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The Guardian - US
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Kari Paul (now), Kenya Evelyn and Martin Belam (earlier)

California plans sweeping stay-at-home orders as coronavirus strains hospitals - as it happened

Shoppers wear masks at the Citadel Outlets in Los Angeles, California.
Shoppers wear masks at the Citadel Outlets in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Evening summary

Kari Paul here, logging out for the night. Here are the top stories of the last few hours:

  • Joe Biden says he will call on Americans to wear masks for 100 days from his inauguration
  • White House communications director Alyssa Farah has stepped down
  • An intensive look at Dr Fauci’s grueling daily schedule: 5 am wakeup, one meal a day, hundreds of emails, back-to-back Zoom meetings

That’s all! Have a good Friday and weekend, folks.

Updated

Dr. Fauci’s daily schedule: 5 am wakeup, one meal a day, hundreds of emails, back-t0-back Zoom meetings

A reporter from HuffPost has given us a window into the daily schedule of real-life superhuman Anthony Fauci. The nearly-80-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been carrying the Trump administration and the rest of the country through the coronavirus pandemic for months now. It’s a calling that takes a lot of work, and his schedule shows it.

“Each day is different,” Fauci told HuffPost. “It’s just, you know, drinking out of a firehose trying to keep ahead of everything that’s going on.”

The director works nearly 18 hours per day, according to a schedule shared with the publication. He starts each day at 5:10 am EST, showering before answering emails and appearing remotely on a number of media outlets. This particular interview was conducted the day before Thanksgiving, so many of his press appearances focused on staying safe for the holidays.

Fauci, who is still a practicing doctor, also does rounds in the morning on Covid patients and meets with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staff. He has just one scheduled break in his marathon day, from 1:30 pm - 1:50 pm.

Unlike many public figures we have seen breaking their own Covid-19 mandates in recent weeks, Fauci seems to practice what he preaches. He does not ride public transportation, he does not socialize with friends or anyone else outside the home, and he does not go out to eat.

“I have federal agents that protect me. So they drive me to work, they stay here, they make sure that nobody tries to break in [to my home] and, as Steve Bannon would like, have somebody behead me,” Fauci said. “I don’t socialize. It’s my wife and I and the federal agents. We’ve sort of become like a new family unit.”

Updated

Trump administration communications director steps down

White House communications director Alyssa Farah announced Thursday she will be resigning from her role “to pursue new opportunities”.

“It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the Trump administration over the last three and a half years,” she said in a statement on her Twitter account.

Farah has worked with the administration in a variety of capacities since Trump first ennntered office. She first worked as Vice-president Mike Pence’s press secretary, then as the press secretary for the defense department, becoming the youngest person to ever serve as the Pentagon’s press secretary.

In April, she was brought on to be the White House communications director, taking on much of the responsibility of messaging around the coronavirus pandemic.

Updated

Biden says he will call on Americans to wear masks for 100 days from his inauguration

Joe Biden will publicly be administered the Covid-19 vaccine and call on Americans to wear masks for the first few months after he is inaugurated, the president-elect said in a CNN interview to be aired Thursday evening.

In clips shared early from the interview, Biden laid out his plan to address the coronavirus pandemic as soon as he takes office in January. He said he spoke with Anthony Fauci on Thursday afternoon to confirm the doctor will stay on as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and to appoint him as a chief medical adviser.

He also echoed statements from former presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush, and Bill Clinton that he will get the Covid-19 vaccine “in public” as soon as Fauci says it is safe. Biden said he will encourage Americans to wear masks outside the home for 100 days after he is inaugurated, but it is unclear if that will be a mandate or a suggestion. The interview airs at 9pm EST on Thursday.

Updated

Kari Paul here on the west coast – I will be blogging for the next few hours. Stand by for more news.

Updated

That's a wrap for the east coast!

Kenya Evelyn in Baltimore, here, signing off from an eventful day on the politics live blog. Here’s what was covered this afternoon:

  • Wisconsin’s supreme court declined to hear Donald Trump’s latest appeal to toss out ballots in the state
  • The CDC warned the US could see nearly 20,000 the week of Christmas alone
  • Mary Trump said its “impossible” for her uncle, the president, to concede
  • A former US attorney called on Georgia election officials to investigate Lindsey Graham
  • A White House liaison to the justice department was banned from its premises

That’s all from me, folks! Stay up-to-date, however, with reporter Kari Paul over on the west coast.

Updated

Sunrise Movement slams Biden over economic council pick

The Sunrise Movement criticised Joe Biden’s selection of Brian Deese for director of the national economic council, noting “there are many diverse, qualified people that can help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Build Back Better who didn’t choose to work at predatory investment firms”.

“The revolving door between Wall Street and the White House does no good for working people or the planet,” the climate advocacy group said in a statement. “If the Biden-Harris team wants to show that they will treat the crises we face with the urgency they demand, just appointing people around in the Obama years isn’t going to inspire confidence”.

The Sunrise Movement are among many groups to call on the incoming Biden administration to choose a more diverse cabinet, reflective of what the statement called “concerns of younger generations and is committed to building a diverse team that goes beyond the old guard”.

Updated

California stay-at-home orders linked to 15​% ICU capacity

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%, with the vast majority of the state expected to meet that criteria within the next few days.

Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, announced the new restrictions as cases in the state reached the highest reported since the pandemic began.

“The bottom line is if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Newsom said. “If we don’t act now, our death rate will continue to climb.”

Read more from Guardian reporter Vivian Ho.

Updated

AP: White House liaison banned from justice department

The Associated Press is reporting that the White House liaison to the justice department, Heidi Stirrup, has been banned from accessing its buildings.

At least three sources confirmed the restriction was imposed after the liaison attempted to pressure staffers into accessing sensitive files related to voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The liaison apparently did not have required authorization to access the files.

[The] ally of top [Donald] Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the justice department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people said.

One source also revealed:

Stirrup had also extended job offers to political allies for positions at some of the highest levels of the justice department without consulting any senior department officials or the White House counsel’s office and also attempted to interfere in the hiring process for career staffers, a violation of the government’s human resources policies.

The AP also confirmed Stirrup was appointed a member of the board of visitors of the US Air Force Academy on Thursday.

Updated

Senator Marsha Blackburn invokes Chinese stereotype a racist tweet

Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee received swift backlash Thursday for a racist tweet invoking the history of China to allude to a stereotype of cheating.

Trump once again threatens to veto over Section 230

While recognizing Republican criticism, Donald Trump still refused to back down from earlier calls to repeal Section 230, a provision of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that protects tech firms from liability over third-party content. In a tweet, the president called it a “must”.

Earlier, democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, defended Trump’s demand to abolish Section 230, telling the president the future of the country is at stake if the law is not abolished.

Trump first attempted to get Republicans on board last weekend. Critics suggested the move is a veiled attempted to thwart a provision mandating that the Pentagon rename confederate-named military bases.

Updated

Former US attorney calls on Georgia election officials to investigate Lindsey Graham

A former US attorney has called on the Georgia state election board to investigate South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham for pressuring the state’s top election official to interfere in the presidential election.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Michael J Moore – an attorney based in Atlanta – asked the state election board to investigate whether Graham had violated Georgia law in a letter dated Thursday.

From AJC’s report on the letter:

I am particularly concerned that the chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee would make any attempt to interfere with the Georgia secretary of state as he endeavored to lawfully perform his constitutional duties in overseeing the 2020 election and the counting, and re-counting, of the votes cast in the state of Georgia,” Moore wrote.

He also requested the board investigate any attempt by Graham to discard lawful ballots cast for the upcoming 5 January Georgia senate runoff election.

Updated

Mary Trump: “Impossible for Donald to believe that he lost”

In an appearance on ABC’s The View, Mary Trump - niece of Donald Trump - insisted it’s “impossible for [the president] to believe that he lost,” calling her uncle “a very desperate man” who knows “that his best option is to cling to power no matter who gets hurt in the process”.

“Obviously there really isn’t any way for him to do [stay in office] legitimately,” she said. “So he’s going to pursue whatever illegitimate means that he has at his disposal”.

The daughter of the Trump’s brother, Fred Trump Jr and sister-in-law Linda Clapp was commenting about the Republican’s 46-minute speech posted to Facebook.

With cautions of a leader with “serious psychological disorders” echoing her best-selling book Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump insisted her uncle was hurting his own bruised ego looking “like a sore loser” and “behaving like an immature bully”.

“It is going to increase his irrelevance after the inauguration,” she said. “I think it increases the urgency for holding him accountable when he no longer has the protection of the Oval Office.”

Updated

Justice department laws alleges Facebook illegally reserved jobs for H-1B visa holders

A justice department lawsuit alleges the Facebook, the world’s largest social-media platform, illegally reserved high-paying jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence, failing to sufficiently search for US applicants and potential hires.

From Reuters:

The suit said Facebook didn’t advertise the reserved positions on its website and required candidates to mail in their applications rather than accepting them online.

Companies sponsoring workers for employment-based green cards are required to show as part of the federal application process that they couldn’t find any qualified American workers to fill the job.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Updated

CDC: US could see nearly 20,000 Covid-19 deaths week of Christmas

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a grim forecast of an estimated 9,500 to 19,500 deaths the week of Christmas alone, contributing to a projection of tens of thousands of new Covid-19 deaths over the next four weeks.

The CDC’s National Ensemble Forecast, which aggregates models from 37 different groups, projects that by the end of December, the overall US death toll from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could reach 303,000 on the low end and 329,000 on the high end.

Washington Post

Updated

More Senate Republicans open coronavirus relief bill

The Washington Post reports Republican senators Joni Ernst of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas expressed their openness to a $908m coronavirus relief package, which had been unveiled by a group of moderate Republican and Democratic senators Tuesday:

On Thursday, Ernst and Cornyn expressed measured support for the developing talks. Ernst, a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, did not dismiss the viability of the $908 billion framework despite expressing concerns about some of its policy provisions. Cornyn also said senior Democrats’ embrace of the bipartisan plan “represents progress.”

Read more at The Post.

Updated

Rhode Island governor, Gina Raimondo, has ruled herself out of the running for president-elect Joe Biden’s secretary of health and human services (HHS).

“I am not going to be President-elect Biden’s nominee for HHS secretary,” Raimondo said on Thursday. “My focus is right here in Rhode Island, as I have said. I’m working 24/7 to keep Rhode Islanders safe and keeping our economy moving, and I have nothing else to add on that topic.”

The governor in recent days had been mentioned as a leading contender for the job, along with Vivek Murthy, former surgeon general and co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force.

Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton have pledged to get vaccinated for coronavirus on television to promote the safety of the vaccine.

The trio’s effort comes as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prepares to meet next week to decide whether to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech for use in the US.

Here’s more from Adam Gabbatt:

Attorneys for Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers called the Trump lawsuit dismissed by the state supreme court today an “assault on democracy”.

“President Trump’s (lawsuit) seeks nothing less than to overturn the will of nearly 3.3 million Wisconsin voters,” said Evers’ attorneys in filings with the court.

“It is a shocking and outrageous assault on our democracy. He is simply trying to seize Wisconsin’s electoral votes, even though he lost the statewide election.”

With the 8 December deadline for resolving election disputes at the state level fast approaching, the Trump campaign is becoming increasingly desperate in its efforts to overturn results.

Updated

Wisconsin supreme court declines to hear Trump election lawsuit

Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled supreme court has refused to hear Donald Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the battleground state, saying the case must first wind its way through lower courts.

It’s the latest legal defeat in a string of losses for the president’s post-election lawsuits.

The AP reports:

Trump had asked the Wisconsin supreme court to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties, alleging irregularities in the way absentee ballots were administered. His lawsuit 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 had wanted the supreme court to take the case directly, saying there wasn’t enough time to wage the legal battle by starting first with a lower court. But attorneys for Governor Tony Evers and the state Department of Justice argued the law required the lawsuit to start with lower courts.

The court ruled 4-3 against Trump, with swing justice Brian Hagedorn joining three liberal justices in denying the petition. The order said Trump can file in circuit court.

It was not immediately known if Trump would still pursue the case through lower courts. His campaign spokeswoman did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Trump filed a similar lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday.

Updated

Here's what we've covered thus far:

Another day in yet another long week inching closer to its final stretch, but let’s take a look at what we’ve covered thus far:

Updated

Ivanka Trump defends work in deposition over inauguration funds

Ivanka Trump confirmed she was deposed Wednesday in connection to a lawsuit claiming the Trump campaign misused donor funds from the 2017 inauguration. The elder daughter of Donald Trump blasted the five-hour long inquiry as an example of “vindictiveness & waste of taxpayer dollars.”

The daughter Trump faces serious allegations that made her questioning under oath no mere quiz like a university midterm or standardized test. The suit alleges the committee coordinated with Trump family members to overpay for event space in a way that enriched the family.

“I shared with them an email from 4 years ago where I sent instructions to the hotel to charge ‘a fair market rate,’” she wrote in her defense.

Updated

Trump declines to comment on confidence in AG Barr

CBS White House producer Sara Cook on Donald Trump’s exchange with reporters who pushed the president on Thursday for details about his talks with attorney general William Barr on this week:

Barr met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday, just hours after confirming to the Associated Press that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread election or voter fraud to overturn the election.

According to CBS pool reporters, their sources described the meeting as “tense,” saying Trump is “not happy” with Barr.

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) unveiled her official merchandise site’s latest offering Thursday, and the price isn’t sitting well with some consumers.

The site is selling ‘tax the rich’ sweatshirts for just $58. But in this economic climate, the price may be ironically meant for the rich mentioned on the shirt.

AOC appeared to take the mostly GOP-led criticism in jest, however, pointing out the source of the expense: ethical and unionized American labor.

Updated

Gingrich: Sidney Powell and L Lin Wood ‘totally destructive’

Newt Gingrich called Donald Trump’s legal team, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, ‘totally destructive’ following the two attorneys comments encouraging Georgians not to vote in the state’s senate runoff election. Powell and Wood instead called on state officials address unsubstantiated and long debunked claims of voter fraud.

Trump campaign officials were quick to disassociate from the attorneys, confirming neither are connected with the campaign in any capacity. That hasn’t stopped the two from launching last-ditch and half-baked legal battles on the president’s behalf.

Incumbent senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler face tough challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively, so voter apathy will only harm Republicans.

Fearing the “don’t vote strategy will cripple America,” Gingrich called on “every Georgia conservative” to vote in the runoff.

Updated

Democratic challengers lead Georgia senators in latest poll

According to SurveyUSA, the Democratic challengers for Georgia’s senate run-offs currently lead their respective Republican incumbents:

  • Democrat Jon Ossoff leads Republican David Perdue 50-48%
  • Democrat Raphael Warnock leads Republican Kelly Loeffler 52-45%

These hotly contested races could determine who holds control in the US senate as the Joe Biden administration takes over. With astronaut Mark Kelly sworn in as Arizona’s newest Democratic senator the week, the Republican’s majority dropped to 52-48.

Should Democrats pick up both seats in January’s run-off, that lead dissipates, becoming a 50-50 tie. The tiebreak would then be come down to a vote from the vice president: Democrat Kamala Harris.

According to the poll, more than 80% of Georgians said they intend to vote in the January contest.

Updated

Twitter users and journalists have dug more into the background of Melissa Carone, the IT worker who claimed as a former Dominion Voting Systems employee, she witnessed massive voter fraud in a Michigan.

Already deemed “not credible” by a Wayne County judge, Donald Trump’s star witness in his push to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election went on to accost Michigan officials in an election hearing Wednesday, insisting, “I know what I saw”.

Since the bizarre spectacle, with even legal advisor Rudy Giuliani struggling to calm her, Twitter users poked even more holes in everything from Carone’s allegations of voter fraud (including claiming deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was involved), to her educational and professional background.

Despite claims that she’s working with a different attorney and “had to shut down all of [her] social media accounts due to harassment and fear for [her] safety,” online investigators easily found evidence to the contrary.

That’s only one of many unusual witnesses called by Giuliani and his team, another unidentified witnessed claiming “all Chinese look alike” when pushing for voter ID laws.

Updated

Biden adviser: Race central to coronavirus fight

Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith, a senior adviser to the incoming Joe Biden administration’s Covid-19 pandemic response spoke to the Associated Press about the critical role race continues to play in combatting the spread of the coronavirus.

“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.”

People of color, particularly Black Americans, have faced an unequal consequence from the outbreak since its onset, from 1-in-1000 Black Americans dying of the virus, to 1-in-6 losing a job from the economic impact.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Black people, Latinos and Native Americans’ rates of hospitalization and death from Covid-19 are two-to-four times higher than for white Americans.

Also an associate dean for health equity research at Yale’s medical school, Nunez-Smith will serve on the president-elect’s advisory board alongside Vivek Murthy and David Kessler, former surgeon general and Food and Drug Administration commissioner for the Barack Obama administration, respectively.

“This is a unified voice across the entire transition,” Nunez-Smith told the AP of the administration’s commitment to tackle racial inequality in the pandemic fight.

Read more from the AP.

Updated

More on Dr Anthony Fauci’s criticism of the UK’s vaccine approval:

CBS News White House correspondent Steven Portnoy with more on Dr Anthony Fauci’s criticisms of the UK approving a vaccine by Pfizer.

Leading the current administration’s coronavirus task force, Fauci noted that Donald Trump’s nightly Covid briefings yielded “mixed” results before becoming too politicized. According to Portnoy, Fauci also confirmed that he is now cooperating and meeting virtually with president-elect Joe Biden’s landing team.

The full interview with CBS’s Takeout Podcast airs Friday.

Georgia senator David Perdue made more than 2,500 stock trades

A bombshell analysis from the New York Times and Senate Stock Watcher, a nonpartisan website that aggregates lawmaker trading, found that Georgia senator David Purdue bought and sold stock from his portfolio a total of 2,596 times, including several companies within his senate committees’ oversight, which raises additional questions of a conflict of interest.

The Times analyzed data to uncover that the senator, who faces a tough run-off election in January against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, made transactions accounting for nearly a third of all senators’ trades reported in the past six years.

The data also shows the breadth of trades Mr. Perdue made in companies that stood to benefit from policy and spending matters that came not just before the Senate as a whole, but before the committees and subcommittees on which he served.

Read more from The New York Times.

Updated

Good day from Baltimore!

I’m Kenya Evelyn, kicking off the blog from Stateside, and there’s much to follow today, including the continued fallout from former president Barack Obama’s Snapchat interview calling Defund the Police a “snappy” slogan that alienates voters.

We’ll get updates out of Wisconsin as Donald Trump’s attempts to suppress the will of the American people continue by challenging more than 200,000 votes of mostly Black and Democratic voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties.

And there’s more fallout from Trump’s bizarre video statement further pushing debunked voter fraud claims, and his legal team’s press conference disguised as a hearing in Michigan - including witness testimony that long-deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez interfered in the 2020 presidential election. It gets even worse from there.

Stay tuned, we have lots for you throughout the day.

Updated

Fauci suggests UK has not scrutinized vaccine data 'carefully'

Dr Anthony Fauci has criticised the UK for approving Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine so rapidly.

Business Insider report that he told Fox News that UK regulators hadn’t scrutinized the Pfizer trial data as “carefully” as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and warned that rapid approvals could reduce public confidence in the shot.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “The UK did not do it as carefully and they got a couple of days ahead.”

“If you go quickly and you do it superficially, people are not going to want to get vaccinated,” he said, adding the US will be there “very soon.”

The FDA has arranged a meeting of an independent expert panel to evaluate the Pfizer vaccine, which studies suggest is 95% effective, for 10 December.

Read more here: Business Insider – Fauci says UK approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine too fast

Updated

Number of Americans filing new jobless claims falls

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims has fallen.

The closely-watched initial claims total dipped to 712,000 (seasonally-adjusted) last week, down from 787,000 in the previous seven days.

Economists had expected the figure to be higher, around 775,000, given the impact of surging Covid-19 cases and deaths in the US, and the latest restrictions.

But it’s still a worryingly high number of people seeking help -- and still higher than the pre-pandemic record of 695k (this year, the initial claims peaked at over 6 million one grim week).

A further 289,000 freelancers, self-employed workers and others who can’t file initial claims sought help under the PUA programme.

So overall, nearly one million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefit last week, showing the long-term economic damage.

The number of Americans receiving unemployment support for at least a fortnight also fell.

The continuing claims total dropped to 5.52m in the week to November 21, from 6.08m the previous seven days.

That sounds positive (if people are moving back into work), but it may simply show that some families have simply used up their entitlement, so their benefits are expiring.

Updated

Team Trump are unhappy this morning with the way that lawmakers in Michigan treated witnesses at that House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, where Rudy Giuliani appeared trying to get the state legislature to overthrow the election results. [See 7:25am]

The internet, meanwhile, cannot get enough clips of Melissa Carone…

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, has been on ABC News’ Good Morning America to talk about the coronavirus pandemic. He said he had been concerned about the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations, but he had grown more hopeful that the federal government response would not lapse.

“We’re in the middle of the worst battle of this war, and the hand-off has got to be smooth. We’ve got to work together. There’s got to be no politics in this virus,” he told the show, reports Susan Heavey for Reuters.

Hogan echoed CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield’s warning from yesterday, citing dark days ahead and noting even when vaccines are approved, there initially won’t be enough to even cover all of his state’s healthcare workers.

“The worst part of this virus is coming in the weeks and maybe the month or two to come. And we’re not going to have enough for everybody, so we’re just asking for patience,” Hogan said.

Redfield told an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce that the United States could start losing around 3,000 people each day over the next two months.

“The mortality concerns are real and I do think unfortunately before we see February, we could be close to 450,000 Americans that have died from this virus,” Redfield said.

The administration of outgoing president Donald Trump is still yet to articulate an effective nationwide strategy to contain the virus beyond promoting the development of a vaccine, which could be rolled out later this month, but which faces an uphill battle amid a skeptical public and logistical challenges.

The president’s few public appearances recently have been dedicated to efforts to overturn the results of the 3 November election rather than deal with coronavirus. Prior to the election, Donald Trump said that the country was rounding the corner and the media would no longer talk about Covid from 4 November onwards.

Kamala Harris names key appointments to her team: Tina Flournoy, Nancy McEldowney and Rohini Kosoglu

Vice president-elect Kamala Harris has just officially announced the membership of her White House senior staff – although the names have been in the frame for a couple of days. Chief of Staff will be Tina Flournoy, National Security Advisor will be Ambassador Nancy McEldowney and Domestic Policy Advisor will be Rohini Kosoglu.

In a press statement, Harris says:

Leading my office as Chief of Staff will be Tina Flournoy, whose deep experience, public policy expertise, and accomplished career in public service make her uniquely qualified for this important position. Tina brings a strong commitment to serving the American people, and her leadership will be critical as we work to overcome the unprecedented challenges facing our nation. Serving as my National Security Advisor will be Ambassador Nancy McEldowney, whose distinguished Foreign Service career and leadership abroad will be invaluable as we keep the American people safe and advance our country’s interests around the world. And serving as my Domestic Policy Advisor will be Rohini Kosoglu, who is not only an expert on some of the most important issues facing the American people, but also one of my closest and most trusted aides from the Senate and presidential campaign.

Some mixed messages coming out of the Trump team and outriders this week on the Georgia Senate runoff races in January. This morning Tim Murtaugh, the director of comms for Trump’s failed re-election campaign, has urged Republicans to get out and vote to keep hold of Senate control. The president will campaign in the state on Saturday.

Some Republican strategists are concerned that Trump might be a bit of a loose cannon to have in the state, depending on what he says about the integrity of elections. Especially if he takes his cue from Sidney Powell.

Although she has been estranged from his legal team, she was campaigning in Georgia yesterday at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Atlanta, where she urged Republicans not to take part in the election, saying:

There should not be a runoff, certainly not on Dominion machines. I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure. I mean that regardless of party. We can’t live in a free republic unless we know our votes are legal and secure.

Newt Gingrich is not amused.

Updated

Google violated US labor laws when it surveilled and terminated workers who organized employee protests, according to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The complaint was filed on Wednesday following a year-long investigation launched by terminated employees who filed a petition with the board in 2019, after hundreds of Google employees carried out internal protests and public demonstrations against Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection. This came after a huge walkout in 2018 over the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations. The Communications Workers of America union helped author the workers’ charges.

The NLRB complaint absolved two fired employees of any wrongdoing and found Google repeatedly violated US labor law by using “terminations and intimidation in order to quell workplace activism”. It also found Google’s accessing of worker calendars and other internal documents constituted unlawful surveillance.

One of the fired workers, Laurence Berland, described the NLRB’s move as significant “at a time when we’re seeing the power of a handful of tech billionaires consolidate control over our lives and our society”. Berland was fired while organizing to expose and counter Google’s continuing efforts to work with the union-busting firm IRI Consultants.

“Google’s hiring of IRI is an unambiguous declaration that management will no longer tolerate worker organizing,” he said. “Management and their union-busting cronies wanted to send that message, and the NLRB is now sending their own message: worker organizing is protected by law.”

Read more of Kari Paul’s report here: Google broke US law by firing workers behind protests, complaint says

Geoffrey Mak writes for us this morning on how he see Republicans winning over Asian immigrants like his father:

He is just one of many Chinese American immigrants who increasingly find sympathy and belonging in the Republican party. They appear undeterred by Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. More pressingly, they vehemently hate the Chinese Communist party and support Trump’s hawkish stance against China in the trade wars. Chinese voters make up the largest group within Asian Americans, who are collectively the fastest-growing demographic category in the country. While Asian Americans supported Biden overall, Trump gained seven percentage points with Asian Americans this election.

This might be cause for alarm for Democrats, who like to see themselves as the bearer of a nationwide multiracial coalition. Is this a myth? In California, a Democratic stronghold, Asian Americans appear increasingly nonplussed about campaigns touting multicultural ideals. For instance, many Asian American families oppose affirmative action, fearing that their children would suffer in elite university admissions if merit were given less weight than race. So when Proposition 16 – which would have ended a 24-year-old ban on affirmative action in education, employment and contracting – appeared on the ballot, Asian Americans played a pivotal role in voting it down.

When Kamala Harris identified as the first Asian American vice-presidential candidate, my father did not particularly “feel seen”. When he read that Black Lives Matter protests turned violent, he bought an American flag from Amazon and hoisted it above his front door. Some of his views and choices mystify me, but I see how, for instance, a term like “Bipoc” – which stands for Black and Indigenous people of color, and stakes authority based on relative disadvantage – risks leaving many Asian Americans feeling squeezed out of the minority coalition, like an expendable casualty.

Read more here: Geoffrey Mak – Republicans are winning over Asian immigrants like my father. Here’s why

Axios have an analysis of just how bad these most recent coronavirus figures are for the US, where the number of people hospitalised with Covid has topped 100,000 for the first time. Sam Baker and Danielle Alberti write:

For weeks, every available data point has said the same thing — that the pandemic is as bad as it’s ever been in the U.S. Yesterday’s grim new hospitalisation milestone represents an 11% increase in hospitalizations over the past week, and a 26% jump over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations are rising in 38 states, in some cases reaching unsustainable levels.

Many rural areas already have more patients than they can handle, prompting local hospitals to send their coronavirus patients to the nearest city with some capacity left to spare. But as cases keep rising, everyone’s capacity shrinks.

In New Mexico, for example, coronavirus patients are using 27% of hospital beds. To put that number in perspective: It’s a surge that has left the entire state with just 16 ICU beds left to spare.

Read more here: Axios – Coronavirus hospitalizations top 100,000 for the first time

Sam Levine and Alvin Chang in New York have the latest in our fight to vote series, looking at how Democrats took a risk to push mail-in voting – and it paid off.

When America began shutting down this spring because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it transformed the already high-stakes 2020 race into a precarious high-wire balancing act.

Election officials across the country, many of whom were already underfunded and under-resourced, began scrambling to find places where they could safely offer in-person voting, and poll workers, who tend to skew older, began to drop out. Disastrous primaries in Wisconsin and Georgia offered alarming signals that America was barrelling towards a chaotic general election.

Amid this mayhem, states where few people typically vote by mail were suddenly forced to scale up and run elections in which most people were expected to vote that way, hoping to avoid long lines and human contact amid the pandemic. As the year wore on, a sharp partisan divide emerged. Donald Trump railed against voting by mail, while Democrats aggressively encouraged supporters to do so.

For Democrats, it was a risk. In many states, vote by mail had not been used before – including key battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. For voters used to casting their ballots in person, voting by mail offered a new set of rules and procedures to follow and a voter could have their ballot rejected for even a small mistake.

While Democrats waged an aggressive legal battle to loosen mail-in voting restrictions many Republican officials refused to do so. Congress allocated a fraction of the estimated $4bn needed to run elections with significantly scaled-up mail-in voting. Despite severe mail delays this summer, Republican officials in Texas and Ohio limited opportunities for voters to return their ballots in person. Texas Republicans fought to block people from being able to register to vote online and sought to reject 127,000 ballots cast using drive-thru voting. Republicans in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina strongly objected to efforts to give voters more time to return their ballots and election officials to count them. In Alabama, the state’s top election official successfully went all the way to the US supreme court to block counties from offering curbside voting. In Oklahoma, after the state supreme court struck down a law requiring voters to get their ballots notarized, Republicans moved quickly to reinstate a revised version of the measure.

Now, nearly a month after the election, the risk appears to have paid off for Democrats. The nightmare scenarios largely didn’t occur – there weren’t widespread mail delays leading to millions of Americans being disenfranchised, as many feared this summer. Instead, states with little vote-by-mail experience were able to match more experienced states in running a successful election. More than 100 million people voted early, either in person or by mail – a record number.

Read more of Sam Levine and Alvin Chang’s analysis here: Democrats took a risk to push mail-in voting. It paid off

Giuliani appearance at Michigan oversight committee meeting described as 'a farce and a legislative embarrassment'

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was in Michigan yesterday, at a lengthy and at times farcical hearing into the election being held by the Michigan House Oversight Committee. He appeared to be pressuring the legislature to overturn the election result, where Joe Biden won the state by a margin of around 154,000.

“You are the final arbiter of how honest or not your election is in your state,” Giuliani said at one point. “And it’s your responsibility to stand up to that. If we let them get away with this, I don’t know what happens after this.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, a member of the president’s legal team, arrive for an appearance before the Michigan House Oversight Committee.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, a member of the president’s legal team, arrive for an appearance before the Michigan House Oversight Committee. Photograph: Rey Del Rio/Getty Images

The four hour hearing took place in highly unusual circumstances, and the Republican House Oversight Chairman Matt Hall even allowed Giuliani to question witnesses, a procedure that is usually the preserve of the lawmakers themselves.

One witness who claimed to have worked as a contractor for Dominion Voting System, asserted that she had seen voter fraud taking place. “I know for a fact that there was illegal activity going on there” she said. A Washington Post analysis earlier this week showed that the majoroity of swing-state counties that were using Dominion Voting System machines actually voted for Donald Trump.

Another witness complained about the lack of voter ID requirements, before asserting that ‘all Chinese look alike’.

“The other representative said that you can actually show up and vote without an ID, it’s shocking. How can you allow that to happen. A lot of people think all Indians look alike, I think all Chinese look alike, so how would you tell?”

Democratic Michigan Senator Chris Hertel issued a Facebook post during the hearing saying “This is the biggest joke of a hearing I’ve ever seen. House members limited in their questions but Giuliani can ask all the questions he wants. This is a farce and a legislative embarrassment.”

Other witnesses included Jessy Jacob, who says she was working in the center for the election. She says she was told to “pre-date” ballots and was kicked out when she notified other workers that someone’s signature didn’t match the one on their license. “I was treated like a criminal,” Jacob said.

State Representative Darrin Camilleri questioned her credibility and reminded the hearing that a Wayne County judge had called into question her story at a court hearing earlier in the month.

Melissa Carone was also a witness. She said she saw election workers count multiple ballots. “They were just rescanning, rescanning, rescanning, counting ballots nine to ten times, counting votes nine to ten times,” Carone said.

“So they were counting the same ballot the same vote, nine or ten times?” Giuliani asked. “Yes, sir,” Carone replied. Giulaini asked Carone how many ballots she saw get counted multiple times, she responded “at least 30,000.”

This account has also already been given in court, where the judge found Carone’s allegations “simply not credible.”

The witnesses did not have to make their statements on oath at the hearing.

I’m not going to dwell particularly on Donald Trump’s latest video rant – suffice it to say that it was the mix of conspiracy theory and baseless accusations of voter fraud that we’ve come to expect in the month since he lost the election to Joe Biden. Claims, it should be noted, that Trump and his team have repeatedly made on social media and at press conferences, but not in court, where the burden of proof is set somewhat higher than it is on your uncle’s Facebook feed.

This analysis last night by Philip Bump caught my eye though – he described it as the most petulant 46 minutes in American history.

Trump read and riffed on a prepared script lambasting those who had the audacity to suggest that receiving fewer votes than his opponent meant he shouldn’t serve a second consecutive term in office. It was also clearly no small undertaking; the numerous cuts in the final product suggested that what was offered to the country was a subset of what Trump had to say to the camera. This was a project. Good thing Trump rarely has any official duties on his calendar anymore.

What the video wasn’t was a compelling argument for the idea that the 2020 presidential contest was somehow marred by fraud. It was, almost literally, a distillation of the past four weeks of rants, allegations and accusations, including countless examples of claims which have already been soundly debunked. That sudden surge of votes seen in Wisconsin, something so compelling in Trump’s eyes that he brought a visual aid to demonstrate it? We dispatched that on 11 November: it was just the county of Milwaukee reporting its results. Whether it’s more worrisome if Trump knew it had been debunked or if he didn’t is up to you to determine.

It was a pastiche of so much that we’ve heard so often. It presented no coherent case for the existence of fraud, instead substituting a volume of accusations for an abundance of proof. Having hundreds of people make unfounded allegations isn’t proof of wrongdoing, as any review of those sheaves of affidavits collected by Trump’s campaign from various supporters makes clear.

Since polls closed 3 November Trump’s public response to his loss has been one of exasperation, the spoiled child suddenly told that he can’t do something he wants to do. Some part of this is political, an effort to lash out at President-elect Joe Biden and to impose an emotional cost on Democrats broadly. But there’s obviously something deeper and more psychological at play, a darker shadow of refusal and frustration and fury that can’t as easily be countered with simple rationality.

Read more here: Washington Post – The most petulant 46 minutes in American history

Jill Filipovic has filed her latest column for us, saying that Donald Trump believes in clemency and mercy – but only for his friends and family…

Given that Donald Trump treats the office of the presidency like a personal branding tool and deals with adversity like a two-bit mafioso, this moment was perhaps predictable: the president is reportedly considering pre-emptively pardoning three of his children, his son-in-law, and associates including Rudy Giuliani. He has already pardoned or commuted the sentences of several of his friends and associates, which should raise some eyebrows – why do so many people who surround this president wind up charged with a crime, in jail, or bracing themselves for criminal charges? And why is the supposedly law-and-order “pro-life” Republican party shrugging as this president excuses the criminality of his kin and his cronies while he refuses to intervene to save anyone from execution – and in fact, is using what little time he has left in office to reinstate barbaric practices like death by firing squad?

We all know Trump didn’t drain the swamp. But in his last two months in office, he is sending a clear message about who and what he and his party value. It’s not Christian mercy, or hard-nosed law and order, or even the sanctity of life. It’s power, dominance and a thick line between two Americas: one connected, white, power-hungry and lawless, and the other at its mercy.

Many expect that the president will issue a flurry of pardons and commutations, and this largesse will be bestowed much like the measly 11 pardons and commutations he’s issued so far: on people who worked for him, people who supported him, people could incriminate him and people who personally impress him (sometimes via reality television stars, because we are living in the worst of times).

Read more here: Jill Filipovic – Donald Trump believes in clemency and mercy. But only for his friends and family

Preliminary hearing in Kyle Rittenhouse homicide case due in Wisconsin today

17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of killing two men during an August protest in Wisconsin, is due in court today for a preliminary hearing in the case.

The teenager from Antioch, Illinois is also charged in the wounding of a third person on 25 August during a night of protest in Kenosha that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a local Black man.

Rittenhouse told police he was attacked while guarding a business and that he fired in self-defense. He was freed from jail last month after posting $2 million bond, with most of the money raised through a legal defense fund set up by conservatives who have repeatedly attempted to portray him as a patriot protecting other people’s property.

Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have painted Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy white supremacist, who travelled from Illinois to Kenosha with a gun specifically looking for any unrest and an opportunity to shoot.

Rittenhouse is charged with homicide and attempted homicide for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounding a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz. A preliminary hearing is the stage at which a court decides whether enough evidence exists to proceed to trial.

Associated Press report that in a filing this week, Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards asked the court to dismiss two of the six counts . He argued that a misdemeanor count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 isn’t supported by the law – an argument that the court already rejected once. Richards also sought the dismissal of a felony count against Rittenhouse for recklessly endangering the public’s safety by using a dangerous weapon

The shootings happened two days after a white police officer trying to arrest Blake shot the 29-year-old seven times in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down. Video of the shooting sparked several nights of protests in Kenosha, a city of about 100,000 near the Wisconsin-Illinois border.

Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis need to extend to American classrooms with routine lessons on the threats posed by global heating, two former US education secretaries have urged.

In a letter to the Democratic president-elect, the former top education officials – John King and Arne Duncan – said the education of more than 50 million children in US public schools provides a “critical opportunity” to prepare them for a world transformed by climate change, as well as the opportunities afforded by renewable energy and other potential solutions to the crisis.

“Supporting students today in learning about climate change and providing the opportunity to explore and consider climate solutions will increase the resilience of our society as well as our competitiveness in a green economy,” states the letter.

The statement was also signed by Christine Todd Whitman and Gina McCarthy, both former administrators of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Sally Jewell, the former interior secretary, and a dozen other climate activists, education specialists and teacher union representatives.

Biden has vowed to use the breadth of the federal government to address the climate crisis, from state department diplomacy to the levers of economic policy. But the letter urges Biden to not overlook the department of education in this quest, suggesting emissions could be cut from sources such as school buses as well as encouraging the uptake of climate-themed lessons.

“The education secretary could use the bully pulpit to talk about the importance of climate change education, which would be useful to leading the way,” King, who was education secretary in Barack Obama’s administration, told the Guardian.

“There are a lot of students not learning about climate change at all when the science is quite settled on this. Young people will have to navigate a world deeply impacted by climate change so they need to learn about that, not just the science of it but the social and economic consequences,” King added.

Read more of Oliver Milman’s report here: Teaching climate crisis in classrooms critical for children, top educators say

Trump administration bans cotton imports from Xinjiang, places visa restrictions on Chinese politicians

The Trump administration has expanded economic pressure on China’s western region of Xinjiang, banning cotton imports from a powerful Chinese quasi-military organization that it says uses the forced labor of detained Uighur Muslims.

Reuters report that the US. Customs and Border Protection agency said on Wednesday its “Withhold Release Order” would ban cotton and cotton products from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), one of China’s largest producers.

XPCC produced 30% of China’s cotton in 2015 and the ban could have a sweeping effect on companies globally involved in selling textiles and apparel to the United States.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kenneth Cuccinelli, who oversees the border agency, called “Made in China” a “warning label.”

“The cheap cotton goods you may be buying for family and friends during this season of giving - if coming from China - may have been made by slave labor in some of the most egregious human rights violations existing today in the modern world,” he told a news conference.

China’s Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded by saying that US politicians “concoct false news about forced labor so as to suppress Chinese firms and China.”

In a separate development, the New York Times is reporting that the Trump’s administration has restricted travel to the United States by Chinese Communist Party members and their families.

New rules issued on Wednesday limit the validity of travel visas for party members and families to one month and a single entry, the paper reported. Previously, party members, like other Chinese citizens, could obtain US visitor visas of up to 10 years’ duration.

“This clearly is an escalated form of political oppression towards China by some extreme anti-China forces in the US who act out of intense ideological bias and a deep-rooted Cold War mentality,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded at a news briefing.

The Trump administration has sought to cement the outgoing president’s tough-on-China legacy as relations between the world’s two largest economies have sunk to their lowest point in decades.

Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt at Reuters have a little more on potential coronavirus ‘czar’ Jeff Zients.

They write that when technical problems marred the ballyhooed launch of the Affordable Care Act’s website, Barack Obama turned to JZients, an economic adviser touted for his managerial skills, to repair Obama’s signature policy rollout.

Seven years later, Joe Biden is considering tapping Zients to tackle a far more daunting problem. The prominent coronavirus ‘czar’ position would be similar to the role that Ron Klain, Biden’s soon-to-be chief of staff, played for Obama administration during the Ebola crisis in 2014. While that outbreak ultimately killed only two people in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has already cost more than 270,000 US lives, and shows little sign of slowing.

Zients appears to be the front-runner for the job, which could be announced as soon as next week.

Jeff Zients was part of the Obama team at the White House.
Jeff Zients was part of the Obama team at the White House. Photograph: Larry Downing/Reuters

In addition to confronting the disease’s spread after Biden is sworn in on 20 January, the coronavirus ‘czar’ will oversee a mammoth and unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies. The rollout of the first vaccines may begin this month, but it could be months before they are widely available.

Zients, a wealthy businessman who has moved between the public sector and corporate America, has played a central role in the transition since Biden beat Trump last month. He has also served as a pandemic liaison of sorts with governors and state officials, frequently joining calls to share data and discuss concerns, according to two sources familiar with the calls.

“Zients has been impressive,” said one state Democratic official who has participated in the calls. “If the people currently involved in the transition are involved come January, I think we are in good hands.”

Zients’ corporate background, however, has concerned some liberal groups that question whether he would be too business-friendly. “The Covid czar will have to make decisions on just how deferential to business to be,” said Jeff Hauser, head of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group that scrutinizes executive branch appointees for their corporate ties.

It is difficult to imagine more consequential picks for president-elect Joe Biden than his top health care officials.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for Associated Press that one prominent candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has already faded from the scene. New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was offered another Cabinet post — interior secretary — and turned it down, a person close to the Biden transition said Wednesday.

Biden is expected to announce his choice for HHS secretary next week. That person has to have “the confidence of the president, the ability to operate collaboratively across the government, credibility within the health care world, and the capacity to work with the states,” said former HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who served under Republican President George W. Bush.

Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo has emerged as a focus of attention for the top health job. Although Raimondo has been aggressive in confronting the virus, her state is facing a dangerous surge and struggling to flatten the curve. Separately, Raimondo’s business-friendly orientation may raise objections from the left flank of the Democratic Party.

Also in the running is former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force. Murthy has a soft-spoken demeanor and a reputation for consensus building. He’s the author of a recent book addressing the human toll of loneliness, a problem that has become more widely recognized in the time of Covid-19.

Alongside his health secretary, Biden is expected to name a top-level White House adviser to coordinate the government’s extensive coronavirus response. Vaccines developed under the Trump administration will be delivered on Biden’s watch, a massive undertaking that’s bound to have its share of logistical problems.

Democratic health policy experts say the leading candidate is businessman Jeff Zients, an economic adviser in the Obama White House who was widely credited with rescuing HealthCare.gov after its disastrous launch in 2013.

Keeping the focus on the virus, Biden is also said to be close to nominating a commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration and a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health care will be a defining issue of Biden’s presidency even after expected vaccines defuse the threat of COVID-19, former HHS Secretary Leavitt predicted.

Addressing Medicare’s finances will become an urgent priority before the end of the first term. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare’s giant trust fund for inpatient care will be unable to cover expected costs in 2024. “If that is the case, they are going to have to deal with it legislatively in 2021 or 2022,” Leavitt said.

Someone not taking as many precautions as Hawaii seems to be secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Overnight the Washington Post has been reporting on the holiday party planning at the state department.

Following a sharp spike in coronavirus cases across the country, State Department leadership sent out a notice to employees one week ago recommending that “any non-mission critical events” be changed to “virtual events as opposed to in-person gatherings.”

That same week, event planners were told that the guidance did not apply to the upcoming functions they were working on: large indoor holiday parties hosted by Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, on the eighth floor of the State Department involving hundreds of guests, food and drinks.

A copy of one invitation welcomes guests to a 15 December event titled “Diplomacy at Home for the Holidays” in the Benjamin Franklin Room, the department’s flagship reception space. Invitations have already gone out to 900 people, said two US officials familiar with the planning, raising concerns about a potential superspreader event.

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. “An indoor event of this kind is dangerous on so many levels.”

A State Department spokesman said “we plan to fully enforce social distancing measures at this reception, and face coverings are mandatory for admittance.”

When asked how he could expect attendees to keep masks on at a reception that includes food and drinks, the spokesman did not offer a response.

Read more here: Washington Post – Pompeo invites hundreds to indoor holiday parties after subordinates are warned against hosting ‘non-mission critical events’

NBC News report that a couple in Hawaii face reckless endangerment charges after they boarded a flight with their 4-year-old son even though they had tested positive for Covid-19. Janelle Griffith writes:

The couple, Wesley Moribe and Courtney Peterson, knew they had tested positive when they boarded a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Lihue, Coco Zickos, a spokeswoman for Kauai police, said Wednesday. San Francisco International Airport officials had instructed them to isolate and not to travel.

When Moribe and Peterson arrived at Lihue Airport, they were escorted by police to an isolation room for further processing and investigation. Moribe, 41, and Peterson, 46, residents of Wailua, were arrested on second-degree reckless endangerment charges. A family member took their son home.

“They knowingly boarded a flight aware of their positive Covid-19 test results, placing the passengers of the flight in danger of death,” Zickos said in a statement.

The couple posted bail, which was set at $1,000. They could face up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted.

Read more here: NBC News – Couple who tested positive for Covid are arrested after boarding flight to Hawaii

The potential arrival of a vaccine before the end of the year is one glimmer of hope in the pandemic, but with public trust in vaccines in the US seemingly low, it also appears it may spark a public spectacle. Former presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton have all volunteered to get a coronavirus vaccine shot in public to prove it’s safe. CNN report:

The three most recent former presidents hope an awareness campaign to promote confidence in its safety and effectiveness would be a powerful message. Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN that the 43rd president had reached out to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx to see how he could help promote the vaccine.

“He wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN. “First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, president Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”

Clinton’s press secretary told CNN on Wednesday that he too would be willing to take the vaccine in a public setting in order to promote it. “He will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same,” Angel Urena said.

Obama, in an interview scheduled to air today said that if Fauci said a coronavirus vaccine is safe, he believes him. The former president said “I promise you that when it’s been made available for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it,” he said.

“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.

Read more here: CNN – Former Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton volunteer to get coronavirus vaccine publicly to prove it’s safe

California’s agricultural workers have contracted Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of other residents in the state, a new study has found, laying bare the risks facing those who keep a $50bn industry afloat.

Farmworkers have been deemed “essential” and thus continued to work throughout the duration of the pandemic. Epidemiologists already knew that this primarily Latino workforce was disproportionately affected by the virus, with Latino individuals experiencing five to seven times the risk of Covid-19 mortality relative to white individuals in the US.

But a study from the University of California, Berkeley, published Wednesday, is the first to explore the prevalence of infection rates among the workforce putting food on tables across America.

The study surveyed 1,091 farmworkers from mid-July through the end of November in the Salinas Valley, home to more than 50,000 agricultural workers. Key findings include that 13% of these workers tested over this five-month period tested positive. Comparatively, just 5% of all Californians tested came back positive. The study also found that one in five of the workers tested were antibody positive, meaning they had been infected some time before.

Of the positive cases among the farmworkers, 45% of those cases were asymptomatic. The study found that 57% of workers who reported experiencing symptoms and 58% who had symptoms and later tested positive had continued working when they had symptoms.

“One of the main takeaways from this study is that the Latino population is not just disproportionately affected by high positivity rates, but they’re also affected in the sense that they’re vulnerable because a lot of them are going to work when sick because they’re worried about losing their jobs and losing their pay,” said the principle investigator Ana Maria Mora, an assistant researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health. “More than half of the farmworkers we surveyed, their annual household income is less than $25,000. A lot of them are food insecure. They’re bringing food to our table but many can’t provide food for their families.”

Read more of Vivian Ho’s report from San Francisco: Covid and California’s farmworkers – study lays bare disproportionate risks

US records highest daily level of Covid deaths, as hospitalisations exceeded 100,000 for first time

The US recorded its highest daily level of coronavirus deaths yesterday, as hospitalisations with Covid exceeded 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.

According to numbers from the Johns Hopkins University tracker, there were 3,157 new deaths recorded on Wednesday. The previous high was the 2,607 deaths recorded on 15 April at the beginning of the pandemic.

There were 200,070 new cases yesterday, marking only the second time that new cases have exceeded 200,000. With the total caseload now standing at 13,911,728, the US is set to record its 14 millionth case later today.

Yesterday Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaking at an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce, said that about 90% of hospitals in the country are at stretched capacity.

“We are at a very critical time right now about being able to maintain the resilience of our health-care system. The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that’s going to be put on our health-care system.”

Hospitalizations had been growing over the course of November, setting new records nearly every day. The 911 emergency call system has been described as “at a breaking point,” by the American Ambulance Association.

Task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx urged Americans who had traveled over the recent holiday weekend to behave as though they have the virus. “If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others.”

April’s peak of cases and deaths was concentrated mostly in the states of New York and New England, but the current spread of the virus is across the whole country, and shows no sign of slowing down. Over 1.1 million new cases have been recorded in the last seven days alone. 273,621 have died in total.

Vice president Mike Pence, who has been leading the Trump administration response to the pandemic, will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee later today.

default

Updated

Hi, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics for today. It is one month since the election. President-elect Joe Biden leads the popular vote count by 6.8m votes, and is projected to win the electoral college by 306 to 232, and is assembling his team to enter the White House on 20 January. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is posting 46 minute videos laden with conspiracy theories on Facebook. And the country is in the grip of an increasingly grim pandemic.

  • According to Johns Hopkins University figures, yesterday the US recorded its highest ever level of daily Covid deaths, at 3,157.
  • New cases topped 200,000 for only the second time, as the pandemic worsens, and the US heads for recording its 14 millionth case today.
  • Hospitalizations from the virus topped 100,000 — more than double the number at the beginning of November.
  • Vice president Mike Pence will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee later today.
  • Joe Biden’s transition team are meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as the president-elect faces growing and critical pressure from interest groups about who he nominates to run major agencies in his incoming administration.
  • Barack Obama chastised Democratic political candidates for using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police” that he argued could turn voters away.
  • It emerged that Ivanka Trump was interviewed by attorneys alleging that Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misused donor funds, a new court filing reveals.
  • Iran has passed a law threatening to halt nuclear inspections and boost enrichment, in a move sure to anger the Trump White House.
  • Facebook and Twitter placed warnings on a 46-minute video statement released by Donald Trump on Wednesday, in which the president repeated baseless claims of voter fraud in November’s election, which he lost.
  • The weekly unemployment claims report will be released at 8.30am ET, with the rise in coronavirus cases and restrictions expected to have a significant impact.
  • Trump’s diary today includes presenting the Medal of Freedom to former college football coach Lou Holtz and signing an executive order about the responsible use of artificial intelligence in government.
  • Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will give their first joint interview since the election this afternoon to CNN. It takes place at 4pm ET, and will air in full at 9pm tonight.
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