US Covid deaths soar as Barr dismisses Trump’s election conspiracy theories – live

Good morning, this is Lauren Aratani taking over for Martin Belam. As Congress continues to be at a standstill with a new coronavirus stimulus package, cities are starting efforts to bring direct relief to their residents.

Houston, Texas is preparing to launch a program that would give $1,200 checks to residents of the city this month, payments similar to the stimulus checks that were sent out by the federal government in the spring.

The program would be open to residents who demonstrate a need for assistance in an application. The city is allocating a maximum of $30 million for the program, which could help as many as 23,750 families, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Unlike other forms of government assistance, the checks can be used however struggling residents see fit.

“People can utilize that on whatever – utility, rent, you name it,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. “We’re doing everything we can with the dollars we’ve been given to meet those needs or people where they are.”

Teen Vogue has in recent years gained itself a reputation for doing more hard-hitting journalism than you’d expect from the title, and it has a very strong piece today by Lindsey Beth Meyers, titled Working at a nursing home during the Covid-19 pandemic is a daily heartbreak. She says “I work with the grandparents we’re leaving to die.”

I work at an assisted-living facility and nursing home in Buffalo, New York. I’m a wellness leader, which means I run fitness classes, make presentations, host games, and help create a monthly schedule. I also kick butt at Bingo. During Covid times, a large part of my job has been helping the residents fend off loneliness.

Sixty residents live at the nursing home. Since March, none of them have been able to visit with their families. Group activities are limited to eight people, all spaced six feet apart, with masks on and hand sanitizer at the ready. They eat meals in their rooms and watch TV all night long. Most days, they see and speak to almost no one. It’s exhaustingly solitary, and many of them have deteriorated health-wise as a result. Try as I might, there are some voids I simply cannot fill.

Read more here: Teen Vogue – Working at a nursing home during the Covid-19 pandemic is a daily heartbreak

Do you ever sometimes look at social media and start wondering if something has gone wrong in your brain, and are you really actually seeing this?

This morning I’ve had to do double-takes over Young Americans for Biden tweeting out an ‘advent calendar’ of the president-elect eating ice cream.

And earlier Trump campaign strategy manager Steve Cortes interuppted his usual Twitter service of claims of voter fraud to wish Britney Spears a happy birthday…

A leader of the Trump administration’s effort to produce and distribute a coronavirus vaccine says he expects the Food and Drug Administration to soon authorize the use of a vaccine.

Operation Warp Speed chief science adviser Moncef Slaoui says he hopes by 10 December or 11 December the Pfizer vaccine will be approved in the US.

Slaoui told ABC’s Good Morning America he “would expect the FDA to reach a similar conclusion” as British authorities did this morning by approving emergency use of a vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Slaoui is urging people to listen to the experts about taking the vaccine, look at the data and keep their minds open. He says “great science” allowed researchers to do discovery work “in weeks rather than in years.”

Slaoui calls the vaccine “an insurance against this virus” and says it’s “what will get us out of this pandemic.”

In a move absolutely guaranteed to delight outgoing president Donald Trump, People magazine has today announced that Dr Anthony Fauci is one of their people of the year, and he gets his own front cover.

They write:

Dr. Anthony Fauci stepped up to be the doctor America needed in 2020, providing steady guidance during the pandemic. Even though he and his family were getting death threats, he continued to be out front, reassuring us during turbulent times with his devoted public service, unflappable common sense, and life-saving leadership.

George Clooney, Selena Gomez and Regina King were also named.

Donald Trump is heading to rally in Georgia on Saturday ahead of the crucial Senate runoff races there in January. Aaron Blake for the Washington Post here suggests that move is not without its risks for the Republican party:

Late last week, concern was building among Republicans that President Trump’s baseless attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election might lead their voters to sit out Georgia’s all-important Senate runoffs, which will determine control of the chamber. If elections are rigged, the logic goes, why bother? And why reward people who supposedly haven’t stood up enough for Trump’s specious claims?

Trump retweeted a user who suggested that it was pointless to elect Republicans like Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who had just certified their states for Joe Biden.

“Watching the Arizona hearings and then watching Gov. Ducey sign those papers, why bother voting for Republicans if what you get is Ducey and Kemp?” the user said. Trump also retweeted another user who asked rhetorically, “Who needs Democrats when you have Republicans like Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey?”

The tweets weren’t about the senators, but the message dovetails with the GOP’s nightmare scenario in Georgia, with some Republicans worrying that Trump will focus more on himself than on the senators and deliver a message that could be counterproductive.

Then-Trump attorney Sidney Powell alluded at a news conference last week — and not subtly — to the idea that Loeffler might have participated in rigging the election to earn herself a spot in the runoff. Powell’s claim that even Republicans might have rigged their own elections was thought to be part of the reason she was swiftly removed from Trump’s legal team a week ago.

Another Trump-adjacent lawyer has been even more explicit. L. Lin Wood, a Powell ally who has spearheaded challenges on behalf of Trump in Georgia, has repeatedly tweeted that Republicans should at least consider sitting out the runoffs.

Read more here: Washington Post – The Trump-fueled peril for the GOP in Georgia

Thomas Fuller and Manny Fernandez have this for the New York Times this morning on the state of the coronavirus outbreak in California.

For all its size and economic might, California has long had one of America’s lowest number of hospital beds relative to its population. Now state officials warn that this shortfall, combined with acute staffing shortages, may prove catastrophic.

In the spring, California had some of the earliest outbreaks and was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order. By summer, many Californians thought the worst was behind them, only to see an explosion of cases at the end of June. The number of cases dropped, then plateaued, before skyrocketing again this fall.

On Sunday, California became the first state to record more than 100,000 cases in a week. The state government estimates that about 12 percent of its confirmed cases end up in a hospital.

Complicating the situation for hospitals is the fact that cases are now exploding in nearly all parts of the country, meaning that healthcare workers cannot be brought from other states as an emergency stopgap like they were in the spring, when the pandemic was mostly concentrated in a few coastal states, experts say.

The shortage of nursing staff will make handling the surge of virus cases “extraordinarily difficult for us in California,” said Carmela Coyle, the head of the California Hospital Association, which represents 400 hospitals across the state.

“This pandemic is a story of shortage,” Ms. Coyle said. “It’s what has made this pandemic unique and different from other disasters.”

Read more here: New York Times – With cases on the rise, California faces a severe shortage of hospital staff and beds

In among a flurry of other tweets yesterday, Donald Trump appeared to endorse a view that coronavirus – or at least one of the measures to combat it – is a scam. He quote-tweeted an image of a doctor in a medical facility in Reno which had the message “Here is the fake Nevada parking garage hospital picture that our moron governor tweeted, proving it’s all a scam.”

The president added his own message “Fake election results in Nevada, also!”

The Los Angeles Times morning has a breakdown on why that assertion is not true.

Renown Regional Medical Center has been the primary target of renewed conspiracy theories online suggesting that hospitals are empty and the coronavirus is not as dangerous as top medical experts say it is. The hospital opened an alternative care site with two floors of supplemental hospital beds inside a parking structure 12 November to accommodate an overflow of Covid-19 cases if needed.

A selfie by Dr. Jacob Keeperman, who works for the medical center, shows him standing in front of empty hospital beds at the auxiliary facility in Reno. The photo was taken the day the site was opened, before patients began arriving.

According to Renown, the facility currently has 42 patients and has served 198 since it opened last month. The site, which was set up for patients who do not require long-term care, can house more than 1,400 patients.

Keeperman, medical director for Renown’s Transfer and Operations Center, shared the photo of himself on Twitter in hopes of conveying the gravity of the situation at the hospital. But his tweet was quickly picked up and misrepresented online.

“It is really demoralizing to everybody who is out working so hard to have this politicized and polarized so much,” he said. “I am holding patients’ hands when they take their very last breath because their loved ones can’t be with them.”

The Nevada Hospital Association reported that a record-high 1,589 patients were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19 in the state on Tuesday.

Read more here: Los Angeles Times – This doctor took a selfie to show the gravity of the pandemic. Now it’s being used to deny it

It’s a big day up in Congress for former astronaut Mark Kelly, who will be sworn in as a Senator for Arizona after defeating Sen. Martha McSally last month. CNN report:

While other senators-elect will have to wait until January to be sworn in for the new Congress, Kelly is able to take the oath of office right away since he won a special election. The swearing-in is slated to take place Wednesday afternoon.

The special election victory marks a moment of triumph for Kelly, a retired Navy captain and NASA astronaut, that comes in the aftermath of tragedy.

Kelly was thrust into the national spotlight in 2011 when his wife, Arizona’s then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head and nearly killed, an event that sent shock waves throughout the nation.

He later turned into a political activist, launching a group called Americans for Responsible Solutions alongside his wife and fighting for gun control policies like universal background checks and so-called red flag laws.

“I learned a lot from being an astronaut. I learned a lot from being a pilot in the Navy, “ Kelly said in his campaign announcement video. “But what I learned from my wife is how you use policy to improve people’s lives.”

Read more here: CNN – Mark Kelly to be sworn in as US senator, flipping Arizona seat from red to blue

Politico have been labelling this as a scoop on their social media about president-elect Joe Biden’s cunning plan to place mid- to lower-level officials across the federal government, particularly in national security roles, to ensure his administration can begin to enact his agenda immediately, in the anticipation that a Mitch McConnell-led Senate will be obstructive over confirming the senior roles. They write:

By quickly selecting candidates for slots that don’t require Senate confirmation, such as deputy assistant secretaries, the transition team also can try to ensure that many of those hired can obtain security clearances by the time Biden takes office.

The shift in focus to filling positions that do not require confirmation reflects the urgency with which the Biden team sees its staffing conundrum — especially in the realm of national security, where there’s little room for error. It also signals Biden’s anxiousness to replace Trump appointees and fill long-empty positions as soon as possible so he can enact his agenda.

The Biden transition team is also considering asking former government officials, such as retired diplomats, to come in and fill key positions on an acting basis until the nominees for those jobs are confirmed by the Senate, according to a fourth person familiar with the situation. That could prove legally complicated, but it’s not impossible

Read more here: Politico – Anticipating Senate bottlenecks, Biden plans a nomination workaround

“This is the federal government admitting that climate change is killing off a widely distributed tree, and we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are many species threatened.”

That’s Rebecca Riley, who is legal director for the Natural Resources Defense council, talking about the fate of Whitebark pine trees, which are dying across the US west.

The climate crisis, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of the high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears across the US west.

Whitebark pine trees can live up to 1,000 years and are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters), conditions too harsh for most trees to survive. The trees grow in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada, but have been all but wiped out in some areas.

That includes parts of the eastern edge of Yellowstone national park, where they are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears. Grizzlies raid squirrel caches of whitebark pine cones and devour the seeds within the cones to fatten up for winter.

Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 2008 to protect the trees, and a US Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be published on Wednesday would indeed protect the tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

However, the agency said it doesn’t plan to designate which forested areas are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.

Read more here: Whitebark pine trees are dying across the US west. Could a federal proposal protect them?

NBC News had this take last night on Trump’s plans for a 2024 run, and how he may be intending to use them to upstage Joe Biden on Inauguration Day.

President Donald Trump is discussing the possibility of announcing a campaign to retake the White House in 2024 on Inauguration Day and skipping the swearing-in of his successor, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

There is “preliminary planning” underway for a 20 January event to kick off a new Trump bid, the people familiar with the discussions said, though it’s possible the president could make the announcement earlier as no final decisions have been made.

Regardless of the timing of a campaign announcement, Trump is not expected to attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, according to the people familiar with the discussions. He also does not plan to invite Biden to the White House or even call him, they said.

Biden transition officials said Trump’s attendance at the inauguration, or lack thereof, won’t affect their plans.

Read more here: NBC News – Trump considers 2024 campaign kickoff on Inauguration Day

Is a Trump 2024 campaign a real possibility? The outgoing president appeared to float the idea yesterday.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump told the crowd at a holiday reception at the White House, which included many Republican National Committee members. “We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”

Trump’s comments appeared to acknowledge that he thought he could have lost the election. While speculation about a presidential run in 2024 has been rife, and many US politics watchers expect him to declare a bid soon, he has not spoken publicly about it before.

There’s one very good motivation for Trump to keep the idea he might run again in 2024 alive. It will guarantee that the media won’t be able to look away from him as the Biden-Harris administration gets into gear, and also opens up a fund-raising avenue. Trump has raised over $150m in the month since the election on the basis of disputing his defeat.

Read more here: Donald Trump suggests 2024 presidential bid: ‘I’ll see you in four years’

In a somewhat predictable development, Republican Senators who have said not a peep while the commander-in-chief goes around calling people “Sleepy Joe”, “Crooked Hilary”, dubs vice president-elect Kamala Harris a “nasty woman” and insults all and sundry, are now seemingly upset that president-elect Joe Biden isn’t playing nicely enough with them. That’s according to this report from the Hill anyway, where Jordain Carney explains that Republican frustration is building over Biden’s Cabinet picks.

Tensions are building on various fronts, from complaints that Biden’s team isn’t coordinating with Senate Republicans to warnings that he should expect a slower pace of confirmation after years-long frustrations from GOP senators about the treatment of President Trump’s nominees.

“I really am a little surprised … that there hadn’t been at least some consultation. I mean, some of these problems can be avoided and people, you know, saved from the embarrassment if there would simply be some consultation on who they’re thinking about,” said Sen. John Cornyn.

Asked about consulting with Republicans, Sen. Kevin Cramer said, “Unless you’re putting all your eggs in the ‘We’re going to win them both in Georgia’ basket, that would be a wise thing to do.”

Sen. Mike Rounds added that while there was still time for Biden to do outreach, he should keep in mind the views of Republicans who will be wary of anything that will “obliterate” work done under the Trump administration.

As Biden is “attempting to lay out people that he thinks should be part of his Cabinet, we hope that he takes that into consideration,” Rounds said.

It feels churlish to point this out, but given that senior Senate Republicans like Mitch McConnell are still yet to acknowledge that Joe Biden has won the election in public, it seems a bit rich for Republicans to also be complaining that the Biden team isn’t reaching out enough.

Read more here: The Hill – Republican frustration builds over Cabinet picks