Republicans to Trump: Georgia fraud claims could cost us the Senate

Republicans to Trump: Georgia fraud claims could cost us the Senate

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s sustained attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s presidential election tally are threatening the Republican Senate majority — and GOP senators are starting to fret. Even as the key battleground states have certified their results and Trump’s legal challenges are crumbling, the president is refusing to let go of his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and fight to overturn the election results. Moreover, the official presidential transition is already in motion, and President-elect Joe Biden received…

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Trump hustles $170 million from his gullible supporters

Trump hustles $170 million from his gullible supporters

The New York Times reports: President Trump has raised about $170 million since Election Day as his campaign operation has continued to aggressively solicit donations with hyped-up appeals that have funded his fruitless attempts to overturn the election and that have seeded his post-presidential political ambitions, according to a person familiar with the matter. The money, much of which was raised in the first week after the election, according to the person, has arrived as Mr. Trump has made false…

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States with few coronavirus restrictions are spreading the virus beyond their borders

States with few coronavirus restrictions are spreading the virus beyond their borders

ProPublica reports: As the number of COVID-19 cases skyrockets nationwide, the extent of the public health response varies from one state — and sometimes one town — to the next. The incongruous approaches and the lack of national standards have created confusion, conflict and a muddled public health message, likely hampering efforts to stop the spread of the virus. The country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said last month that the country needs “a uniform approach” to fighting…

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The pandemic will be tamed, but not before a horrible winter

The pandemic will be tamed, but not before a horrible winter

Donald G. McNeil Jr. reports: The regions of the country now among those hit hardest by the virus — Midwestern and Mountain States and rural counties, including in the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming — are the ones that voted heavily for Mr. Trump in the recent election. The president could help save his millions of supporters by urging them to wear masks, avoid crowds and skip holiday gatherings this year. But that seemed unlikely to occur, many health experts…

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‘Absolutely remarkable’: No one who got Moderna’s vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

‘Absolutely remarkable’: No one who got Moderna’s vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

Science reports: Continuing the spate of stunning news about COVID-19 vaccines, the biotech company Moderna announced the final results of the 30,000-person efficacy trial for its candidate in a press release today: Only 11 people who received two doses of the vaccine developed COVID-19 symptoms after being infected with the pandemic coronavirus, versus 185 symptomatic cases in a placebo group. That is an efficacy of 94.1%, the company says, far above what many vaccine scientists were expecting just a few…

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Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines

Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines

Politico reports: The Trump administration is shunting to the states hard decisions about which Americans will get the limited early supplies of coronavirus vaccines — setting up a confusing patchwork of distribution plans that could create unequal access to the life-saving shots. Federal and state officials agree that the nation’s 21 million health care workers should be first in line. But there is no consensus about how to balance the needs of other high-risk groups, including the 53 million adults…

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Fired director of U.S. cyber agency Chris Krebs explains why this election was the ‘most secure in American history’

Fired director of U.S. cyber agency Chris Krebs explains why this election was the ‘most secure in American history’

  60 Minutes: Though the transition has begun, President Trump remains largely holed up in the White House tweeting false accusations of a rigged election from behind a crumbling wall of lawsuits. No legal challenge, no recount, no audit has changed the outcome in any state. Mr. Trump’s claim that millions of votes were deleted or switched is denied by the official he chose to secure the nation’s election systems. Christopher Krebs called the 2020 vote “the most secure in…

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1918 Germany has a warning for America

1918 Germany has a warning for America

Jochen Bittner writes: It may well be that Germans have a special inclination to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history. One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that…

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Why it’s reasonable to describe Trump as a fascist who attempted a coup

Why it’s reasonable to describe Trump as a fascist who attempted a coup

Eric Levitz writes: Trump’s “coup” was surely quixotic. But it delegitimized our electoral system in the eyes of a large minority of the public, while also creating incentives for Republican officials to administer elections in a more partisan manner going forward. Before November 3, Georgia’s Republican secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, was a rising star in GOP politics. After the Peach State went blue, and Trump cried fraud, both of Georgia’s GOP senators called for Raffensperger’s resignation, all for the…

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Sociology’s race problem

Sociology’s race problem

Robyn Autry writes: With Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests spreading across the globe this year, this ought to be a moment when sociologists cast valuable light on how racist thinking affects everyday life. Sociology is, after all, deeply invested in its Others; racial others, gendered others, economic others, indeed every other other, is at the focal point of the discipline, even if too narrow a lens is applied when studying some of these social others. Sociology should matter now more…

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Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Adam Harris writes: On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a “long national nightmare.” And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trump’s supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss. “I understand the disappointment tonight,” Biden said. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now let’s give each other…

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An inverse relationship between Trump’s success with rallies and his ability to win votes

An inverse relationship between Trump’s success with rallies and his ability to win votes

Dante Chinni writes: As the 2020 campaign wound down, President Donald Trump held rallies across the country to fire up his supporters and get them out to vote. Many saw the rallies as a sign of big enthusiasm for Trump, but the data suggest the visits did not produce the desired impact for the president. Comparing Trump campaign stops over the last two weeks of the race to election results shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, Trump underperformed…

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Trump says Georgia’s voting system is ‘very fraudulent’; GOP fights against loss of faith in that GOP-run system

Trump says Georgia’s voting system is ‘very fraudulent’; GOP fights against loss of faith in that GOP-run system

CNN reports: At a Saturday campaign stop in Marietta, Georgia, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel attempted to persuade Republicans to vote in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, even as voters expressed ambivalence about expanding “money and work when it’s already decided.” Incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are facing tough reelection battles in two January runoff elections that could determine control of the US Senate. “It’s not decided. This is the key — it’s not decided,” McDaniel told…

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A scorched earth strategy on Iran

A scorched earth strategy on Iran

Barbara Slavin writes: When Israel engineered the assassinations of a half-dozen Iranian nuclear scientists from 2010 to 2012, supporters of these killings argued that they would help slow a nuclear program at a time when multilateral diplomacy was showing little progress. The killing on Friday of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, comes in a very different context. Iran is again producing a large amount of uranium, but it is not close to the level needed to produce a nuclear…

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Eschewing Occam’s razor, China seeks to change Covid origin story

Eschewing Occam’s razor, China seeks to change Covid origin story

The Observer reports: Nearly a year after doctors identified the first cases of a worrying new disease in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the country appears to be stepping up a campaign to question the origins of the global Covid-19 pandemic. State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019. The…

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