By Pat Muir

Yakima Herald-Republic

Congressman Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Sunnyside who last week joined more than 120 of his GOP colleagues in supporting a Texas lawsuit challenging the presidential election results, issued a statement Tuesday in which he referred to Joe Biden as president-elect even while repeating unspecified concerns about the election’s legitimacy.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday tossed the Texas lawsuit, which President Donald Trump had previously referred to as “the big one” that would undo his election night loss.

Dozens of such lawsuits have been dismissed by state and federal courts. This one in particular, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and joined by 18 Republican-led states, 126 Republican legislators and Trump himself, charged that Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had illegally changed their voting systems in the lead-up to the election. It asked the court to bar those states’ electors from participating in the formal Electoral College vote Monday that gave Biden the presidency.

The court found that Texas had no standing to bring the suit, a fact Newhouse did not address in his statement.

“As we transition to a new administration, I still have strong concerns that we could be headed down a slippery slope: If the American people can’t have confidence that our elections are safe, fair, and constitutional, we will not keep our republic,” Newhouse said in Tuesday’s statement. “Congress must continue to work to uphold our Constitution and produce integrity and transparency in our election systems.”

Newhouse, whose spokesperson said he was unavailable for an interview, did not expand on what made the slope so slippery. No evidence of widespread voter fraud has been found by the Trump campaign or its allies. And repeated rulings from courts at the state and federal levels have further validated the election results.

Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, attacked Newhouse over the matter last week, tweeting that “It is shameful that two of Washington’s leaders are backing this anti-democratic charade. Attempting to overturn a free and fair election is absolutely indefensible. They know that.”

Newhouse fired back: “This lawsuit is not about overturning the results of an election. As I’ve said, it is about ensuring the American people have faith in our elections and our Constitution.”

Had the lawsuit succeeded, it would have nullified millions of votes from the swing states Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Newhouse’s Tuesday statement did seem to acknowledge the reality that Biden had won the election.

“I am committed to educating the incoming Biden administration in the coming weeks and throughout the next Congress on the issues and priorities that matter most to the people of Central Washington,” it said. “Ensuring the voices of the 4th District are heard by the federal government, including the president-elect, is of the utmost importance and will be absolutely critical as we cannot afford to backtrack on the significant progress we’ve made over the past four years of the Trump Administration.”