some of the nation’s strictest voting and anti-immigrant laws — will throw up roadblocks to voting in the name of fraud prevention.

Trump’s vow to root out voter fraud echoes an effort by President George W. Bush. Bush’s years-long crackdown found no evidence of organized efforts to taint elections, and led to a few dozen convictions — mostly of people who mistakenly filled out registration forms or expressed confusion about eligibility rules, according to media reports at the time.

In a study of the 2016 elections focused on 42 election jurisdictions in 12 states, New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found officials flagged just 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. About 23.5 million votes were cast in those jurisdictions.

“In California, Virginia and New Hampshire — the states where Trump claimed the problem of non-citizen voting was especially acute — no official we spoke with identified an incident of non-citizen voting in 2016,” the study said.  

Read related Tribune coverage:

• Gregg Phillips, a former Texas official with the Health and Human Services Commission, appears to be the source of Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that “millions” of people voted illegally in the race for the White House. [link]

• Following President Donald Trump’s latest unsubstantiated claim that voter fraud cost him the popular vote, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said “voter fraud is real” in an interview on Fox News Wednesday morning. [link]

• A barrage of court rulings has forced Texas leaders to confront whether they strayed too far in enacting voting laws found to have disproportionately burdened minorities. [link]

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s leading scientists gave Energy Secretary Rick Perry a free lesson about the well-established scientific findings on climate change, just two days after the Trump Cabinet member denied that carbon dioxide is driving the global crisis.

In a Wednesday letter to Perry, Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, said it is “critically important” that Perry understand that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are, indeed, the primary cause of climate change.

“This is a conclusion based on the comprehensive assessment of scientific evidence,” Seitter wrote. “It is based on multiple independent lines of evidence that have been affirmed by thousands of independent scientists and numerous scientific institutions around the world. We are not familiar with any scientific institution with relevant subject matter expertise that has reached a different conclusion.”

Seitter added that “without this fundamental understanding of the science, it is impossible to discuss potential policy changes in meaningful ways.”

In an interview Monday, CNBC “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernen asked Perry whether he believes carbon dioxide “is the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate.” Perry said, “No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”

Perry went on to defend his and others’ climate change denial, suggesting that those who question the scientific community’s findings are more intelligent. “I think if you’re going to be a wise, intellectually engaged person, being a skeptic about some of these issues is quite all right,” he said. 

Seitter wrote Wednesday that AMS agrees — that “skepticism and debate are always welcome and are critically important to the advancement of science.” But when it comes to the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in driving global warming, he said, the science is “extremely well established.”

“In climate science unresolved questions remain — issues that currently lack conclusive evidence,” Seitter wrote. “However, there are also very solid conclusions that are based on decades of research and multiple lines of evidence.”

“Skepticism that fails to account for evidence is no virtue,” he added.

Read the American Meteorological Society’s full letter here. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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How many hours have you spent smashing pots in the various Legend of Zelda games in your endless quest for rupees? Too many. Even though there have been many short films, comics and cartoons about Link, they always leave this activity out for some reason.

Smashing pots for rupees is what it’s all about. Everyone knows that. Animator Callegos Yavolitak created Race for Rupees, a fan film that celebrates this. It is nice to know that we’re not alone in our obsession to destroy and gain in-game virtual wealth.

This is a fun little film and very well done. It’s sure to bring a smile to the face of any Zelda fan.

[via Dorkly via Neatorama]