PA GOP mail-in ballot battle: David McCormick sues to count them all

By Marita Vlachou

Tuesday, May 24

PENNSYLVANIA GOP SEN CANDIDATE SUES OVER MAIL BALLOTS David McCormick, a billionaire locked in a neck-and-neck Pennsylvania Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate against celebrity heart surgeon Mehmet Oz, sued to require counties to promptly count mail-in ballots that lack a required handwritten date on the return envelope. The race is close enough to trigger Pennsylvania's automatic recount law. [AP]

MONKEYPOX LIKELY SPREAD BY SEX AT 2 RAVES IN EUROPE, EXPERT SAYS A leading adviser to the World Health Organization described the unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox in developed countries as "a random event" that might be explained by sexual transmission between men at two raves held in Spain and Belgium. [AP]

CALIFORNIANS COULD SEE MANDATORY WATER CUTS DUE TO EXTREME DROUGHT California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to impose mandatory water restrictions if residents don't use less on their own as a drought drags on and the hotter summer months approach. [AP]

RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT TO UN IN GENEVA RESIGNS OVER WAR IN UKRAINE A veteran Russian diplomat says he resigned before sending out a letter inveighing against Russia's war in Ukraine. "For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24 of this year," he wrote. This comes as the conflict marked its third month, with Moscow appearing bogged down in what increasingly looks like a war of attrition. [AP]

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DAVID PERDUE ATTACKS STACEY ABRAMS AS 'DEMEANING HER OWN RACE' IN RACIST REMARKS Republican former Sen. David Perdue, who is running for governor in Georgia, made several racist attacks on presumptive Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, who is Black, saying she was "demeaning her own race" and should "go back to where she came from." [HuffPost]

REP. MADISON CAWTHORN INVESTIGATED FOR 'IMPROPER RELATIONSHIP' WITH STAFFER Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for an alleged "improper relationship" with a staffer. The House committee also said it was investigating Cawthorn for having "improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he may have had an undisclosed financial interest." [HuffPost]

DONT 'ENABLE THE LIAR': LIZ CHENEY WINS PROFILE IN COURAGE AWARD, WARNS OF TRUMP Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, warning former President Donald Trump remains one of the greatest threats to American democracy. "We face a threat we have never faced before: a former president attempting to unravel our constitutional republic," Cheney said. [HuffPost]

APPEALS COURT RULES FLORIDA LAW ON SOCIAL MEDIA UNCONSTITUTIONAL A Florida law intended to punish social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled, dealing a major victory to companies accused by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of discriminating against conservatives. [AP]

TRUMP HAD A PHASE WHERE HE WAS PERPETUALLY PARANOID ABOUT GETTING PIED Trump's very specific paranoia about flying food was apparently not limited to fruit. According to the Daily Beast, Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen revealed Trump went through a phase where he became obsessed with Bill Gates having once been struck in the face with a cream pie, and feared the same could happen to him. [HuffPost]