To the very end, Trump remains haunted by one word: loser

To the very end, Trump remains haunted by one word: loser

Dan Barry reports: In the now-distant Republican presidential primaries of 2016, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas handily won the Iowa caucuses. This was determined by a method that has lately come under attack but at the time was considered standard: elementary math. One of the losers in Iowa, the developer and television personality Donald J. Trump, soon accused Mr. Cruz of electoral theft. He fired off several inflammatory tweets, including this foreshadowing of our current democracy-testing moment: “Based on the…

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How Einstein reconciled religion to science

How Einstein reconciled religion to science

Brian Gallagher writes: Not long ago, I heard an echo of Albert Einstein’s religious views in the words of Elon Musk. Asked, at the close of a conversation with Axios, whether he believed in God, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla paused, looked away from his interlocutors for a brief second, and then said, in that mild South African accent, “I believe there’s some explanation for this universe, which you might call God.” Einstein did call it God. The…

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How the Covid-19 pandemic has been curtailed in Cherokee Nation: By ‘following the science’

How the Covid-19 pandemic has been curtailed in Cherokee Nation: By ‘following the science’

Usha Lee McFarling reports: While the United States flounders in its response to the coronavirus, another nation — one within our own borders — is faring much better. With a mask mandate in place since spring, free drive-through testing, hospitals well-stocked with PPE, and a small army of public health officers fully supported by their chief, the Cherokee Nation has been able to curtail its Covid-19 case and death rates even as those numbers surge in surrounding Oklahoma, where the…

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Doctors and nurses in the fight against Covid are suffering combat fatigue

Doctors and nurses in the fight against Covid are suffering combat fatigue

The New York Times reports: About 2 a.m. on a sweltering summer night, Dr. Orlando Garner awoke to the sound of a thud next to his baby daughter’s crib. He leapt out of bed to find his wife, Gabriela, passed out, her forehead hot with the same fever that had stricken him and his son, Orlando Jr., then 3, just hours before. Two days later, it would hit their infant daughter, Veronica. Nearly five months later, Dr. Garner, a critical…

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After admitting mistake, AstraZeneca faces difficult questions about its vaccine

After admitting mistake, AstraZeneca faces difficult questions about its vaccine

The New York Times reports: The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation. “Get yourself a vaccaccino,” a British tabloid celebrated, noting that the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, costs less than a cup of coffee. But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether…

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Pope Francis: A crisis reveals what is in our hearts

Pope Francis: A crisis reveals what is in our hearts

Pope Francis writes: In this past year of change, my mind and heart have overflowed with people. People I think of and pray for, and sometimes cry with, people with names and faces, people who died without saying goodbye to those they loved, families in difficulty, even going hungry, because there’s no work. Sometimes, when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it…

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Supreme Court follows public health guidance in remote hearings but blocks limits on religious gatherings

Supreme Court follows public health guidance in remote hearings but blocks limits on religious gatherings

The Associated Press reports: The Supreme Court said Wednesday it will continue to hear arguments by telephone through at least January because of the coronavirus pandemic. The court’s announcement extended telephone arguments by a month. “The Court will continue to closely monitor public health guidance in determining plans for the February argument session,” the court said in a statement. Politico reports: The Supreme Court signaled a major shift in its approach to coronavirus-related restrictions late Wednesday, voting 5-4 to bar…

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Did American democracy really hold? Maybe not

Did American democracy really hold? Maybe not

Jeff Greenfield writes: That breeze you felt recently was a national sigh of relief that the 2020 election might finally, at long last, be over. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the other close states have, or soon will have, certified the results. Judges have unceremoniously thrown out the dubious legal claims that thousands, or hundreds of thousands or millions of votes should be disallowed. Foreign leaders and business tycoons are reaching out to President-elect Joe Biden, and that General Services Administration…

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Trump’s conspiracies have MAGA world talking Georgia boycott

Trump’s conspiracies have MAGA world talking Georgia boycott

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s demonization of mail-in voting may have cost him votes in the recent election. Now, his demonization of Georgia’s entire electoral system is hurting his party’s chances at keeping the Senate. Driven by Trump’s insistence that Georgia’s elections are indelibly rife with fraud, conspiratorial MAGA figures are calling for a boycott of the two Senate runoff races, slated for Jan. 5, that will determine which party controls the upper chamber. Their reason: The two GOP candidates,…

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A growing number of Americans are going hungry

A growing number of Americans are going hungry

The Washington Post reports: More Americans are going hungry now than at any point during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, according to a Post analysis of new federal data — a problem created by an economic downturn that has tightened its grip on millions of Americans and compounded by government relief programs that expired or will terminate at the end of the year. Experts say it is likely that there’s more hunger in the United States today than at any point…

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Pandemic restrictions riddled with contradictions

Pandemic restrictions riddled with contradictions

Amanda Mull writes: Two weeks ago, I staged a reluctant intervention via Instagram direct message. The subject was a longtime friend, Josh, who had been sharing photos of himself and his fiancé occasionally dining indoors at restaurants since New York City, where we both live, had reopened them in late September. At first, I hadn’t said anything. Preliminary research suggests that when people congregate indoors, an infected person is almost 20 times more likely to transmit the virus than if…

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Pennsylvania slams judge’s ‘overreach’ in certification ruling

Pennsylvania slams judge’s ‘overreach’ in certification ruling

Bloomberg reports: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and other state officials assailed a Pittsburgh judge for issuing what they described as an unprecedented order halting additional steps in the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory. “Since the birth of our nation nearly 250 years ago, no court has ever issued an order purporting to interfere with a state’s ascertainment of its presidential electors — until today,” state officials said in an appeal filed shortly after Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough’s…

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Trump races to weaken environmental and worker protections, and implement other last-minute policies

Trump races to weaken environmental and worker protections, and implement other last-minute policies

ProPublica reports: Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella. Ordinarily, a change like this would take about…

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Georgia’s Senator Perdue profited from the pandemic

Georgia’s Senator Perdue profited from the pandemic

The Associated Press reports: As the ravages of the novel coronavirus forced millions of people out of work, shuttered businesses and shrank the value of retirement accounts, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to a three-year low. But for Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, the crisis last March signaled something else: a stock buying opportunity. And for the second time in less than two months, Perdue’s timing was impeccable. He avoided a sharp loss and reaped a stunning gain…

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