Evening summary
That’s all from me. Thanks for sticking with us.
- We got to agree on agreeing on the Covid package.
- More of the future administration that President-elect Joe Biden has selected emerged today: Jennifer Granholm to run the energy department, Gina McCarthy for his domestic climate czar, Ali Zaidi for deputy White House climate coordinator and Michael Regan likely for EPA administrator.
Updated
Can the Radical Left “steal” an election you haven’t conceded?
This seems notable… A Trump fundraising email that implicitly concedes that he may not serve two continuous terms pic.twitter.com/WX9T01EjHo
— Sam Stein (@samstein) December 16, 2020
Welp.
Just asked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy if he’s willing to acknowledge that Biden won the election and is president-elect. He walked in silence into Pelosi’s office.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 16, 2020
Buttigieg: 'A moment of tremendous opportunity'
Pete Buttigieg responds on Twitter to President-elect Joe Biden selecting him to be his transportation secretary:
This is a moment of tremendous opportunity—to create jobs, meet the climate challenge, and enhance equity for all.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 16, 2020
I'm honored that the President-elect has asked me to serve our nation as Secretary of Transportation.
Secretary Mayor Pete is the correct styling. https://t.co/qeXyJHlGDn
— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) December 16, 2020
Updated
More Biden administration picks emerge
So far today we have Gina McCarthy for domestic climate czar, Jennifer Granholm for head of the energy department and Pete Buttigieg for transportation secretary.
The selections keep coming: it looks like today we also have Ali Zaidi, an aide for New York governor Andrew Cuomo, for deputy White House climate coordinator and Michael Regan, top environmental regulator in North Carolina, for EPA administrator.
NBC News confirms that Biden is expected to name Jennifer Granholm as energy secretary, Gina McCarthy as domestic climate coordinator, and Ali Zaidi as deputy White House climate coordinator. Michael Regan is likely choice for EPA administrator, I'm told.
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) December 15, 2020
SCOOP: @JoeBiden has picked former EPA Administrator @GinaNRDC to be the first-ever national climate adviser, spearheading the new administration's domestic climate policy. Cuomo aide @ali_a_zaidi will be her deputy. W/ @brady_dennis https://t.co/aON08utD0f
— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) December 15, 2020
Updated
Biden reportedly picks Gina McCarthy for domestic climate czar
More administration selections:
EXCLUSIVE-Biden has selected former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy as his domestic climate czar, sources tell @Reuters
— Joseph Ax (@josephax) December 15, 2020
Updated
President-elect Joe Biden will pick Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan, to run the energy department, Politico reports.
Granholm served two terms as Michigan’s governor and defeated the husband of education secretary Betsy DeVos to win her second term. In November, she penned an op-ed for the Detroit News calling for Michigan’s auto industry to invest in low-carbon economy, stating that “the time for a low-carbon recovery is now”.
“She’s really a student of the [energy] transition,” Skip Pruss, who directed the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth under Granholm, told Politico. “If you were to ask me what was a limitation in Michigan, I would say that she was slightly ahead of her time.”
Updated
Agreeing to agree here that we agree that no one is leaving until we all agree on how many more times we can say the word agree when it comes to the Covid package:
.@MarkWarner on CNN: "Everyone now agrees Congress cannot leave for Christmas without getting a Covid package."
— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) December 15, 2020
Top 4 Hill leaders-Mnuchin meeting on omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief legislation will resume at approx. 7:30pm tonight on Capitol Hill.
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) December 15, 2020
More (not much more) on the Covid package:
From colleague Jason Donner. McConnell: We're still talking to each other and I think there's an agreement that we're not gonna leave here without the Omni and the COVID package...We’ll have an agreement as soon as we can agree.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) December 15, 2020
Updated
Hey all, Vivian Ho on the west coast, taking over the blog. Let’s see where the rest of the day takes us, shall we?
Afternoon summary
It has been a busy day in Washington and around the country.
- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized Joe Biden as the president-elect for the first time in a speech delivered on the Senate floor Tuesday. Donald Trump still refuses to concede but McConnell’s comments signal a turning point for the party, which has indulged, supported and amplified the president’s baseless claims of voter fraud.
- At a press briefing this afternoon, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory and suggested Trump could still reverse the results of the election and serve a second term.
- Biden said he intended to take the coronavirus vaccine, though it remains unclear whether Trump will.
- At a campaign event in Atlanta, Biden implored Georgians to send Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate. Their election would created a divided Senate, with vice president-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker.
- Biden will tap Pete Buttigieg, a former rival, to be his transportation secretary.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is currently meeting with McConnell, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy to discuss the terms of a potential coronavirus relief package. McConnell said the Senate would not leave Washington without one.
That’s all from me today. I’m handing the reigns over to my colleague on the west coast, Vivian Ho. Thanks for reading!
Updated
The Associated Press is reporting that the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland is a leading contender to be Biden’s interior secretary.
Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Pueblo of Laguna, would be the first Native American to lead the department, a role that includes dealing with the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes.
Native leaders as well as prominent women’s organizations and progressive members of Congress have backed Haaland for the role, though the AP reports that Biden is also considered the retiring senator Tom Udall and the former interior department official Michael Connor, who is also Native American.
One concern, according to the AP, is that Haaland’s elevation would leave an open seat in the House, where Democrats hold a thin majority.
Updated
Wrapping up his remarks, Biden said he needed the Democratic candidates in the Senate to help him enact an ambitious economic agenda, climate change legislation and criminal justice reform.
Their election would create an evenly divided Senate, with Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote. Only then will the “doors of promise and progress are going to open in Washington,” Biden said.
“It really is time to leave the anger and bitten politics of division behind us. It’s time for us to come together as a country,” he implored Georgians, adding: “Turn out the vote so it’s not even close. Don’t give them an excuse, don’t let them take away your power.”
Biden is now introducing the two Democratic candidates. Speaking of Warnock, he marveled at how the pastor managed to stay in such good shape while continuing to preach and keep pace with a grueling campaign.
“I reached up and grabbed his arm – it’s as big as my thigh!” Biden remarked, laughing at his own joke. “You’re a good man, Rev.”
Updated
“It’s starting to feel like I won Georgia three times,” Biden crowed, as he began his remarks in Atlanta. Multiple recounts affirmed his victory in the states after Trump and his campaign challenged the result.
He said Georgians refused to be “bullied” or “silenced”.
“You who did nothing while Trump, Texas and others were trying to wipe out every single one of the almost 5 million votes you cast in November?” Biden said. “Your two Republican senators.”
Biden was referencing their support for a Texas lawsuit that sought to set aside tens of millions of voters in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
In the spirit of the season, Biden said he’d try to be generous and suggested maybe the state’s senators thought they were representing the people of Texas.
“Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are running to represent Georgia. Georgia! They’ll actually fight for you, represent you, stand up for you,” Biden said, making his pitch for the Democratic senators. “They won’t put Texas first. They won’t put Donald Trump first. They won’t put themselves first either - they’ll put you first. There’s no doubt in my mind - none, none - that if Texas or Trump or anyone else in the United States senate tries to do anything except respect the will of the people of Georgia, they’ll move heaven and earth to stop them.”
“I need two senators from this state to get something done,” Biden added, “Not two senators who will just get in the way because, look, getting nothing done just huts Georgia.”
Updated
“To say that elections have consequences feels like a gross understatement. Elections, as we learned tragically this year, are a matter of life and death,” Warnock said. “And so vote, Georgia, like your life depends on it because it actually does.”
“I am an example and an iteration of the American story,” Warnock continued. “I’m a kid who grew up in public housing down in Savannah, Georgia.” He said he was born the 11th of 12 kids in his family, and the recipient of a Pell grant that allowed him to go to Morehouse College.
“Only in America is my story even possible,” he said. “The kid who grew up in public housing goes on to receive four degrees, including a PhD degree, and now I’m running for the United States senate against the wealthiest member of Congress. That’s the American promise.”
Updated
Nancy Pelosi announced that masks will now be required at all times in the chamber, including on the floor, “without exception”.
Speaker Pelosi presiding over the House today announces "masks will now be required at all times in the hall of the House without exception including while members are under recognition...and recognition will be withdrawn if they remove the mask while speaking." https://t.co/28UXMRiOSM pic.twitter.com/ybKbR6NEeB
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) December 15, 2020
“The message today is simple Georgia: the polls are open and it is time to vote. It is time to vote like we never have before Georgia,” Ossoff told voters. “We have hope in our hearts because for the first time in four years we have the opportunity to define the next chapter in American history. It’s Georgia voters who have the power.”
“Think how far the American South has come,” Ossoff added. “We are the most competitive battleground state in this country. We did that. All of you did that. Stacey Abrams did that.”
Updated
“Good afternoon to the great, blue state of Georgia,” Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, opening her remarks at the rally. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Georgia narrowly voted for Biden in November, the first time the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992.
Updated
Stacey Abrams has taken the stage in Atlanta, Georgia, where Biden is due to host a rally for Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
In a fiery speech, Abrams warned of the cost of re-electing Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
“When people who proclaim to be capitalists seem to believe in capitalism only for themselves, when we need money to our families and businesses to help our communities while Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue watch Mitch McConnell burn our economy down and they stand behind him holding the matches,” she said, her voice rising as supporters honked car horns in a sign of approval, “we need to send our firefighters, our first responders. We are sending Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to DC to save America. That’s what we deserve.”
She added that at a moment when American was in the midst of a racial reckoning, “Kelly Loeffler poses accidentally for the second time with a KKK leader and unfortunately David Perdue has a hard time pronouncing the letter K” – a reference to the moment when Perdue pretended he couldn’t pronounce the name of his Senate colleague, Kamala Harris – he “doesn’t seem to understand that the diversity that built America is the diversity that will save America. But we don’t have to wait for them to do their jobs,” she said in a blistering attack on the Republican senators, encouraging Georgians to vote early ahead of the runoffs next month.
Updated
Several outlets have confirmed that McConnell and his deputies pleaded with their colleagues not to object to the election results on 6 January, when Congress ratifies the electoral college’s vote.
A handful of Trump allies in the House are planning a last-ditch challenge to try to reverse Biden’s victory. While the effort may succeed in disrupting the process, it is likely to fail.
According to outlets who reported on the private call, McConnell warned that the campaign would force Republicans into a “terrible” position.
🚨NEW On a Senate R call just now, @senatemajldr, @RoyBlunt & @SenJohnThune all pleaded with Senate Rs to NOT object to the election results Jan. 6.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 15, 2020
MCCONNEL: it’s a “terrible vote” for the GOP. They’d have to vote it down, which makes it seem like they are anti Trump, he said
According to CNN, no Republican senator expressed a desire to join the House effort.
Updated
Mitch McConnell, reminding reporters that he is a survivor of polio, said he was anxious to take the Covid-19 vaccine. He said he hopes his decision to take the shot will inspire others to follow suit.
“All of us who have some following in the country need to step up” and take the vaccine, he said.
Updated
Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming and a physician, applauded the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine and urged Americans to take it. “As a physician, sign me up,” Barrasso said.
Updated
“As I’ve said repeatedly, No 1, we’re not leaving here without a Covid package. It’s not gonna happen. ... No matter how long it takes, we’ll be here until we get a Covid package,” Mitch McConnell told reporters at a weekly news conference, hours before he is due to meet with the “four corners” – the four Congressional leaders – to discuss a relief deal.
He said the best way to move forward is if Republicans and Democrats set aside the two major sticking points: Democrats’ demands for additional funding for state and local governments and Republicans’ desire for a liability shield to protect against coronavirus-related lawsuits.
Referring to Biden, he said the “next administration” has made clear it wants another relief bill in addition to the one passed by Congress this year. He said Democrats and Republicans could forestall negotiations over the state and local funding and liability protections until the next bill.
Updated
Biden selects Buttigieg to be transportation secretary
Joe Biden has tapped Pete Buttigieg, his rival for the 2020 Democratic nomination, to lead the department of transportation, The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss confirmed.
The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, helped the president-elect secure the nomination in March when he dropped out of the race and quickly threw his support behind Biden. He helped campaign and fundraise for the Democratic ticket and was widely discussed as a potential member of Biden’s cabinet. The news was first reported by Reuters.
Neither a Biden transition official or a spokesman from Buttigieg has confirmed the report.
Updated
McEnany ended the briefing by chastising the media for its coverage – or what she said was a lack of coverage – about a report that a Chinese spy had cozied up California congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat and vocal critic of the president. A group of House Republicans have called on Pelosi to remove Swalwell from his position on the House Intelligence Committee.
She also slammed the press for not making a bigger deal of the revelation that Hunter Biden’s tax affairs are under federal investigation. Nearly all major outlets, including The Guardian, have covered the disclosure.
McEnany signaled that Trump would sign a potential coronavirus relief deal if the Congressional leaders reach a deal in the coming days. Trump has lobbied for direct cash payments to Americans, which was not included in the latest bipartisan framework. McEnany emphasized that the White House’s priority was to get relief to the American people but would not say if he would a bill that does not include those payments.
She said Trump still planned to veto the $740bn National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill was approved by Congress with a veto-proof majority.
Asked whether Trump would support the Senate taking up Biden’s cabinet nominees before he is sworn in on 20 January, McEnany called the scenario a “hypothetical” and said Trump has taken all steps to ensure a “smooth transition or a continuation of power.”
In response to a question from Guardian reporter David Smith about Trump’s future political ambitions, McEnany said she Trump was still focused on attempting to reverse the outcome of this election. As such, she would not say whether she would work for a potential Trump 2024 campaign.
White House refuses to follow McConnell in acknowledging Trump defeat
Asked about the electoral college vote, McEnany said: “The president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election. Yesterday’s vote was one step in the constitutional process so I will leave that to him.”
She said she has not spoken to Trump since McConnell recognized Biden as the president-elect and directed further questions to the president’s campaign.
Whether Trump will get the vaccine remains unclear. McEnany said he is “absolutely open” to taking the vaccine but because he recovered from Covid-19 earlier this year did not believe he should be among the first to receive the vaccine. She said other senior administration officials would receive the vaccine, but did not offer names.
“The president wants to send a parallel message which is, our long-term care facility residents and our frontline workers are paramount and he wants to set a good example in that regard,” she said, adding: “I absolutely would be open to taking the vaccine.”
Updated
McEnany is now addressing reporters from the briefing room, beginning by declaring that the nation had witnessed a “medical miracle” on Monday, after Americans began receiving the first doses of a vaccine against the coronavirus.
She started her remarks by quoting a host of news reports that suggested a vaccine by the end of the year was unlikely. “These reports deserve their own fact check: false,” she said.
“President Trump has not only been the optimist... he has also been a leader,” she said.
Before departing for Atlanta, Biden told reporters that he had a “good conversation with Mitch McConnell today” during a call to the Republican leader to thank him for his remarks on the Senate floor.
“While we disagree on a lot of things, there are things we can work together on,” Biden told reporters. “We agreed to get together sooner (rather) than later.”
Biden promised to provide a list of other Republican lawmakers he’s spoken to, according to a pool report.
Asked when Biden might take a vaccine, the president-elect said he was advised by Dr Fauci that he should get it “sooner than later”. He said he planned to do it “by the numbers” and that he would receive the shot “publicly.”
Newsmax, the pro-Trump media platform that gained a wave of new viewers after refusing to recognize the president’s electoral defeat, said it was ready to accept reality and will refer to Biden as the president-elect.
“As a result of the Electoral College vote Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be referred to as such on Newsmax,” a spokesperson for the media company told The Hill. “We also recognize President Trump continues to contest the results and we will cover aspects of that news story.”
Newsmax is one of the few media outlets that did not project Biden as the winner in the days following the 3 November election. They touted that as a point of distinction from networks like Fox News, which declared Biden the president-elect along with other mainstream news outlets and networks.
The decision sparked outrage from viewers and the president, who was already furious at the network for being one of the first media organizations to call Arizona for Biden. A group of the president’s supporters announced a boycott of Fox News and other outlets and turned to pro-Trump sites like Newsmax, which reported record viewership in the days and weeks following the election.
It’s unclear how viewers will respond to their decision to refer to Biden as the president-elect. But the move is a further blow to Trump’s public pressure campaign to delegitimize the election result.
Elections officials – from low-level public servants and volunteers to high-ranking government officials – have faced an escalation of threats and intimidation for simply doing their job. In some instances, the president weighed in, as he did today, to attack those who defended their state’s voting process against fallacious claims of fraud or who supported the outcome of an election that Trump lost.
Perhaps no official has drawn the ire of his party and his president quite like Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who has resisted the president’s attempt to reverse his loss int he state.
Speaking on Tuesday, after Trump re-tweeted a conservative lawyer calling for Raffensperger to be imprisoned, the Republican revealed that someone had attempted to break into his daughter-in-law’s townhouse.
Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger says at @BPC_Bipartisan event that one of scariest moments of the election was when someone broke into his daughter-in-laws townhouse https://t.co/u2kpGNITJ5
— Sam Levine (@srl) December 15, 2020
On Monday, Biden praised the election officials who he said withstood enormous political pressure and threats to their physical safety to “carry on the flame of democracy.”
“They showed a deep and unwavering faith in and a commitment to the law,” Biden said in a speech from Wilmington. “They knew the elections they oversaw were honest and free and fair. They saw it with their own eyes and they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different.”
Politico reporters that top congressional leaders will meet this afternoon in an attempt to reach a deal on coronavirus relief before millions of Americans risk losing their unemployment benefits at the end of the year.
🚨🚨NEW … @SpeakerPelosi has invited her fellow leaders to a meeting this afternoon to discuss finalizing govt funding and covid relief.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 15, 2020
meeting is for the Four Corners — @SpeakerPelosi, @senatemajldr, @GOPLeader and @SenSchumer
A deal has eluded Congress for months. But now the virus is again raging across the country, as some states and localities begin imposing new restrictions and shutdown orders. McConnell suggested in remarks earlier that Congress’ last act of the Trump era would be a bipartisan relief bill.
The White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that she will hold a briefing at 1pm EST.
White House Press Briefing at 1 pm ET!
— Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) December 15, 2020
McEnany, who has all but abandoned the tradition of a daily briefing from the White House, has continued to amplify the president’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and declined to accept Biden’s victory. She is likely to face questions about why the president still refuses to concede even after the electoral college confirmed his defeat and what avenues the president believes are still open to him now that the Senate Republican leader has accepted Biden’s win.
She may also be asked to provide proof of Trump’s recent claim of newfound “evidence” that the presidential vote had been tainted by fraud or whether Trump had plans to attend Biden’s inauguration next month, as is customary.
It’s now official that Biden will be sworn in to office on 20 January, but the ceremony will look a lot different this year because of the coronavirus pandemic that has already claimed more than 300,000 American lives and shows few signs of abating before Trump leaves office.
The Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) announced that the ceremony to officially swear in Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States will be “extremely limited” and encouraged Americans to participate the events from home.
“The ceremony’s footprint will be extremely limited, and the parade that follows will be reimagined,” the committee said in a statement. “The PIC is urging the public to refrain from any travel and participate in the inaugural activities from home.”
As per tradition, Biden and Harris will take their oaths of office at the US Capitol on 20 January during a ceremony that will include “vigorous health and safety protocols.” After being sworn in, Biden will deliver his inaugural address, in which he is expected to “lay out his vision to beat the virus, build back better, and bring the country together.”
The committee announced the appointment of chief medical advisor, Dr David Kessler to help shape public safety guidelines around the event.
“The pandemic is continuing to have a significant public health impact across the nation,” Kessler said in a statement. “Americans everywhere must do their part to slow the spread of the virus: wear masks, stay home, and limit gatherings. We are asking Americans to participate in inaugural events from home to protect themselves, their families, friends, and communities.”
Updated
Moments after McConnell acknowledged Biden’s victory, Trump again refused to accept his defeat.
In a tweet that Twitter immediately labeled “disputed,” the president claimed that there was “tremendous evidence pouring in on voter fraud. There has never been anything like this in our Country!” Trump offered no proof of the “evidence” that purportedly supports his claims of rampant voter fraud, which his departing attorney general acknowledged were unsubstantiated.
The president re-tweeted a conservative lawyer who suggested Trump jail Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, after they certified Biden’s victory in the state.
Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer in Atlanta who helped filed lawsuits challenging the outcome of Georgia’s election, tweeted just after midnight that Trump “gave @BrianKempGA & @GaSecofState every chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going to jail.”
President Trump @realDonaldTrump is a genuinely good man. He does not really like to fire people. I bet he dislikes putting people in jail, especially “Republicans.”
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 15, 2020
He gave @BrianKempGA & @GaSecofState every chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going to jail. pic.twitter.com/7PMBLc8L2N
Hours later, Trump re-tweeted the post, which includes a doctored image of the officials wearing a face mask with the Chinese flag. The officials, both Republicans, resisted pressure and verbal attacks from Trump, who demanded they reject the result of their state’s election even though multiple recounts that affirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Trump has been pressuring the justice department for years to prosecute his political foes, including his Democratic opponent, Biden, and his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Often, these brazen directives are treated as the rantings of a leader railing against his fate, rather than an extraordinary attempt by a democratically-elected president to exert his authority over the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, his attorney generals have ignored the president’s calls to jail political opponents while a number of Trump associates and allies have been convicted of crimes during his presidency.
At the end of McConnell’s remarks on the Senate floor, he added that he looked forward to “finishing out the next 36 days strong with President Trump”.
“Our nation needs us to add another bipartisan chapter to this record of achievement,” he said, hinting at the need for Congress to reach a deal on coronavirus relief that has eluded Capitol Hill for months.
McConnell publicly recognizes Biden as president-elect
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly recognized Biden as the president-elect for the first time on Tuesday, after the electoral college affirmed Biden’s victory over Trump on Monday.
The Republican leader had for weeks declined to acknowledge Biden as the winner of the presidential election.
Declaring that the Electoral College “had spoken,” McConnell congratulated Biden in a speech delivered from the Senate floor on Tuesday morning.
Yesterday, electors met in all 50 states. So, as of this morning, our country officially has a President-elect and a Vice President-elect. Many millions of us had hoped the presidential election would yield a different result. But our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January the 20th. The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
McConnell’s comments mark an important turning point for Senate Republicans, who had largely chosen to ignore reality or remain silent as Trump waged an unprecedented assault on the nation’s system of voting.
But as state after state certified the result of their elections, and courts at every level rejected the president’s attempts to reverse the outcome, cracks in Trump’s support began to appear.
McConnell focused the bulk of his speech praising Trump’s record of achievement at home and abroad, though he spoke of the president in the past tense.
“As you can see, it would take far more than one speech to catalog all the major wins the Trump Administration has helped deliver for the American people,” he said. “The outsider who swore he would shake up Washington and lead our country to new accomplishments both at home and abroad proceeded to do exactly that.”
After the electoral college met on a Monday, a groundswell of Republicans accepted that Biden had won the election. And yet McConnell’s comments are significant because a number of Republicans still refused to recognize the result, even after the electoral college vote made the Democrat’s win official.
His speech is likely to pave the way for more Republicans to accept Trump’s defeat, even if the president refuses to concede.
Updated
According to ABC, the Biden transition is preparing to announce plans for the president-elect to receive a vaccine against the coronavirus. Biden has previously said he wouldn’t hesitate to take the vaccine if Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, recommended it.
On Tuesday morning, Fauci recommended Biden and the vice president-elect Kamala Harris be vaccinated as soon as possible.
A transition official says plans for @JoeBiden to receive the vaccine will be announced imminently, following Fauci’s comments on @GMA ⬇️ https://t.co/UIc9sdaHBS
— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) December 15, 2020
Trump, who likely has some level of immunity to the virus after contracting it earlier this year, said he had no immediate plans to take the vaccine.
Georgia voters shattered records on the first day of early voting ahead of the run off Senate races next month, according to the New York Times Nate Cohn.
A record-shattering first day of early voting in the Georgia runoff: 168k vote in-person yesterday, up from 136k on day one of in-person early voting for the general election
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) December 15, 2020
Cohn notes that the first day of early voting typically favors Democrats and is not reflective of the final outcome, which is expected to be close after Biden narrowly won the state in the presidential election.
What these numbers do indicate, however, is that – like every election of the Trump era – this is likely to be a high turnout election. But which party has the edge remains unclear.
We often compare Biden and Trump’s victories from 2016 and 2020 because they both won, according to a preliminary count based on states’ results, 306 electoral college votes. But according to the electoral college, which is the official count, Trump won just 304 electoral votes.
When the electoral college met in December 2016, Trump lost two “faithless electors” – an elector who does not support the candidate whom he or she pledged to vote for based on the results in their state. That year, two Texas electors cast their ballots for former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Texas congressman Ron Paul, and not Trump, who won the state. Hillary Clinton lost five faithless electors.
This is true. Biden got 306 with no defections.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 15, 2020
Trump got 304 after two Texas electors sent votes to John Kasich and Ron Paul. https://t.co/UN2zGjBe6h
For what it’s worth, Trump still touts a 306-electoral vote victory and considers it a “landslide” even as he continues to deny the reality of Biden’s 306-electoral vote victory.
Updated
Someone has been busy…
The Trump campaign has sent 494 fundraising solicitation emails to supporters since 11 pm on election night, November 3, and 168 text messages. There have been 5 emails and 1 text since the electoral college formally declared Biden's victory.
— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) December 15, 2020
And that’s it from me, Martin Belam in London, today. Indeed, that’s it from me this year, as I’m going on holiday now and will be back in January. Lauren Gambino will be here shortly to take you through the rest of the day. Thank you so much for reading, take care, stay safe, and have a wonderful Christmas. I’ll see you in 2021…
Here’s a bit of a tee-up of what we can expect from Joe Biden’s visit to Georgia today:
A Biden campaign official said that, while in Georgia, “the President-elect will underscore what’s at stake for the country in the midst of a still worsening pandemic.”
“He will speak directly to Georgians’ ability to vote for change and lawmakers dedicated to getting help immediately to those who are suffering when they cast their ballots for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock,” the official continued. “The President-elect will also echo his message of unity and a battle for the soul of the nation that led to him getting 81 million votes across the country – more than any presidential candidate in history – and becoming the first Democrat in decades to win the state of Georgia during a presidential election.”
The Hill report that polls show a tight race between candidates in each of the two runoff elections. According to an average of polls by FiveThirtyEight, Rev. Raphael Warnock leads Kelly Loeffler by less than 2 percentage points and Jon Ossoff leads David Perdue by a single percentage point. That’s very much within margins of polling error and therefore makes the races too close to call.
Jeremy W. Peters at the New York Times has spent some time inside the right-wing media bubble, where the myth of a Trump win lives on. He writes:
Six weeks after his defeat, the aggressive campaign by Trump and his media boosters to insist with each new setback that the election is far from settled isn’t letting up. Inside this bubble, the president’s allies present virtually impossible outcomes as completely plausible. And then when they don’t meet the bar they set, they move it.
This is what the president’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, demonstrated on Monday when he insisted in an interview on Fox & Friends that the electoral college vote was largely irrelevant because all that truly mattered was Inauguration Day, 20 January.
“So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner,” Mr. Miller said, resetting the calendar to another scheme to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans, because the previous one had flopped.
Some allies of Trump had hoped the Electoral College vote would end with a different outcome: that Republican legislators in six battleground states would name slates of electors favorable to Mr. Trump. The upheaval failed to materialize and the electors cast their votes on Monday without incident. The few instances of resistance by Republicans were muted and entirely symbolic
All along, Trump-friendly media personalities like Mark Levin, who hosts one of the most popular talk radio shows in the country, have led their audiences to believe that it was possible to pressure state lawmakers to reject Mr. Biden’s victory. They have often based their confidence on the wild accusations of people with political motives and diminished credibility.
Levin was one of the first to give a national platform to the conspiracy theories of the lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, whose various claims of fraud involve a multinational network of saboteurs and domestic enemies of the president both dead (Hugo Chávez of Venezuela) and alive (“Never Trump” Republican officials).
Read more here: New York Times – Inside the right-wing media bubble, where the myth of a Trump win lives on
Secretary of state Mike Pomeo has tweeted to support the decision of some European governments to withdraw co-operation with Iran over the execution of journalist Ruhollah Zam. Pompeo says “The Iranian people deserve a free and diverse media, not censorship, arrests, and the execution of journalists.”
The international community must continue to hold the regime accountable for its unconscionable actions. We applaud steps by European governments in this regard. The Iranian people deserve a free and diverse media, not censorship, arrests, and the execution of journalists. https://t.co/vfcqf1XoHf
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 15, 2020
For its part, Iran has also been criticising the US today. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned US sanctions against Turkey over Ankara’s acquisition of Russian S-400 air defence systems as “contempt for international law”.
“US addiction to sanctions and contempt for international law at full display again. We strongly condemn recent U.S. sanctions against Turkey and stand with its people and government,” Zarif tweeted.
Iran’s parliament has also passed a measure ban dual nationals and holders of foreign residency from running in presidential elections, after speculation that some officials may hold Green Cards from the United States.
The measure, passed in a session carried live on state radio, still needs to be approved by a high clerical council before it takes effect.
Hardline figures and media outlets have long speculated that some senior officials, such as US-educated foreign minister Zarif, hold dual nationalities or US residency and that this posed a security risk. Zarif has denied even applying for a Green Card.
FDA report raises no new concerns with Moderna's coronavirus vaccine
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) staff members did not raise new concerns over data on Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine in documents made public on Tuesday, preparing the way for the US authorization of a second, easier-to-handle vaccine.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine currently being rolled out has to be stored at ultra-low temperatures.
The FDA staff said the Moderna vaccine was effective without any specific safety issues in adults over the age of 18 in the documents prepared for Thursday’s meeting of outside experts, who will discuss whether to endorse a US emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Moderna shot.
The company’s earlier assessment said that its vaccine had an efficacy rate of 94.1 percent in a trial of 30,000 people. Side effects, which can include fever, headache and fatigue, were unpleasant but not dangerous, the agency found.
If the FDA were to approve it on Friday, after the meeting, distribution of about six million doses could then potentially begin next week.
Updated
Congress has still not managed to agree some kind of coronavirus relief or stimulus bill, and the Associated Press is reporting this morning that rank-and-file Democrats appear increasingly resigned to having to drop, for now, a scaled-back demand for fiscal relief for states and local governments whose budgets have been thrown out of balance by the pandemic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone last night and continues to press for help for struggling states and localities. But top Democratic allies of president-elect Joe Biden came out in support of a $748 billion plan offered by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and hinted they won’t insist on a pitched battle for state and local aid now.
“We cannot afford to wait any longer to act. This should not be Congress’ last Covid relief bill, but it is a strong compromise that deserves support from both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate,” said Sen. Chris Coons. “We cannot leave for the holidays without getting relief to those Americans who need it.”
The message from Coons, and a similar message from Senate majority whip Dick Durbin, came as a bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a detailed Covid-19 aid proposal in hopes it would serve as a model for their battling leaders to follow as they try to negotiate a final agreement.
But the group was unable to forge a compromise on GOP-sought provisions shielding businesses from COVID-19-related lawsuits, a key priority of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican is pressing a lowest-common-denominator approach that would drop the lawsuit shield idea for now if Democrats agree to drop a $160 billion state and local aid package.
Dr Fauci calls for Biden and Harris to be vaccinated against Covid 'as soon as we possibly can'
Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci says president-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris should be vaccinated for Covid-19 as soon as possible.
Speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America, Fauci said, “For security reasons, I really feel strongly that we should get them vaccinated as soon as we possibly can.”
He added that he’d like to see Biden “fully protected as he enters into the presidency in January.”
Earlier this week president Trump unexpectedly countermanded in public a plan to have senior White House officials vaccinated. Fauci says that while President Donald Trump probably still has antibodies to the virus that will protect him for at least several months, he should get the vaccine as well to be “doubly sure.”
Fauci says vice president Mike Pence should get vaccinated, too. He says, “You still want to protect people who are very important to our country right now.”
Pompeo to meet Biden's secretary of state nominee Blinken this week – reports
CNN are reporting this morning that another slow tentative step in the handover of power from the outgoing Trump administration to Joe Biden’s team will happen this week when secretary of state Mike Pompeo briefly meets the man nominated to follow him, Antony Blinken.
The meeting will mark the first formal recognition by Trump’s top diplomat that he is preparing to hand over the reins of American foreign policy to his successor. The meeting is scheduled to last for only 15 minutes, but State Department officials view it as a positive step, a source told CNN.
The meeting will be one of the first high-level face-to-face meetings between a Biden team nominee and a member of Trump’s Cabinet. In the immediate aftermath of the election, Pompeo refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory and ignited a furor among diplomats by stating that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
But Pompeo has also said “we’ll make this work” when speaking about the transition at the department, and last week CNN reported that he was willing to meet with members of Biden’s team.
“It is a good thing that the Pompeo meeting is expected to happen this week, but Blinken was not waiting around. He couldn’t. The Biden team didn’t know if Pompeo would even agree to meet Blinken, and they thought he may do it in the eleventh hour if he did it at all,” said a source familiar with the transition.
Read more here: CNN – Pompeo to meet Biden’s secretary of state nominee this week
Alvin Chang and Sam Levine bring us this in-depth look today at how, while Biden was winning the presidency, Republicans cemented their grip on power for the next decade…
State lawmakers have the authority to redraw electoral districts in most US states every 10 years. In 2010, Republicans undertook an unprecedented effort – called Project Redmap – to win control of state legislatures across the country and drew congressional and state legislative districts that gave them a significant advantage for the next decade. In 2020, Democrats sought to avoid a repeat of 2010 and poured millions of dollars and other resources into winning key races.
It didn’t go well.
Democrats failed to flip any of the legislative chambers they targeted and Republicans came out of election night in nearly the best possible position for drawing districts. They will have the opportunity to draw 188 congressional seats, 43% of the House of Representatives. Democrats will have a chance to draw at most just 73 seats. Republicans will probably also be able to draw districts that will make it more difficult for Democrats to hold their majority in the US House in 2022.
“It was really bad. It was devastating to the project of building long-term power,” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a group focused on local races.
Republicans have two additional advantages this year. In 2019, the US supreme court said that federal courts could not strike down districts on the grounds that they were too partisan, giving lawmakers a green light to virtually guarantee their own re-election. 2021 will also be the first time that places with a history of voting discrimination will also be able to draw districts without first submitting them to the justice department for approval because of a 2013 supreme court decision, Shelby County v Holder, that struck down a pre-clearance provision at the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Read more here: The fight to vote – as Biden won the presidency, Republicans cemented their grip on power for the next decade
As mentioned earlier, Joe Biden will be in Georgia today campaigning for Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in their Senate run-off races.
There’s a couple of other things in the diary that we can expect to see. Vice president Mike Pence will be touring a vaccine production facility and leading a coronavirus response roundtable discussion in Bloomington, Indiana at 1.45pm.
In what could be a little bit spicy, the secretaries of state for Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the four states that Texas attempted to take to the supreme court – will talk about the 2020 elections with the Bipartisan Policy Center at 11.45am.
First lady Melania Trump will be visiting the Children’s National Hospital at 12 noon, where she will be reading to children. She’ll no doubt be thrilled, given her recorded position of “who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations?”
The president has no public events scheduled.
Updated
The Los Angeles editorial board have called time on Trump and the Republican’s efforts to undermine the election result this morning, saying: “The presidential election is over. Republicans must admit that Biden won”
They’ve done enough damage already with the wild allegations and conspiracy theories they’ve been peddling relentlessly for weeks. A recent Fox News poll found that almost 70% of Republicans believe that the election was “stolen” from Trump, evidently buying his claim that he couldn’t possibly lose in a fair contest.
If Trump cared about the welfare of the nation, he would congratulate Biden and (if that is his choice) prepare to seek the presidency again in 2024. But it’s unrealistic to expect that a narcissist like Trump would acknowledge reality after the electoral college vote, any more than he did after a string of losses in the courts. As electors started to meet around the country, White House advisor Stephen Miller told Fox News that “alternate” slates that backed Trump in the contested states would submit their votes to Congress too. It wouldn’t surprise us if Trump continued to cry “fraud” up to the moment Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20 — and perhaps even after that.
Republican members of Congress are in a different position. If they want to be taken seriously — including by the new president — they need to stop giving aid and comfort to Trump’s delusions about a rigged election.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has taken refuge in anodyne statements about the need to count every legal vote, while deflecting the question of whether Biden is the president-elect. It’s time for McConnell to accept that Trump lost in a free and fair election and to respond positively to any overtures from Biden for bipartisan cooperation.
House minority ;eader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield has even more to repent for. McCarthy disgraced himself and California by joining more than 120 House Republicans in endorsing a preposterous and anti-democratic lawsuit by the state of Texas challenging the election results in four states carried by Biden.
Read more here: Los Angeles Times – The presidential election is over. Republicans must admit that Biden won
Amber Phillips at the Washington Post writes that Joe Biden keeps giving Republicans who ignore his win the benefit of the doubt, but that he’s not necessarily getting the same in return:
What Biden sees, according to a victory speech he delivered Monday after the electoral college voted him president, is not a democracy in distress, but one that successfully resisted all this pressure.
A glass-half-full look at what happened is at odds with good-government experts’ warnings that President Trump sliced a deep cut on American democracy by claiming fraud because he lost. Polls show a majority of Republican voters believe the election was rigged or stolen. Republican lawmakers have largely acquiesced in silence.
But Biden has seemed to go out of his way to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they’re just stuck in a bad political situation while Trump’s still in office. “They will,” he replied when reporters asked him shortly after the election how he could work with congressional Republicans who won’t even acknowledge he won. “There have been more than several sitting Republican senators privately called and congratulated,” Biden told CNN more recently. “I understand the situation they find themselves in.”
That’s not how other top Democrats desire to write one of the last pages of the extraordinary past five weeks in American electoral history. They want to make sure Republicans get blamed in the history books for their actions.
“In almost any other year, both major parties would have fully and publicly accepted the will of the American people by now,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Monday as the electoral college voted. “Just how many times does President Trump have to lose before rank-and-file Republicans, before most senators, acknowledge that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States?”
Read more here: Washington Post – Biden keeps giving Republicans who ignore his win the benefit of the doubt
I know we are all a little bit more sceptical of polling numbers than we were a few weeks ago, but Axios this morning are reporting some findings from their rolling weekly coronavirus survey that are encouraging for the roll-out of the vaccine in the US. They appear to show a big uptick in the willingness to get vaccinated since September. Margaret Talev writes:
The share of Americans who say they’ll get the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as it’s available has doubled since September, with more than one in four now putting their hands up, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
This increased comfort with or appetite for getting the vaccine is happening as the first Americans get vaccinated. It’s being driven by people 65 and older, but it’s happening across all age, party ID and racial and ethnic groups.
Trust in pharmaceutical companies rose to 43%, up from 35% in September.
The survey also offers some early evidence that as President Trump’s voice recedes, Republicans may grow more willing to listen to institutions and science.
Read more here: Axios – New enthusiasm for the shot
Biden heads for Georgia to support Democrats in crucial Senate runoffs
President-elect Joe Biden will be in Georgia today, to campaign for the two Democratic US Senate candidates whose 5 January runoff elections could make or break his domestic policy agenda.
Biden’s narrow win in the Southern state in November’s presidential election completed its transformation from Republican stronghold to one of the country’s most competitive political battlegrounds.
Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are facing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively, in twin races that will determine which party controls the US Senate. If the Republicans win either contest, they would maintain power in the Senate, allowing them to thwart many of Biden’s ambitious legislative goals on issues such as the coronavirus, the economy and climate change. A Democratic sweep would give the party control of the White House and Congress, where it also has a majority in the US House of Representatives.
Biden’s trip to Atlanta comes nine days after President Donald Trump traveled to Georgia in support of Perdue and Loeffler. The president-elect’s visit also coincides with early in-person voting, which began on Monday as hundreds of Georgians braved rainy weather to stand in line.
As in November, many voters are expected to cast ballots by mail amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Thus far, more than 1.2 million residents have requested absentee ballots, and more than 260,000 have already sent them in, according to the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Jospeh Ax for Reuters notes that Biden’s win has boosted Democratic hopes of capturing both seats, along with aggressive efforts to register voters and changing demographics that have pushed the electorate away from Republicans.
Perdue got a higher percentage of the vote than Trump in the 3 November election, finishing ahead of Ossoff but just shy of the 50% required to avoid a runoff under state law. A third-party candidate received about 2% of the vote.
The other race had a large field of candidates in November due to its status as a special election because Loeffler was appointed to her seat to fill a vacancy. Warnock and Loeffler finished in the top two positions, each well short of 50%.
Both sides face turnout challenges in the midst of the pandemic and without the polarizing Trump at the top of the ballot to turn out votes from his deeply loyal supporters and also from detractors with deep animosity toward him.
Some Republicans in the state have expressed concern that Trump’s repeated insistence, without evidence, that the November results were fraudulent may drive down turnout among his most ardent supporters.
Updated
Evan McMullin is in the New York Times pondering if, in the wake of Trump’s electoral defeat and the way that senior Republican figures coddled up to his widespread voter fraud delusions, what he calls “principled NeverTrump Republicans” like himself should strike out on their own:
So what’s next for Republicans who reject their party’s attempts to incinerate the Constitution in the service of one man’s authoritarian power grabs? Where is our home now?
The answer is that we must further develop an intellectual and political home, for now, outside of any party. From there, we can continue working with other Americans to defeat Trump’s heirs, help offer unifying leadership to the country and, if the GOP continues on its current path, launch a party to challenge it directly.
Although we hoped that defeating Trump would start to right the Republican ship, our efforts over the last four years have not been in vain. We defeated and removed immoral and dishonorable Republicans like Roy Moore, Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King and Martha McSally. We turned out to ensure that Democrats nominated a unifying leader who a majority of voters could support. And we were a key part of the coalition that defeated Trump himself.
But the NeverTrump movement has mostly been inward looking thus far. It emerged to defeat Mr. Trump and defend foundational principles such as self-government, liberty and justice, sovereignty, pluralistic society, the sanctity of all life, decency and objective truth.
But to turn back Trump’s dangerous ideology, which has survived his defeat, and move America forward, we must build on these ideals and look beyond ourselves.
Read more here: New York Times – Evan McMullin – Should NeverTrump conservatives form a new party?
On a somewhat lighter note, the national guard in Alaska has managed to carry out their Operation Santa Claus tradition despite a pandemic being on.
The tradition was born out of hard times in 1956, when residents in the village of St. Mary’s faced a tough choice: food or gifts for the children after flooding, then drought, devastated subsistence activities. They chose food.
The Alaska Air National Guard then stepped in, delivering donated gifts and supplies to the community,
Since then, the program has grown, and in 1969, The Salvation Army became a partner in providing toys and other items to children across rural Alaska.
Each year, Operation Santa Claus attempts to deliver gifts to two or three villages that are selected for varying reasons, such as having a particular hardship in the last year or high poverty levels.
“For 65 years we have not missed a beat,” said Chief Master Sgt. Winfield Hinkley, Jr., command senior enlisted leader of the Alaska National Guard. “And I will tell you, Covid is rough,” he said, “but it will not stop us from carrying out this tradition. It is an honor to do it.”
This year, report the Associated Press, volunteers packed toys, stocking stuffers, backpacks, knit hats, toothbrushes and toothpaste and books for 127 children.
In a normal year, the arrival of Operation Santa Claus is a community event, with locals driving Santa and Mrs. Claus and helpers in the back of pickups or on sleds pulled by snowmobiles to the local school for a party. All village residents are invited to have their photos taken with Santa and eat an ice cream sundae, and children get a gift.
But during the pandemic, Coivd-19 protocols dictated the gifts be delivered to airstrips, where locals picked up and distributed them.
Stevens Village First Chief David Kriska said having the National Guard call and see if they would be interested was reassuring.
“It was great because just being so locked down and with travel, you know, so out of touch with the outside world,” he said. “Having someone that even reached out and wanted to do something like that was like, ‘Whoa, hey, awesome!”’
However, he wishes it could have been the full experience, including having his children sit on Santa’s lap.
“It would have been great for my kids to interact with them because they’re needing that social interaction,” he said. “I would have loved to have that picture with my daughters.”
Away from coronavirus for a moment, the Georgia Senate runoff races on 5 January will decide whether Joe Biden comes to power with a Senate that backs him, or in the teeth of a Republican-controlled Senate set to obstruct his every move. Peter Stone reports for us this morning on how Wall Street is putting its money firmly behind the Republicans:
Billionaire Republicans on Wall Street have been opening their wallets to try and protect David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s Senate seats. Two super Pacs are planning to spend about $80m on ads and other efforts backing the Republicans.
Among donors are top finance CEOs Stephen Schwarzman, of Blackstone Group, and Kenneth Griffin, of Citadel LLC, who have donated millions to the Senate Leadership Fund super Pac which is supporting Perdue, according to campaign finance records.
Last month, Schwarzman, who briefly was the chair of Donald Trump’s strategic and policy forum, contributed $15m and Griffin donated $10m to the Pac; while earlier in the year, the Pac received $20m from Schwarzman and $25m from Griffin.
Separately, a fundraising committee backing both Republican senators that launched last month has surpassed its goal of raising $35m to oppose Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. This committee is also being helped by fundraising on Wall Street including Schwarzman, Griffin and others, say two GOP sources.
Read more here: Wall Street donates millions to back Republicans in Georgia Senate race
Associated Press have been doing an investigation into the toll that the coronavirus pandemic has taken on healthcare officials. Amid a fractured federal response, the usually invisible army of workers charged with preventing the spread of infectious diseases has become a public punching bag. Their expertise on how to fight the coronavirus is often disregarded.
Some have become the target of far-right activists, conservative groups and anti-vaccination extremists who have coalesced around common goals: fighting mask orders, quarantines and contact tracing with protests, threats and personal attacks.
The backlash has moved beyond the angry fringe. In the courts, public health powers are being undermined. Lawmakers in at least 24 states have crafted legislation to weaken public health powers, which could make it more difficult for communities to respond to other health emergencies in the future.
“What we’ve taken for granted for 100 years in public health is now very much in doubt,” said Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
It is a further erosion of the nation’s already fragile public health infrastructure. At least 181 state and local public health leaders in 38 states have resigned, retired or been fired since 1 April, according to an ongoing investigation by the Associated Press and KHN. According to experts, this is the largest exodus of public health leaders in American history. An untold number of lower-level staffers have also left.
Tisha Coleman is one who is still in her job, but suffering. She has lived in close-knit Linn County, Kansas, for 42 years and never felt so alone.
As the public health administrator, she’s struggled every day of the coronavirus pandemic to keep her rural county along the Missouri border safe. In this community with no hospital, she’s failed to persuade her neighbors to wear masks and take precautions against Covid-19, even as cases rise.
In return, she’s been harassed, sued, vilified and called a Democrat, an insult in her circles. Even her husband hasn’t listened to her, refusing to require customers to wear masks at the family’s hardware store in Mound City.
“People have shown their true colors,” Coleman said. “I’m sure that I’ve lost some friends over this situation.”
By November, the months of fighting over masks and quarantines were already wearing her down. As of 14 December, 1 out of every 24 residents in Linn County had tested positive. Coleman herself got Covid-19, likely from her husband, who she thinks picked it up at the hardware store.
Her mother got it, too, and died on Sunday, 11 days after she was put on a ventilator. The day after her mother was put on a ventilator, Coleman fought to hold back tears as she described the 71-year-old former health care worker with a strong work ethic.
“Of course, I could give up and throw in the towel, but I’m not there yet,” she said, adding that she will “continue to fight to prevent this happening to someone else.”
Coleman.
She said she has noticed more people are wearing masks these days. But at the family hardware store, they are still not required.
US has over 110,000 people hospitalised with Covid for the first time
The vaccine roll-out is a complicated business. According to Gen. Gustave F. Perna, who is the chief operating officer of the federal effort to get a vaccine out, 145 sites were to receive the vaccine on Monday, with 425 getting it today and a further 66 sites getting deliveries on Wednesday.
It will be too late for some people – currently the US has over 110,000 people hospitalised with Covid for the first time, according to numbers from the Covid tracking project.
Meanwhile, according to the Johns Hopkins University figures, not a single US state is seeing an increase rate in cases that is lower than 3%, and over twenty states have an increase rate higher than 10%.
The delivery of a vaccine to healthcare workers makes a huge step-change in the American battle against coronavirus. Daniella Silva at NBC News had this about one of the first people to take it – Dr. Gregory Schmidt.
Schmidt, an intensive care physician with the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, was among those to get the vaccine Monday.
“The emotional power of this moment is something that we have been anticipating, striving to reach for about 10 months,” he said. “To be able to take this step feels like a piece of what we all need to do to make our world safe again, to get back to the life where we can see each other’s faces.”
Schmidt, who is also the associate chief medical officer of critical care in the hospital system, said about 75 percent of the patients he has treated in the intensive care unit for months have been coronavirus patients. He and his staff have had to watch many of them die from the virus.
“I feel, in a very personal way, the risk to me. I feel the personal risk to my family,” said Schmidt, the father of three children.
Schmidt said he almost burst into tears as he arrived Monday knowing the vaccine was “so close.”
He said his message to the public would be: “Trust the science. This vaccine has been developed with care, and it’s been tested extensively.”
Read more here: NBC News – Meet some of the first Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine
Stephen Collinson at CNN has this analysis of what he says was the beginning of the US “turning the page”:
Biden’s statement was a clear effort not just to move the country forward after its most acrimonious modern post-election period. It was also a firm attempt to assert his authority as the incoming president, to create the symbolism of a transfer of power that is being denied by Trump and to begin to establish legitimacy even among Trump supporters.
There is no sign that a president who has constantly ignored constitutional norms is moving any closer to accepting the reality of his defeat. But there were signs of a crumbling of the ancient regime, as a few of Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate began to grudgingly accept, six weeks after the election, that Biden is indeed president-elect.
One source close to Trump told CNN’s Jim Acosta that while the President has privately conceded he won’t be staying in the White House for a second term, he won’t stop trying to discredit the election. Another adviser said it was highly unlikely that the President would show up at Biden’s inauguration for a ceremonial tableau that is an emblem of America’s mostly unbroken chain of peaceful transfers of executive authority.
There is also likely to be no cathartic national moment analogous to then-vice president Al Gore’s graceful December concession speech after a bitter legal battle handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.
Trump’s behavior is certain to complicate Biden’s call for healing. There is still a chance that Republicans in the House – who remain in Trump’s thrall – will try to mount a futile rear guard to challenge the election result when Congress holds a joint session on January 6 to tally the results of the Electoral College. The President’s malfeasance has convinced many of the more than 70 million people who voted for him that the election was stolen, a dynamic that is likely to continue to be corrosive in the run-up to the midterm elections in 2022.
Read more here: CNN – A new vaccine and a soon-to-be president begin turning the page
Lauren Aratani in New York has been looking for us at the vexed issue of whether US employers can mandate that their workers take a vaccine.
Vaccinating a whole country – especially one as large as the US – was always going While the vaccine will only be available to the majority of Americans by summer 2021 at the earliest, the coming months may see serious debate over whether businesses, including hospitals and long-term care facilities, should mandate the vaccine for their employees to ensure things can go back to normal as quickly as possible.
Employers, particularly in sectors that have been radically changed by the pandemic, have shown an eagerness to get their workers vaccinated. The National Restaurant Association and other food and agricultural organizations wrote a letter to Donald Trump and Joe Biden asking them to prioritize getting food workers vaccinations “to ensure the agricultural and food supply chains remain operating”.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, has also said that the union supports schools requiring teachers to get vaccinated, saying it is “just like we have vaccines we require kids to take to be in school in normal times.
And in the private sector other bosses are hoping to get all their staff vaccinated. Daniel Schreiber, the CEO of Lemonade insurance company, wrote on the company’s website that he will be trying to get a 100% vaccination rate at the company. While he said the company will not enforce vaccination, he wrote: “A corporate directive, coupled with educational sessions, can inject the urgency and reassurances needed to move the needle.”
Employers generally have the right to require employees to get vaccinations. Employment in the US is typically at-will, which means an employer can fire an employee for any reason as long as it does not have to deal with an employee’s protected identity, for example, an employee’s race or religion. Barring some religious and health-related exemptions, private businesses have the specific right to maintain their own health and safety standards and are legally able to fire employees who violate their rules, including if they do not get certain vaccines.
Read more of Lauren Aratani’s report here: Can US employers order workers to get the coronavirus vaccine?
China suspected of spying on Americans via Caribbean phone networks
China appears to have used mobile phone networks in the Caribbean to surveil US mobile phone subscribers as part of its espionage campaign against Americans, according to a mobile network security expert who has analysed sensitive signals data.
The findings paint an alarming picture of how China has allegedly exploited decades-old vulnerabilities in the global telecommunications network to route “active” surveillance attacks through telecoms operators.
The alleged attacks appear to be enabling China to target, track, and intercept phone communications of US phone subscribers, according to research and analysis by Gary Miller, a Washington state-based former mobile network security executive.
Miller, who has spent years analysing mobile threat intelligence reports and observations of signalling traffic between foreign and US mobile operators, said in some cases China appeared to have used networks in the Caribbean to conduct its surveillance.
At the heart of the allegations are claims that China, using a state-controlled mobile phone operator, is directing signalling messages to US subscribers, usually while they are travelling abroad.
Signalling messages are commands that are sent by a telecoms operators across the global network, unbeknownst to a mobile phone user. They allow operators to locate mobile phones, connect mobile phone users to one another, and assess roaming charges. But some signalling messages can be used for illegitimate purposes, such as tracking, monitoring, or intercepting communications.
US mobile phone operators can successfully block many such attempts, but Miller believes the US has not gone far enough to protect mobile phone users, who he believes are not aware of how insecure their communications are.
Miller focused his research on messages that he said did not appear legitimate, either because they were “unauthorised” by the GSMA, an international standard-setting body for the telecommunications industry, or because the messages were sent from a location that did not match where a user was travelling.
Read more of Stephanie Kirchgaessner’s exclusive investigation: Revealed – China suspected of spying on Americans via Caribbean phone networks
'I am ready for interaction and contact with you' – Putin congratulates Biden on election win
Reuters report that Russian president Vladimir Putin has congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the US presidential election, after Biden won the state-by-state electoral college vote that officially determines the U.S. presidency, the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin had said it would wait for the official results of the election before commenting on its outcome, even as other nations congratulated Biden on the win in the days after the 3 November vote, when it had become obvious that he had overwhelmingly won the popular vote and secured the support of enough states to head to the White House in January.
“For my part, I am ready for interaction and contact with you,” the Kremlin cited Putin as saying in a statement.
“Putin wished the president-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which have a special responsibility for global security and stability, could, despite their differences, really help to solve the many problems and challenges facing the world,” the Kremlin said.
If Dick Cheney gained notoriety as George W Bush’s “Darth Vader”, William Barr, the US attorney general, appeared a worthy successor as Donald Trump’s Lord of the Sith.
Barr played the role of presidential enforcer with apparent relish, whether spinning the Russia investigation in Trump’s favour or defending a harsh crackdown on this summer’s civil unrest.
But even he could not or would not pass the ultimate loyalty test: shredding the US constitution to help his boss steal an election. As Trump’s niece, Mary, puts in the title of her book, it was a case of Too Much and Never Enough.
Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr will resign before Christmas. Barr, for his part, issued a resignation letter that noted election fraud allegations “will continue to be pursued” before going on to lavish praise on Trump’s “historic” record despite resistance that included “frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.
David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama, observed in a Twitter post: “In writing his fawning exit letter, Barr reflected a fundamental understanding of @realDonaldTrump: Like a dog, if you scratch his belly, he is a lot more docile. Just as[k] Kim [Jong-un] !”
But the sycophantic words could not conceal how Barr, like the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the FBI director James Comey before him, had refused to do the 45th president’s bidding once too often. With democracy in existential danger, he was the dog that did not bark.
Barr, who previously served as attorney general under George HW Bush in the early 1990s, had always been a believer in expansive presidential power and being tough on crime. He was therefore “simpatico” – to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favourite words – with Trump from the off.
Read more of David Smith’s sketch from Washington here: Barr couldn’t pass Trump’s loyalty test: shredding the US constitution
US President-elect Joe Biden delivered a forceful rebuke to president Donald Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of his victory, hours after winning the state-by-state electoral college vote that officially determines the US presidency. “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden said in a prime-time speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,” Biden said. “We now know that not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame.”
Monday’s vote, typically a formality, assumed outsized significance in light of Trump’s extraordinary effort to subvert the process due to what he has falsely alleged was widespread voter fraud in the 3 November election.
Good morning, and welcome to our US politics live coverage on the day after Joe Biden secured an overwhelming victory in the electoral college, confirming that he won November’s election.
- Joe Biden hailed the presidential election and its uncharted aftermath as a triumph of American democracy and “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we’ve ever seen in our country”.
- In his address to the nation, Biden said: “There is urgent work in front of all of us. Getting the pandemic under control to getting the nation vaccinated against this virus. Delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today – and then building our economy back better than ever.”
- Biden won the electoral college 306 votes to 232, making Donald Trump the first one-term president of the 21st century, and the first US president to lose the popular vote twice.
- US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the justice department had uncovered no evidence of the widespread voter fraud that Trump has repeatedly and baselessly claimed.
- Yesterday there were 193,454 new coronavirus cases, and 1,311 deaths. That took the total death toll of the pandemic in the US to 300,236 according to the figures from Johns Hopkins University
- The first doctor in the US to receive the coronavirus vaccine said: “I went in today feeling very hopeful”. Roll-out of the vaccine continues today.
