Ballots will continue to be counted in Georgia as the runoff election result between GOP Sen. David Perdue and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate . Earlier Wednesday, Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, according to projections by the Associated Press. With the projected victory, Warnock became the first Black man elected as U.S. senator from Georgia with his victory and the first Democrat elevated to the Senate from Georgia in 20 years. A win by Ossoff would result in a 50-50 split in the Senate, effectively giving Democrats control of the chamber since Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would cast tiebreaking votes. Read more at USA Today
A group of Republican lawmakers plan to object Wednesday when a joint session of Congress meets to formally count the votes cast by the Electoral College, marking a dramatic conclusion to the bitter 2020 presidential election. The meeting, required by the U.S. Constitution, is all but certain to affirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump by a count of 306-232 electoral votes. But multiple House Republicans, taking their lead from Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, have indicated they will object to some states' electoral votes. Nearly a dozen senators have said they would join the effort unless an "emergency 10-day audit" of the returns in the "disputed states" is completed. Vice President Mike Pence, who has not acknowledged that Trump lost, will preside over the session. "We'll hear the objections. We'll hear the evidence," Pence said at a rally in Georgia on Monday. Read more at USA Today
Police officer who shot Jacob Blake won't face charges. The Kenosha county district attorney said that a case review found the officer had behaved reasonably. Lawyers representing Blake’s family said they were “immensely disappointed.” A separate, federal investigation into whether the officers violated Blake’s constitutional rights continues. Read more at Wall Street Journal
The US hit a new daily high coronavirus death toll yesterday, with 3,775 new deaths reported across the country. The fresh tragedy comes as US governors take new steps to get vaccines administered faster, including mobilizing National Guard members and training more volunteers to vaccinate people. Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic and other countries are also seeing cases, hospitalizations and deaths spike. Meantime, the World Health Organization has issued a rare rebuke after a team of its scientists were prevented from entering China to study the origins of the novel coronavirus. Read more at CNN
The COVID surge in Los Angeles is so bad that county ambulance crews were told Monday to cut back on their use of oxygen so it can be reserved for the patients who need it most. The Los Angeles Times reports that only patients with oxygen saturation rates below 90 percent will get oxygen, even though a reading below 95 percent is abnormal for most people. The paper also reports that the oxygen directive comes days after the L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency told paramedics they should not take patients who cannot be resuscitated in the field to the hospital for further life-saving efforts and should instead declare them dead in the field if they cannot restore breathing or a pulse. L.A. hospitals are completely overwhelmed by the spike in cases fueled by Thanksgiving and are preparing for even worse conditions once cases from Christmas and New Year’s travel and gathering start to manifest themselves. Read more at Los Angeles Times
It took a California hospital just hours to administer all its COVID-19 vaccines—because it had no choice. The compressor on the freezer storing the vials conked out and by the time it was noticed, the Moderna vaccine was two hours away from going bad. The Los Angeles Times reports that staff at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Medical Center in Northern California hit the phones and arranged to give vaccines to local jail staff and residents of a nursing home. Then they set up four vaccination sites and recruited volunteer medical staff to give out the shots to all comers—some of whom might have waited weeks or months for the shots otherwise. “We just wanted to make sure none of this goes to waste,” Adventist spokeswoman Cici Winiger told the Times. Other hospitals across the country have struggled to administer the vaccines according to government priority lists. Read more at Los Angeles Times
Protests planned for Washington, D.C., on Wednesday are likely to attract large numbers of President Donald Trump's supporters, including armed groups and members of the extremist group the Proud Boys , raising concerns of violent confrontations. The rallies coincide with the official congressional vote to certify the Electoral College votes from the 2020 election and declare President-elect Joe Biden the winner. Far-right groups from around the country have vowed to descend on the capital to protest the vote and attempt to pressure lawmakers into voting against certifying the results, an outcome that even the leaders of the effort admit is unlikely to happen. Trump himself has amplified conspiracy theories about the election and encouraged his supporters to show up at the protests. The rallies began Tuesday and by Tuesday night, D.C. police had announced six protest-related arrests. The charges ranged from carrying a pistol without a license to assault of a police officer, according to a spokesman. Read more at USA Today
The Democratic Party’s 2020 victory just got a lot bigger.
And Joe Biden’s chances of signing ambitious legislation — to fight climate change, reduce economic inequality and slow the coronavirus pandemic — got a lot bigger, too.
The Democrats appear to have won both Senate runoffs in Georgia last night, giving them control of the Senate. The Rev. Raphael Warnock has beaten Senator Kelly Loeffler by about 2 percentage points, according to Times estimates. Most news organizations have not yet called the race between Jon Ossoff and Senator David Perdue, but Ossoff leads by about 16,000 votes and the outstanding votes come from Democratic-leaning areas.
The Times’s Nate Cohn, who analyzes election returns, said he believed Ossoff would likely end up with a lead of more than 0.5 percentage points — large enough to avoid a recount. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report wrote that he considered both races to be over.
The apparent victories will give Democrats control of both the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time in 10 years.
True, their control of the Senate will be by the narrowest of margins — a 50-50 tie, broken by the incoming vice president, Kamala Harris. That narrowness will mean that Democrats will rarely be able to overcome a filibuster and will often be reliant on their most moderate senators, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
But a Senate majority will still make a profound difference to the Biden administration. It will be able to pass budget bills and confirm judges (neither of which tend to be vulnerable to filibusters) so long as Democrats remain united.
Mitch McConnell will no longer be Senate majority leader, with the power to decide which bills come up for a vote. Chuck Schumer will be in charge, for the first time.
Much of the economic agenda that Biden proposed during the campaign is now in play. And it was a boldly progressive agenda, including plans to reduce medical costs, expand Medicare, create manufacturing jobs and promote clean energy, as well as raise taxes on the rich. Many of those policies — as well as measures to accelerate a mass vaccination program and increase economic stimulus — can be included in a budget bill this year.
Before last night, the 2020 election looked like a decidedly mixed picture: victory over an incumbent president for the Democrats, combined with a surprisingly good showing for down-ballot Republicans. Last night didn’t erase all the good news for Republicans, but it did rob them of their biggest prize — Senate control.
Biden will now have much more of a chance to be a president who gets things done.
More analysis of the results:
Senate control will allow Biden to use a coronavirus stimulus package “as a vehicle for hundreds of billions of dollars in spending to boost the renewable energy economy,” Coral Davenport, a Times climate reporter, says.
“Senator Mitch McConnell has plenty of experience in gumming up the works as minority leader. Get ready to hear a lot about Senate moderates in both parties and a procedure called ‘reconciliation,’ which allows some legislation to skirt a filibuster,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, says.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told CNN that final results would probably be available by lunchtime today.
Josh Kraushaar of National Journal noted that Perdue ran well ahead of Ossoff in the election’s first round two months ago — suggesting that the last two months of events had hurt Republicans.
Maggie Haberman of The Times pointed out that the Republican losses came despite Trump’s campaigning in the state: “This is the first indication of the damage he’s done his own level of influence in the party in the last two months.”
Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review wrote on Twitter that Perdue and Loeffler suffered from three problems: “being unimpressive candidates, GA shifting purple, and Trump being a maniac.”
Nate Cohn wrote that, compared with the November elections, turnout fell the most in rural and heavily pro-Trump parts of Georgia and the least in heavily Black areas.
Until 2020, no Democrat had won a statewide race in Georgia since 2006. And one person — Stacey Abrams — is most responsible for Georgia’s new status as a Democratic state, Reid Epstein and Astead Herndon of The Times write. Read more at New York Times
A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll (2,516 U.S. adults, conducted Monday and Tuesday, with a ±3.0 point margin of error) shows how President-elect Biden has been damaged by two months of baseless allegations, Margaret Talev writes: 58% of Americans accept his win as legitimate, while more than one in four don't.
There's a massive partisan split: 96% of Democrats and 57% of independents say they accept Biden's win. 62% of Republicans say they don't. Read more at Axios
Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer, has resigned from her law firm after a recording showed that she had participated in the call in which Trump pushed Georgia officials to overturn the election result. Read more at New York Times
The Trump administration is pushing in its final days to undo decades-long protections against discrimination, a last-ditch effort to accomplish a longtime goal of conservative legal activists.
The Justice Department is seeking to change interpretation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin by recipients of federal funding. Under these rules, actions are considered discriminatory if they have a discriminatory effect, what’s known as a “disparate impact,” on protected groups. Under the new version, only intentional discrimination would be prohibited.
The Trump administration has been considering this change for more than two years but waited until its final weeks to try to put it into effect. A notice about the change was filed for regulatory review at the White House last month and a copy of the proposal was shared with The Washington Post.
The document says the change would “provide much needed clarity to the courts and federal funding recipients and beneficiaries,” noting that the Justice Department currently distributes about $6 billion a year in grants or awards, though it also concedes it is unclear what portion of that might be affected by the planned change.
The planned change was pushed in late December by William P. Barr, one of his last acts as attorney general. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Read the document: Justice Department’s proposed amendment to Title VI regulations
A government website that tracks the regulatory process shows meetings on this proposal are scheduled with White House officials as late as the morning of Jan. 20, inauguration day. Usually, final rules are not published until after these meetings are held.
Civil rights activists responded with alarm to the news.
“The idea they would use this process at the 11th hour to undermine civil rights protections is deeply alarming though not surprising,” said Becky Monroe, director of the Fighting Hate and Bias program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who worked at the Justice Department in the Obama administration. “This is a big deal.”
The regulation, if finalized, would directly affect the rules for grants awarded by the Justice Department, but because the agency is involved in legal matters that stretch across the government, it could have a broader effect in setting the tone for legal policies and practices in other agencies. Read more at Washington Post
The seating of new Pennsylvania legislators turned into a bitter partisan spectacle Tuesday, as Republicans in the state Senate blocked a Democratic lawmaker from taking his oath of office and removed the Democratic lieutenant governor from his role overseeing the proceedings.
Leaders shouted and spoke over each other, at one point trying to conduct dueling sessions in a stark showcase of this year’s political divisions over normally routine functions of democracy. “There’s nothing about this day that is appropriate,” one state senator yelled. “Nothing!”
Republicans say they will not seat Sen.-elect Jim Brewster as a legal challenge to his victory is pending, although his win has been certified and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently sided with him in a dispute over how to count votes in a close race. Democrats decried the move as an overreach and an echo of Republican attempts to overturn result of the presidential election. Read more at Washington Post
Lives Lived: Tanya Roberts found fame in the 1980s playing a detective on “Charlie’s Angels” and a brave earth scientist in the James Bond film “A View to a Kill.” She died at 65. Read more at New York Times
January is going to be “a tough one...It really is all hands on deck.” That's how the World Health Organization described the dire days and weeks ahead to the AP.
Despite growing vaccine access, the immediate future is looking grim around the globe as the virus resurges and reshapes itself in European hot spots like Britain and Germany, sparks new concerns in Japan and Thailand, and leaves hospitals in California desperate for more medical workers.
The virus is filling hospitals anew and shutting down livelihoods as governments race to find solutions like lockdowns to keep people apart, Danica Kirka in London and Angela Charlton in Paris report.
Mexico City’s hospitals now hold more virus patients than they ever have. South Africa and Brazil are struggling to find space for the dead. Even virus success story Thailand is fighting an unexpected wave of infections. Doctors are facing or bracing for rising numbers of COVID-19 patients after end-of-year holiday gatherings.
And more and more countries are reporting cases of a new, more contagious variant of the virus that has already rampaged across Britain, which recorded an alarming 60,000 new cases in one day for the first time.
England's National Health Service is accustomed to tough winters — and caring for people on overcrowded wards sometimes means moving patients into the corridor. But this is different. Now some are lucky just to get medical help as they wait in an ambulance in the parking lot. Hospitals are staggering under the relentless force of the virus.
Germany extended its lockdown until Jan. 31, tightening curbs on social contacts and limiting people’s movements in its worst-affected regions as it tries to reduce stubbornly high infection figures and rising deaths.
Balkans No Vaccines: When thousands of people in the European Union rolled up their sleeves to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, one corner of the continent felt isolated and abandoned: the Balkans. Most Balkan nations are still waiting for their first vaccines to arrive and have no firm timeline when massive inoculations could start. What is already clear is that Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro — home to some 20 million people — are lagging far behind in the vaccine race. Sabina Niksic in Sarajevo and Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade report.
The EU's medicines agency is meeting to consider giving the green light for Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine to be used in the 27-nation bloc. Approval would make it the second shot for the EU after the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Nearly two weeks after most other EU nations, the Netherlands has begun its vaccination program, with nursing home staff and frontline workers in hospitals getting the first shots.
Thailand Worry: For much of 2020, the country had the coronavirus under control. After a strict nationwide lockdown in April and May, the number of new local infections dropped to zero. However, a new outbreak discovered in mid-December threatens to put Thailand back where it was in the toughest days of last year. The country’s COVID-19 coordinating center has warned that the number of new daily cases could rise to more than 10,000 later this month if the government does not do more to curtail the virus’s spread, Bill Bredsen reports from Bangkok.
VIDEO: Thailand scrambles to contain virus, get vaccines.
Tokyo is reporting a daily record of 1,591 cases as the national government prepares to declare a state of emergency to cope with a surge.
Netanyahu's Vaccine Lifeline: For media-obsessed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the coronavirus vaccine has arrived just in time. With an election in March, Netanyahu has placed his world-leading vaccination drive at the center of his reelection campaign. He has launched an aggressive media blitz portraying him as almost singlehandedly leading the country out of the pandemic. He appears to be betting that a successful vaccination effort can persuade voters to forget about his corruption trial and the economic damage caused by the virus crisis, Josef Federman reports from Jerusalem. Read more at AP
Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have agreed to restore diplomatic relations with the tiny gas-rich nation of Qatar. The agreement ends a three-year boycott of the nation that has divided the Gulf states ever since. In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and took issue with the country’s friendly relations with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the boycott, Qatar’s only land border -- with Saudi Arabia -- was sealed shut, and boycotting nations closed their airspace to Qatar. Though the countries’ leaders appeared optimistic at the signing of the deal in the Saudi city of al-Ula, it’s unclear what provisions it entails and which have been met. Read more at CNN
More than a week later, FBI avoids terror label for bombing
The FBI's investigation into whether the Nashville bombing was a terrorist act has sparked criticism about a possible racial double standard. It's also drawn questions from downtown businesses owners whose insurance coverage could be affected by the bureau’s assessment. So far, the FBI says it has found no evidence that the bomber was motivated by political ideology — a key factor in any formal declaration of terrorism. Instead, investigators are reviewing whether Anthony Warner believed in conspiracy theories involving aliens and 5G cellphone technology. Warner died in the Christmas Day explosion of a recreational vehicle that also wounded three other people. Read more at AP
Alabama’s Smith becomes 1st wide receiver to win Heisman in 29 years
DeVonta Smith of Alabama is the first wide receiver to win the Heisman Trophy in 29 seasons. Smith broke the monopoly quarterbacks have had on U.S. college football’s most prestigious award by beating three of them. The Crimson Tide senior is the fourth receiver to win the Heisman, joining Michigan’s Desmond Howard in 1991, Notre Dame’s Tim Brown in 1987 and Nebraska’s Johnny Rodgers in 1972. Quarterbacks had won 17 of the previous 20 Heisman trophies, including the previous four. Smith is the third Alabama player to win the Heisman, all since 2009. Read more at AP
Dr. Dre is breaking his silence after being hospitalized for a possible brain aneurysm.
"Thanks to my family, friends and fans for their interest and well wishes," the rapper, whose real name is Andre Romelle Young, wrote on InstagramTuesday. "I’m doing great and getting excellent care from my medical team."
Young, 55, assured his fans and followers that he "will be out of the hospital and back home soon." He added, "Shout out to all the great medical professionals at Cedars. One Love!"
According to TMZ, the Los Angeles Times and E! News, the rapper was rushed to the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles on Monday after suffering an aneurysm. Read more at USA Today
Many Christians across the world Wednesday will celebrate Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day in many places. Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, recounted in the Bible in the story of the wise men who brought the baby Jesus gifts and proclaimed him the Son of God. The day traditionally is celebrated 12 days after Christmas, closing out the holiday season, although most U.S. Protestants mark the day on the Sunday closest to Jan. 6. Many Latino families in the U.S. and abroad give children toys, candy or other gifts for Three Kings Day. Read more at USA Today
The man who will now forever be known as Bean Dad has issued a long apology for his controversial Twitter thread. Over the weekend, podcast host John Roderick shared a bizarre anecdote in which he said his 9-year-old daughter told him she was hungry, and he responded by making her struggle with a can opener for several hours to crack open some beans. Some described the ordeal as “child abuse,” and, after initially defending himself, Roderick has now said sorry. On his website, he wrote that he exaggerated the story for comedic effect, noting that “we had a bowl of pistachios between us all day,” and that his daughter was laughing during the challenge. But he noted: “A lot of the language I used reminded people very viscerally of abuse they’d experienced at the hand of a parent.” He also apologized for the “many racist, anti-Semitic, hurtful and slur-filled tweets from my early days on Twitter,” saying he “should’ve known better” even if they were in an “ironic, sarcastic” tone.
Kim admits failures. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un admitted that his five-year plans had failed to meet goals “on almost every sector” as he addressed the opening of the Worker’s Party congress on Tuesday. Kim is expected to lay out new five-year plans in the coming days. He is also set to announce changes to the country’s leadership structure—with a more senior role for Kim Yo Jong, Kim’s sister, a possibility. Read more at Foreign Policy
Hong Kong activists arrested. Roughly 50 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists have been arrested in the single largest police action since new national security laws came into effect in June. Those arrested allegedly broke the new laws by holding an unofficial primary to select candidates for legislative elections last year. Over 600,000 Hong Kong citizens participated in those primaries, which Beijing criticized as a “serious provocation.” One U.S. citizen, a human rights lawyer, was also arrested—in what appears to be the first use of the law to detain a foreign national. Read more at Foreign Policy
Brexit deal aftermath. Green party members of the European Parliament have called on the European Commission to deny permits to U.K. financial services companies wishing to access the single market unless firmer commitments are made to combat money laundering and tax avoidance—two issues left out of the “rebalancing” provisions in the Brexit deal.
In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, the group called on the leaders to use EU leverage to “to the maximum extent in order to gain robust commitments against tax dumping and in favor of financial transparency.” Read more at Foreign Policy
The war on Chinese tech. A Trump administration executive order has banned eight Chinese-made mobile payment apps, including ones made by giants Tencent and Ant Group in the latest move targeting the Chinese tech sector. The order blamed the apps for practicing “bulk data collection,” putting U.S. national security at risk. It’s unclear whether the ban can take effect in the short-term: A similar ban on the Chinese-owned TikTok app is held up in litigation. Read more at Foreign Policy
Germany is to add more diversity to the traditionally German names it gives its storms and weather systems following a stunt from an online campaign.
The naming of German weather systems is open to the public as long as they pay fees ranging from 240 euros (cold and wet weather) to 360 euros (sunny). A group called New German Media Makers (NDM), whose aim is to make Germany’s diversity more visible, exploited this fact, buying up the naming rights for the first 14 weather systems of 2021.
Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Kurdish, Polish, and Turkish names will now appear on a number of pressure systems heading toward the country in 2021. For example, the low-pressure system Ahmet, a Turkish male name, currently sits above Germany.
Sebastian Münzenmaier, a member of parliament for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD)—which has frequently presented immigrants as an existential threat, though not a meteorological one—criticized the campaign, calling it “diversity mania.”
“Making the weather more diverse is only a symbolic step … What’s important is that social diversity finally becomes normal, everywhere,” said Ferda Ataman, the chair of NDM. Read more at Foreign Policy
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