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) 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. 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.
Sahil Kapur
(@sahilkapur)New: Capitol Hill is buzzing with fresh optimism about a Covid-19 relief deal.
Party leaders are converging on a price tag and negotiating after months of deadlock.
But some policy disputes linger—primarily on state/local aid and liability protections.https://t.co/mEqQfKK6GL
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. 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
Dominic Rushe
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.
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.
Daniel Strauss
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
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