New Mexico shut down nearly everything to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by covid. It wasn’t enough

New Mexico shut down nearly everything to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by covid. It wasn’t enough

The Washington Post reports: The governor had been sounding the alarm for more than a month. But by mid-November, it was clear to Michelle Lujan Grisham that she would need to take extreme measures to head off the “most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced.” With covid-19 cases rising exponentially and hospital beds dwindling, she dragged her state back to the darkest days of spring, when restaurant dining was banned, nonessential businesses were closed and residents were ordered…

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Report points to microwave ‘attack’ as likely source of mystery illnesses that hit diplomats and spies

Report points to microwave ‘attack’ as likely source of mystery illnesses that hit diplomats and spies

The New York Times reports: The most probable cause of a series of mysterious afflictions that sickened American spies and diplomats abroad in the past several years was radiofrequency energy, a type of radiation that includes microwaves, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has concluded in a report. The conclusion by a committee of 19 experts in medicine and other fields cited “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy” as “the most plausible mechanism” to explain the illness, which came to…

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Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

MIT Technology Review reports: On the evening of Wednesday, December 2, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, announced via Twitter that the company had forced her out. Gebru, a widely respected leader in AI ethics research, is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. She also cofounded the Black in AI affinity group,…

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The U.S. has passed the hospital breaking point

The U.S. has passed the hospital breaking point

Robinson Meyer and Alexis C. Madrigal write: Since the beginning of the pandemic, public-health experts have warned of one particular nightmare. It is possible, they said, for the number of coronavirus patients to exceed the capacity of hospitals in a state or city to take care of them. Faced with a surge of severely ill people, doctors and nurses will have to put beds in hallways, spend less time with patients, and become more strict about who they admit into…

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How 700 epidemiologists are living now, and what they think is next

How 700 epidemiologists are living now, and what they think is next

The New York Times reports: Even with coronavirus vaccines on the way, many epidemiologists do not expect their lives to return to pre-pandemic normal until most Americans are vaccinated. In the meantime, most have eased up on some precautions — now going to the grocery store or seeing friends outdoors, for example — but are as cautious as ever about many activities of daily life. In a new informal survey of 700 epidemiologists by The New York Times, half said…

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Wall Street and finance workers could get COVID vaccines before most Americans

Wall Street and finance workers could get COVID vaccines before most Americans

MarketWatch reports: Wall Street could get a shot in the arm in the coming months, while much of Main Street waits months for their COVID inoculations. Lenders, bank tellers and traders could jump ahead of most Americans for vaccines, after such remedies receive emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, potentially putting financial industry workers ahead of those aged above 65, adults with medical issues and the rest of the U.S. population. The American Bankers Association said it has…

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A gathering political storm hits Georgia, with Trump on the way

A gathering political storm hits Georgia, with Trump on the way

The New York Times reports: Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats on Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud. With Mr. Trump set to campaign for the two Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly…

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Trump Pentagon nominee spreads debunked conspiracies and tweets suggesting Trump declare martial law

Trump Pentagon nominee spreads debunked conspiracies and tweets suggesting Trump declare martial law

CNN reports: President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a senior Pentagon official spread debunked conspiracies on Twitter that called Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden a “coup” attempt and shared tweets that suggest Trump should declare martial law. Scott O’Grady, a former fighter pilot and Trump loyalist, repeatedly retweeted tweets that falsely stated Trump won the election in “landslide fashion” and that millions of votes were stolen from the President. On November 25, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that said, “Trump…

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Judge orders restoration of DACA program

Judge orders restoration of DACA program

CBS News reports: A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era initiative that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, requiring officials to open the program to new applicants for the first time since 2017. Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday that states the department will accept and adjudicate Deferred Action for…

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How do you solve a problem like John Durham?

How do you solve a problem like John Durham?

Benjamin Wittes writes: How should the next attorney general, whoever he or she turns out to be, handle the John Durham probe? The more I study what Attorney General Bill Barr did in his secret October order naming the Connecticut U.S. attorney as a special counsel, the more devilishly clever it seems—and the bigger the pickle it creates for Barr’s successor. This, presumably, is Barr’s intention. Untangling this knot is going to take no small amount of diplomacy, lawyering and…

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House votes to legalize weed

House votes to legalize weed

Politico reports: The House on Friday passed a landmark bill that would remove federal penalties on marijuana and erase cannabis-related criminal records. The bill passed by a vote of 228-164, with several Republicans on board. While the MORE Act is not expected to come up in the Senate this year, and likely won’t in the next session of Congress either, its passage nevertheless marks a monumental step in marijuana policy. “We’ve been patient for years on this,” said Rep. Earl…

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Team Trump is trying to slay the Frankenstein monster it created

Team Trump is trying to slay the Frankenstein monster it created

The Daily Beast reports: On Wednesday evening, what was left of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign began insinuating that an attorney striving to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia could, in fact, be a Democratic plant working against the Republican Party and the president. Lin Wood, the charismatic though increasingly off-the-wall celebrity lawyer, has spent the past few weeks making wild accusations that the election in his state was corrupted and should be awarded to Trump. On Wednesday, he took…

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Trump is acting crazy, so why are we shrugging it off?

Trump is acting crazy, so why are we shrugging it off?

Susan Glasser writes: On Wednesday, more than three thousand Americans died because of the coronavirus, the nation’s deadliest day yet during the pandemic. The same day, the President of the United States chose to release, on social media, a forty-six-minute videotaped address from the White House. He called it possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” The pandemic’s grim toll was never mentioned. What was? The “tremendous vote fraud and irregularities” in last month’s election, the results of which…

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Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info

Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info

The Associated Press reports: The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press. Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a…

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Trump administration sets wave of executions for days leading up to Biden inauguration

Trump administration sets wave of executions for days leading up to Biden inauguration

The Washington Post reports: After nearly two decades without any federal executions, the Justice Department reversed course this summer by carrying out three death sentences in four days. Now the department is planning a similarly busy schedule of executions during the Trump administration’s final days, before a president who staunchly backs capital punishment is succeeded by one who opposes it. The Justice Department’s push to carry out executions during the run-up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration — including scheduling three…

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