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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Vivian Ho (now), Jessica Glenza and Martin Belam (earlier)

Biden urges Congress to act on economy and Covid with 'dark winter' ahead – as it happened

Evening summary

Busy day if you were an attorney for the Trump team. Thanks for sticking with us while we made sense of all those rulings!

  • Donald Trump and his team notched losses in four states in his bid to contest the election results. A Georgia appellate court, the Wisconsin supreme court, a superior court in Arizona and a district court in Nevada all had some choice words for Team Trump.
  • A judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore Daca.
  • Five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area have pre-emptively adopted the state’s regional stay-at-home order, which will affect 6m Californians.

Updated

The Arizona election results ruling came hours after Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers issued a statement that the state legislature would not overturn the presidential election results.

“Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected,” Bowers said.

However, he also joined Arizona Senate President Karen Fann to call for an audit of Maricopa County election software and equipment.

Donald Trump was appreciative.

Who’s ready for loss No 46? A judge has denied the Trump team’s contest of election results in Arizona.

Randall Warner, a Maricopa county superior court judge, wrote in his ruling that the evidence does not show fraud or misconduct, nor does it show illegal votes or erroneous vote counts. He specifically noted the allegation around mail-in ballots and signature comparisons, writing that “the signature comparison is just one part of the verification process” and that “Maricopa County election officials followed this process faithfully in 2020”.

“Approximately 1.9m mail-in ballots were cast and, of these, approximately 20,000 were identified that required contacting the voter,” Warner wrote. “Of those, only 587 ultimately could not be validated.”

“Plaintiff has not proven that the Biden/Harris ticket did not receive the highest number of votes,” Warner wrote.

Updated

Here comes another one. For the Trump legal team, the decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court to deny a petition from a conservative group asking the panel to invalidate the presidential election is loss no. 45, according to a tally by the Democracy Docket.

Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote incredulously that while the unprecedented petition “falls far short of the kind of compelling evidence and legal support we would undoubtedly need to countenance the court-ordered disenfranchisement of every Wisconsin voter”, at least “no one can accuse the petitioners of timidity”.

This passage of his decision is worth a read:

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to share a further observation. Something far more fundamental than the winner of Wisconsin’s electoral votes is implicated in this case. At stake, in some measure, is faith in our system of free and fair elections, a feature central to the enduring strength of our constitutional republic. It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering. The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen. Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread. The loss of public trust in our constitutional order resulting from the exercise of this kind of judicial power would be incalculable.

I do not mean to suggest this court should look the other way no matter what. But if there is a sufficient basis to invalidate an election, it must be established with evidence and arguments commensurate with the scale of the claims and the relief sought. These petitioners have come nowhere close. While the rough and tumble world of electoral politics may be the prism through which many view this litigation, it cannot be so for us. In these hallowed halls, the law must rule.

Updated

Trump loses 44th post-election appeal

Donald Trump notched his 44th loss in post-election litigation on Friday when a district judge dismissed both an attempt by his campaign to contest the election results in Nevada and another in Georgia, according to a count by Democracy Docket.

First off, here’s a recap of all the election challenges happening:

The Nevada dismissal was fairly straightforward, with Judge James Russell ruling that “contestants evidence does not establish by any clear and convincing proof, or any standard of evidence, that ‘the defendant or any person acting, either directly or indirectly, on behalf of the defendant has given, or offered to give, to any person anything of value for the purpose of manipulating or altering the outcome of the election’.”

Trump’s campaign had asked a judge to nullify Nevada’s election results or set them aside and declare him the winner, arguing that illegal or improper votes were cast and the use of optical scanning to process signatures on mail-in ballots violated state law.

The Georgia dismissal was more an issue of jurisdiction. The lawsuit in Georgia involved the state’s presidential electors from Georgia, who sued the governor and secretary of state, among others, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, asserting that Georgia’s certified 2020 presidential election results were suspect because of alleged vulnerabilities in Georgia’s election machines and alleged mathematical and statistical anomalies in the vote count.

Two days later, they sought a restraining order to prevent the erasing or altering forensic data on voting machines, among other things, and a judge granted them a limited restraining order that applied to the machines in three counties. The Trump team appealed that order.

The court had an evidentiary hearing scheduled before the appeal that it was forced to canceled. So the court was fairly scathing in their dismissal of that appeal:

In our judicial system, the district court is the central forum for testing, advancing, proving, or disproving a party’s allegations. It is where trials take place and the parties present their evidence. As a court of appeals, “we are a court of review, not of first view.” Typically, we enter the picture only after the district court has considered the parties’ competing positions and a winner has emerged. Less frequently, we review preliminary injunctions or orders that ask a particularly important, purely legal question.

The district court has not issued one of those appealable orders. In this case, the district court issued an emergency temporary restraining order at the plaintiffs’ request, worked at a breakneck pace to provide them an opportunity for broader relief, and was ready to enter an appealable order on the merits of their claims immediately after its expedited hearing on December 4, 2020. But the plaintiffs would not take the district court’s “yes” for an answer. They appealed instead. And, because they appealed, the evidentiary hearing has been stayed and the case considerably delayed. For our part, the law requires that we dismiss the appeal and return the case to the district court for further proceedings.

Updated

Judge orders Trump administration to fully restore Daca

A federal court judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore the Daca program that made it possible for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to live and work in the US without fear of deportation.

The ruling by US Judge Nicholas Garaufis meant that the administration must reopen the program to first-time applicants and return the period of protections to two years.

A quick recap: Daca is a program created in 2012 under Barack Obama that allowed people brought to the US unlawfully as children the temporary right legally to live, study and work in America, instead of always having to fear deportation. The program allowed them to do basic things like get driver’s licenses, apply for colleges or get work permits.

Trump orders troops out of Somalia

Donald Trump has ordered all 700 American troops out of Somalia, the New York Times is reporting.

The mostly special operations troops who have been conducting training and counterterrorism missions will be leaving by 15 January, five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

A Defense Department official told the Times that many of the troops will be “repositioned” to Kenya.

Updated

Virginia is expected to receive 480,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of December, according to the Virginia Department of Public Health.

The vaccines will come from Pfizer and Moderna.

6m ordered to stay at home in California

The five Bay Area counties’ preemptive adoption of the regional stay-at-home order will affect about 6m Californians when it goes into effect on Sunday.

The preemptive order comes as San Francisco averages 142 new Covid-19 cases a day and 900 new cases a week. Hospitalizations have tripled over the last month.

“It takes several weeks for new restrictions to slow rising hospitalizations and waiting until only 15 percent of a region’s ICU beds are available is just too late,” said San Francisco health officer Dr Tomás Aragon. “Many heavily impacted parts of our region already have less than 15 percent of ICU beds available, and the time to act is now.”

This is not the first time that the Bay Area has led the charge on coronavirus measures. The counties of San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda were the first in the nation to issue a shelter-in-place order, days before Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, issued the order statewide.

Hey all, Vivian Ho on the west coast, taking over the blog for the rest of the day. And we’re starting off hot with some west coast news.

California announced yesterday new plans to launch regional stay-at-home orders based on intensive-care unit capacity. Once the ICU capacity of a region falls below 15%, a stay-at-home order will be triggered, with the vast majority of the state expected to meet that criteria within the next few days.

The San Francisco Bay Area, one of the state’s five regions, is expected to be the last region to fall below a 15% capacity. But on Friday, San Francisco and four other Bay Area counties pre-emptively adopted the stay-at-home order in an effort to curb the surge taking place in the area.

“Given the steep increase in Covid-19 cases in San Francisco, we must do whatever is necessary in order to get the virus under control,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “This is about protecting people’s lives. We see how quickly it moves and how devastating the effects. We need to do everything we can to prevent our hospital system from becoming overwhelmed and to save lives.”

There are 11 counties total in the stay-at-home designation of these early stay-at-home adopters, meaning seven other counties in this region do not have stay-at-home orders while San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and Santa Clara counties do.

Meanwhile, the other four regions of the state - northern California, the greater Sacramento area, southern California and the San Joaquin valley - are expected to reach the below-15% threshold within the next few days.

Updated

Covid-19 surges and the jobs recovery collapses as Congress debates relief package

  • The US saw the worst single-day highs for new Covid-19 cases and deaths of the entire pandemic, at 217,664 new cases and 2,879 deaths.
  • President-elect Joe Biden urgently called for Congress to pass a $900bn coronavirus stimulus bill, as the jobs recovery slowed significantly in November.
  • The latest jobs report, bad on its own, does not reflect the worst effects a probable surge could have on the economy.
  • That is because the November jobs or coronavirus case data does not reflect new cases acquired during the Thanksgiving holiday, which have yet to be diagnosed because of Covid-19’s long incubation period.
  • New data on travel over the Thanksgiving holiday showed few Americans heeded warnings to stay at home.
  • Public health officials from all quarters are warning Americans the darkest days are still ahead and to delay any Christmas plans people may have.

I’m now handing the blog over to my esteemed colleague Vivian Ho, who will carry us through the evening.

A $2.3m coronavirus contact-tracing contract in Iowa was awarded to a major Republican donor in a 36-hour bidding process critics say smacks of favoritism from the state’s Republican governor.

The man who owns the company has claimed his telemarketing company made 80 million calls to help Trump win the 2016 election. Here is his current pinned tweet:

And here is more from the Associated Press:

MCI is owned by GOP donor Anthony Marlowe, who has boasted that it played a key role in Trump’s 2016 victory and was among the state’s top backers of Trump’s unsuccessful reelection bid.

Marlowe was an Iowa delegate to the Republican National Convention in August who spoke during the roll call vote as the state supported Trump’s renomination. He said his company had grown from 400 employees in 2016 to 4,000 “thanks to your explosive economic policies.”

MCI subsidiary Mass Markets has been paid $1 million by Trump’s campaign for telemarketing and data services since 2016, campaign finance records show.

Marlowe said in 2016 the company made 80 million calls to help Trump get out the vote, raise money and draw crowds to events. This cycle, MCI provided custom software and telephony services to the campaign.

The Republican governor’s campaign paid MCI more than $18,000 for services between 2017 and 2019 to promote rally turnout, and Marlowe’s firm has recently done work for the Republican Party of Iowa.

Marlowe has become a major donor, giving more than $175,000 to Republican Party groups and candidates since 2017, including to Trump, Reynolds and the state party, records show. His wife Julia began working at the White House earlier this year, although the couple has since announced their divorce.

Iowa awarded the contract using federal coronavirus relief funds that must be used by Dec. 31, after contact-tracing workers had been unable to keep pace with new cases. Last month, the state’s third-largest county abandoned contact tracing amid exponential growth.

Democratic state Sen. Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City, ranking member of the appropriations committee, called the bidding process “terrible” because vendors had only 36 hours to apply.

“We knew for weeks and weeks we weren’t keeping up with contact-tracing. Suddenly we have this emergency and a competitive process that’s meaningless,” he said. “Now we have hired this company that has these close ties to the governor. This just reeks of inside dealing.”

He noted the state’s no-bid contracts for a $26 million testing program and $21 million payroll system using coronavirus relief funds also faced favoritism allegations.

Independent experts had long recommended that Iowa hire hundreds or thousands more people to identify, contact and isolate those exposed to infected people to slow the spread.

Facing a virus surge that was overwhelming hospitals, the Iowa Department of Public Health announced Nov. 16 that it was seeking a contact tracing vendor. Citing the urgency, the department said proposals would be due the next day at midnight.

Fourteen companies submitted bids for the work. Marlowe said he wanted MCI, whose proposal was dated Nov. 16, to be the first to apply to demonstrate its nimbleness.

“Simply put, we move quickly and get things done,” he said.

Proposals had to be 10 pages. MCI’s 12-page proposal had one page of references and one page of graphics, which the department considered a “minor deficiency” but not disqualifying, agency spokeswoman Sarah Ekstrand said.

MCI was the top-scoring applicant out of the six that met the minimum score, she said.

Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett said the governor’s office played no role in the request for proposals or contract selection. Marlowe said that he had not discussed the contract with Reynolds and that he doubted she was aware MCI worked on her campaign.

He released emails showing another MCI official had solicited state officials in March and state epidemiologist Dr. Caitlin Pedati in May to promote its services. MCI’s proposal said it would charge $240,000 per week to provide 200 full-time tracers.

The press conference concludes with Biden saying an enthusiastic “Yes!” when asked if he will go to Georgia, where two key US Senate races are going into runoffs in January.

A reporter has just asked what Biden’s inauguration could look like in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said he plans to listen to the science, and they “key is keeping people safe”.

“It is highly unlikely there will be a million people on the mall going all the way down to the monument,” said Biden. “I think you’re going to see something closer to what the convention was like... First and foremost is to keep America safe, but to celebrate, and see one another celebrate,” said Biden.

President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Important question about how much planning has been done by the federal government for vaccine distribution, expected to be one of the most logistically challenging health efforts in American history:

“They’ve clued us in on their planning, on how they plan to distribute the actual vaccine to the states, but there is no detailed plan – that we’ve seen anyway – as to how you get the vaccine out of the container into an injection syringe and into someone’s arm,” said Biden.

He emphasizes the need for “equity” in vaccine distribution, arguing accurately that giving the vaccine to large commercial pharmacies will not be enough to reach Americans typically underserved by the healthcare industry.

Even as Biden speaks about his administration’s plans to “turn the corner” on the Covid-19 pandemic, former president Barack Obama is speaking about the importance of a runoff vote in Georgia for two US Senate seats.

Updated

Biden says he is “encouraged” by bipartisan efforts to pass a coronavirus relief bill in Congress, but does not answer a question about whether he has had a chance to speak with Senate Majority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell.

President-elect Joe Biden addresses the 'grim' November jobs report

“It shows an economy that is stalling,” said Biden, adding, “It doesn’t have to stay that way”. Biden also called out the long-term unemployment rate – now including 2.3 million people.

“This is a dire jobs report,” said Biden. He later said, “We head into a very dark winter ahead.”

Americans need help said Biden – “They’re in trouble through no fault of their own... What they need, they need us to understand, we’re in a crisis... We need the Congress to act, and act now.”

Biden also said 12 million Americans stand to lose their unemployment benefits if Congress and President Trump do not act – “Merry Christmas”.

President-elect Joe Biden speaks about jobs at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks about jobs at the Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Updated

Democratic New Jersey governor Phil Murphy called Republican US representative from Florida Matt Gaetz “Matt Putz” in a press briefing Friday.

Murphy called out Gaetz in a news conference after the congressman allegedly traveled to Jersey City for a Young Republicans event, in which no one was social distancing and there were no masks in sight.

“That guy in the middle, the tall, handsome fella in the gray suit, that is Representative Matt Putz – oh sorry, Matt Gaetz,” said Murphy, according to NBC News 4, a local New York City station.

“And based upon his past performances, it is obvious being a knucklehead is not beyond the pale for him,” Murphy said.

Updated

The US House of Representatives voted to federally decriminalize and tax marijuana today. It’s the first time either house of Congress has voted for such a measure. The vote is an important gesture, but not expected to go any further. Republicans, who control the Senate, oppose the measure.

Republicans ridiculed the measure as unnecessary when so many Americans need economic relief from Covid-19.

“With all the challenges America has right now, (Republicans) think Covid relief should be on the floor, but instead, the Democrats put cats and cannabis” on the House floor, said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The AP writes: McCarthy’s comment about cats referred to a separate bill approved by the House to ban private ownership of big cats such as lions and tigers, a measure boosted by the Netflix series “Tiger King.″

That bill, approved by the House on Thursday, would allow most private zoos to keep their tigers and other species but would prohibit most public contact with the animals.

The Italian government’s move to ban people travelling around the country during the Christmas period has been described as a “slap in the face” to families and their deeply rooted traditions.

Italy has imposed some of the harshest Christmas rules in Europe amid calls from some scientists for more sober festivities as it overcomes a severe second coronavirus wave and tries to avoid a third one.

The rules were signed on the day Italy registered its highest daily death toll – 993 – of the pandemic. At more than 58,000, the country has the most Covid-related deaths in mainland Europe and health officials say the tightening of restrictions is essential to prevent the sort of catastrophe the nation faced during the first wave in the spring.

People will be barred from travelling between regions from 20 December until 6 January except for work, health or emergency reasons. Furthermore, they will not be able to leave their towns on Christmas Day, St Stephen’s Day or New Year’s Day. This will prevent relatives who live in different areas from congregating on what is considered the most important occasion for family get togethers.

“Christmas is very important for Italians,” Riccardo Ciogli said outside Gatsby Cafe in Rome’s Esquilino district. “This is what we do – we get together with family, with friends, and we eat.” His friend Erica Salvatore, who works at the nearby federation of architects, is from the southern region of Molise, where she usually spends Christmas with her parents. “I will go and see them for a few days this weekend but I don’t know if I’ll be able to travel before 20 December,” she said. “In Italy our traditions are very important, you can’t just take them away.”

Giulia Della Fratte, who also lives in Rome, said: “I kind of understand the ban on inter-regional travel but not the one between towns. Rome, for example, is made up of lots of different municipalities that are maybe only 1km apart – so how will that work? It’s nonsense.”

A bi-partisan group of legislators aims to hammer out a coronavirus relief packaged by Monday, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling reporters there is “momentum” for a $908bn deal.

The moves come after a striking November jobs report, which showed jobs growth slowing markedly from previous months.

Such a bill would also include money for distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, an extremely complex effort state health department sorely need cash to implement.

Here is some more detail from Reuters:

“There is momentum. There is momentum,” Pelosi told a news conference, after a government report showed job growth slowing in early November amid a resurgence of coronavirus infections.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate continued work on a bipartisan bill that congressional leaders view as the basis for Covid-19 legislation they hope to get through Congress next week.

“We’re in the middle of drafting as we speak, and so ... Monday is kind of the goal,” US Representative Tom Reed, Republican co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told reporters. “This is about making sure that the money is allocated to those that are most in need.”

Pressure is mounting on Congress to help people and businesses hit hard by the surging pandemic, which has now infected 14.1 million Americans and killed more than 276,000. Health officials have warned of a dark winter ahead, saying the spread is likely to accelerate into the approaching holiday season.

A range of emergency aid programs set in place in response to the pandemic, including additional unemployment benefits and a moratorium on renter evictions, will expire at the end of December.

“Soon approximately 12 million Americans will lose their unemployment assistance. The fire alarm is sounding on our economy and the only question is whether Congress will respond,” the conservative US Chamber of Commerce said on Friday.

Lawmakers enacted $3 trillion in aid earlier this year but have not been able to agree on fresh relief since the spring.

Underscoring the urgency of a new aid package, a government report on Friday showed slowing U.S. job growth in November, with 3.9 million people out of work for at least six months and many giving up.

“The situation requires urgent action,” President-elect Joe Biden in a statement that called on the Trump administration and Congress to reach agreement on coronavirus relief.

“But any package passed in the lame duck session is not enough. It’s just the start,” Biden added. “Congress will need to act again in January.”

Biden: jobs report is a “grim” sign of “stalling” economy

More from Reuters here:

US President-elect Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday the November U.S. jobs report underlined the need for urgent action on coronavirus relief but that any package passed by Congress now would not suffice and that more would be needed in January.

“This is a grim jobs report. It shows an economy that is stalling,” he said, adding he was “encouraged” by bipartisan Senate efforts on a $900 billion relief package.

“Congress and President Trump must get a deal done for the American people. But any package passed in the lame duck session is not enough. ... Congress will need to act again in January.”


Vice President Mike Pence is visiting Georgia ahead of a Trump rally there tomorrow.

Republicans are hoping to shore up support in two US Senate runoff races. The races will determine which party controls the upper chamber. Here’s more from the AP:

Vice President Mike Pence is trying to help Republicans project a unified front in two high-stakes Senate runoffs as he campaigns in Georgia a day ahead of President Donald Trump’s potentially volatile visit to the state that will determine which party controls the Senate in January.

The vice president is campaigning Friday with Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, with the GOP roiled by Trump’s continued denial of his own defeat and his baseless attacks that Republican officials in Georgia, including the governor and secretary of state, enabled widespread voter fraud on behalf of President-elect Joe Biden.

Vice President Mike Pence is greeted by Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, who is fighting for control of the Senate in a run-off with Democratic challengers.
Vice President Mike Pence is greeted by Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, who is fighting for control of the Senate in a run-off with Democratic challengers. Photograph: Alyssa Pointer/EPA

Pence navigated Trump’s refusal to concede as he rallied Republicans two weeks ago alongside Perdue and Loeffler. At two north Georgia rallies, he promised to fight for “every legal vote” but spent more time emphasizing the stakes of Senate control. But this time, Pence arrives as Georgia completes another recount of presidential ballots and with some of the president’s supporters – including lawyers once considered allies of the president’s re-election campaign – urging a boycott of Perdue’s and Loeffler’s Jan. 5 runoffs.

The vice president’s visit also comes on the same day that former President Barack Obama will appear in a virtual rally with the Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, in a show of the kind of party unity that Republicans have difficulty fashioning with the president calling Gov. Brian Kemp “hapless” and dubbing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “an enemy of the people.”

“They are hyper aware of Trump’s latest comments and latest tweets and the negative impact it could be having,” said Republican donor Dan Eberhart of the senators’ advisers. “And those folks go to bed every night hoping there’s no Trump tweet while they sleep.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed any such concerns, though she certainly embraced the idea that Trump can make or break the runoffs for Republicans.

“The president’s presence in Georgia will push Sens. Loeffler and Perdue over the finish line,” she said Friday, noting that Republicans enjoyed their own turnout boost this fall to narrow House Democrats’ majority and defend Senate Republicans who’d been seen as vulnerable.

Biden health team to be announced next week

Dr. Anthony Fauci said today that Biden asked him to be the administration’s chief medical advisor. He said yes “on the spot”.

Here’s a helpful graphic from the CDC to help people slow the spread of Covid-19.

CDC reiterates key guidance to slow Covid-19 surge

The CDC just reiterated guidance for Americans to slow the spread of Covid-19, as health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease experts, continue to warn of a “surge upon a surge”.

Their message is this – contain the spread to see “lives saved,” “economy recovered,” and “community life restored”.

A review of evidence of why these measures are important makes this note at the top:

The United States has entered a phase of high-level transmission where a multi-pronged approach to implementing all evidence-based public health strategies at both the individual and community levels is essential.”

These are their recommendations for Americans...

  • Wear a mask
  • Maintain 6 feet of distance
  • Wash hands
  • Avoid gatherings
  • Protect health workers
  • Postpone travel

And for public health authorities...

  • Identify and isolate cases
  • Conduct contact tracing
  • And if a vaccine is approved, vaccinate widely

We expect President-elect Joe Biden to comment on the last jobs report of 2020 this afternoon. Ahead of the speech, Democratic National Committee chairman and former labor secretary Tom Perez released this statement:

Today’s jobs report is another sobering reminder of the pain countless American families are feeling right now. November was the slowest month for job growth since the spring, and for the 37th consecutive week, more than a million Americans filed for unemployment.

On Wednesday, the United States saw its highest single-day death toll from Covid-19 since this pandemic began, and more small businesses are closing their doors for good with each passing day.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders continue to hold up the stimulus Americans need during this crisis. And President Trump has done nothing but drum up conspiracy theories about his election loss. Instead of providing Americans with the relief they need, the president is focused on lying, scheming, and doing whatever is necessary to save face and undermine our democracy.

This kind of behavior is exactly why the American people voted for new leadership last month. They voted for a president and vice president with a bold plan to end this pandemic, coordinate the swift and widespread delivery of a vaccine, and revive our economy. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will put the health and safety of the American people first. January 20 can’t come soon enough.”

We’re now turning to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is accepting an award at the International LGBTQ Leaders Conference held by the Victory Institute.

“I’m humbled by the award, again, because so many people made it happen,” said Pelosi, whose work to repeal the military “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was highlighted by the award. The policy was repealed a decade ago this year.

In her acceptance speech, Pelosi also shared she has a transgender niece.

“Today receiving this has special poignancy, because over the holidays I found out my nephew David is going to be Skyler, and we’re all filled with joy Skyler has found her happiness.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted an award for her service to the LGBTQ community from the Victory Institute.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted an award for her service to the LGBTQ community from the Victory Institute. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Updated

The CDC advisory committee on immunization practices held an emergency meeting this week to discuss who should be the first priority group to get a vaccine – they recommended health workers and long-term care residents be the first – and there’s an important reason why.

Today is the deadline for states to request allocations of the leading coronavirus vaccine candidate from Pfizer and BioNTech. That is because the federal government hopes to begin distributing the vaccine within 24 hours of approval, which could come as soon as next week.

Here’s more on those important deadlines from CNBC:

States have about two weeks to set up distribution centers across the country to meet the Nov. 1 deadline set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a monumental undertaking made even more difficult by the fact that a vaccine hasn’t been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and clinical trials of two of the four leading candidates have been halted.

Most of the potential vaccines require two doses, although Johnson & Johnson’s requires just one shot, and some of them need to be transported and stored at varying and specific temperatures.

“Everybody needs to realize it’s not going to be seamless,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “This is an ambitious undertaking, but we will get there and I think the fact that we have an opportunity to get a little bit in front of something and plan for it is going to make a difference.”

When will a coronavirus vaccine be approved in the United States? A flurry of federal government activity suggests it could be soon. Here’s a more from Reuters:

The US Food and Drug Administration’s chief had a “robust discussion” with the White House this week about the timeline for coronavirus vaccine approvals and believes vaccinating 20 million Americans this year is realistic, he said on Friday.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn declined to lay out a specific timetable for approval of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech but said he hoped the regulator would make a decision this month.

Many federal officials are expecting a vaccine approval within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of experts, though one FDA official recently said an approval decision could take weeks.

“We expect to move quickly,” after that meeting, Hahn told Reuters in an interview.

Britain leapt ahead of the United States this week in approving Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, intensifying scrutiny on US regulators as they consider whether to grant emergency use in the country that leads the world in coronavirus infections.

Hahn has come under pressure from outgoing President Donald Trump, who is eager to claim credit for a successful vaccine, to speed up the process.

Employees work with dry ice at the Pfizer Manufacturing plant in Puurs, Belgium, on Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. British officials on Wednesday authorized a COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, greenlighting the world’s first shot against the virus that’s backed by rigorous science and taking a major step toward eventually ending the pandemic.
Employees work with dry ice at the Pfizer Manufacturing plant in Puurs, Belgium, on Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. British officials on Wednesday authorized a COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, greenlighting the world’s first shot against the virus that’s backed by rigorous science and taking a major step toward eventually ending the pandemic. Photograph: Olivier Matthys/AP

Here is a helpful map of how Covid-19 has spread since October.

More on today’s slow jobs growth. The US economy added just 245,000 jobs last month, a significant deceleration.

As we wait to see the impact of Thanksgiving travel on the coronavirus pandemic, new data is troubling. The Associated Press gave us a glimpse the nation’s failure to heed health warnings, and stay home.

The nation’s unwillingness to tamp down on travel offered a warning in advance of Christmas and New Year’s as virus deaths and hospitalizations hit new highs a week after Thanksgiving. U.S. deaths from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 on Thursday, obliterating the single-day record set last spring.

Vehicle travel in early November was as much as 20% lower than a year earlier, but it surged around the holiday and peaked on Thanksgiving Day at only about 5% less than the pandemic-free period in 2019, according to StreetLight Data, which provided an analysis to The Associated Press.

“People were less willing to change their behavior than any other day during the pandemic,” said Laura Schewel, founder of StreetLight Data.

Data from roadways and airports shows millions could not resist the urge to gather on Thanksgiving, even during a pandemic.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
Data from roadways and airports shows millions could not resist the urge to gather on Thanksgiving, even during a pandemic.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File) Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will be responsible for much of the planning of the most challenging vaccination campaign in the nation’s history.
President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will be responsible for much of the planning of the most challenging vaccination campaign in the nation’s history. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

The need for federal guidance and money for states to deploy vaccines is real and urgent. Here’s a bit more from NBC News, which reports the bulk of planning for how to distribute the vaccine is still not finished nine months into the pandemic.

Yet beyond the guidelines advising states about how to deploy their vaccines — and a large Defense Department operation to deliver them — the Trump administration hasn’t prepared for a major federal role, a lack of planning that is causing significant anxiety among state and local health officials.

The significant checklist of unmet federal responsibilities underscores the challenges ahead for President-elect Joe Biden, who inherits most of the burden for executing a successful nationwide campaign to vaccinate all Americans, potentially without the billions of dollars in additional funding that will be needed.

The warning signs have been evident even though authorities have had nine months to prepare for mass distribution of different vaccines. For example, the federal government is still trying to fine-tune a system to track critical medical supplies, like syringes, and to facilitate regular communication between administrators and providers.

One of the major sticking points of the relief bill is liability protections, especially for hard-hit long-term care homes. Although long-term care homes represent less than 1% of the US population, residents and staff represent 40% of Covid-19 deaths.

“We cannot sign off on Mitch McConnell’s idea of, like, a blanket liability, which will open up the floodgates to a whole host of bad conduct, putting in danger the American people,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., a Pelosi deputy. “So nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon. But we’re working hard to arrive at a bipartisan agreement.”

A number of studies have shown that community spread, rather than nursing home rating, is the best predictor of cases within these facilities.

Renewed negotiations of a coronavirus economic relief bill are raising the hopes of local health departments, who are expected to begin vaccine distribution as soon as this month with no new money.

In the proposed bill, $16bn would go toward vaccine distribute, contact tracing and testing efforts.

“We’re very encouraged by this,” Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told the Washington Post. “I suspect that is going to meet most of our needs.”

As it stands, health departments face rolling out the most logistically complex vaccination campaign in US history without any new funding, on top of contact tracing and testing efforts they have been conducting since the beginning of the pandemic.

Now, they’re providing those services in the midst of the largest surge to date. They had received funding to conduct those services through the CARES Act, but that money too is scheduled to run out 31 Dec.

“I am very concerned about the fact we have only given states and localities $200m to do the largest vaccination campaign in US history, when by the CDC’s own estimates this would require $6bn for states and localities to do it,” Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program for the Council on Foreign Relations and a law professor told the Guardian this week. The incoming Biden-Harris administration has proposed allocating $25bn to distribute vaccines.

We’re one week past Thanksgiving – and not out of the woods yet. Public health officials repeatedly and loudly asked Americans not to travel or gather for the holiday, but millions nevertheless did.

“We have not yet seen the post-Thanksgiving peak,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert told NBC News Today Show.

“It is likely we’ll see more of a surge as we get two to three weeks past the Thanksgiving holiday… the thing that concerns me is that abuts right on the Christmas holiday as people start to travel and shop and congregate.”

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are the contrasting ways the president Donald Trump and vice president-elect Kamala Harris have been keeping themselves busy on Twitter in the last few minutes.

Contrasting tweets from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Contrasting tweets from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Photograph: Twitter

And on that note, I will be off. I’m handing over from London to Jessica Glenza in the US. I’ll see you next week. Stay safe and have a great weekend…

A suspect in the shooting of a state trooper in Massachusetts was killed during a shootout with US marshals in the Bronx earlier this morning that left two of the officers wounded.

The two marshals suffered non-life threatening injuries in the 5:30am confrontation.

The suspect, 35-year-old Andre Sterling, was wanted for allegedly shooting a Massachusetts state trooper in the hand on 20 November during a traffic stop in Hyannis, Massachusetts, according to a law enforcement who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press.

Florida investigation finds governor misled public on Covid as cases rose

Florida this week became the third US state to record a million coronavirus cases and yet the public there has been misled by state leadership about the extent and dangers of the pandemic, especially in the run-up to the presidential election, an investigation has concluded.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has been engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment about Covid-19 amid the gravest health threat the state has ever faced, according to a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation.

According to the newspaper, Republican DeSantis influenced a state administration that “suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters” who supported the governor’s ambivalent approach to the disease.

DeSantis declined to be interviewed, the Sun Sentinel said, but it noted he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight earlier this week that the media’s criticism of his approach was “all political”.

The investigation found that the Florida Department of Health’s county-level spokespeople stopped issuing public statements about Covid-19 between September and the 3 November election.

And earlier on in the pandemic state leaders did not release details about the earliest cases in Florida and denied the virus was spreading person to person, despite the fact that coronavirus is highly contagious.

The attitude struck by state leadership, mimicking the kind of dismissive approach of Donald Trump, the US president to whom DeSantis is a loyalist, has helped foster a public culture in which many defiantly shun face masks and readily gather in crowded bars and parties, the newspaper said, contrary to federal public health guidelines.

The Sun Sentinel’s said its extensive reporting is based on interviews with scientists, doctors, politicians and officials, and reviewing thousands of pages of documents.

Misinformation has included the governor’s spokesman claiming on Twitter that coronavirus was less deadly than the flu, while also citing statistics in a way that played down the toll of the virus.

Read more here: Florida investigation finds governor misled public on Covid as cases rose

'I said yes right on the spot' – Fauci says there was no doubt he would accept Biden job off

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s chief infectious disease expert, says there was never a question that he would accept president-elect Joe Biden’s offer to serve as his chief medical officer and adviser on the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci told NBC’s Today show on Friday, “I said yes right on the spot” after Biden asked him to serve during a conversation on Thursday.

As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci has served several presidents, both Republican and Democratic. But during president Donald Trump’s administration, he has been largely sidelined as Trump gave rosy assessments of the virus and insisted it would fade away.

Fauci, by contrast, urged rigorous mask-wearing and social distancing, practices that have not often been followed at the White House, which is embarking on a round of packed Christmas parties even as the US sets new record levels of coronavirus cases and deaths.

On Thursday, Biden said he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president. “I told him I thought that was a good idea,” Fauci told NBC.

US jobs market recovery slows amid surge in Covid-19 cases

The recovery in the US jobs market collapsed in November as cases of Covid-19 hit new records, government figures revealed on Friday.

The US added just 245,000 new jobs in November, less than the 638,000 jobs added in October, the 672,000 jobs added in September and the 1.4m jobs added in August. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7%.

Jobs growth has now slowed month on month since June and the latest report highlighted another worrying trend – the growth in long-term unemployment. In November, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 385,000 to 3.9m, accounting for 36.9% of the total unemployed.

The slowdown comes as Congress continues to argue over the size of a new stimulus package and millions of Americans face the expiration of unemployment benefits agreed to when Washington signed off on the last stimulus package in March.

Janet Yellen, incoming president Joe Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary, warned this week that there would be “more devastation” if action is not taken soon.

“It’s an American tragedy and it’s essential that we move with urgency. Inaction will produce a self-reinforcing downturn, causing yet more devastation,” Yellen said.

Read more of Dominic Rushe’s report here: US jobs market recovery slows amid surge in Covid-19 cases

The cellphone video shot in the dark by a woman in a parked car appeared to show something ominous: a man closing the doors of a white van and then rolling a wagon with a large box into a Detroit election center.

After shooting her video, Texas Republican Kelly SoRelle took it to a conservative YouTube host who played it for his show’s 5 million subscribers the day after the election. She also gave it to the Texas Scorecard, a website started by Empower Texans, a lobbying group that ranks politicians on a conservative scorecard and is bankrolled by West Texas businessman Tim Dunn.

Empower Texans’ PAC has pumped millions of dollars into the campaigns of ultra-conservative candidates. Texas Scorecard posted the video on its website and YouTube page, which collectively racked up 50,000 shares on Facebook.

Others soon picked up the story, and four hours later, Eric Trump had tweeted it to his 4 million followers. “WATCH: Suitcases and Coolers Rolled Into Detroit Voting Center at 4 AM, Brought Into Secure Counting Area,” he tweeted.

Over the next week, there were nearly 150,000 mentions of wagons, suitcases or coolers of votes in broadcast scripts, blogs and on public Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts, according to an analysis that media intelligence firm Zignal Labs conducted for the Associated Press.

That single video serves as a powerful emblem of the trafficking in false information that has plagued the presidential election won by Joe Biden.

None of it was true.

WXYZ on the wagon story.

The clip was quickly discredited by news organizations and public officials. An investigative reporter at local TV station WXYZ-TV clarified on Twitter the same night the video was first posted that the mysterious man was one of its videographers pulling in a wagon of equipment to relieve the crew inside the voting center.

But to many viewers it had its intended effect. Eric Hainline, a UPS driver from Dayton, Ohio, watched the video and many like it, and said the images reinforced his suspicions that the election was stolen from Trump. “You don’t know who to believe anymore,” said Hainline, 44. “I think the trust people have is broken.”

Trump and his allies have fomented the idea of a “rigged election” for months, promoting falsehoods through various media and even lawsuits about fraudulent votes and dead voters casting ballots across the country.

While the details of these spurious allegations may fade over time, the scar they leave on American democracy could take years to heal.

“There will always be people who believe the Democrats stole the election in 2020,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. “That will not change.”

Biden supporter RosaLea Schiavone, of San Diego, said she has watched with horror — but not surprise — as Trump has fanned conspiracy theories about the election’s outcome. She worries the damage will last far longer than one campaign, one term or one presidency.

“This is about fear, what he’s doing. He plays into people’s fear and mistrust,” the 71-year-old said. “It could hurt all of us.”

Former Barack Obama speechwriter and author David Litt writes for us this morning reminding us that claims of ‘voter fraud’ have a long history in America, and they are false. He argues that Trump and company’s long-winded complaints about the election have been counter-productive:

Never in American history have self-proclaimed fraud-fighters been given more attention, resources, and time to prove their case – that a major election was stolen through what they’ve dubbed “illegal votes”.

Instead, they’ve done the opposite. The 2020 election, and Trump’s attempt to overturn it, will leave us with plenty of reasons to remain concerned about the health of our democracy. But the idea that our political process has been compromised by widespread fraud isn’t among them. It’s time to retire the voter-fraud myth for good.

Litt also gives us this little history lesson, where the modus operandi of voter suppression in the name of conquering some imagined fraud seems rather familiar:

In early 19th-century New Jersey, under the state’s original constitution, some women had the right to vote, and some politicians (namely those of the Federalist Party) felt they would be more likely to win elections if those rights were taken away. But stripping eligible voters of their rights for purely partisan reasons was unseemly, even by 1800s standards, so ambitious lawmakers came up with an excuse. Men, they charged, were casting their ballots, slipping into petticoats, and then voting a second time. The only way to prevent this fraud was to eliminate women’s voting rights entirely.

As a logical argument, the anti-fraud case for disenfranchising women made little sense. But logic was never the point. In 1807, aided by their theoretically principled excuse for their blatantly partisan power grab, the New Jersey legislature ended their state’s experiment in women’s suffrage.

Read more here: Claims of ‘voter fraud’ have a long history in America. And they are false

Over and over again in courts across the country Republican president Donald Trump and his allies have continued to mount new cases in a futile attempt to stay in power. They’ve been recycling the same baseless claims, even after Trump’s own attorney general declared the Justice Department had uncovered no widespread fraud.

“This will continue to be a losing strategy, and in a way it’s even bad for him: He gets to re-lose the election numerous times,” Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College Law School told the Associated Press. “The depths of his petulance and narcissism continues to surprise me.”

Of roughly 50 cases brought by Trump’s campaign and his allies, more than 30 have been rejected or dropped. About a dozen are awaiting action. Trump has notched just one small victory, a case challenging a decision to move the deadline to provide missing proof of identification for certain absentee ballots and mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

Another legal blow came Thursday, the day after Trump posted his 46-minute rant to Facebook filled with conspiracies, misstatements and vows to keep up his fight to subvert the election.

In Wisconsin, a split state Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties, alleging irregularities in the way absentee ballots were administered. The case echoed claims that were earlier rejected by election officials in those counties during a recount that barely affected Biden’s winning margin of about 20,700 votes. Trump filed a similar lawsuit in federal court late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, a judge heard arguments Thursday in a case contesting the election results brought by Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. Ward’s lawyers say an inspection of 100 ballots found two problems: one person’s vote for Trump was ultimately recorded as a Biden vote and another person’s vote for Trump was canceled when the reproduced ballot contained votes for both the Republican incumbent and a write-in candidate.

Judges in battleground states have repeatedly swatted down legal challenges brought by the president and his allies. Trump’s legal team has vowed to take one Pennsylvania case to the supreme court, even though it was rejected in a scathing ruling by a federal judge as well as an appeals court.

After recently being kicked off Trump’s legal team, conservative attorney Sidney Powell filed new lawsuits in Arizona and Wisconsin this week riddled with errors and wild conspiracies about election rigging.

One of the plaintiffs named in the Wisconsin case said he never agreed to participate in the case and found out through social media that he had been included. The same lawsuit asks for 48 hours of security footage from the “TCF Center”. That is in Detroit, which is famously not in Wisconsin.

The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have raised are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postmarks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost. Election officials from both parties have said the election went well.

Failing to gain any traction in court, Trump and his allies are now turning to events with Republican lawmakers and rallies in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan where they can use unfounded claims of fraud to incite the president’s loyal base.

For months Capitol Hill has struggled with how to contain the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

But even as the rest of the world slowly got a better handle on the spread of the virus, infections among US lawmakers in Washington DC have continued to rise. By the end of November, more than 25 members of Congress and at least 150 workers have been infected, or were presumed to be infected, according to NPR.

That has lead some members of Congress, and privately some congressional staffers, to complain about a lack of direction about how to safely go about lawmaking in Congress – including on bills responding to the pandemic.

Now though lawmakers and the office in charge of legislators’ health are trying to get a better handle on the pandemic in their own workplace. Curbing the coronavirus on Capitol Hill is uniquely important because lawmakers still have to legislate during the pandemic and many of them are within the parameters experts consider high risk. At moments Congressional staffers have not gotten the same directives as elected officials during the pandemic as well.

Over the last few days there have been substantial changes to aspects of Congress and the precautions taken for the coronavirus pandemic.

The Office of the Attending Physician, which is responsible for the health of members of Congress, recently sent out a set of new directives for traveling to and from Washington DC, quarantining and working on Capitol Hill. Previously, in November, the Associated Press reported that the OAP took steps to make coronavirus testing more available for members of Congress and staff.

Those December directives from the OAP come as Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and highest ranking Democrat in Congress, announced an expansion of Covid-19 testing administered with the help of the Air Force over the next six weeks or so as well as new travel restrictions.

Read more of Daniel Strauss’ report here: US Congress slow to issue directives as Covid spreads at a high rate among lawmakers

Alicia Victoria Lozano has this report for NBC News on one of the themes that is emerging with the proposed roll-out of a Covid-19 vaccine in the US – the way that the impact of the disease, and trust in information about it, varies across the country’s diverse population.

Despite the potential for a vaccine within weeks, distrust of the medical community by Black and Latino people, who have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, remains high as elected leaders and public health professionals work to prioritize its distribution.

Fueled by a dark history of medical experimentation and unequal access to care, people in Black and Latino communities struggling with high Covid-19 rates are among those least likely to get vaccinated, health advocates say. Overcoming systemic racism and the collective trauma associated with it will be paramount as officials rush to distribute vaccines to hard-hit communities, they warn.

“The people who need it the most are the same who don’t trust it,” said Sernah Essien of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, an international advocacy group working to ensure equitable vaccine access. “Without considering racial equity, we deepen the cracks that systemic racism has already created in our health care system.”

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an expert on health care inequality at Yale University, said testing and vaccine programs must consider fairness and equity along with safety to be truly effective.

“We cannot get this pandemic under control if we do not address head-on the issues of inequity in our country,” she said. “There is no other way.”

Read more here: NBC News – Racial disparities create obstacles for Covid-19 vaccine rollout

Trump has raised $495 million since mid-October in haul fueled by misleading appeals

One thing Donald Trump will not be short of, whatever he decides to do next politically, is fund-raiser cash. The Washington Post reports this morning:

President Trump has raised $495 million since mid-October, with $207.5 million of it pouring in after Election Day — an extraordinary haul resulting from Trump’s post-election fundraising effort using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the integrity of the vote.

The sum raised since 15 October far exceeds fundraising records set by the Trump operation in roughly comparable time periods at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign and is an unusually large amount to raise after the election.

That means between 15 October and 23 November, Trump raised an average of nearly $13 million per day — a massive amount fueled by a deluge of email and text fundraising appeals sent out by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee that raises money for the president’s campaign, the Republican Party and Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America.

Much of the money raised since the election probably will go into Save America, a political action committee that the president can use for various activities after he leaves office.

Since late October, the Trump campaign spent $8.8 million on bringing legal challenges to election results in key states, including recounts. Of that amount, $30,000 in legal consulting fees went to Jenna Ellis, one of the most prominent lawyers on Trump’s post-election legal team.

Read more here: Trump raises $495 million since mid-October, including a massive haul fueled by misleading appeals about election fraud

Natalie Haynes has an essay for us which you might enjoy today: what Donald Trump can learn from the Roman emperors. She notes that the US president’s refusal to concede the election looks unnervingly familiar to a classicist – and that ancient Rome offers valuable lessons about letting go of power…

Intriguingly, Caligula’s habit of issuing erratic and deceitful communications meant that many people didn’t believe it when the news of his death was announced. They thought it must be a story Caligula had released himself, to find out what people thought of him. The assumption of falsehood had been embedded into Roman society in a surprisingly short time: you could judge the condition of the times from this, Suetonius adds, rather wearily.

Read more here: Decline and fall – what Donald Trump can learn from the Roman emperors

Talking of Trump 2024, Gabby Orr wrote for Politico last night that the president’s mounting spitefulness toward allies within his own party has unnerved Republicans fretting about the prospect of him running again.

In recent weeks, Trump has started attacking any Republican who has not fully embraced the false narrative that he won the 2020 election, leaving party officials, lawmakers and donors wondering about the repercussions they might face for not immediately endorsing a Trump 2024 White House run. Other Republicans are growing concerned about an unfair scenario in which donors may feel pressured to support Trump right out of the gate — not because they believe he’s the best candidate, but to simply avoid drawing the ex-president’s ire.

Meanwhile, Trump has yet to make a decision on his own future. As recently as Wednesday, the president was mulling the idea of scheduling a campaign announcement on 20 January to counterprogram Biden’s inauguration. He has also discussed an announcement ahead of Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections on 5 January, believing his base’s excitement would increase turnout in the all-important contests.

Some Trump allies claim the president would help other Republicans, too, by declaring his candidacy almost immediately after leaving office, suggesting it would save the party a contentious primary between Trump-hostile characters and those vying to claim his ultra-loyal base. But other confidants have encouraged Trump to keep the public in suspense, and instead spend the next two years strategically undercutting the Biden administration and lending his help to House and Senate GOP candidates.

The result is a party in a holding pattern — one incapable of starting its long-term planning for 2022 or beyond until Trump makes up his mind.

Read more here: Politico – Trump’s looming 2024 bid leaves Republicans in a bind

Alexander Kirshner and Claudio López-Guerra write for us this morning that Donald Trump can – and should – be stopped from running in 2024.

Democracies do not sprout spontaneously, like red poppies in a field. They are established by brave democrats: people who struggle, sometimes paying the ultimate price, against the forces of authoritarianism. This is how democracies survive, too. There is no such thing as the inevitability of democratic rule once it is in place. It has to be defended.

Donald Trump’s post-election maneuvers have, at a minimum, rocked Americans faith in their democracy. And rumors abound that the president will seek the position again in 2024, potentially announcing his run during Biden’s inauguration. That possibility requires a proportionate response. Newspapers are teeming with discussions about the wisdom of pursuing criminal prosecutions of Trump after 20 January. But criminal prosecutions are not the only, or even the best mechanism for responding to the Trumpian challenge to self-government. In a society fully committed to democracy, Congress would use this lame-duck period to impeach, convict and disqualify Donald Trump from pursuing public office in the future, as the constitution allows.

This might seem undemocratic. It is not. Joseph Goebbels famously said: “It will always be one of the best jokes of democracy that it gives its deadly enemies the means to destroy it.” But Goebbels was wrong. Well-designed democracies need not turn the other cheek when confronted by aspiring autocrats.

Read more here: Alexander Kirshner and Claudio López-Guerra – Donald Trump can – and should – be stopped from running in 2024

Here’s something for your ears today. As the US justice department investigates an alleged ‘bribery for pardon’ scheme at the White House, Jonathan Freedland and our Washington bureau chief David Smith delve into the many possible legal issues Donald Trump could face after 20 January, in this week’s extra episode of our Politics Weekly podcast.

Might Donald Trump, once stripped of the near-total immunity that came with his office, face the full might of the law? Could he be charged with crimes, or even go to jail? Or might he pardon himself in advance? Freedland and Smith discuss the many potential scenarios that could play out once Trump is no longer the commander-in-chief.

Listen to it here: Pardon me! Could Trump be indicted? Politics Weekly Extra podcast

Rich McKay and David Morgan at Reuters have this on another aspect of the Georgia Senate runoff – the Republican worry that Trump loyalist Kelly Loeffler’s attacks on her opponent, the pastor Rev. Raphael Warnock risk suburban votes.

Loeffler’s attack ads have sought to portray Warnock as a dangerous anti-American, anti-police, anti-Israel “Marxist” tied to Black Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright and an infamous 2008 sermon in which he declared: “God damn America!”

A Warnock campaign spokesman described the attacks as an attempt to distract voter attention from Loeffler’s record on healthcare and other issues.

“The imagery used certainly had a racial undertone, and I think that turned off voters in those suburban areas,” said Matt Towery, a former Georgia Republican legislator.

Rev. Raphael Warnock, left, and Jon Ossoff, right, gesture toward a crowd during a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia.
Rev. Raphael Warnock, left, and Jon Ossoff, right, gesture toward a crowd during a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia. Photograph: Brynn Anderson/AP

A spokesman for the Loeffler campaign said any potential issues with suburban voters are not borne out by polling data, which he said shows that her attacks on Warnock are working.

Republicans face the task of trying to turn out two voting blocs: devoted Trump supporters who respond favorably to harsher rhetoric, and moderate suburbanites who don’t.

“As the Republicans hit the accelerator to turn out the vote in south Georgia, middle Georgia and north Georgia, they also turn off white, higher-income voters in these suburban areas,” Towery said. “They have to have two messages.”

This is difficult in a nationalized, big money campaign, where according to the tracking firm AdImpact, a combined $310 billion of TV air time has already been purchased or reserved.

Warnock and Ossoff are also battling for white suburban votes. Democrats will need about 30% of Georgia’s white voters, in addition to a coalition of Black, Latino and Asian voters to pierce the 50% mark needed for victory, political analysts say.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler at a campaign event in Cumming, Georgia.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler at a campaign event in Cumming, Georgia. Photograph: Dustin Chambers/Reuters

Loeffler and fellow incumbent Sen. David Perdue have to run up the margins in rural areas to win, said Republican strategist Chip Lake. Both have treated Georgia voters to dire warnings about the consequences of a Democratic Senate majority. Perdue’s TV ads urge supporters to “save America” from higher taxes, open borders, defunded police departments, socialized medicine, military spending cuts, the Green New Deal and voting rights for illegal immigrants.

Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman, has had to rely on advertising more heavily than Perdue to assure voters about her conservative credentials. As a result, political analysts say, she has more strongly paralleled Trump’s combative messaging style and agenda priorities, at one point describing herself as more conservative than Attila the Hun.

Trump set to host Saturday rally in Georgia amid concerns he is discouraging Republicans from voting

Donald Trump is set to host a Saturday rally in Georgia amid concerns he is discouraging Republicans there from turning out to vote in a critical runoff contest by attacking top GOP officials and falsely claiming fraud and voting-machine irregularities cost him the November election.

The event will be Trump’s biggest public appearance since losing Georgia, and the presidential race, last month. He will rally on behalf of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, two Republican senators in runoff contests. Republicans need to win at least one of the contests in order to retain control of the US Senate and maintain a veto over the next four years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Trump is urging supporters to vote for Perdue and Loeffler, but some Republicans worry he could be hurting their chances of winning. Even after a hand recount confirmed Trump lost Georgia by about 13,000 votes, the president has continued to falsely claim fraud cost him the election. By undermining confidence in the election, Trump could also be telling his supporters that their votes won’t matter.

L Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, two prominent conservative attorneys who have filed a spate of baseless pro-Trump lawsuits alleging election malfeasance, encouraged supporters in Georgia on Wednesday not to vote in the runoff election.

“We’re not gonna go vote 5 January on another machine made by China. You’re not gonna fool Georgians again,” Wood said on Wednesday. “If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Perdue wants your vote, they’ve got to earn it. They’ve got to demand publicly, repeatedly, consistently, ‘Brian Kemp: call a special session of the Georgia legislature.’ And if they do not do it, if Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue do not do it, they have not earned your vote.

“Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?”

Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, faced skeptical voters in Georgia last weekend and had to reassure them the Senate election was not yet decided.

Read more of Sam Levine’s report here: Republicans fear Trump’s false claims could hurt party in Georgia runoff

Kentucky’s senior senator, Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell, is at the center of congressional negotiations on another relief package. Kentucky voters didn’t punish McConnell for the long-stalemated talks in November, instead awarding him a lopsided victory as he secured a seventh term.

He spent the campaign boasting about the money he delivered for the Bluegrass State in the massive federal relief package passed early in the pandemic.

While reports of hardship are growing in Kentucky, much of the political pressure there is focused not on McConnell but on the state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear.

Bruce Schreiner and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn report for Associated press that Beshear is under fire from business owners and state GOP leaders who think the virus-related restrictions he’s imposed on daily life in Kentucky have gone too far.

Emboldened by gains they made in the November elections, GOP legislative leaders are expected to push to rein in Beshear’s authority to take emergency measures when the legislature convenes next year.

Beshear says he’s focused on saving lives but Congress must do its part and pass more aid.

“We need people to not be Democrats or Republicans but to be human beings and do the right thing,” the governor said in an interview. “People out there are dying, People out there are hurting. This is the time to invest in our people and in their safety.”

Kentucky has seen 190,601 coronavirus cases, with 3,836 newly recorded yesterday. There have been 2,014 deaths.

“There is no reason why we should not deliver another major pandemic relief package to help the American people through what seems poised to be the last chapters of this battle,” McConnell said in a Senate speech this week. In his home state, anxiety is rising along with deaths, infections and hospitalizations.

In a region already reeling from the decline of coal mining, eastern Kentucky pastor Chris Bartley has heard an unprecedented chorus of pleas for help from people whose lives have been shattered by the economic turmoil caused by Covid-19.

“You hear the desperation in the phone calls: I have to pay my rent today. I’ve done everything I can do. I’ve offered to rake leaves or mow grass or anything I can do.’ They’ve lost their job or the stimulus has run out,” said Bartley, associate pastor at a Methodist church in Pikeville, Kentucky.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear in September.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear in September. Photograph: Timothy D Easley/AP

Beshear, meanwhile, delivers daily doses of grim news of the state’s virus cases and deaths and presses for another economic lifeline for struggling businesses, the unemployed, and state and local governments.

“We saw the first round of CARES Act funding really flow through our economy in a positive manner,” he said. “People needed the dollars. They spent the dollars. We saw businesses lifted up by those dollars. We were able to use funds to help people stay in their homes with an eviction-relief fund. Pay their utility bills so they didn’t end up in debt.”

Beshear has carefully avoided calling out McConnell or president Donald Trump as the impasse drags on. Republicans dominated federal and state elections last month in Kentucky. “I’m willing to take whatever blame some people want to heap out there,” he said.

“If it means that their relatives are still around for Christmas this year and Christmas next year, I’ll take it.”

“We heard no fake news. We heard no conspiracy theories. We heard no personal grievances. We heard a President-Elect and a vice president who want to work with the other side.”

That was CNN’s Don Lemon speaking immediately after the network had aired president-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris’ first joint interview since winning the election on 3 November. Brian Stelter added this analysis, pulling out his five key quotes:

  • In light of the multiple crises Biden is inheriting, Tapper asked, “what does it feel like... what’s the emotion that goes through you?” The first words out of Biden’s mouth were “I’m determined.”
  • Regarding the Covid-19 crisis, Biden said he will ask Americans to wear masks for “one hundred days.”
  • Harris on her working relationship with Biden: “We are full partners in this process.”
  • Biden said Americans will not see “policy by tweets” once he takes office.
  • Biden said he is reaching out, “not just to the communities that supported me, I’m going to reach out to those who didn’t support me. I mean, for real, because I think a lot of people are just scared and think they’ve been left behind and forgotten. We’re not going to forget anybody in this effort.”

Read more here: CNN – ‘No fake news:’ Biden and Harris sit down for a ‘very normal’ interview with Jake Tapper

China hits back at US spy chief's 'greatest threat to freedom' claim

China has rejected as a “concoction of lies” an incendiary article by the US’s most senior intelligence official, who labelled China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom since the second world war.

In a Wall Street Journal column John Ratcliffe, the US director of national intelligence, said China was bent on world domination and the US needed to prepare for an “open-ended period of confrontation”. While intelligence agencies had historically prioritised concerns over Russia and counter-terrorism, China should now be the primary national security focus of the US, he warned, and it posed “the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since world war two”.

Ratcliffe said China was “regularly” directing influence operations on US soil, and had targeted members of Congress at a frequency six times that of Russia, and 12 times that of Iran. He also accused China of stealing US technology to fuel Xi Jinping’s huge modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army.

At a regular press briefing on Friday, China’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said the article was “just a sensational headline” and did not show any real evidence. “He just continued and repeated what is I think another concoction of lies,” she said.

“We hope that American politicians will respect the facts, stop making and selling fake news, stop fabricating and spreading political viruses and lies, and stop damaging Sino-US relations, otherwise it will only further damage the credibility of the United States.”

Earlier a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US told Reuters that Ratcliffe’s comments were “fact-distorting” and hypocritical, and showed “the entrenched cold war mindset and ideological prejudices of some people on the US side”.

Read more of Helen Davidson’s report from Taipei: China hits back at US spy chief’s ‘greatest threat to freedom’ claim

Americans couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts who begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic

Vehicle travel in early November was as much as 20% lower than a year earlier, but it surged around the holiday and peaked on Thanksgiving Day at only about 5% less than the pandemic-free period in 2019, according to StreetLight Data, which provided an analysis to the Associated Press.

“People were less willing to change their behavior than on any other day during the pandemic,” said Laura Schewel, founder of StreetLight Data.

Airports also saw some of their busiest days of the pandemic, though air travel was much lower than last year. The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 1 million passengers on four separate days during the Thanksgiving travel period. Since the pandemic gutted travel in March, there has been only one other day when the number of travelers topped 1 million.

“If only a small percentage of those travelers were asymptomatically infected, this can translate into hundreds of thousands of additional infections moving from one community to another,” Dr. Cindy Friedman, a CDC official, said this week during a briefing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged people to stay home for the Christmas holidays, but officials acknowledged that many people would not heed that advice and advised them to get tested before and after trips. Friedman said that this year’s holidays presented “tough choices” for many families.

Trananda Graves, who runs a travel-planning company in Keller, Texas, took a Thanksgiving road trip with her family to Nashville, Tennessee. It was a chance for her daughter to connect with relatives as they shared recipes, and Graves said everyone’s mood was uplifted.

“It was just a break to get away from home,” Graves said. “We work at home, we go to school at home.”

She decided to drive to meet extended family after seeing that flights were crowded and said her family followed guidance to avoid spreading infections. But infections, even from small Thanksgiving gatherings, have begun to stream in around the country, adding another burden to health departments that are already overwhelmed.

“This uptick here is really coming at a time when everyone’s exhausted,” said Don Lehman, a spokesman for the Warren County Public Health Department in upstate New York.

The county concluded that Thanksgiving gatherings or travel likely caused 40% of the 22 cases it reported in the last two days. That means contact tracers have to figure out where people came from or traveled to and contact health officials in those places. Lehman said it adds “a lot of legwork” to the contact-tracing process.

California, the country’s most populous state, has announced sweeping plans for a new, regional stay-at-home order that is likely to affect nearly all of the state within days.

The order is pegged to hospital capacity – regions where where ICU capacity falls below 15% will come under the new restrictions.

The orders are the strictest to be imposed since the statewide stay-at-home order in March. “This is the most challenging moment since the start of the pandemic,” said the governor, Gavin Newsom, announcing the order on Thursday.

So what does it mean, and will it work? Vivian Ho has got you covered…

The new stay-at-home order will impose new restrictions on business and gathering spaces. Residents have been directed to remain at home and avoid all non-essential travel. Activities such as grocery shopping, medical appointments, dog walks and individual outdoor exercise are permitted.

Restaurants will be limited to takeout and pickup service, while bars, breweries and distilleries will be closed, along with fitness centers, hair salons, barber shops, casinos and nail salons.

Retail establishments may remain in business while limited to 20% of capacity, with hotels permitted to stay open to support “critical infrastructure” only.

Office workplaces will be closed except for essential sectors where remote working is impossible. Public schools with in-classroom instruction already in place may remain open.

Under the plan, indoor religious services will remain prohibited, despite recent US supreme court decisions siding with churches and synagogues that challenged state social distancing rules on worship.

Read more here: California’s new stay-at-home order explained

Here’s those clips of last night’s interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper where US president-elect Joe Biden said that he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president. Biden and vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, also committed to receiving coronavirus vaccinations as soon as possible, when approved by US regulators. Yesterday, former presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton all committed to getting vaccinated on TV if it would help dispel people’s worries over the vaccine.

Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Friday, after a day on which the US has again set new records for new coronavirus cases and new Covid deaths.

  • There were 217,664 new coronavirus cases in the US yesterday according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker – a new single day high.
  • 2,879 people died. It’s the second day in a row the US has set a new record number of deaths. (Johns Hopkins has revised down Wednesday’s initial figure from 3,157 deaths to 2,804, reportedly due to an error in one state.)
  • The total number of deaths since the pandemic began has now reached 276,366.
  • There hasn’t been a single day since the 3 November election when the US has recorded fewer than 100,000 new cases, and the total caseload has now reached 14,143,801.
  • President Donald Trump stayed silent on the crisis. President-elect Joe Biden said he plans to urge all Americans to wear masks for 100 days after his inauguration in January.
  • Vice president Mike Pence will visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a coronavirus briefing. This week CDC director Dr Robert Redfield said “The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they are going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”
  • California has unveiled plans to issue regional stay-at-home orders for areas in the state where intensive care units are expected to fall below a capacity of 15%. The vast majority of the state is expected to meet that criteria within the next few days.
  • A flurry of federal government activity suggests approval for Covid-19 vaccines could come as soon as next week as complex arguments rage about who could or should get it first.
  • The Trump administration has formally announced the go-ahead for the fiercely opposed sale of controversial gas and oil drilling licences in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The sale of leases is planned for 6 January 2021, a few days before Trump leaves the White House.
  • Wisconsin’s supreme court has refused to hear Donald Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the battleground state, sidestepping a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruling the case must first wind its way through lower courts.
  • Michigan resident Melissa Carone has become an internet sensation after her bizarre appearance and outlandish claims alongside Rudy Giuliani at a hearing into allegations of electoral fraud in the state.
  • There’s new economic figures due out at 8:30ET, and later on Joe Biden is expected to make comments about jobs and the economy from Wilmington, Delaware. He’ll also receive the daily presidential briefing.
  • The president has no engagements in his diary today.
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