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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh (now), Joan E Greve and Martin Belam (earlier)

More than 250,000 Americans have died from coronavirus as US cases soar - as it happened

People line up for Covid-19 tests at Judiciary Square in Washington DC, on 18 November. The United States has just marked the grim milestone of 250,000 deaths due to coronavirus.
People line up for Covid-19 tests at Judiciary Square in Washington DC, on 18 November. The United States has just marked the grim milestone of 250,000 deaths due to coronavirus. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Summary

From me and Joan E Greve:

  • The US coronavirus death toll surpassed 250,000. That’s a higher death toll than any other country in the world.
  • New York will close all public schools starting tomorrow, as the city experiences a rise in new cases of coronavirus. New York’s seven-day average positivity rate has hit 3%, requiring schools to cancel in-person instruction, per state guidelines.
  • More states, including Kentucky and Minnesota, announced new restrictions on gatherings. Kentucky’s governor Andy Beshear said at a news conference today that “when fighting Covid-19, action is unpopular, but inaction is deadly”.
  • Joe Biden held a virtual meeting with frontline health care workers, pledging to pursue a robust response to the coronavirus pandemic after he is inaugurated in January.
  • Pfizer said a late-stage vaccine trial showed its coronavirus vaccine is actually 95% effective, after previously saying it was more than 90% effective. The company expects to apply for emergency authorization in the US within days.
  • Donald Trump’s campaign said it would request recounts of two Wisconsin counties. The Trump campaign has already wired $3m to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and called for recounts in the Democratic-leaning Milwaukee and Dane counties. Biden currently leads in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, so a partial recount is unlikely to reverse his victory there.
  • House Democrats re-elected Nancy Pelosi as their nominee for speaker. In her acceptance speech, Pelosi said the next Congress should focus on “justice”. “It has to be about justice in our economy. It has to be about justice in our justice system, passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” Pelosi said.

Updated

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota has also announced new restrictions.

The state will prohibit in-person gatherings with members of different households starting Friday. Bars and restaurants will be take-out only. Schools, however, will remain operational – with a combination of in-person and virtual instruction.

Updated

More states and cities are announcing coronavirus restrictions as the number of cases build.

Kentucky’s governor Andy Beshear said at a news conference today that “when fighting Covid-19, action is unpopular, but inaction is deadly”. The economy “remains open” he said, but announced new guidelines restricting the size of private gatherings to 8 people from no more than two households, shutting down in-person schooling and restricting indoor dining.

Updated

Georgia recount expected to affirm Biden victoory

As Georgia wraps up its hand recount of 5m ballots, Joe Biden has maintained his lead. Donald Trump gained a bit more than 1,300 votes, shaving Biden’s lead down a little bit.

But Biden still appears to have just under 13,000 more votes than Trump. On CNN, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the votes that Trump gained in the recount can mostly be attributed to clerical errors. He reaffirmed: “we have not seen any widespread fraud”.

The state is expected to release the complete results of its audit tomorrow.

Updated

More than 900 employees at Mayo Clinic, a top research hospital that is based in Rochester, Minnesota, have contracted Covid-19 in the last two weeks.

Lauren Aratani reports:

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dr Amy Williams, dean of clinical practice at the hospital, said that the vast majority of staff who were infected – 93% – were not infected at work, according to the St Paul Pioneer Press. Most of those who were infected at work contracted the virus while eating without a mask during their breaks, Williams said.

The hundreds of employees who have contracted the virus over the last two weeks make up over a third of all employees who were infected since the start of the pandemic. The hospital is experiencing a shortage of 1,000 employees at its headquarters in Rochester, according to the Pioneer Press.

“It shows you how easy it is to get Covid-19 in the midwest,” Williams said during a press call. “Our staff are being infected mostly due to community spread, and this impacts our ability to care for patients.”

The hospital did not say whether any of those infected had died from the virus. Lost on the Frontline, a joint effort by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News, is investigating the deaths of 1,396 healthcare workers who appear to have died of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Covid-19 cases have been rising across the country as the dreaded winter surge in cases has arrived. Yesterday, 161,000 new cases in the US were reported, and 76,830 people were reported to be currently hospitalized with the virus across the country.

Minnesota has seen a particularly alarming spike in cases over the last few weeks. The seven-day moving average for new cases in the state was 7,402 on Tuesday, the highest it has been in the state, according to Johns Hopkins University. The governor is anticipated to enact new restrictions on social gatherings and businesses such as bars and restaurants amid the influx.

California’s governor Gavin Newsom, who came under fire for attending a fancy dinner with lobbyists at the French Laundry in Napa, was joined by officials from the California Medical Association, Politico reports:

CEO Dustin Corcoran and top CMA lobbyist Janus Norman both joined the dinner at the French Laundry, an elite Napa fine dining restaurant, to celebrate the 50th birthday of lobbyist and longtime Newsom adviser Jason Kinney, a representative of the powerful interest group confirmed Wednesday morning.

Both Norman and Corcoran are friends of Kinney, as is Newsom, who referred this week to his 20-year friendship with Kinney. In a photo obtained by Fox LA, Norman is clearly visible seated to Newsom’s left.

Newsom had said it was a “mistake” to attend the 6 November dinner, held on the restaurant’s patio. Indoor and outdoor dining was allowed in Napa at the time, but even if the upscale gathering wasn’t against the rules, it struck many as out of touch as the governor and other officials ask Californians to cancel Thanksgiving plans and coronavirus cases surge.

Updated

US coronavirus death toll surpasses 250,000

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the US coronavirus death toll is now at 250,029, representing a higher death toll than any other country in the world.

The death toll has quickly accelerated in recent days amid a national surge in new cases. The figures from Johns Hopkins indicate 1,707 Americans died of the virus yesterday alone.

A number of states have introduced stricter guidelines in recent weeks to try to mitigate the spread of the virus.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio has announced public schools will be closed starting tomorrow because the city’s seven-day average positivity rate has reached 3%.

Updated

Walmart, McDonald’s and Uber are among the companies that have the most employees on food stamps and Medicaid, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO looked into the matter at the behest of Bernie Sanders. “These giant corporations pay starvation wages – wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps,” Sanders said, pointing to several fast food and other companies whose workers have to rely on benefits because they do not make enough money to survive.

The Washington Post has published a detailed report of the findings here.

Sanders and his supporters are vying for him to become labor secretary in the upcoming Biden administration. Sanders has long been advocating for a federal $15 minimum wage.

Updated

Welfare checks and hotspots: how a school district is fighting to keep kids in class amid Covid

Abené Clayton reports from Richmond, California:

When the West Contra Costa unified school district (WCCUSD) first shut down in-class instruction in early-March, 750 of their students never picked up their school-issued laptops or signed into their online classes, according to Marin Trujillo, WCCUSD’s community engagement coordinator.

The sudden drop-off prompted a fact-finding mission to understand why students had disappeared. “We organized semi-welfare checks where we had to go one family at a time,” Trujillo said. “We saw how economic anxiety can get in families’ way, some had trouble connecting to the internet. The need was very great.”

District staff and officials said they have connected with most of these “missing” youth over the summer. But now, more than halfway through the first semester, teachers say last year’s troubling pattern of chronic absenteeism is repeating itself.

The reasons students miss school regularly vary, but state data shows that students living in poverty and dealing with homelessness are most likely to be absent. Even before the coronavirus, absenteeism numbers in Contra Costa schools were high – a 2016 grand jury report found that the county’s public schools ranked 46th out of 58 California counties for having the worst levels of truancy. Latino, Black, disabled and homeless students represent the lion’s share of truant students, according to the most recent state data.

The pandemic added new factors driving absenteeism, including practical problems such as spotty internet access and out of date immunization records.

This semester, administrators are starting from square one and can’t locate an estimated 2,000 students, according to county board of education trustee Fatima Alleyne.

Updated

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • New York will close all public schools starting tomorrow, as the city experiences a rise in new cases of coronavirus. New York’s seven-day average positivity rate has hit 3%, requiring schools to cancel in-person instruction, per state guidelines.
  • Joe Biden held a virtual meeting with frontline health care workers, pledging to pursue a robust response to the coronavirus pandemic after he is inaugurated in January. The meeting comes as the US coronavirus death toll approaches 250,000.
  • Pfizer said a late-stage vaccine trial showed its coronavirus vaccine is actually 95% effective, after previously saying it was more than 90% effective. The company expects to apply for emergency authorization in the US within days.
  • Donald Trump’s campaign said it would request recounts of two Wisconsin counties. The Trump campaign has already wired $3m to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and called for recounts in the Democratic-leaning Milwaukee and Dane counties. Biden currently leads in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, so a partial recount is unlikely to reverse his victory there.
  • House Democrats re-elected Nancy Pelosi as their nominee for speaker. In her acceptance speech, Pelosi said the next Congress should focus on “justice”. “It has to be about justice in our economy. It has to be about justice in our justice system, passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” Pelosi said.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

Joe Biden called Nancy Pelosi today to congratulate her on being re-elected as House Democrats’ nominee for speaker, the president-elect’s team said in a statement.

The Biden transition team said, “President-elect Biden called Speaker Pelosi to congratulate her on her election as Democratic nominee for Speaker of the House and express that he looks forward to working with her and Democratic leadership in the House on a shared agenda to get Covid-19 under control and build our economy back better.”

Pelosi accepted her caucus’ nomination earlier today and said she looked forward to collaborating with Biden once he was inaugurated, emphasizing the need to pass another coronavirus relief package.

Updated

Senator Chuck Grassley said he remains “symptom free,” a day after announcing that he tested positive for coronavirus.

The Iowa Republican said in a tweet, “I remain symptom free & in isolation. I continue to feel good Thx for all the messages of encouragement & prayers.”

The 87-year-old missed his first Senate vote in 27 years yesterday, after learning he had been exposed to someone who later tested positive for coronavirus. Grassley announced his own positive test result hours later.

Speaking on the Senate floor today, majority leader Mitch McConnell said, “Certainly if any member of this body has the good health and stamina to kick the virus to the curb, it’s Senator Grassley. So we’ll look forward to seeing him soon.”

Another member of the House has tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the sixth member of Congress to announce a positive test result in the past week and a half.

Dan Newhouse, a Republican of Washington state, said in a tweet, “I began to feel a little run down yesterday, so I took a COVID-19 test. Last night, the results came back positive for the virus. My symptoms remain mild, and I am following CDC guidelines. I am quarantining and will continue to serve the people of Central Washington from home.”

Newhouse’s announcement also makes him the second House member, after Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter, to test positive after participating in a floor vote on Monday night.

The presence of Newhouse and Perlmutter on the House floor just two days ago raises concern that additional cases could arise among members of Congress in the coming days.

After his virtual meeting with frontline health care workers, Joe Biden was asked why he has not yet spoken to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell about coronavirus relief.

“Because there’s a lot going on, and I’ll have more to say when it’s all settled,” the president-elect replied as he left the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden also told reporters gathered outside the theater that he would take more of their questions tomorrow.

Joe Biden’s transition team is reportedly speaking with former Trump administration officials, as the federal government continues to block the president-elect from receiving resources for his transition.

According to ABC News, the former administration officials are providing input on potential national security threats that the next president may have to confront.

ABC News reports:

The backchannel outreach to at least four former officials who served in senior-level roles comes as the General Services Administration continues withholding its ascertainment of Biden as winner of the presidential election, effectively denying him access to key resources and briefings meant to ensure a safe and secure continuity of government on Jan. 20.

As a result, sources familiar with the matter said that Biden’s team has been in contact with those who have recent experience in various federal agencies, and in most cases the individuals are career officials and not political appointees. It was not clear exactly what information the transition team is soliciting from these former officials, but it was not believed to include classified materials.

Biden once again criticized the GSA today for not recognizing his victory in the presidential election, saying, “We’ve been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know about the depth of the stockpiles.”

Arizona’s secretary of state released a statement condemning the escalating threats of violence against her family and her office.

Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said the attacks were not surprising and described them as a symptom of the greater problem of sowing distrust in democratic institutions.

“There are those, including the president, members of Congress, who are perpetuating misinformation and encouraging others to distrust the election results in a manner that violates the oath of office they took,” Hobbs said.

The secretary of state urged Donald Trump and his allies to stop raising baseless concerns about the integrity of the vote count in Arizona.

“I am calling on other leaders in this state, including the governor whose deafening silence has contributed to the growing unrest, to stand up for the truth,” Hobbs said.

Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, has still not acknowledged Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race, and he previously defended Trump’s lawsuits in battleground states, including Arizona.

The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn reports from Milwaukee on the Trump campaign’s request for a partial recount in Wisconsin:

Looking to challenge Joe Biden’s presidential win in the November 3 election at any turn, Donald Trump and his campaign are tapping into an all-too familiar playbook in the fight for voting rights.

The campaign announced they will formally request a recount in Dane and Milwaukee counties, home to Wisconsin’s capital city of Madison and its largest city, Milwaukee.

With thriving university campuses, younger and more diverse populations, both cities are liberal bastions, in stark contrast to the state’s more conservative suburbs and rural communities.

While turnout didn’t reach the record levels of counterparts in Philadelphia, Atlanta or Detroit, Black Milwaukeeans especially showed up at the polls on 3 November, a deciding factor in Biden flipping the state by 20,000 votes thus far.

Trump won Wisconsin by just 23,000 votes back in 2016, thanks in part to disguised Russian online propaganda compelling young, Black voters in Milwaukee to stay home.

For Republicans, challenging the legitimacy of the nation’s most segregated city this time around likely won’t overturn the result, but it serves the campaign’s goal of playing on racial and political divisions to contest votes of mostly Black and Democratic urban centers.

Those attempts are already proving unsuccessful in Michigan, where two Republican officials were excoriated for a last-ditch attempt to block Wayne County, which incorporates Detroit, from certifying its results.

In a viral rebuke, a visibly angry Ned Staebler, a member of the Wayne county board of canvassers, blasted Republican certifiers by saying that “the Trump stain, stain of racism” they’re covered in “is going to follow [them] throughout history”.

“Millions of people around the world now know them as two racists willing to disenfranchise Black voters by order, lacking an understanding of integrity or a shred of human decency,” Staebler said.

During his virtual meeting with frontline health care workers, Joe Biden detailed his own Thanksgiving plans, as public health experts urge Americans not to travel for the holiday.

“I’ve got a big family you probably heard a lot about,” the president-elect told the health care workers. “We do everything together.”

But Biden said his Thanksgiving meal this year would include just three people “because you can’t mix the families.”

Obviously the president-elect will be celebrating with his wife, Dr Jill Biden, but it’s unclear who the third attendee from his family will be.

Joe Biden has just concluded his virtual meeting with frontline health care workers in Wilmington, Delaware.

During the virtual meeting, the president-elect criticized the General Services Administration for refusing to acknowledge his victory in the election and sign off on transition resources for his team.

“I am optimistic, but we should be further along,” Biden said of his transition. “We’ve been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know about.”

Earlier this week, Biden expressed concern that the stalled transition could result in more Americans dying of coronavirus.

“More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Biden said on Monday. “And so it’s important that it be done — that there be coordination now. Now, or as rapidly as we can get that done.”

New York schools to close tomorrow, de Blasio confirms

Mayor Bill de Blasio has confirmed New York’s public schools will close tomorrow, after the city’s seven-day average positivity rate hit 3%.

“New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution,” the Democratic mayor said in a tweet.

“We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.”

The sudden announcement will cause childcare difficulties for hundreds of thousands of New York families.

When a Wall Street Journal reporter pressed Andrew Cuomo on whether New York schools would be open tomorrow, the Democratic governor mocked the journalist and deflected the question.

The reporter noted that many parents are still confused about schools’ plans. “They’re not confused. You’re confused,” Cuomo replied. “Read the law, and you won’t be confused.”

According to the New York Times, Chancellor Richard Carranza has sent an email to city principals informing them that public schools will be closed starting tomorrow.

New York City public schools to close tomorrow - report

Public schools in New York will reportedly close tomorrow, as the city experiences a rise in the number of new coronavirus cases.

The New York Times reports:

New York City’s entire public school system will shutter on Thursday, Chancellor Richard A. Carranza wrote in an email to school principals, in a worrisome signal that a second wave of the coronavirus has arrived. Schools have been open for in-person instruction for just under eight weeks.

The shutdown — which was prompted by the city reaching a 3 percent test positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average — is perhaps the most significant setback for New York’s recovery since the spring, when the city was a global epicenter of the outbreak.

It was also a major disappointment for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was the first big-city mayor in the country to reopen school buildings. Moving to all-remote instruction will disrupt the education of many of the roughly 300,000 children who have been attending in-person classes and create major child care problems for parents who count on their children being at school for at least part of the week.

Speaking at a press conference, New York governor Andrew Cuomo became confrontational when asked whether the city’s schools would be open tomorrow.

As Joe Biden held a virtual meeting with frontline health care workers, the president-elect’s team noted he again tested negative for coronavirus today.

“President- elect Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected,” the Biden transition team said in a statement.

Biden’s team has been regularly releasing the results of his coronavirus tests since Donald Trump tested positive for the virus last month.

Mary Turner, the president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, told Joe Biden that she has never received a coronavirus test, despite being on the frontlines treating coronavirus patients for months.

“You’re kidding me,” the president-elect said, prompting the nurse to confirm that was indeed the case.

Turner said health care workers were relieved when Biden called for a robust medical and economic response to the pandemic, and she emphasized they were counting on the president-elect to follow through.

Updated

Joe Biden’s virtual meeting with frontline health care workers comes as the US coronavirus death toll continues to climb.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, 249,430 Americans have now died of coronavirus. More than 1,700 Americans died yesterday alone.

Cases are now surging across the country, and many states have already unveiled stricter guidelines to help mitigate the spread of the virus.

During the virtual meeting, nurses and firefighters told the president-elect that they are “anxious” seeing case numbers rise.

One nurse described sitting with dying patients as they pleaded to see their families, who were blocked from entering the hospital due to concerns about the spread of the virus.

Biden holds virtual meeting with frontline health care workers

President-elect Joe Biden is now holding a virtual meeting with frontline health care workers in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden emphasized that he wanted to hear directly from those who have seen the reality of the coronavirus pandemic and how it is devastating American communities.

The president-elect told the health care workers that they deserved leaders who would work “as hard for you as you do for the families in your communities.”

With that, Biden turned the meeting over to his guests, who described their experiences working on the frontlines of the pandemic.

An activist demonstrates after Joe Biden was declared winner of the US 2020 presidential election during a pro-migrant protest at the US-Mexico border on the San Ysidro Crossing Port in Tijuana, Baja California.
An activist demonstrates after Joe Biden was declared winner of the US 2020 presidential election during a pro-migrant protest at the US-Mexico border on the San Ysidro Crossing Port in Tijuana, Baja California. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

A US district court judge today blocked expulsions of unaccompanied children caught crossing unlawfully into the United States, a setback for the outgoing Trump administration, which claimed the policy at the US-Mexico border was aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

US district judge Emmet Sullivan in the District of Columbia ruled that the minors were likely to suffer irreparable harm because they could be subject to sexual abuse and other violence, as well as face the possibility of torture and death if summarily returned to their home countries, Reuters reports.

Donald Trump has made immigration curbs a central part of his four-year term in office and enacted a series of sweeping immigration restrictions during the pandemic.

The US president-elect, Joe Biden, who defeated Trump earlier this month and takes office on Jan. 20, has vowed to reverse many of the Republican president’s hard-line immigration policies.

Biden has not yet commented on how he would handle the emergency border rules that allow for rapid deportations. A Biden campaign official told Reuters that he would defer to health experts on such restrictions.

A US Border Patrol official said in a September court filing that 8,800 unaccompanied minors were expelled under the border rules between their enactment on March 20 and September 9.

Overall, the United States has expelled roughly 197,000 migrants caught crossing the US-Mexico border from March through the end of September, though those figures include migrants who may have crossed multiple times.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the policy was a “pretext” for Trump to close the border to children and asylum seekers from Central America.

The US Department of Justice, US Department of Homeland Security and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The US presidential election result that handed the battleground state of Georgia to Joe Biden will be certified after counties meet a recount deadline on Wednesday, a Democratic campaign aide predicted.

Gwinnett county election workers handle ballots as part of the recount for the 2020 presidential election.
Gwinnett county election workers handle ballots as part of the recount for the 2020 presidential election. Photograph: Megan Varner/Getty Images

“The current status as we understand it is that all of Georgia’s 159 counties will meet the state’s deadline of midnight today and will have their results certified,” said Biden campaign legal adviser Patrick Moore on a call with reporter, Reuters and The Associated Press are reporting.

The hand recount of nearly 5 million votes stems from an audit required by a new state law and wasn’t in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request. The law requires the audit to be done before the counties’ certified results can be certified by the state.

The deadline for the counties to complete the audit is 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, ahead of the Friday deadline for state certification. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system for the secretary of state’s office, said he expects the counties to meet that deadline.

The hand count is meant to ensure that the state’s new election machines accurately tabulated the votes and isn’t expected to change the overall outcome, state election officials have repeatedly said.

Going into the count, Democrat Joe Biden led Republican president Donald Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. Previously uncounted ballots discovered in four counties Douglas, Fayette, Floyd and Walton during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 12,800, Sterling said.

Once the results are certified, if the margin between the candidates remains within 0.5%, the losing campaign can request a recount. That would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling said.

A law passed last year requires the audit but leaves it up to the secretary of state to select the race to be audited. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he chose the presidential race because of its significance and tight margin. Because of the close results, he said, a full hand recount would be needed to complete the audit.

Over the two weeks since the election, Raffensperger has been under attack from fellow Republicans, from the president on down.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Photograph: Brynn Anderson/AP

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Donald Trump’s campaign said it would request recounts of two Wisconsin counties. The Trump campaign has already wired $3m to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and said it will file a petition to conduct recounts in the Democratic-leaning Milwaukee and Dane counties. Joe Biden currently leads in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, and a partial recount is unlikely to reverse his victory there.
  • Biden will virtually speak to frontline health care workers this afternoon, as the US coronavirus death toll approaches 250,000. The president has no events on his public schedule today and spent the morning tweeting out baseless claims of election fraud.
  • House Democrats reelected Nancy Pelosi as their nominee for speaker. In her acceptance speech, Pelosi said the next Congress should focus on “justice.” “It has to be about justice in our economy. It has to be about justice in our justice system, passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” Pelosi said.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said coronavirus relief negotiations, if they resume, would have to occur between House and Senate leaders.

“Those discussions, if they happen, will be dictated by the House and Senate,” Meadows told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Meadows and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin have negotiated with House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer in recent months, but discussions have been stalled for weeks.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has voiced little appetite for another massive coronavirus relief package, instead proposing a targeted bill with $500 billion in funding.

Pelosi and Schumer have dismissed that sum as insufficient to address the country’s medical and financial needs amid a global pandemic.

The two leaders of the Senate, majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer, wished Chuck Grassley a speedy recovery from coronavirus.

Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, announced yesterday that he had tested positive for the virus.

Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell noted that Grassley’s absence from yesterday’s votes marked the first time in 27 years that the 87-year-old had missed a vote in the chamber.

“All of the Senate’s thoughts and prayers are with our distinguished colleague, who reported yesterday evening that he still feels fine. We hope that will remain the case,” McConnell said.

“Certainly if any member of this body has the good health and stamina to kick the virus to the curb, it’s Senator Grassley. So we’ll look forward to seeing him soon.”

House speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted her caucus’ nomination to serve another term as speaker this morning, saying she looked forward to working with the Biden administration over the next two years.

“Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States. Kamala Harris is the vice-president-elect. So, I look forward to serving, working with them for the people,” Pelosi said, according to a copy of her remarks.

The Democratic speaker added that the focus of the next Congress should be on “justice.”

“It has to be about justice in our economy. It has to be about justice in our justice system, passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Breonna Taylor, say her name,” Pelosi said. “Justice in our environment, environmental justice. Justice in our health care.”

Pelosi also emphasized the need to pass another coronavirus relief bill, as negotiations between congressional Democratic leadership and the White House remain stalled.

The Democratic speaker concluded her remarks by reflecting on those who have died in the past year.

“I just want to close by saying we’ve lost some good friends the last year. Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, heroes. My hero, my brother, Tommy,” Pelosi said.

“As we mourn their deaths, we must remember that 250,000 people have died of the coronavirus and the sadness in their families in our country. They are in our thoughts and in our prayers.”

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is on Capitol Hill today, meeting with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Meadows’ meeting with McConnell comes less than four weeks before government funding is set to expire, raising concerns about a potential shutdown next month.

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Meadows said he “can’t guarantee” a shutdown will be averted, but he said it was a “high priority to make sure we keep our government funded.”

It seems likely that both sides of the aisle will be eager to avoid a shutdown, as the country grapples with a global pandemic and the president refuses to concede that he lost the election.

Trump campaign to request recounts in two Wisconsin counties

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign confirmed in a statement that it is requesting recounts of two Democratic-leaning counties in Wisconsin.

The campaign has asked Milwaukee and Dane counties to conduct recounts, citing baseless allegations of “illegally altered absentee ballots.”

“The people of Wisconsin deserve to know whether their election processes worked in a legal and transparent way,” said Jim Troupis, counsel to the campaign. “Regrettably, the integrity of the election results cannot be trusted without a recount in these two counties and uniform enforcement of Wisconsin absentee ballot requirements.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has already confirmed it received $3 million from the Trump campaign for the recount, and the campaign said it would formally file its recount petition this afternoon.

The recount is unlikely to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state, as the president-elect leads in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.

Even if Trump were to win Wisconsin after the recount, which is extremely unlikely, the state would not be enough to alter Biden’s electoral college victory.

Updated

The Wisconsin Elections Commission confirmed it received $3 million from the Trump campaign, as reports indicate the president’s reelection campaign will request a partial recount in the state.

The commission said it has not yet received a petition from the Trump campaign, so it’s unclear which specific counties will be asked to conduct recounts. The campaign will have to file its petition by this afternoon.

If the Trump campaign were requesting a statewide recount in Wisconsin, it would have to pay $7.9 million up front.

As a reminder, a recount is unlikely to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin, as the president-elect leads there by more than 20,000 votes.

The Trump campaign’s pressure campaign on Georgia’s secretary of state began months before the election, according to a new report.

ProPublica reports:

Long before Republican senators began publicly denouncing how Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger handled the voting there, he withstood pressure from the campaign of Donald Trump to endorse the president for reelection.

Raffensperger, a Republican, declined an offer in January to serve as an honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign in Georgia, according to emails reviewed by ProPublica. He later rejected GOP requests to support Trump publicly, he and his staff said in interviews. Raffensperger said he believed that, because he was overseeing the election, it would be a conflict of interest for him to take sides. Around the country, most secretaries of state remain officially neutral in elections.

The attacks on his job performance are ‘clear retaliation,’ Raffensperger said. ‘They thought Georgia was a layup shot Republican win. It is not the job of the secretary of state’s office to deliver a win — it is the sole responsibility of the Georgia Republican Party to get out the vote and get its voters to the polls. That is not the job of the secretary of state’s office.’

Leading the push for Raffensperger’s endorsement was Billy Kirkland, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign who was a key manager of its Georgia operations. Kirkland burst uninvited into a meeting in Raffensperger’s office in the late spring that was supposed to be about election procedures and demanded that the secretary of state endorse Trump, according to Raffensperger and two of his staffers.

Trump and his allies have attacked Raffensperger over his handling of the election in Georgia, even though the secretary of state has consistently defended the integrity of the state’s vote count.

Raffensperger said earlier this week that Lindsey Graham called him and suggested throwing out valid absentee ballots in certain Georgia counties, an allegation that the Republican senator has denied.

According to Fox News, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign will only request a partial recount in Wisconsin, specifically asking certain counties to recount ballots.

That means the recount will not cost the Trump campaign $7.9 million up front, which would be the cost of conducting a statewide recount of Wisconsin’s more than 3 million ballots.

The Trump campaign reportedly plans to file for a recount in Wisconsin, where Joe Biden leads by more than 20,000 votes.

The president faced a deadline today to request a recount, which will cost his campaign $7.9 million up front, unless the campaign only requests recounts in certain counties.

The recount is not expected to change the final result of Biden’s victory in the state. Scott Walker, a former Republican governor of Wisconsin, noted earlier this month that recounts usually result in only small shifts in the vote totals.

Pelosi reelected as House Democrats' nominee for speaker

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has been reelected as the Democratic caucus’ nominee for speaker, running unopposed to serve another term as speaker.

Pelosi was renominated through a voice vote over the digital platform that House Democrats are using to conduct their leadership elections.

If Pelosi becomes speaker for another term, she will face a somewhat divided caucus, as some moderate Democrats and progressive Democrats have already clashed over who is to blame for the party’s losses in the House.

Lauren Gambino reported over the weekend:

Democrats face a reckoning, four years in the making, after an election that accomplished their mission but did little to resolve urgent questions about the party’s political future and serious internal divisions.

The first order of business is a ‘deep dive’ into why more Americans than at any moment in the nation’s 244-year history voted for {Joe] Biden and yet, despite bold predictions of a unified government come January 2021, Democrats ended up with a weakened House majority and an uphill battle to take control of the Senate.

‘What’s clear is that voters did not feel comfortable giving Democrats every lever of power,’ said Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president for social policy and politics at the centrist thinktank Third Way. ‘And the question is, why not?’

The answer, of course, depends on who you ask.

A tense conference call among House Democrats, in which moderate members blamed the left wing for costing them congressional seats, opened a fiery public debate over how to turn a majority coalition into governing majorities.

Updated

Donald Trump has no events on his public schedule, and he is instead using his morning to tweet out false claims about the presidential election.

In one tweet, Trump claimed to have won the election, citing a New York Times article about how his raw popular vote total increased from 2016. (However, Joe Biden has been named the winner of both the electoral college and the popular vote, currently leading Trump by nearly 6 million votes nationally.)

Trump also criticized officials in Wayne county, Michigan, for certifying their election results, after two Republican officials briefly tried to hold up the certification.

The president then falsely claimed Republican observers were not allowed to observe the vote count in Pennsylvania. (This is false; members of Trump’s own campaign observed the vote count in Philadelphia.)

And Trump claimed Georgia had found thousands of fraudulent ballots during its recount. It is true that two Georgia counties discovered uncounted ballots amid their hand recounts, but those ballots were perfectly legitimate, and a majority of them went to the president. (Biden still leads in Georgia by about 13,000 votes.)

Biden to speak with frontline health care workers as coronavirus death toll climbs

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

President-elect Joe Biden will virtually speak with frontline health care workers today, as the US coronavirus death toll continues to climb.

Joe Biden attends a national security briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Biden attends a national security briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

According to Johns Hopkins University, 248,707 Americans have now died of the virus, and the country is expected to soon surpass more than 250,000 deaths.

Despite those alarming statistics, Donald Trump has focused his tweets this morning on baseless claims of fraud in the presidential election.

The president has not delivered public remarks since Friday, when he held an event on Operation Warp Speed, the government program aimed at accelerating the development of a coronavirus vaccine.

At the event, Trump shared several false claims about coronavirus and attacked the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.

Even as the number of coronavirus infections surges across the country, the president has shown little interest in using his final two months in office to help the country mitigate the spread of the virus.

NBC News this morning have this recap of some of the events in the last 24 hours, suggesting that “arguably the biggest political scandal we’ve ever seen in this country is playing right before our eyes”. They cite:

They stress that “being unsuccessful doesn’t erase the magnitude of the scandal — or the fact that the president of the United States has cheered it on every step of the way. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election have stumbled and gained no significant traction yet. But it’s still disturbing to watch, especially with so many elected Republicans staying silent. And it provides a road map for someone else to do it better next time.”

Read more here: NBC News – Trump’s effort to overturn the election results may be inept. But it’s still a scandal

Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast here deftly pointing out the knots Republicans are tying themselves up in at the moment while Donald Trump continues to contest his defeat.

Late last week, Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier declared on social media that he had unearthed definitive proof of widespread voter fraud in Detroit. He pointed to an absentee ballot cast by “118-year-old William Bradley”, a man who had supposedly died in 1984.

“They’re trying to steal the election,” Fournier warned in a since-deleted Facebook post.

But the deceased Bradley hadn’t voted. Within days, Bradley’s son, also named William Bradley, but with a different middle name, told PolitiFact that he had cast the ballot. That was confirmed by Michigan election officials, who said a clerk had entered the wrong Bradley as having voted.

The false claim that the deceased Bradley had voted in the 3 November election is one of a barrage of voter fraud conspiracy theories fired off by Trump supporters across the country during recent weeks, and all have been debunked while failing to prove that widespread irregularities exist.

Instead, the theories often reveal Trump supporters’ fundamental misunderstandings of the election system while creating a game of conspiracy theory whack-a-mole for election officials.

Bradley was only one of dozens of allegedly dead Michigan voters who were found to be alive. Trump supporters pointed to Napoleon Township’s Jane Aiken, who they claimed was born in 1900, and cited an obituary as evidence that she was deceased. But the township’s deputy police chief investigated and found the obituary to be for a different Jane Aiken.

Police told Bridge Magazine that the Aiken who cast the ballot is “94 years old, alive and well. Quite well, actually.”

Meanwhile, CNN examined records for 50 Michiganders who Trump supporters claim are dead voters. They found 37 were dead and had not voted. Five are alive and had voted, and the remaining eight are also alive but didn’t vote.

Read more of Tom Perkins’ report here: The dead voter conspiracy theory peddled by Trump voters, debunked

Donald Trump is again, without evidence, claiming on social media that he won the election, and that there was, and I quote, “voter fraud all over the country!”. The president and his legal teams have yet to establish any evidence of this.

Incidentally, one thing I keep seeing mentioned by conservative voices in order to spread doubt about the Biden-Harris victory is a question of why vice president-elect Kamala Harris has not already resigned from the Senate if she truly believes that she is the next vice president and that the election is decided.

As yesterday showed, Harris still has a role to play in the Senate while under the current administration, where she was instrumental in ensuring that Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors failed to advance. And it is worth noting that vice president Mike Pence did not depart from his role of Governor of Indiana until eleven days before his inauguration in 2017.

Is it just me? I am finding the synchronicity of Mike Pompeo tweeting about his visit to promote free and fair elections in the European country of Georgia at the exact same moments as his boss Donald Trump is complaining about the election in the US state of Georgia a bit too much this morning. These two came within seconds of each other.

Of course, Trump’s claim is untrue. While election officials in Floyd County did fail to upload a memory card which has now uncovered some 2,600 previously uncounted votes, they are not by any stretch of the imagination all “Trump votes” as the president has just stated.

In that batch uncounted votes, there were 1,643 new votes for Donald Trump and 865 votes for Joe Biden.

Of course, every ballot should be counted, and there is concern that these were omitted in the initial tally. Georgia is currently auditing all the votes in the presidential election as part of a new state law process, not because of any complaint by either campaign team. In total 5,000 previously unreported votes have turned up, which has reduced Joe Biden’s lead in the state to around 13,000 votes.

Georgia has not been called for either man, so the current electoral college victory tally of Biden’s – 290 to 232 – does not include Georgia’s 16 votes.

This is not stopping the Trump outriders pushing hard on this story.

It doesn’t seem to be such a huge deal for Republicans locally, however. Yesterday the Denver Channel reported:

“It’s not an equipment issue. It’s a person not executing their job properly,” said Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager. “This is the kind of situation that requires a change at the top of their management side.”

The head of the Republican Party in Floyd County said the issue was concerning, but “doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue,” and he was glad the ballot audit revealed it.

Updated

We’ve long been treated to the Donald Trump mantra that the US only has so many coronavirus cases because it tests so many people. But it is a lot harder to try and make that argument when your hospitalisation figures are rising like this – with 19 states recording record high figures according to the Covid Tracking Project data.

Erica Pandey and Marisa Fernandez have written for Axios this morning about another concern, that the US is hitting a peak of Covid infections just as the nation prepares for Thanksgiving and is no longer paying attention. They write:

Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are at new peaks, cities and states are weighing second lockdowns, and flu season is upon us — but we’re all looking the other way. Pandemic fatigue has set in and the nation has collectively stopped caring just in time for the holiday season. This Thanksgiving could be catastrophic for public health.

It’s tiring for people to worry all the time, says Meredith Matson, a psychology professor at Horry-Georgetown Technical College. “As the novelty of this wears off, that fatigue starts to rise.”

On top of that, the virus is competing for attention. The election and the holidays have been a distraction, especially for those who have not experienced a loss or a layoff, she says. “There are people who are fortunate enough, who have not had this affect them directly in a way that has forced them to take notice.”

Selective hearing also plays role as people hear differing information on what’s safe and what’s not from their friends, their television sets and their outgoing president. “If I want to have my family down for Thanksgiving, then I can go looking for peers and news sources and authorities who confirm what I want.”

Read more here: Axios – The Thanksgiving time bomb

Associated Press report that a suburban Milwaukee police officer who has fatally shot three people in the line of duty since 2015, including Black teenager Alvin Cole outside a mall in February, is resigning from the department.

The Wauwatosa Common Council approved a separation agreement with Joseph Mensah on Tuesday night, effective 30 November, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has ruled all three shootings by Mensah, who also is Black, were justified self-defence.

Protests followed the most recent shooting outside Mayfair Mall. Cole, 17, was shot five times by Mensah after he fled from police following a disturbance inside the mall. Mensah said Cole pointed a gun at him, so he shot him.

Protesters marched for months, calling for Mensah to be fired, and members of Cole’s family took part in campaigning events during the election.

Tristiana Cole holds a sign and a photo of her brother Alvin Cole as she arrives for a Get Out The Vote rally in Chicago in October.
Tristiana Cole holds a sign and a photo of her brother Alvin Cole as she arrives for a Get Out The Vote rally in Chicago in October. Photograph: Nam Y Huh/AP

Mensah was suspended by the Wauwatosa Police and Fire Commission after a complaint was filed by the family of one of the men he killed, Jay Anderson Jr. He was shot after Mensah found him sitting in a car in a city park after hours in 2016. Mensah also fatally shot Antonio Gonzales in 2015 after Gonzales refused to drop a sword, according to police.

On the same day that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm cleared Mensah of any criminal wrongdoing in Cole’s death, an independent investigator hired by the commission recommended that Mensah be fired.

Investigator Steven Biskupic wrote in his report released 7 October that the potential for a fourth fatal shooting by Mensah created an extraordinary and unnecessary risk to the police department and the city.

Chisholm’s decision set off nights of protests throughout the city where a curfew was imposed for five days.

FAA clears Boeing 737 Max plane to fly in US again

A quick snap from Reuters here that FAA Administrator Steve Dickson has signed an order lifting the flight ban on the Boeing 737 Max in the US, and the agency released an airworthiness directive detailing the required changes.

The FAA is requiring new pilot training and software upgrades to deal with a stall-prevention system called MCAS, which in both crashes repeatedly and powerfully shoved down the jet’s nose as pilots struggled to regain control.

The FAA, which has faced accusations of being too close to Boeing in the past, said it would no longer allow Boeing to sign off on the airworthiness of some 450 737 MAXs built and parked during the flight ban. It plans in-person inspections that could take a year or more to complete, prolonging the jets’ delivery.

American Airlines says it plans to relaunch the first commercial Max flight since the grounding on 29 December. Southwest Airlines, the world’s largest Max operator, does not plan to fly the aircraft until the second quarter of 2021.

Boeing faces lawsuits from families of crash victims after the 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people within five months in 2018 and 2019, leading to the worldwide grounding of the model and costing the company some $20 billion.

David Ignatius writes for the Washington Post that Donald Trump and his supporters are discovering – albeit seemingly very very slowly – how hard it is to sabotage election results.

When the history books about this election are written, Chris Krebs will be one of the heroes. Last Thursday, when Trump was trying to spin his unsubstantiated claim that Dominion Voting Systems and other companies that provided election software had diverted votes to President-elect Joe Biden, Krebs delivered an emphatic rebuttal on behalf of his agency and the 50 state election monitors he had worked with.

Krebs had even retweeted a caution against “wild and baseless claims about voting machines, even if they’re made by the president.” That may have infuriated the White House, but he spoke for a task force that included representatives of secretaries of state and state election directors in all 50 states

Krebs and other election security officials had months to prepare, because Trump has been so blatant about his intention to subvert a result that doesn’t go his way. Biden should keep repeating this message: The departing president can demean himself and his party, but he can’t change the result.

Trump’s prime target was Dominion Voting Systems, with a claim that Dominion was “a privately owned Radical Left company”. Pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell said evidence of fraud was “coming through a fire hose.”

As these conspiracy theories rise like swamp gas, is the nation helpless? Thankfully not, because of monitoring systems put in place months ago by officials determined to protect our democracy.

Read more here: Washington Post – Trump and his supporters are discovering how hard it is to sabotage election results

Benjamin Moffitt writes for us this morning, warning that if you think Joe Biden’s victory marks the end of rightwing populism then you’d better think again.

We’ve heard this one before. In 2017, when Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen in France and Mark Rutte defeated Geert Wilders in the Netherlands within the space of a few months, many a thinkpiece was written asking: are populism’s days numbered? I think we all know the answer to that, as do the likes of Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Make no mistake: Joe Biden’s win over Trump is a monumental and important victory, not only for the Democrats in the US, but for small-d democrats worldwide. There was a collective sigh of relief in liberal democracies across the globe when the news came through that the most prominent and famous case of rightwing populism would soon be packing his bags. But to assume that Biden’s win sounds the death knell for populism, or that it provides a clear model for defeating populism that should be imitated in other countries, would be a mistake.

There are three key problems here. The first is assuming that a single election in a single country acts as a bellwether for global trends. The second is overlooking what a singularly and uniquely bizarre, venal and odious character Trump is. The third, and perhaps deepest problem: the kind of “anti-populism” put forward by Biden does not represent a lasting response to rightwing populism.

Read why here: Benjamin Moffitt – Think Joe Biden’s victory marks the end of rightwing populism? Think again

Here’s a little of what is in the diary for today. Vice president Mike Pence is attending a US Space Command briefing at 2pm ET.

President-elect Joe Biden will be holding a virtual roundtable with frontline health care workers in Wilmington, Delaware. He and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will also be having meetings with their transition team.

Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer is holding a press call to announce legislation to increase production of critical PPE, and to address the N-95 respirator shortage facing frontline health care workers at 11am.

Outgoing president Donald Trump has nothing planned in his public diary.

One person who will not need their new role in the White House confirmed by the Senate is Dr Jill Biden, who will become first lady on 20 January 2021. Miranda Bryant in New York profiles her for us today, noting that she will be the first to continue her career while in the role.

During her eight years in the Obama administration as second lady (she preferred the title “captain of the vice squad”), Dr Biden continued to teach English composition at Northern Virginia Community College (Nova). She even requested that the Secret Service agents who accompanied her to work come in disguise as students.

But this time, when she returns to her day job in January, she may struggle to keep a low profile. Student Karolina Straznikiewicz, 27, was taught by Dr Biden before she went on leave at the beginning of the year to join her husband, President-elect Joe Biden, on the campaign trail. Straznikiewicz spent her first lesson trying to work out why her teacher seemed so familiar.

“My brain was telling me that it’s so impossible that a second lady of the United States would teach in a community college around here … I am pretty sure that a lot of the students in the classroom had no idea who she was until the end of the semester.”

By now, though, Straznikiewicz thinks Dr B’s cover must be blown. This year, Dr Biden has darted across the country on the campaign trail as a valuable and energetic advocate for her husband, giving television interviews and speaking at drive-in rallies.

Read more here: ‘Dr B’: the low-profile college educator set to break barriers as first lady

Rick Bright, part of Joe Biden’s coronavirus team, is on the airwaves this morning damping down excitement about the vaccine announcements by pointing out that the current stalling by the Trump team of engaging with the transition is likely to delay its availability to the US public.

With eyes looking forward to a new administration in January, Alex Thompson reports for Politico on how Joe Biden is currently assembling the team to get his future cabinet picks confirmed. In a story they’ve tagged exclusive, he writes:

With Republicans favored to retain their majority in the Senate next year, Biden’s Cabinet is poised to become the new administration’s first big political battle. The confirmation votes will be an early test of the president-elect’s ability to maneuver in the Senate and work with majority leader Mitch McConnell, who will maintain control of the chamber as long as Republicans win one of two Senate run-offs in Georgia.

He reports that the Biden plan is to take a new approach to getting their picks in place.

The new team is also looking to shake up some of the conventions of the cabinet nomination process, including the code of silence that has traditionally surrounded nominees. Instead, transition staff intend to introduce Biden’s cabinet picks to the American people before their Senate hearings, which could include media blitzes to build up public support. There’s a risk, however, that the increased exposure could lead to embarrassing gaffes or missteps by nominees.

In less polarized times, senators were more willing to cross party lines and confirm the president’s cabinet choices. There is more uncertainty now. During the Trump administration, some Democrats with presidential ambitions saw an advantage in voting against as many of Trump’s nominees as possible.

Biden, however, is intent on trying to restore some of the Senate’s erstwhile comity. The transition told Politico that they “are operating under the belief that the Senate will be under substantial pressure from the public and voters across the country to take action on the economy and public health crises, to confirm nominees and rebuild federal agencies with competent public servants.”

Read more here: Politico – Biden builds team for Senate confirmation battles

With that news about Pfizer’s vaccine, it is worth having another look at this report last night from Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco at the Daily Beast that Donald Trump is angry because he thinks Joe Biden will get the credit for the vaccine program that he was hoping for himself. They write:

For months, Trump had promised that a Covid vaccine was coming shortly. He put much of his election hopes on the possibility. But the announcement from two major pharmaceutical companies of hugely successful trial results came in the days after the votes were cast. And while it may have brought joy to the markets and public health officials, for Trump it was nothing but a heap of frustration.

Prior to the announcements the president had brainstormed with aides and close associates about ways he could promote the vaccine to the American people. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of his private comments, the president had said he envisioned large, public, mask-free events—particularly when the weather grew warmer in, what he anticipated to be, a second term—and rallies to celebrate the successes of Operation Warp Speed. When distribution began, Trump had wanted to be directly involved in the vaccine’s promotion, gaming out a video campaign about the safety and success of his operation.

Trump also mused about holding a public, televised event or news conference in which he’d proudly brandish and read from a list of headlines, articles, and TV coverage that had either underestimated him or raised doubts about Operation Warp Speed’s timeline.

“The president has been looking forward to showing that he was right and the media was wrong,” one of the sources described.

Read more here: The Daily Beast – Trump fumes that Biden will get the praise he craves for a Covid Vaccine

Pfizer to apply for emergency US authorization of its Covid-19 vaccine 'within days'

Pfizer has said that the final results from the late-stage trial of its Covid-19 vaccine show it was 95% effective, adding it had the required two-months of safety data and would apply for emergency US authorization within days.

The drugmaker said efficacy of the vaccine developed with German partner BioNTech SE was consistent across age and ethnicity demographics, and that there were no major side effects, a sign that the immunization could be employed broadly around the world.

Efficacy in adults over 65 years, who are at particular risk from the virus, was over 94%.

Moderna Inc on Monday released preliminary data for its vaccine, showing similar effectiveness, report Reuters.

The better-than-expected data from the two vaccines, both developed with new technology known as messenger RNA (mRNA), have raised hopes for an end to a resurgent pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people globally and wreaked havoc upon economies and daily life.

While some groups such as healthcare workers will be prioritized in the United States for vaccinations this year, it will be months before large-scale rollouts begin.

Pfizer said on Wednesday there had been 170 cases of the disease in its trial of more 43,000 volunteers, of which 162 were observed in the placebo arm and 8 were in the vaccine group.

Ten people developed severe Covid-19, one of whom received the vaccine. It also said the vaccine was well-tolerated and that side effects were mostly mild to moderate and cleared up quickly.

The only severe adverse event that affected more than 2% of those vaccinated was fatigue, which affected 3.7% of recipients after the second dose.

There’s a slightly different take on what the president is up to in USA Today, where David Jackson and Michael Collins write about what Trump is doing behind the scenes – working, in part, to poke Biden they say.

While still protesting the election results, Trump has been holding meetings to consider ordering a military strike against Iran, cutting the number of military troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, selling oil leases in the Alaskan wilderness, reducing government regulations and taking other actions designed in part to poke president-elect Biden. He’s also fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and top Pentagon leaders and Homeland Security cyber chief Christopher Krebs, who called the election secure. He is considering parting ways with FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Trump spends most of his days behind closed doors – he has made only two public statements since his angry Election Night speech at the White House – watching cable news and rage tweeting about Biden. He follows television news accounts of the election dispute, aides said, but is also tending the jobs at hand.

Historian Joanne Freeman said Trump’s refusal to accept defeat and the roadblocks to Biden’s transition are unprecedented.

“Other presidents – and their party – sometimes did some last-minute damage to stack the deck against an incoming president and the opposing party,” she said. But, “not on the scale of what seems to be shaping up now, given the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic.”

Read more here: USA Today – President Trump stays mostly out of view after election but is working, taking steps to, in part, poke Biden

Over at CNN, in his analysis, Stephen Collinson describes the revenge firing of Chris Krebs as Donald Trump’s “latest assault against the infrastructure of US democracy”, and portrays an outgoing one-term president increasingly retreating into isolation.

Trump wrote that he terminated Chris Krebs, a senior Department of Homeland Security official, for contradicting his own baseless allegations of irregularities. The president, his campaign and political allies have made multiple efforts, which started well before the election, to falsely argue that he was cheated out of a second term. His effort appears motivated by a desire to explain away his clear defeat by the former vice president but is also part of a pattern of behavior designed to discredit Biden’s presidency and to enshrine national divides that he consciously widened as a tool of power.

As more and more states begin to certify their election results in the coming days, the already minuscule rationale for Trump and the White House to perpetuate the fiction that he won a second term will further recede.

Trump’s setbacks in his struggles to overturn the results comes as he has all but retreated from public view. In no mood to party, Trump has decided to forgo his normal Thanksgiving trip to his Mar-a-Lago resort, administration officials told CNN, and he has had no public engagements for days.

Read more here: CNN – Trump lashes out in new bid to tarnish an election he lost

Mike Pompeo, the man who last week said “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration”, is tweeting about free and fair elections again.

Michael Sainato has this for us today about an untouted impact of the coronavirus pandemic – long-term unemployment. The 6.9 % unemployment rate touted as a success by the Trump administration doesn’t include those considered out of the labor force or under employed. Sainato reports:

Betty Patterson of Lakeland, Florida lost her job as a cashier at Dollar General in April 2020, and has struggled to find ever work since.

While relying on unemployment benefits, she managed to find temporary work for the US Census and then as a poll worker during the election, but like an increasing number of Americans who lost their job at the start of the pandemic, she still remains unemployed.

“I have to go sit in line in my car for at least three hours every Friday at the local church for food,” Patterson said. “If it wasn’t for the unemployment benefits I have received our family would have been living with no power or food. I fear for what’s going to happen to us if someone up in Washington DC doesn’t help us with another stimulus.”

Millions of people across the US continue to face unemployment, as the number of jobs in the US remains at more than 10m fewer than prior to the pandemic in February 2020.

As a massive jobs deficit faces the US, long-term unemployment among Americans who have been out of work 27 weeks or longer is growing, with an increase of 1.2 million people in October to 3.6 million Americans.

Read more here: An unemployment statistic that goes uncounted – the long-term unemployed

Poll: half of Republican voters believe Trump 'rightfully won' US election

About half of all Republicans believe President Donald Trump “rightfully won” the US election but that it was stolen from him by widespread voter fraud that favored Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The 13-17 November opinion poll showed that Trump’s open defiance of Biden’s victory in both the popular vote and electoral college appears to be affecting the public’s confidence in American democracy, especially among Republicans. Which probably shows that the Trump campaign strategy is working.

Altogether, 73% of those polled agreed that Biden won the election while 5% thought Trump won. But when asked specifically whether Biden had “rightfully won,” Republicans showed they were suspicious about how Biden’s victory was obtained.

Fifty-two percent of Republicans said that Trump “rightfully won,” while only 29% said that Biden had rightfully won.

Asked why, Republicans were much more concerned than others that state vote counters had tipped the result toward Biden: 68% of Republicans said they were concerned that the election was “rigged”, while only 16% of Democrats and one-third of independents were similarly worried.

It is worth remembering that, never mind this time around, even before winning the 2016 election Trump kept up a relentless drumbeat of complaints about the process, claiming without evidence that it was unfair to him.

The poll showed that more Americans appear to be more suspicious about the US election process than they were four years ago.

Altogether, 55% of adults in the United States said they believed the 3 November presidential election was “legitimate and accurate,” which is down 7 points from a similar poll that ran shortly after the 2016 election.

The 28% who said they thought the election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging” is up 12 points from four years ago.

Donald Trump has failed to give any proof for his claims of widespread voter fraud, and has not been able to back them up in court.

Bracing for a divided government, progressives are charting a path forward for Joe Biden’s economic vision that doesn’t involve Congress.

In a memo released on Wednesday, New Consensus, a progressive think tank led by former aides to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, outlines how Biden could implement his “Build Back Better” economic agenda using only his presidential powers and executive authorities.

“If President Biden is able to rise to this moment, he can create millions of good, high-wage jobs in every community across the country, bringing this country out of the current economic depression to be better and stronger than ever before -- and he doesn’t need the Senate to do it,” the group said in a statement.

Biden’s economic platform ties the nation’s economic revival from the coronavirus pandemic to combating climate change, addressing racial injustice and investing in American manufacturing. While passing legislation would be preferable, the group writes, the administration must be prepared to work around a hostile Senate.

Key to this plan are the creation of a National Development Council, which would establish a national economic development strategy to implement Biden’s agenda, and a National Development Bank, housed within the Treasury Department that would contract federal agencies to fund national infrastructure projects.

The memo calls on Biden to collaborate with the chair of the Federal Reserve and Secretary of the Treasury Department to implement his plan, drawing on the precedent set by George Bush and Barack Obama during the 2008-9 economic crash.

“Simply by following well established precedent, President Biden could, for example, direct funding towards ensuring that PPE factories are producing what we need and that new mask factories get built,” they said in a statement. Other examples include investment in the auto industry to help manufacturers convert to 100% electric cars.

Democrats will maintain a narrow majority in the House, but control of the Senate hinges on the results of two run off elections in Georgia in January. If Democrats can pull of wins in both seats, the chamber would be split evenly, with vice president-elect Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.

Updated

Emily Cochrane at the New York Times has been pointing out the concerns that there is an ongoing coronavirus outbreak on Capitol Hill. She writes:

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, 87, on Tuesday became the latest lawmaker to be affected, announcing that he had tested positive. His absence helped to temporarily derail the confirmation of president Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board and shattered Mr. Grassley’s pride and joy, the longest consecutive voting streak in Senate history.

His diagnosis came the day after Representative Don Young of Alaska, also 87, disclosed that he had been hospitalized over the weekend after what he described as a particularly brutal bout with Covid-19. The twin announcements from two men whose gender and age put them at peak vulnerability to being killed by the virus underscored the risks that lawmakers are operating under as Congress continues to meet.

The marble-and-stone petri dish that is Capitol Hill is a vivid microcosm of the national struggle to confront and contain the spread of the pandemic, with partisan bickering often thwarting already unevenly enforced health precautions. Having effectively declared themselves essential workers, the nation’s lawmakers — a group of older Americans whose jobs involve weekly flights, ample indoor contact and near-constant congregating in close quarters — are yet again struggling to adapt their legislative and ceremonial routines to stem the spread of the virus, even as it rages within their ranks.

The latest national US figures for coronavirus are again grim reading for the Trump administration, and worrying for the incoming Biden-Harris transition team who are still being denied access to data about the virus because of Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his election defeat.

Sen. Grassley was one of 161,934 new coronavirus cases in the US yesterday. There were 1,707 deaths recorded. The country is likely to hit a total of more than 250,000 deaths within the next 48 hours.

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As Jessica Glenza reports for us, diagnoses and hospitalisations have risen to their worst levels of the pandemic so far.

There’s no doubt that an incoming Biden-Harris administration will take a much stronger line on suggesting people wear masks to combat the spread of coronavirus than the outgoing Trump administration has.

Andrew Selsky at Associated Press has been looking at how the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advice on masks has been modified during the course of the pandemic as more science has emerged about the way the virus propagates.

He reminds us that US surgeon general Jerome Adams tweeted on 29 February: “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus”.

But last week, having now long advised people to wear masks because they help prevent people who are infected from spreading the coronavirus, the CDC added a new reason for wearing a mask. Masks can also protect wearers who are not infected

The agency referred to a study led by Japanese researchers that found masks block about 60% of the amount of virus that comes out of an infected person. When an uninfected person wearing a mask is near an infected person who isn’t wearing one, the amount of virus the uninfected person inhaled fell by up to 50%.

But when BOTH people are wearing masks, that produced the best result.

The decline in virus particles reaching the second person was close to 70%. So, if everyone wears a mask when social distancing is not feasible, the infection rate will be cut, experts say.

Across the US there is no single federal mandate for masks. The CDC has made only recommendations, and these were frequently undermined by Donald Trump often ridiculing Joe Biden for wearing one whenever he was out in public.

Biden, now president-elect, has said repeatedly that there should be a nationwide mask mandate. He has also promised to ask every governor to impose mask rules. For those who refuse, he’s vowed to go around them to seek similar mandates at the county or local level until the entire country is covered.

As of yesterday, 36 states have some type of mask mandate in place.

Republican governors in Iowa, North Dakota and Utah — all states that are being hit hard — have recently reversed course and required at least limited mask use. Others have extended or expanded earlier orders.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds cast some doubt Tuesday on the science behind masks even as she imposed a limited mask rule, noting that neighboring states with mask mandates have seen rising numbers of cases, although not as severely as Iowa.

She’s unwittingly hit the nail on the head with regards to how misinformation about the virus has been so widely spread. “If you look, you can find whatever you want to support wherever you are at,” she said.

Ian Martin, whose writing credits include Veep, writes this for us this morning:

“He went mad and lost America”. A conventional summary of King George III, the tragic figure who took on the colonies, sending in his troops to “dominate” the streets and crush resistance. Alas, the war of independence didn’t end well, for George anyway. Defeated, bipolar, suffering frequent manic episodes, he retreated to Windsor Castle having nevertheless amassed an impressive library and a reputation for cultured intelligence.

A couple of centuries and 45 presidents later, Old King Trump sits barricaded in the White House doing nothing much. His face puckered into that trademark rosebud of petulance. Barking at underlings. Pretending HE won because a lot of Democrat votes were from dead people and very illegal. His sulky-toddler folded arms, like that time he refused to say a single kind word when fellow Republican and war hero John McCain died. There’s something almost majestic about Trump’s utter contempt for the office of president.

Karl Marx – apparently the evil genius behind peaceful protest and Medicare – said that historical entities appear twice, “first as tragedy, then as farce”. That feels about right.

Read more here: Ian Martin – The madness of King Trump, America’s sulky George III sequel

It is approaching eight months since the last coronavirus economic relief package, and yesterday the Republicans and Democrats again traded barbs about whose fault that was. Jacob Jarvis sums it all up for Newsweek:

Democrat figureheads sent a letter to Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, urging him to negotiate with them this week in order to facilitate a bipartisan COVID-19 relief bill amid the ongoing pandemic.

Following this message, McConnell indicated that his stance remains that a “targeted rescue package” should be passed—bemoaning Democrats for having rejected the prospect of slimmed down measures.

The article reminds us:

A Democrat-led package, the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, passed the House of Representatives in May before an updated version—marking a reduction on topline spend to $2.2 trillion—also passed in October.

However, such plans have been met with pushback from the GOP-controlled Senate—with Republican leadership in the upper chamber pushing for a tighter bill with a lower overall cost.

Read more here: Newsweek – Mitch McConnell blames stimulus delay on Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer after letter urges talks

Here’s how Chris Krebs has reacted to that firing in public, by the way. He’s changed his Twitter biography to say “Used to be the 1st Director @CISAgov. Now I’m going to reintroduce myself to my family, fire up the BGE, watch @UVa sports, and ride bikes.”

He may also regret the typo* in this tweet where he says he did the right thing, which has proved popular overnight.

[*I realise a Guardian live blogger pointing out somebody else’s typo is very much a stones/glass houses situation]

Mike Pompeo makes call in support of 'free and fair elections' while visiting Europe

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in Georgia today – but the other one, in Europe’s South Caucasus region. There are some similarities though – Reuters report that thousands of Georgians unhappy over the way a recent election was held took to the streets of the capital even while Pompeo held talks with local politicians and a church leader.

Pompeo held talks with president Salome Zurabishvili, prime minister Giorgi Gakharia, as well as civil society representatives.

Pompeo told the Georgian prime minister that he recognised “the pain and difficulty connected to the (Russian) occupation of your country,” a reference to the fact that Russian forces garrison two breakaway Georgian regions after a 2008 war.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo meets with civil society leaders in Tbilisi, Georgia.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo meets with civil society leaders in Tbilisi, Georgia. Photograph: Reuters

In one of those exchanges that sound increasingly surreal coming from the Trump administration, Pompeo said the United States wanted to continue supporting Georgia in building its institutions to ensure “free and fair elections and all of the things that come with robust debate and democracy”.

Reminder – yesterday the president of the United States fired the director of the US cybersecurity agency via Twitter because he’d basically said the US had held free and fair elections, but Donald Trump doesn’t like the result.

There was praise in Georgia for Pompeo’s visit. Giga Bokeria, an opposition leader, told Reuters “Georgia needs continued and active US involvement to support its security and democracy in order to push back on Putin’s aggression in this frontier state.”

Outside, thousands of people formed a live chain in the city centre holding a huge Georgian national flag and posters saying: “USA - Thanks for supporting our liberty!” and “Elections rigged by Russian oligarch”.

Pompeo, having visited religious leaders in Istanbul yesterday, also met with Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II at the Patriarchate of Georgia in Tbilisi.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo, left, meets with Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II at the Patriarchate of Georgia in Tbilisi.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo, left, meets with Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II at the Patriarchate of Georgia in Tbilisi. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Updated

The deadline for a hand tally audit of presidential election votes in Georgia is tonight

Election officials across Georgia are staring down a deadline today to complete a hand tally of the presidential race in the state.

The hand recount of nearly 5 million votes stems from an audit required by a new state law, and wasn’t in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request. The law requires the audit to be done before the counties’ certified results can be certified by the state.

The deadline for the counties to complete the audit is 11:59pm, ahead of the Friday deadline for state certification. The hand count is meant to ensure that the state’s new election machines accurately tabulated the votes and isn’t expected to change the overall outcome, state election officials have repeatedly said.

Going into the count, Democrat Joe Biden led Republican President Donald Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. Previously uncounted ballots discovered in two counties during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 13,000, said Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system for the secretary of state’s office.

Once the results are certified, if the margin between the candidates remains within 0.5%, the losing campaign can request a recount. That would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the state, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has said.

Over the two weeks since the election, Raffensperger has been under attack from fellow Republicans, from the president on down. “The secretary of state has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections,” Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler wrote in a letter.

Raffensperger has steadfastly defended the state’s handling of the election and the subsequent hand tally. Associated Press report that he has said his office has seen no evidence of widespread voting fraud or irregularities and he was confident the audit would affirm the election results.

With changes made at the top of the Pentagon and the firing of people in government who are opposing his false narrative of a stolen election, I know the question on a lot of people’s lips is “Can Trump actually get away with this, stage a coup, and stay in office?”

Sam Levine has got you covered, and the answer is (almost certainly) no. Sam sets out the routes by which Trump and the Republicans might try and subvert Biden’s victory in the courts and state legislatures, however he concludes:

Despite all of Trump’s machinations, it is extremely unlikely he can find a way to stay in power or stage a coup. Regardless of however long a dispute is, the constitution sets one final deadline. Even if counting and legal disputes are ongoing, the president and vice-president’s terms both end at noon on 20 January. At that point if there isn’t a final result in the race, the speaker of the House – probably Nancy Pelosi – would become the acting president.

Read more here: Can Trump actually stage a coup and stay in office for a second term?

Nancy Pelosi accuses Donald Trump of a 'dangerous and shameful charade' over election result denial

Overnight Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi has issued a stinging statement about the firing of Cisa director Chris Krebs. She says:

Director Krebs is a deeply respected cybersecurity expert who worked diligently to safeguard our elections, support state and local election officials and dispel dangerous misinformation. Yet, instead of rewarding this patriotic service, the President has fired Director Krebs for speaking truth to power and rejecting Trump’s constant campaign of election falsehoods.

The president’s insistence on distracting and dividing the country by denying his defeat in the election undermines our democracy. As the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council — composed of the top nonpartisan election security officials in the country — stated last week, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised… we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”

Instead of stooping to this dangerous and shameful charade, Trump needs to get serious about crushing the accelerating pandemic that has killed nearly 250,000 Americans, infected over 11 million people in our country and devastated the livelihoods of tens of millions more.

Updated

Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Wednesday, as president Donald Trump still refuses to concede his overwhelming defeat in the election, and appears to be taking a wrecking ball to his administration along the way.

  • Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa). Krebs’ agency had issued a statement pushing back against the baseless claims of widespread voter fraud that Trump has continued to endorse.
  • Nancy Pelosi has described the president’s actions as a “dangerous and shameful charade”.
  • The Pennsylvania supreme court delivered another defeat to the Trump campaign, as the president’s legal efforts struggle to gain traction. The state supreme court ruled that Philadelphia election officials did not improperly block the Trump campaign from observing the city’s vote count.
  • The Trump campaign tried to delay the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden leads by about 73,000 votes. Arguing on behalf of the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani repeated the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.
  • Republican certifiers in Michigan were forced to back down after initially refusing to approve Biden win there.
  • Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa has tested positive for coronavirus. The 87-year-old senator was speaking on the Senate floor just yesterday, raising alarm that he could have exposed other lawmakers and staffers.
  • Grassley was one of 161,934 new coronavirus cases in the US yesterday. There were 1,707 deaths recorded. Diagnoses and hospitalisations have risen to their worst level of the pandemic.
  • Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors failed to advance in the Senate. Every Senate Democrat and two Senate Republicans opposed advancing Shelton’s nomination.
  • Biden announced a new round of senior staff appointments. The president’s former campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, will serve as deputy chief of staff, and congressman Cedric Richmond, a key House ally for Biden, will join the administration as the director of the White House office of public engagement.
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