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

Trump fires Cisa boss - as it happened

Chris Krebs, director of the agency that secures voting technology, was fired by Donald Trump.
Chris Krebs, director of the agency that secures voting technology, was fired by Donald Trump. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Summary

Here’s a recap, from me and Joan E Greve:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The Pennsylvania supreme court delivered another defeat to the Trump campaign, as the president’s legal efforts struggle to gain traction. Reversing a lower court’s decision, 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, while a lawyer for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state called for dismissing the lawsuit.
  • 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, but majority leader Mitch McConnell could take up the issue again if Rick Scott or Chuck Grassley, both of whom are quarantining after potential coronavirus exposure, soon return to Capitol Hill.
  • 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.
  • Biden is reportedly wary of continuing investigations of the Trump administration once he is sworn in. According to NBC News, one adviser to Biden said the president-elect has made it clear that he “just wants to move on”.

Updated

Mark Warner, a Democratic senator of Virginia and co-chair of the Senate cybersecurity caucus, said Krebs “is an extraordinary public servant and exactly the person Americans want protecting the security of our elections”.

“It speaks volumes that the president chose to fire him simply for telling the truth,” he said, echoing many of his Democratic colleagues.

While Warner was among many officials who expected Krebs to be fired, his dismissal does raise cybersecurity concerns. During the presidential transition period, when the US is especially vulnerable to foreign threats, a vacancy at the top of the DHS’ newly created cybersecurity agency is not ideal.

Updated

As Donald Trump and his supporters continue to sow doubt about the integrity of the election, Maricopa county supervisor Clint Hickman, a Republican, has issued a statement saying, “It is time to dial back the rhetoric, rumors, and false claims.”

“No matter how you voted, this election was administered with integrity, transparency and in accordance with state laws,” Hickman said.

Updated

Adam Schiff, the Democratic California congressman who chairs the House intelligence committee, has responded to the news, saying that Trump’s move to fire Krebs is “pathetic and predictable from a president who views truth as his enemy”.

Updated

Twitter quickly flagged the tweets in which Trump announced Krebs’ firing because the repeated many of the baseless election fraud claims the president has been making in recent weeks.

Unwilling to accept reality and concede the election, Trump has doubled down on conspiracy theories about election fraud. His administration has blocked the Biden transition team from receiving briefings, but now that Krebs is no longer working in an official capacity - the incoming administration may be able to glean non-classified briefings from the former cybersecurity official.

Krebs has said he was “honored to serve”:

Updated

Several top Democrats have condemned the president’s decision to fire Krebs.

On CNN, senator Chris Coons of Delaware said, “Chris Krebs’ federal service is just the latest casualty in President Trump’s four-year-long war on the truth.”

Angus King, the Maine senator who is among the candidates who may be appointed Director of National Intelligence in the upcoming Biden administration, said Krebs “is a dedicated public servant who has helped build up new cyber capabilities in the face of swiftly-evolving dangers. By firing him for doing his job, President Trump is harming all Americans.”

Donald Trump fires official for pushing back against baseless rumors of election fraud

Trump said Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), “has been terminated”.

Krebs had indicated he expected to be fired. Last week, his agency released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the statement read. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Trump mentioned the note in his tweet firing Krebs. He also repeated baseless, false claims that dead people had voted and machines changed votes.

Here’s more background:

In Pennsylvania, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani – who has continued his efforts to invalidate election results with baseless claims of voter fraud – has also suffered other setbacks...

Here’s more background on the long-shot litigation, from my colleague Sam Levine:

Republicans blocked Michigan’s largest county from certifying the results of the 3 November election on Tuesday, an alarming development that leaves wiggle room for Donald Trump in a state he lost by around 146,000 votes.

The four-member board of canvassers in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, deadlocked along partisan lines on Tuesday over certifying the election results. Joe Biden carried the county by nearly 323,000 votes. The decision essentially leaves certification up to the Michigan state board of canvassers, according to the Washington Post. The board is split along partisan lines and must approve election results with at least a 3-1 vote, according to Bridge Michigan.

There’s some concern that if the board doesn’t act to certify the results, the Michigan state legislature could step in and appoint its own electors. Michigan Republican leaders in the state legislature have downplayed those concerns.

A Republican member of the board of canvassers said on Tuesday she would be willing to certify results in parts of the county other than Detroit, which many saw to be an overtly partisan and racist move. Detroit is more than 78% Black.

The Trump campaign has focused on ballot counting in Detroit in several of the lawsuits it has filed in the state seeking to block certification of the results. Several judges have dismissed those lawsuits, finding no irregularities.

Here’s a view of Chuck Grassley, unmasked, speaking at the Senate yesterday

We’re monitoring which other senators might decide to quarantine after interacting with Grassley. Florida senator Rick Scott, who said he was exposed to the virus in his home state, is also quarantining. He has tested negative so far, he said.

Grassley was in close contact with senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and potentially others. While the Iowa senator did wear a mask when he wasn’t speaking, other Republican senators didn’t.

Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio confronted Republican Dan Sullivan of Alaska on the floor about wearing a mask - in part to protect staffers – including a stenographer - sitting below him.

“I don’t wear a mask when I’m speaking,” Sullivan responded. “I don’t need your instruction.” Republican Ted Cruz of Texas also seized on the opportunity to attack Brown, calling his colleague “complete ass” and accusing the Ohio senator of “fake virtue”.

Senator Grassley tests positive for coronavirus

Republican senator Chuck Grassley, 87, of Iowa has tested positive for coronavirus, he announced.

Grassley was unable to vote on Judy Shelton’s controversial nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors (she has advocated for a return to the gold standard) because he was quarantining after being exposed to the virus.

Before quarantining, Grassley spoke on the Senate floor, without a mask.

Updated

Joe Biden spoke with the leaders of Chile, India, Israel, and South Africa.

Congratulatory calls from president Sebastián Piñera of Chile, prime minister Narendra Modi of India, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and president Reuven Rivlin of Israel and president Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa followed calls from European and Chinese leaders, and the pope last week.

Netanyahu and Biden discussed the US-Israeli alliance and Biden’s “steadfast support for Israel’s security and its future as a Jewish and democratic state” per the president-elect’s transition team and Netanyahu’s office. Their conversation is a blow to Trump, who has pursued a foreign policy that has greatly favored Israel and maintained a close relationship with Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister had a more contentious relationship with the Obama administration, especially after the US chose not to vote against a security council resolution urging Israel not to build settlements on Palestinian territory.

Fellow populists Trump and Modi of India have also maintained an allyship, hosting a “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas at one point.

Here’s more background on how the transition could affect foreign policy:

It’s truly the greatest gift of all: a $1m donation by Dolly Parton to coronavirus vaccine research supported the development of the Moderna vaccine, which shows 95% protection from the virus.

In April, Parton donated £800,000 to research after her friend Dr Naji Abumrad of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee told her that they were making “some exciting advancements” in the search for a cure for the virus. Abumrad and Parton became friends in 2014 after the singer was involved in a car accident and treated at Vanderbilt.

This image released by Netflix shows Dolly Parton in a scene from “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square.” (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows Dolly Parton in a scene from “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square.” (Netflix via AP) Photograph: AP

Parton is yet to respond to the news. The Guardian has contacted representatives for the singer.

The 74-year-old country music icon’s donation has also supported convalescent plasma study at Vanderbilt – treating infected people with the plasma of others carrying antibodies against the virus – as well as the development of several research papers pertaining to the virus.

Moderna has said it could potentially produce 1bn doses of the vaccine by the end of 2021 and is applying for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It has already begun submitting data to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA): the UK has secured an initial 5m doses of the new vaccine. Moderna’s breakthrough follows a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showing 90% effectiveness.

The Dolly Parton Covid-19 research fund is the latest example of Parton’s well-known philanthropy. Her Imagination Library gifts free books to children from birth until starting school in participating areas. She recently told Oprah Winfrey that she never had children “because I believe that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like the Imagination Library.”

Read more:

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:

  • The Pennsylvania supreme court delivered another defeat to the Trump campaign, as the president’s legal efforts struggle to gain traction. Reversing a lower court’s decision, 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, while a lawyer for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state called for dismissing the lawsuit.
  • 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, but majority leader Mitch McConnell could take up the issue again if Rick Scott or Chuck Grassley, both of whom are quarantining after potential coronavirus exposure, soon return to Capitol Hill.
  • 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.
  • Biden is reportedly wary of continuing investigations of the Trump administration once he is sworn in. According to NBC News, one adviser to Biden said the president-elect has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.”

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer have sent a letter to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell asking him to engage in negotiations for another coronavirus relief bill.

“We write to request that you join us at the negotiating table this week so that we can work towards a bipartisan, bicameral COVID-19 relief agreement to crush the virus and save American lives,” the Democratic leaders said in the letter.

McConnell has proposed a targeted $500 billion relief bill, but Pelosi and Schumer have consistently dismissed that offer as insufficient to address the country’s medical and financial needs amid the pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession will not end without our help,” the Democrats said. “For the sake of the country, we ask that you come to the table and work with us to produce an agreement that meets America’s needs in this critical time.”

President-elect Joe Biden has emphasized the need to pass another massive relief bill, but negotiations between congressional Democratic leadership and the White House have been stalled for weeks.

Joe Biden’s lead in Georgia has slightly decreased to 12,929, after a memory card of 2,755 uncounted votes was found in Fayette county.

However, most Georgia counties are reporting little to no change in their presidential vote totals as they conduct their hand recounts.

Georgia election officials have until Friday to complete the recounts, and Biden is expected to maintain his lead in the state.

Pennsylvania supreme court deals Trump campaign another defeat

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the Trump campaign’s legal efforts in Pennsylvania:

Philadelphia election officials did not improperly block Donald Trump’s campaign from observing the counting of mail-in ballots, the Pennsylvania supreme court ruled 5-2 on Tuesday, a major blow to the president’s already flailing legal efforts.

The decision is significant because one of the Trump campaign’s loudest claims since the election has been that they were improperly blocked from observing the counting of ballots in Philadelphia.

While campaign observers were always allowed to observe, the campaign alleged they were being kept too far from the counting - about 15-18 feet - to make any meaningful observation. It secured a court order in the days after election day requiring Philadelphia officials to let observers within 6 feet.

But the Pennsylvania supreme court reversed that decision on Tuesday, noting that Pennsylvania law gives Philadelphia election officials wide discretion to decide the rules around observers.

“The Board did not act contrary to law in fashioning its regulations governing the positioning of candidate representatives during the pre-canvassing and canvassing process, as the Election Code does not specify minimum distance parameters for the location of such representatives,” Justice Barbara Todd, a Democrat, wrote for the five justice majority.

“We find the Board’s regulations as applied herein were reasonable in that they allowed candidate representatives to observe the Board conducting its activities as prescribed under the Election Code.”

Even the two Republican justices who dissented from the majority opinion disagreed with the idea, advanced by the Trump campaign, that legitimate votes should be rejected because of improper observation practices.

“Short of demonstrated fraud, the notion that presumptively valid ballots cast by the Pennsylvania electorate would be disregarded based on isolated procedural irregularities that have been redressed -- thus disenfranchising potentially thousands of voters -- is misguided,” Chief Justice Thomas Saylor wrote in his dissenting opinion.

“Accordingly, to the degree that there is a concern with protecting or legitimizing the will of the Philadelphians who cast their votes while candidate representatives were unnecessarily restrained at the Convention Center, I fail to see that there is any real issue.”

As a reminder, Joe Biden currently leads Trump in Pennsylvania by 72,832 votes.

Despite the Senate vote blocking Judy Shelton’s nomination for now, a White House spokesperson pledged to continue working for her confirmation to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.

“President @realDonaldTrump’s nominee to the Federal Reserve is incredibly qualified,” spokesperson Judd Deere said in a tweet. “The @WhiteHouse fully supports her, and we remain confident that Judy Shelton will be confirmed upon reconsideration.”

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell could take up Shelton’s nomination again, but he has little time to do it, as Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona will soon be sworn in to replace Republican Martha McSally.

Shelton has received criticism for her comments on returning to the gold standard and her close ties to Donald Trump.

Judy Shelton's Fed nomination fails to advance

Senate Democrats, with the help of two Republican colleagues, have successfully blocked the confirmation of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors -- for now, at least.

The motion to advance Shelton’s nomination failed by a vote of 48-49. (Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell changed his vote after it was clear the motion would fail, allowing him to take up the matter again at a later date, so the final vote was technically 47-50.)

Every Senate Democrat and two Senate Republicans -- Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah -- opposed advancing Shelton’s nomination.

Republicans failed in part because two of their colleagues -- Rick Scott of Florida and Chuck Grassley of Iowa -- are quarantining right now, after being exposed to people who tested positive for coronavirus.

If Scott and Grassley were to return to Capitol Hill, McConnell could have the votes to advance Shelton’s nomination.

However, McConnell has little time to take up the matter again, as Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona is expected to be sworn in by the end of the month, replacing Republican Martha McSally.

Kelly defeated McSally in a special Senate election two weeks ago.

Pennsylvania lawyers ask judge to dismiss Trump’s bid to block Biden from being certified winner

Lawyers for Pennsylvania asked a judge this afternoon to dismiss Donald Trump’s bid to block the president-elect, Joe Biden, from being certified as the victor in the state.

The Republican president, with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani arguing for him, is pursuing a long-shot legal challenge to his 2020 election loss.

Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell’s take.
Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell’s take. Illustration: Steve Bell/The Guardian

Giuliani, the former New York mayor, took a key role in spearheading Trump’s case before US district judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

A loss in the case would likely doom Trump’s already-remote prospects of altering the election’s outcome, Reuters writes.

There was “widespread, nationwide voter fraud” in the election, Giuliani told Brann, but provided little evidence to back up that claim.

Daniel Donovan, a lawyer for Pennsylvania’s top election official, said Trump’s campaign did not allege irregularities that would change the outcome in the state.

The Trump campaign on Sunday narrowed the Pennsylvania case to focus on a claim that voters in the state were improperly allowed to fix ballots that had been rejected because of technical errors such as missing a “secrecy envelope.”

Pennsylvania officials have said a small number of ballots were fixed. Trump’s campaign, however, is asking Brann to halt certification of Biden’s victory in the state.

Pennsylvania secretary of state Kathy Boockvar is due to certify the election results next Monday, meaning Brann is expected to rule quickly.

Biden is projected to have won the state by more than 70,000 votes, giving him 49.9% of the state’s votes to 48.8% for Trump.

Biden clinched the election by winning Pennsylvania to put him over the 270 state-by-state electoral college votes needed.

Updated

As she arrived on the Senate floor to vote against Judy Shelton’s nomination, Kamala Harris was warmly welcomed by her Republican colleagues, many of whom have refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who has lent credibility to Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, offered Harris a fist-bump to congratulate her on the win.

Several other Senate Republicans -- including Tim Scott of South Carolina, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Ben Sasse of Nebraska -- also congratulated her.

Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris arrived on the Senate floor with a police escort and voted “no” on advancing Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.

Explaining her vote, Harris said in a tweet, “We need a reliable Federal Reserve to help manage our economy in this pandemic.

“Judy Shelton’s dangerous ideas would devastate our economy, and her lack of commitment to using the full force of the Fed to provide COVID-19 relief is unacceptable.

“I voted no on her nomination.”

The vote remains open, but with Harris’ vote logged, it seems likely Shelton’s nomination will be blocked for now.

Appearing on Capitol Hill today for the vote on Fed nominee Judy Shelton, vice-president-elect Kamala Harris was asked about the president’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the election.

Harris told reporters, “I think that we want to make sure that we are all focused on the priorities of the moment and the day.”

The California senator specifically cited the coronavirus pandemic as the main focus of the Biden transition team right now.

Harris ignored questions about the Trump administration withholding resources from the Biden team and the announcement of US troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the hearing in the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania lawsuit:

Rudy Giuliani launched into a series of baseless claims about the election during an appearance on behalf of the Trump campaign in federal court on Tuesday, seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results.

Giuliani, who requested to appear on behalf of Trump this morning, alleged there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

That’s false; there isn’t a single state election official in the country who has seen widespread irregularities. The Department of Homeland Security described the 2020 election as “the most secure in American history.”

National security adviser Robert O’Brien briefly addressed the US troop drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan while speaking to reporters at the White House.

O’Brien said the 2,500 troops who would remain in each of the two countries would focus on protecting US diplomats and facilities.

“By May, it is President Trump’s hope that they will come home safely and in their entirety,” O’Brien said.

The administration has said the partial troop withdrawal will happen by January 15, five days before the inauguration of Joe Biden.

Like acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, O’Brien did not take any questions from reporters about the troop reduction.

Acting defense secretary confirms US troop reduction in Iraq and Afghanistan

Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense, has confirmed reports that the outgoing Trump administration will reduce the presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Miller, who was installed last week after the firing of Mark Esper, said the US will have 2,500 troops in each country by January 15, 2021 -- five days before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“This is consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives, supported by the American people, and does not equate to a change in US policy or objectives,” Miller told reporters at the Pentagon.

After issuing the announcement, the acting defense secretary left the briefing room without taking reporters’ questions.

The announcement means Donald Trump will leave office without fulfilling his promise of withdrawing all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reports of a potential troop drawdown were met with criticism from the president’s opponents and allies.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday that a troop reduction in the countries “would hurt our allies and delight -- delight -- the people who wish us harm.”

Update: vice-president-elect Kamala Harris has arrived at the Capitol, meaning she will likely break the tie to block Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.

With Harris’ expected “no” vote, the final tally on Shelton’s nomination will likely by 48-49 against confirmation.

However, another Senate Republican -- Pat Roberts of Kansas -- has also said he is undecided about Shelton’s nomination, so the final vote numbers could look a bit different than that.

Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris will reportedly be back in the Senate today to vote against Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.

Harris was supposed to participate in a national security briefing with Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, but she is now expected to take part in the briefing virtually.

Assuming she arrives in time, Harris could provide the tie-breaking vote to block Shelton’s confirmation. Without Harris present, it seems the final vote would likely by 48-48, allowing vice-president Mike Pence to break the tie.

Three Republican senators have indicated they will oppose Shelton’s nomination, and two other Republicans -- Rick Scott of Florida and Chuck Grassley of Iowa -- could not vote because they are quarantining after being exposed to coronavirus.

Shelton is considered a controversial nominee, given her past comments on the US returning to the gold standard and her close ties to Donald Trump, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is trying to have her nomination approved before the new Congress is sworn in.

Rudy Giuliani asked for $20,000 a day to assist the Trump campaign’s legal efforts in battleground states, according to the New York Times.

The Times reports:

The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much, and it is unclear how much Mr. Giuliani will ultimately be compensated.

Since Mr. Giuliani took over management of the legal effort, Mr. Trump has suffered a series of defeats in court and lawyers handling some of the remaining cases have dropped out.

A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated attorneys anywhere.

Giuliani denied the Times’ story, saying whoever claimed he made the request “is a liar, a complete liar.” (Multiple people confirmed the story to the Times.)

The former New York mayor is appearing in federal court in Pennsylvania this afternoon, as the Trump campaign seeks to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Senator to Zuckerberg: Will you ban Bannon?

In a Senate hearing today, the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal asked Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg a very direct question about a former Trump aide: “How many times is Steve Bannon allowed to call for the murder of government officials before Facebook suspends his account?”

Earlier this month, on Bannon’s own podcast, the former campaign manager, White House strategist and alleged fraudster referred to FBI director Chris Wray and top public health expert Anthony Fauci when he said: “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the programme or you’re gone.”

Twitter banned Bannon’s War Room account permanently, for violating its policy on the glorification of violence.

Zuckerberg had already defended the decision not to ban Bannon from Facebook.

To Blumenthal, he said: “Senator, as you say, the content in question did violate our policies and we took it down. Having a content violation does not automatically mean your content, your account, gets taken down and the number of strikes varies depending on … the type of offence.

“So if people are posting terrorist content or child exploitation content then the first time that they do it, then we will take down their account. For other things, it’s multiple. I’d be happy to follow up afterwards.”

Blumenthal pressed: “Will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannon?”

Zuckerberg said: “Senator, no, that’s not what our policies would suggest that we should do in this case.”

Here’s Kari Paul’s live blog of the Senate hearing:

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Joe 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.
  • The Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Pennsylvania will receive a hearing in federal court this afternoon. The lawsuit, which seems unlikely to succeed, is aimed at delaying Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory there. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has filed a request to appear on behalf of the campaign.
  • Biden is reportedly wary of continuing investigations of the Trump administration once he is sworn in. According to NBC News, one adviser to Biden said the president-elect has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.”

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

Another 26 people in North Dakota died of coronavirus yesterday, as the virus continues to rapidly spread across the US.

According to the North Dakota Department of Health, the state’s total coronavirus death toll now stands at 769.

The state population of North Dakota is about 762,000, meaning that roughly 1 out every 1000 state residents has now died of the virus.

The governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, has asked healthcare workers who have tested positive for coronavirus but not developed symptoms to continue reporting for duty.

Danielle Renwick reports:

Nurse Leslie McKamey has gotten used to the 16-hour shifts, to skipping lunch, to the nightly ritual of throwing all her clothes in the laundry and showering as soon as she walks through the door to avoid potentially infecting her children. She’s even grown accustomed to triaging Covid patients, who often arrive at the emergency room so short of breath they struggle to describe their symptoms.

But despite the trauma and exhaustion of the last eight months, she was shocked when North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, said last week that healthcare workers who test positive for coronavirus but do not display symptoms could still report to work. The order, which is in line with CDC guidance for mitigating staff shortages, would only allow asymptomatic health workers who test positive to work in Covid units, and treat patients who already have the virus.

But many feel the idea endangers the workers themselves and their colleagues. It comes as North Dakota faces one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 and grapples with healthcare staff shortages.

‘We’re worried about somebody dying, frankly, because we couldn’t get to them in time,’ said McKamey, an emergency room nurse in Bismarck.

A former NFL player who bills himself as the ‘anti-Colin Kaepernick’ has been elected to the US House of Representatives.

Burgess Owens, running as a Republican, beat the Democrat incumbent Ben McAdams in a close race that was finally called on Monday. Owens will represent Utah’s fourth district, which covers the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

Owens was one of the first black players to represent the University of Miami football team, where he also majored in biology and chemistry. He went on to have a 10-year career in the NFL with the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders, with whom he won Super Bowl XV. After leaving the league as a “cocky liberal” he says his political views became “very conservative”.

On his campaign site he pitched himself as “as a cultural counterweight to the hatred that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has spewed for the last few years”. He also described Black Lives Matter as “a Marxist organization”. Black Lives Matter is a decentralized movement and does not have official policies.

Owens has also suggested there may be merit in the QAnon movement, a baseless conspiracy theory that posits Satan-worshipping liberal elites secretly rule the world while engaging in child trafficking. Owens brought up the subject during a radio interview in October. “What I find interesting is anytime you bring up child trafficking, we get from the left a word called QAnon,” said Owens. His spokesman later said Owens does not believe in the theory.

Two other NFL veterans currently serve in the House of Representatives. Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Collin Allred is a Democrat for Texas’ 32nd district, while Anthony Gonzalez, who played for the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl XLIV, is a Republican for Ohio’s 16th district.

Senator Lindsey Graham said he had spoken to election officials in other battleground states, as the president and his allies continue to push baseless claims of election fraud.

“Yeah, I talked to Arizona, I talked to Nevada,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Graham’s comments come as Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, has accused the Republican senator of suggesting throwing out valid absentee ballots in the state. (Graham has denied the allegation.)

After Graham’s comments were reported, the Arizona secretary of state clarified that she has not spoken to the senator.

“This is false. I have not spoken with @LindseyGrahamSC,” Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said.

Graham later clarified he spoke to Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, and another official (not the secretary of state) in Nevada.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, who served as Joe Biden’s campaign manager, expressed excitement about joining his administration as deputy chief of staff.

“Working for @JoeBiden is absolutely the honor of my life,” Dillon said in a tweet. “We have hard things to do, and with his leadership, we can do them together for the American people. Ready to get to work.”

With Biden’s victory, Dillon became the first woman to manage a successful Democratic presidential campaign.

Congressman Cedric Richmond said he would leave the House before January 20 in order to join Joe Biden’s administration as the director of the White House office of public engagement.

“I am not leaving the people of Louisiana,” Richmond said at a press conference to announce his plans. “I am New Orleans through and through. I bleed black and gold.”

Richmond’s departure from the House leaves a seat open in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District.

Describing his discussion with the president-elect about joining the administration, Richmond said, “He was clear in his ask and also clear in what we could do together and what this country needs at this moment in time.”

President-elect Joe Biden praised his newly announced senior staffers in a statement, saying they would help the country tackle the many challenges it currently faces.

“I am proud to announce additional members of my senior team who will help us build back better than before,” Biden said. “America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation.”

Ron Klain, who was named as White House chief of staff last week, added, President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have an ambitious and urgent agenda for action. The team we have already started to assemble will enable us to meet the challenges facing our country on day one.”

Biden announces more senior staff appointments

The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:

President-elect Joe Biden has announced more senior staff appointments, as well as advisers to incoming first lady Jill Biden.

The new additions followed the announcement of Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff as vice-president, as chief of staff in the White House.

Joe Biden receives virtual briefing from his economic advisers in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Biden receives virtual briefing from his economic advisers in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The newly hired advisers for Biden are all familiar faces. They have either been top aides for years or were high-ranking officials during the presidential campaign.

Jenn O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, will be deputy chief of staff. Mike Donilon, chief strategist for the campaign, will be a senior adviser.

Dana Remus, general counsel for the campaign, will be counsel to the president. Steve Richetti, chairman for the Biden campaign, will be counselor to the president. Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, another chairman for the campaign, will be senior advisor to the president and director of the White House office of public engagement.

The Biden transition team also announced two lesser known additions to the White House. Julia Rodriguez will be director of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs. Annie Tomasini will be director of oval office operations.

Anthony Bernal, who was deputy campaign manager and chief of staff for Dr. Jill Biden, will be a senior adviser to Dr. Biden. Julissa Reynoso Panteleon will be chief of staff to the incoming first lady as well. She is currently a partner at the Winston & Strawn law firm.

Dr Anthony Fauci voiced confidence in the coronavirus vaccine candidates, after Moderna announced its vaccine had an efficacy of nearly 95%.

Speaking to CNN this morning. the infectious disease expert reminded viewers that the data from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials would be closely scrutinized by career scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.

Asked whether he himself would take the vaccine, Fauci said, “I will take a vaccine, and I will recommend to my family to also take it.”

But Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, emphasized that the apparent success of the two vaccine candidates did not mean Americans should stop being vigilant about social-distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing.

“We don’t want the extraordinary success of these two vaccines to get people to be complacent,’ Fauci said.

He argued the hope of the imminent approval of a coronavirus vaccine should encourage people to “double down and hang in there” for the next few months.

Updated

Chuck Grassley is quarantining after being exposed to someone who tested positive for coronavirus, meaning he will not be in the Senate today for the confirmation vote of controversial Fed nominee Judy Shelton.

If Grassley is not there, the vote on Shelton’s nomination is expected to fail -- assuming vice-president-elect Kamala Harris is present for the vote.

Harris is scheduled to receive a national security briefing with president-elect Joe Biden this afternoon.

Well, this should be interesting: Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, has filed an application to appear in federal court in Pennsylvania on behalf of the Trump campaign’s election lawsuit there.

The court is set to hold a hearing in the case at 1:30 pm ET today.

The hearing comes as the Trump campaign has slimmed down its Pennsylvania lawsuit, abandoning its efforts to invalidate hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots.

Instead, the lawsuit now focuses on trying to block Pennsylvania from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Given that many Republican efforts to postpone certification have already failed, the lawsuit does not seem likely to succeed.

Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, said he was exposed to someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

“I learned today that I’ve been exposed to the coronavirus,” Grassley said in a statement. “I will follow my doctors’ orders and immediately quarantine as I await my test results.”

Grassley added, “I’m feeling well and not currently experiencing any symptoms, but it’s important we all follow public health guidelines to keep each other healthy.

At 87, Grassley is the second-oldest member of the Senate, and his age will make him more vulnerable to becoming very ill with coronavirus if he does contract the virus.

The news comes less than a week after Don Young, the oldest member of the House, announced he had tested positive for coronavirus. Young said yesterday that he had been discharged from the hospital and continued to recover at home.

Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, reiterated his accusation that Lindsey Graham suggested throwing out valid ballots in the state, where Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes.

Speaking to CBS News this morning, Raffensperger said the Republican senator called him and raised the possibility of throwing out absentee ballots in counties where poll workers accepted higher rates of mismatched signatures.

Raffensperger told Graham that he would consult with his counsel and get back to him, but he then decided it would be better to “disengage and move forward,” given his concerns about the idea.

Graham has denied the accusation, saying it is “ridiculous” to suggest he proposed throwing out valid ballots.

Raffensperger also defended the integrity of the state’s recount, pushing back against baseless accusations of election fraud from Trump and his allies.

“I’ve always been a conservative Republican, and I want to make sure we have a lawful process because I think integrity still matters,” the secretary of state said. “That’s what this audit is going to do.”

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

Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: president-elect Joe Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris will receive a briefing on national security in Wilmington, Delaware.

The soon-to-be first lady, Jill Biden, will also speak at the Military Child Education Coalition’s (MCEC) 2020 virtual education summit this morning.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has nothing on his schedule, as the president has kept a very low profile since Biden was declared the winner of the election 10 days ago (aside from his tweeting, of course).

Ohio’s Republican Senator Rob Portman has gone public with his participation in a Covid vaccine trial, in the hope that it would help raise the number of volunteers.

The 64 year old told the Associated Press that he wanted to do what he could to help “explain the great potential for these vaccines” and the need for volunteers. “I could help encourage more people to step up and join the trials,” Portman said.

He said he also wants to send a message about vaccine safety. “One of the challenges as you know is assuring that people will be willing to be vaccinated.”

He noted that surveys have shown that many Americans are wary of vaccine safety when vaccines become available. A fact not helped by the partisan politicisation of the Covid crisis.

Portman said he received an injection 5 November at a CTI Cincinnati lab that is testing for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate. Volunteers get either the vaccine or a dummy shot but aren’t told what they received.

He does daily monitoring of vital signs, keeping a log and working with the lab. Portman said he feels great, hasn’t experienced any side effects, and is donating the $1,200 stipend offered to charity.

CTI spokesperson Caitrin Cardosi said the company needs some 10,000 volunteers for five different vaccine trials and has around 8,000 now. And the company will need more volunteers even after vaccines are in use for continued research on how to improve them.

Portman said he applauded the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which is helping develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines, and that Congress should offer more bipartisan support for long-term funding.

“I think the White House needs to continue to support the scientists and not make this political at all,” Portman said.

US retail sales increased 0.3% in October – less than expected

A quick economics snap from Reuters here – US retail sales increased less than expected in October and could slow further as new Covid restrictions bite.

The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3% last month. Data for September was revised down to show sales up by 1.6% instead of the 1.9% previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales would gain 0.5% in October.

As daily new coronavirus cases have been exceeding 100,000 since early this month, pushing the total number of infections in the United States above 11 million, state and local governments have imposed new restrictions on businesses.

These restrictions – and consumer avoidance of crowded places like bars and restaurants – could undercut spending and trigger another wave of layoffs, further squeezing incomes following the loss of a government weekly unemployment subsidy.

Economists expect moderate retail sales growth for the rest of the year, which will contribute to slower economic growth after a historic rebound in gross domestic product in the third quarter.

This is interesting from Clara McMichael this morning about how one of the ideas to make elections more transparent and easier to observe backfired in the fevered and paranoid atmosphere that surrounded the 2020 US election: Why US ballot count livestreams became misinformation magnets

At a vote-counting center in Montgomery county, Maryland, a man sat in a room with other election workers, wearing a grey hat and dark purple rubber gloves. He unfolded a ballot, looked around and leaned forward to mark it. The man appeared on a Yahoo Finance livestream of the center. The video went viral, one version ending up on YouTube, where the narrator said they found it on 4chan.

“Do you notice that, folks?” said the narrator. “How he looks around to see if anyone is watching him – as if he’s about to commit a crime?”

The video spread across social media, viewers claiming the election worker was committing fraud. Then election officials launched an investigation and found the voter hadn’t used a dark enough pen to mark their ballot; the worker was darkening their selections – a routine practice.

In Delaware county, Pennsylvania, a video was taken from the livestream showing a woman filling in ballots. It went viral, proliferating further after Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point, a rightwing student organization, showed it during his election livestream.

A spokesperson told USA Today the video had been misleadingly cropped; there were election observers at the end of the table and the worker was manually transcribing damaged ballots, a common and lawful practice.

“The issue comes where information can be picked up, cut, taken out of context and reframed or reinterpreted,” said Kate Starbird, associate professor at the University of Washington and cofounder of the Center for an Informed Public. “That just becomes raw material for people trying to create conspiracy theories.”

Read more of Clara McMichael’s report into why US ballot count livestreams became misinformation magnets

Teo Armus over at the Washington Post brings us news of this principled turnaround:

Moments after the presidential race was called for Joe Biden, Marc A. Scaringi took to his talk radio show to question President Trump’s dubious legal campaign to challenge the election results in various swing states.

“At the end of the day, in my view, the litigation will not work,” the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, lawyer said 7 November on iHeartRadio. “It will not reverse this election. In my opinion, there really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency, including these lawsuits.”

Barely a week later, Scaringi is now playing a key role in one piece of that litigation, representing the Trump campaign in what may be its last stand in Pennsylvania — an unlikely lawsuit intended to block the Keystone State from certifying its election results.

A growing number of Trump campaign attorneys have in recent weeks pulled out of election lawsuits that critics say are peddling unfounded allegations of voter fraud. And now, the 51-year-old lawyer is set to argue a case in their place that — even if it were successful — would not come close to reversing Biden’s vote margin of more than 70,000 ballots in Pennsylvania.

Read more here: Washington Post – Trump’s new Pennsylvania lawyer said Biden won and that lawsuits ‘will not reverse this election’

Yesterday, David Adelman, US ambassador to Singapore during the Obama administration, said that the White House’s failure to provide President-elect Joe Biden’s team with transition intelligence materials was “potentially catastrophic.”

“So far I think it’s not terribly damaging; it’s really still early days,” Adelman said, but added, “If it were to persist for weeks or even more than a month, I think the damage would be substantial.”

Last night Biden made a joke about the Trump administrations failure to provide him with that intel, saying that “the good news is that my colleague [indicating vice president-elect Kamala Harris] is still on the intelligence committee, so she get’s the intelligence briefings. I don’t anymore.”

Naturally several conservative voices on social media have leapt on that remark and accused Harris of treason and leaking classified materials to the president-elect.

'Lives are at stake here' – Biden Covid task force member Rick Bright urges transition co-operation on vaccines

Rick Bright, the Trump administration vaccine expert turned whistleblower who has joined Joe Biden’s transition coronavirus task force has been on ABC News this morning, talking about vaccines. He said that it’s really important for Americans to understand that there’s a lot of work ahead of them to get a vaccine distributed.

There’s a lot of coordination that goes into putting those vaccines into a vial, and making those vials and shipping those vials out across the country, getting those into the hands of doctors and nurses so they could administer those vaccines. And tracking to make sure that the person who got the first dose of one vaccine gets the second dose of the same vaccine at the right time. There’s a lot of activity that must happen. And we need to coordinate that. After 20 January a new administration will come in, and a new team will take over that responsibility. So it’s important that this new team has all of the information that the current team has so there’s a smooth transition. Lives are at stake here.

He also, in a move sure to please the Trump administration, laid credit for some of the foundation work on these vaccines with the Obama administration.

A lot of things that have happened with these vaccines over the last several years. I’m really excited to see the progress from messenger RNA or mRNA vaccines. It is an investment that we made in the Obama administration, starting back in 2013. It was a new technology that we have invested in and built a foundation. So when we needed them now for this crisis, they were ready to run.

He stressed again that “President-elect Biden has said all along that he’s going to let science lead the way” and urged for transparency and sharing of all the data associated with the proposed coronavirus vaccines.

Dr Khalid Khan is an internal medicine physician in Houston, Texas. Even in the face of a pandemic that has cost almost quarter of a million American lives and administration that often seemed to demonize Islam, the doctor and self-proclaimed devout Muslim cast his ballot for Donald Trump.

“When you eat a dish, you might not like every ingredient. But you like the whole dish. We should take the good and leave the bad,” Khan said, comparing the US president to a mediocre meal.

Trump spent much of his presidency pushing anti-Muslim policies, but in spite of that, some Muslims like Khan, still voted for him. In fact, the margin between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden among Muslims was closer than experts predicted, revealing Muslim voters are not a monolithic bloc and can be courted by Republicans, even when apparently targeted by their policies.

A survey conducted by the Associated Press revealed that while the majority of Muslims interviewed voted for the president-elect, 35% said they voted for Trump. Though Muslims account for less than 1% of the total US electorate, in places like Michigan, these voters can potentially be key to winning a state in a tight election battle, as happened in both 2016 and again in 2020.

Khan’s wife, Annette, a white Christian convert to Islam, said she believes her husband’s support for Trump is valid.

“I do acknowledge that during his presidency he said some things that would be perceived as anti-Muslim. I believe it was out of ignorance,” Annette Khan said. “His lack of dealings with Muslims and lack of knowledge are the cause. When he banned Muslims from coming into the country he was referring to those who were already established by the Obama administration as being terrorist-harboring countries. Not all Muslim countries.”

Read more of Erum Salam’s report here: ‘We should be thankful to him’: why some Muslim voters stood by Trump

A Kentucky man accused of shooting two police officers during demonstrations over the killing of Breonna Taylor has been indicted on 35 charges.

Larynzo D Johnson, 26, is accused of shooting at police officers on 23 September, during protests held after a grand jury process led by state attorney general Daniel Cameron produced no charges involving the shooting of Taylor by police.

Instead, prosecutors announced a single officer had been indicted on charges of wanton endangerment for firing into a home next to Taylor’s.

On 23 September, Louisville officer Robinson Desroches was shot in the abdomen and Major Aubrey Gregory was shot in the hip. Both have recovered.

Johnson was indicted by a Jefferson county grand jury on two counts of first-degree assault and 33 counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, news outlets reported.

Read more here: Kentucky man charged with shooting police duo at Breonna Taylor protests

I mentioned earlier that Barack Obama was to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey as it is the day that the first volume of his memoirs are published.

Here’s a clip. He tells Winfrey that the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will help lead the country back to the ‘competent, caring government we so badly need’

He lamented the standard of governance seen in the US over the past four years, saying that Biden and Harris will ‘level set’ and show that the presidency won’t label journalists ‘enemies of the state’ or ‘routinely lie’ anymore.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in Istanbul, and not everyone is entirely happy about it. He met with the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians during a short trip to Turkey that has raised the ire of Turkish officials and includes no meetings with any of them.

Pompeo, who is on a seven-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, tweeted pictures of him being greeted by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the leader of some 300 million Orthodox Christians, after being shown around the Patriarchate. He was also scheduled to meet with the apostolic nuncio to Turkey, Archbishop Paul Russell, and visited the Rustem Pasha Mosque.

The talks were to center on religious freedoms in Turkey, which has angered Ankara and prompted officials to call on Washington to focus on human rights violations in the United States.

Last week, Turkey issued a sharply-worded statement criticizing Pompeo’s plans and said Washington should “look at the mirror” and deal with issues such as racism, Islamophobia and hate crimes.

But the talks went ahead, and Pompeo on Tuesday tweeted that “as leader of the Orthodox world” Bartholomew “is a key partner as we continue to champion religious freedom around the globe.”

The trip comes amid already frayed ties between the two Nato allies over a series of issues, even though Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump have maintained friendly personal ties.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enters the Rustem Pasha Mosque in Istanbul.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enters the Rustem Pasha Mosque in Istanbul. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Senior State Department officials said the lack of official meetings in Turkey was due to scheduling issues during the brief stop and note that Pompeo and his Turkish counterpart plan to see each other in early December at a meeting of Nato foreign ministers.

Turkish media reports though said that Turkish officials were giving Pompeo the cold-shoulder, after he allegedly refused to travel to the capital Ankara to pay an official visit.

Around 25 members of a left-wing nationalist group, the Turkish Youth Union, staged a brief demonstration near the Patriarchate under heavy police presence, protesting Pompeo for meeting with Bartholomew instead of state officials. The demonstrators chanted “Down with US imperialism” and “Yankee go home.”

Turkish Youth Union members holding anti-US placards.
Turkish Youth Union members holding anti-US placards. Photograph: Emrah Gürel/AP

Later stops on Pompeo’s tour will include visits to Israeli settlements in the West Bank that have been avoided by previous secretaries of state.

It might feel like overkill to have to fact check Donald Trump tweeting that he won the election, but here we all are. For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how the Associated Press have gone about it:

In the face of conclusive evidence that he lost, president Donald Trump is claiming “I won.”

Biden achieved victory in key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, topping the 270 electoral vote threshold to clinch the presidency, with room to spare.

If Biden’s advantage holds in Georgia after a recount, he would end up with 306 electoral votes, a total that Trump called a “landslide” when states delivered him that number in 2016 despite his loss of the popular vote.

Biden leads Georgia by 14,122 votes, or 0.28 percentage points. There is no precedent of a recount erasing a lead of that size. But Biden already has enough electoral votes without Georgia.

Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department.

No case has established irregularities of a scale that would change the outcome. Lawsuits that remain do not contain evidence that would flip the result.

Here’s a little of what is in the diary for today. Donald Trump doesn’t have any public events scheduled. That can either mean he’ll surprise us with something later on, or he’ll go and play golf. Vice president Mike Pence will be leading a coronavirus task force meeting at the White House at 3pm.

President-elect Joe Biden receives a briefing on national security in Wilmington, Delaware.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the main attraction at Congress today will be Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey testifying before the Senate judiciary committee at 10am.

You may also be interested to know that the first volume of former president Barack Obama’s memoirs is published today, and he’ll be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey to mark it. Julian Borger had this write-up of it yesterday for us.

Updated

Gary Younge writes for us today a typically eloquent long read on Donald Trump’s desperate fight to stop the minority vote in 2020 – and how he still lost.

According to Trump, votes were illegitimate by dint of where they were cast. “Detroit and Philadelphia are known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country – easily,” he said. “They cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race.”

This was a new twist in the racial logic of the American right, which has gone from blocking Black people from voting to allowing them to vote as long as their votes don’t all get counted.

It is important to remember that the US was a slave state for more than 200 years – and an apartheid state, after the abolition of slavery, for another century. Throughout that time, in certain parts of the country, all Black votes were, by definition, illegal, and conservatives worked hard to keep it that way. It has only been a nonracial democracy for 55 years. And that short reign now hangs in the balance.

In 2013, just a year after turnout rates for Black voters surpassed that for white voters for the first time, the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which provided some legal protections for Black voters in places where they had once been excluded.

The late Rep. John Lewis’s home state of Georgia soon got to work thwarting the Black vote with weapons more subtle than the teargas and billy clubs used in Selma, Alabama in 1965. The state cut the number of polling stations by almost 10%, purged tens of thousands of voters from the rolls simply because they had not voted for a while, and suspended the registrations of another 50,000 people – mostly Black – for discrepancies as minor as omitting a hyphen in their name. Those long lines we witnessed around the election were not simply voter enthusiasm – they were also voter suppression.

The trouble is that as white people become a minority in the US, efforts to disfranchise non-white voters necessarily become ever more crude and ever more desperate, but cannot be guaranteed to produce results. The sums just don’t add up for Republicans.

Read Gary Younge in full here: Counted out – Trump’s desperate fight to stop the minority vote

Nato secretary-general issues warning over US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

In his report on the situation with Iran just now, Patrick Wintour mentioned those reports that Donald Trump is intending to make a significant troop withdrawal from Afghanistan before vacating the White House in January. Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has issued a warning about that this morning.

Associated Press report him saying “We now face a difficult decision. We have been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, and no Nato ally wants to stay any longer than necessary. But at the same time, the price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high,” in a statement.

He said the country still “risks becoming once again a platform for international terrorists to plan and organize attacks on our homelands. And ISIS (Islamic State) could rebuild in Afghanistan the terror caliphate it lost in Syria and Iraq.”

Nato has fewer than 12,000 troops from dozens of nations in Afghanistan helping to train and advise the national security forces. US. troops frequently make up about half that number, and the 30-nation alliance relies heavily on the United States armed forces for transport, logistics and other support.

Stoltenberg said that “even with further US reductions, Nato will continue its mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces. We are also committed to funding them through 2024.”

Nato’s security operation in the country is its biggest and most ambitious undertaking ever. It was launched after the military alliance activated its mutual defence clause — known as Article 5 — for the first time, mobilizing all the allies in support of the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

“Hundreds of thousands of troops from Europe and beyond have stood shoulder to shoulder with American troops in Afghanistan, and over one thousand of them have paid the ultimate price,” Stoltenberg said.

“We went into Afghanistan together. And when the time is right, we should leave together in a coordinated and orderly way. I count on all Nato allies to live up to this commitment, for our own security,” he said.

Iran warns of ‘crushing response’ if Trump targets nuclear site

Iran has warned of a strong response if Donald Trump goes ahead with plans to use the twilight of his presidency to mount a strike on Iran or its allies in the region.

It was reported that Trump last week looked at options for striking Iran’s main nuclear site, but was dissuaded from taking action after his advisers warned it might lead to a larger conflict in the Middle East. The report was sourced to four US officials by the New York Times.

Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei warned against such an attack. “Any action against the Iranian nation would certainly face a crushing response,” he said in remarks streamed on a government website.

Trump is frustrated that his policy of maximum sanctions has not forced Iran back to the negotiating table. He has yet to concede defeat to Joe Biden, but appears to be looking for foreign policy legacy, including the further withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the New York Times report, US officials told Trump last week that inspectors from a UN nuclear watchdog had reported on Wednesday that Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material had increased significantly. At the Natanz nuclear facility, the IAEA said, the uranium stockpile is 12 times larger than permitted by the Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew in 2018.

Iranians are also monitoring sudden personnel changes inside the Pentagon, including Trump’s removal of the defence secretary, Mark Esper, and the recruitment of a group of hardliners. Little official explanation has been given for the reshuffle, leaving Iranian officials on guard for a military confrontation.

Officials said Trump had been dissuaded from striking the nuclear facility, but the possibility remains of targeting Iranian assets and allies outside of Iran, such as Iranian-aligned militias operating in Iraq. A day before the White House meeting, the report says, a small group of national security advisers met to discuss the issue.

Read more of our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour’s report here: Iran warns of ‘crushing response’ if Trump targets nuclear site

Biden wary of launching federal investigations into Trump once he is president – reports

If you were hoping that the Biden-Harris administration might immediately launch a “Mueller Investigation 2” to probe alleged abuses of office by outgoing president Donald Trump, NBC News are suggesting today that you are going to be disappointed.

President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn’t want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.

Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations. They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.”

Another Biden adviser said, “He’s going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them.”

It’s worth noting that this wouldn’t leave Trump scot-free – Biden’s relaxed approach wouldn’t affect any investigations by state officials, including that by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has fought to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

Read more here: NBC News – President-elect Biden wary of Trump-focused investigations, sources say

The chief executive officers of Twitter and Facebook are taking the stand Tuesday to testify, again, about allegations of anti-conservative bias on their platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey were subpoenaed in October to appear at Tuesday’s hearing with the Senate judiciary committee in order to “review the companies’ handling of the 2020 election”.

Republican lawmakers frequently allege censorship of conservative views, but this particular hearing was called in response to the companies’ handling of a New York Post article about Joe Biden.

When the story was published in October, Twitter took unprecedented steps to limit its circulation, blocking users from posting links or photos of the report. At the time, Twitter said the measures were taken due to “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which were allegedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. Twitter policies prohibit “directly distribut[ing] content obtained through hacking that contains private information”.

The company later walked back on its response, tweeting that the communication around the actions on the article “was not great”.

Though Zuckerberg and Dorsey were called to speak at the hearing in advance of the election, how their companies handled misinformation over the last few weeks will likely be a dominant focus of questioning.

Twitter and Facebook have both slapped a misinformation label on some content from Donald Trump, most notably his baseless assertions linking voting by mail to fraud.

On Monday, Twitter flagged Trump’s tweet proclaiming “I won the Election!” with this note: “Official sources called this election differently.”

Read more of Kari Paul’s report here: Twitter and Facebook CEOs to testify on alleged anti-conservative bias

Aamer Madhani has this for Associated Press on Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration. Hardly a major public figure before now, Murphy is running the obscure federal agency that is holding up the presidential transition.

“I am not here to garner headlines or make a name for myself,” Murphy said at her Senate confirmation hearing in October 2017. “My goal is to do my part in making the federal government more efficient, effective and responsive to the American people.”

Murphy is head of the General Services Administration (GSA). She is responsible for “ascertainment” — the task of determining the expected winner of the presidential election, which launches the official transition process.

It’s been 10 days since President-elect Joe Biden crossed the 270 electoral vote mark to defeat President Donald Trump and win the presidency. Unlike the 2000 election, when the winner of the election was truly unknown for weeks, this time it is clear that Biden won, although Trump is refusing to concede.

But Murphy has yet to certify Biden as the winner, stalling the launch of the official transition process. When she does ascertain that Biden won, it will free up money for the transition and clear the way for Biden’s team to begin placing transition personnel at federal agencies.

Trump administration officials also say they will not give Biden the classified presidential daily briefing on intelligence matters until the GSA makes the ascertainment official. The White House has not said whether there have been conversations about ascertainment between officials there and at GSA.

Prior to the election, she is known to have held a Zoom call with Dave Barram, the man who was in her shoes 20 years earlier during that Bush-Gore dispute.

“I told her, I’m looking at you and I can tell you want to do the right thing,’” recalled Barram, who declined to reveal any details of what Murphy told him. “I’ll tell you what my mother told me: If you do the right thing, then all you have to do is live with the consequences of it.’”

Barramsaid he felt sympathy for Murphy. “Republican lawmakers are asking her to be more courageous than they are,” Barram said. “Sure, it’s her decision to make, and she’s going to have to make it one of these days. But they could make it easier if five or 10 of them come out and say: Biden’s won. Let’s congratulate our old Senate colleague.’”

NBC’s Joe Scarborough has this analysis of what is happening with Republicans and Covid in the wake of the election. He suggests that with the vote behind them, some Republicans are now making serious anti-Covid policies that they decried during the campaign.

He cites a Washington Post report on Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds introducing a statewide mask mandate on Monday after months of disparaging them as “feel-good” measures with little impact. Coronavirus infections have doubled in Iowa over the past month.

Speaking of vaccines, Pfizer has launched a pilot delivery program for its experimental Covid-19 vaccine in four US states, as the drugmaker seeks to address distribution challenges posed by its ultra-cold storage requirements.

The drugmaker said it had selected Rhode Island, Texas, New Mexico, and Tennessee for the program because of their differences in overall size, diversity of populations and immunisation infrastructure, as well as the states’ need to reach individuals in varied urban and rural settings.

Jessica Glenza has had a look for us yesterday at the major hurdles in the way of getting the vaccine out to people – including a nursing shortage in the US.

The first on the list to receive the vaccine are healthcare workers, but herein too is a challenge. There is commonly a nursing shortage in the US, but healthcare facilities are facing more extreme staff shortages because of the enormous spread of Covid-19 across the US.

In many cases, the same workers who test the public will have to turn around and vaccinate fellow workers. Those doses will need to be metered out, because potentially flu-like side-effects from the virus could sideline some. For that reason, a hospital could not vaccinate its entire intensive care unit at once.

Read more of Jessica Glenza’s report here: Here are the major hurdles ahead for Covid-19 vaccine distribution in the US

Stephen Collinson at CNN writes this morning of what he describes as “a staggering possibility” that “an outgoing US commander in chief is actively working to sabotage his successor.”

Trump’s denial of his election defeat, his lies about nonexistent mass coordinated voter fraud and his strangling of the rituals of transferring power between administrations are not just democracy-damaging aberrations.

Given the current national emergency, they threaten to cause practical fallout that could damage Biden’s incoming White House not just in a political sense. There are increasing concerns that Trump’s obstruction will slow and complicate the delivery of the vaccine that brings the tantalizing prospect of a return to normal life.

The distribution operation will be a massively complex and historic public vaccination effort targeting hundreds of millions of Americans – many millions of whom have resisted following basic safety protocols like wearing masks because Trump has encouraged them not to.

The inoculation campaign will require a high level of public trust and will involve sharp ethical debates among officials about who should get the vaccine first. The entire program could be damaged if it is politicized. But unless something changes, the Biden team may face the task of tackling those issues afresh, in a frantic catch-up operation.

The victims of this neglect will be thousands of Americans whom health experts expect to die or get sick in the absence of a coordinated national response to the winter spike in infections and workers caught up in new restrictions imposed on business by local leaders trying to get the virus under control.

Read more here: CNN – Trump’s transition sabotage threatens vaccine rollout

Daniel Strauss in DC has been looking at the possible impact of Trump’s refusal to concede on January’s crucial Senate run-off races in Georgia. Some argue that it could fire up Trump’s base to protect the two Republican incumbents. But there is a worry in some Republican quarters that his baseless claims of election fraud could backfire and even depress Republican turnout.

Republican thinking goes that if voters are still paying attention to politics through November and December instead of taking a break because major elections have been decided, they are more likely to donate and come out to vote in Georgia (if they live there).

That is vital in that keeping control of the Senate will give Republicans a powerful weapon to hobble Biden, frustrating his policy agenda and even limiting who he can pick for his cabinet posts.

The strategy – and the attendant creation of a powerful myth of a stolen election – could also serve to keep many Republican voters motivated in mid-term elections in 2022 and eventually the next presidential election in 2024.

Other Republicans see Trump’s loss and the opportunity to reinforce Republican numbers in Congress as a motivator for voters.

“The last four years the singular message for Democrats has largely been around President Trump and when he’s gone how much of a motivator is that for them? And while Georgia may have delivered an electoral victory to Biden it’s by such a narrow margin I don’t think that anyone can buy into the idea that these voters are also wanting to give Biden a blank check book by giving him both the House and the Senate,” said Republican strategist Tim Cameron.

Read more of Daniel Strauss’ report here: Will Trump’s refusal to concede help his base turn out in Georgia’s runoffs?

If you didn’t catch our award-wining Today in Focus podcast yet today, you can have a listen to it here. The episode is about Donald Trump’s refusal to concede an election which he has lost badly. While his behaviour may seem shocking, it’s not a great surprise, says Lawrence Douglas, the author of Will He Go?

He tells Anushka Asthana that Trump’s refusal to accept defeat was inevitable given the campaign he ran, and that his legal challenges are almost entirely without merit. However, while there is little he can practically do to remain in power, there is a political impact of a sitting president refusing to follow the norms of peaceful transition, which could have a lasting effect on US democracy and the country’s reputation abroad.

Biden expected to name Rep. Cedric Richmond, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Steve Ricchetti in White House team

The New York Times is reporting the names of key members of the Joe Biden White House team that he is expected to announce later today.

President-elect Biden will formally announce key members of his White House staff on Tuesday, tapping Rep. Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana to oversee public outreach and installing Jen O’Malley Dillon, who successfully managed his presidential campaign, as a deputy chief of staff, a person familiar with the transition said.

Biden will also announce that Steve Ricchetti, a longtime confidant, will serve in the White House as a counselor to the president.

Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana, who served as a national co-chairman of Biden’s campaign and was an early supporter has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday where it is expected that he will announce he is leaving Congress.

O’Malley Dillon, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns, has been credited with steering Biden’s presidential bid through the difficulties of the pandemic and the challenges of running against an unpredictable rival like President Trump.

Ricchetti is a close adviser and longtime lobbyist who has been by Biden’s side for years. He lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry and served as chief of staff when Biden was the vice president.

Pennsylvania court to hear latest Trump campaign attempt to overturn election defeat

Donald Trump’s latest attempt to try and overturn the way the election count is headed in Pennsylvania will be up in court later today. The campaign’s federal lawsuit is seeking to prevent Pennsylvania officials from certifying the results.

Trump’s team had asked for a delay, but US Middle District Judge Matthew Brann told lawyers for Donald J. Trump for President Inc. that they must show up and “be prepared for argument and questioning” at the Williamsport federal courthouse.

At the heart of the Trump argument is that election procedures were not uniform across the state. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar has asked to have the lawsuit thrown out, calling its allegations in court filings “at best, garden-variety irregularities.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. Photograph: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters

Brann scheduled the hearing to discuss the campaign’s request for a temporary restraining order as well as the defendants’ request to have the case dismissed.

With Georgia the only uncalled state remaining, Biden has collected at least 290 electoral votes, just enough that overturning Pennsylvania’s result and the 20 electoral college votes that go with it would still not open an avenue for a second term for Trump. Biden’s margin in the state is now nearly 70,000 votes.

Mark Scolforo reports for Associated Press that the Trump legal challenge complains that some counties let voters fix, or “cure,” mail-in ballots that lacked secrecy envelopes or had other problems.

“Democratic heavy counties,” the lawsuit alleges, notified voters about the lack of secrecy envelopes or other problems in time for some to fix them, but counties in Republican regions “followed the law and did not provide a notice and cure process, disenfranchising many.”

The lawsuit seeks to stop Boockvar and election boards in seven Biden-majority counties that are co-defendants from counting absentee and mail-in ballots that the Republican president’s campaign claims were “improperly permitted to be cured.”

Boockvar’s lawyers described Trump’s claims as generalized grievances and speculative injuries that would not warrant throwing out the election results. They told Brann that those Republican-leaning counties could have permitted their voters to fix problem mail-in ballots, but chose not to.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. And with Biden leading Trump by wide margins in key battleground states, none of the minor issues raised by the Trump campaign lawsuits would have any impact on the outcome of the election.

Here’s a reminder of Joe Biden’s words yesterday: “The idea the president is still playing golf and not doing anything about it is beyond my comprehension. You’d think he’d at least want to go off on a positive note” he said.

“I find this more embarrassing for the country than debilitating for my ability to get started”, he added. Biden warned that if outgoing president Donald Trump continues blocking a US transition of power as the coronavirus pandemic worsens, “more people may die”.

Welcome to our live coverage of US politics, as Joe Biden sharpened his tone in his criticism of Donald Trump’s failure to accept his election defeat.

Updated

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