US sets records for Covid deaths and hospitalisations as it approaches grim 14 million cases milestone – live updates
I’m not going to dwell particularly on Donald Trump’s latest video rant – suffice it to say that it was the mix of conspiracy theory and baseless accusations of voter fraud that we’ve come to expect in the month since he lost the election to Joe Biden. Claims, it should be noted, that Trump and his team have repeatedly made on social media and at press conferences, but not in court, where the burden of proof is set somewhat higher than it is on your uncle’s Facebook feed.
This analysis last night by Philip Bump caught my eye though – he described it as the most petulant 46 minutes in American history.
Trump read and riffed on a prepared script lambasting those who had the audacity to suggest that receiving fewer votes than his opponent meant he shouldn’t serve a second consecutive term in office. It was also clearly no small undertaking; the numerous cuts in the final product suggested that what was offered to the country was a subset of what Trump had to say to the camera. This was a project. Good thing Trump rarely has any official duties on his calendar anymore.
What the video wasn’t was a compelling argument for the idea that the 2020 presidential contest was somehow marred by fraud. It was, almost literally, a distillation of the past four weeks of rants, allegations and accusations, including countless examples of claims which have already been soundly debunked. That sudden surge of votes seen in Wisconsin, something so compelling in Trump’s eyes that he brought a visual aid to demonstrate it? We dispatched that on 11 November: it was just the county of Milwaukee reporting its results. Whether it’s more worrisome if Trump knew it had been debunked or if he didn’t is up to you to determine.
It was a pastiche of so much that we’ve heard so often. It presented no coherent case for the existence of fraud, instead substituting a volume of accusations for an abundance of proof. Having hundreds of people make unfounded allegations isn’t proof of wrongdoing, as any review of those sheaves of affidavits collected by Trump’s campaign from various supporters makes clear.
Since polls closed 3 November Trump’s public response to his loss has been one of exasperation, the spoiled child suddenly told that he can’t do something he wants to do. Some part of this is political, an effort to lash out at President-elect Joe Biden and to impose an emotional cost on Democrats broadly. But there’s obviously something deeper and more psychological at play, a darker shadow of refusal and frustration and fury that can’t as easily be countered with simple rationality.
Read more here: Washington Post – The most petulant 46 minutes in American history
Jill Filipovic has filed her latest column for us, saying that Donald Trump believes in clemency and mercy – but only for his friends and family…
Given that Donald Trump treats the office of the presidency like a personal branding tool and deals with adversity like a two-bit mafioso, this moment was perhaps predictable: the president is reportedly considering pre-emptively pardoning three of his children, his son-in-law, and associates including Rudy Giuliani. He has already pardoned or commuted the sentences of several of his friends and associates, which should raise some eyebrows – why do so many people who surround this president wind up charged with a crime, in jail, or bracing themselves for criminal charges? And why is the supposedly law-and-order “pro-life” Republican party shrugging as this president excuses the criminality of his kin and his cronies while he refuses to intervene to save anyone from execution – and in fact, is using what little time he has left in office to reinstate barbaric practices like death by firing squad?
We all know Trump didn’t drain the swamp. But in his last two months in office, he is sending a clear message about who and what he and his party value. It’s not Christian mercy, or hard-nosed law and order, or even the sanctity of life. It’s power, dominance and a thick line between two Americas: one connected, white, power-hungry and lawless, and the other at its mercy.
Many expect that the president will issue a flurry of pardons and commutations, and this largesse will be bestowed much like the measly 11 pardons and commutations he’s issued so far: on people who worked for him, people who supported him, people could incriminate him and people who personally impress him (sometimes via reality television stars, because we are living in the worst of times).
Read more here: Jill Filipovic – Donald Trump believes in clemency and mercy. But only for his friends and family
Preliminary hearing in Kyle Rittenhouse homicide case due in Wisconsin today
17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of killing two men during an August protest in Wisconsin, is due in court today for a preliminary hearing in the case.
The teenager from Antioch, Illinois is also charged in the wounding of a third person on 25 August during a night of protest in Kenosha that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a local Black man.
Rittenhouse told police he was attacked while guarding a business and that he fired in self-defense. He was freed from jail last month after posting $2 million bond, with most of the money raised through a legal defense fund set up by conservatives who have repeatedly attempted to portray him as a patriot protecting other people’s property.
Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have painted Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy white supremacist, who travelled from Illinois to Kenosha with a gun specifically looking for any unrest and an opportunity to shoot.
Rittenhouse is charged with homicide and attempted homicide for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounding a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz. A preliminary hearing is the stage at which a court decides whether enough evidence exists to proceed to trial.
Associated Press report that in a filing this week, Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards asked the court to dismiss two of the six counts . He argued that a misdemeanor count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 isn’t supported by the law – an argument that the court already rejected once. Richards also sought the dismissal of a felony count against Rittenhouse for recklessly endangering the public’s safety by using a dangerous weapon
The shootings happened two days after a white police officer trying to arrest Blake shot the 29-year-old seven times in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down. Video of the shooting sparked several nights of protests in Kenosha, a city of about 100,000 near the Wisconsin-Illinois border.
Oliver Milman
Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis need to extend to American classrooms with routine lessons on the threats posed by global heating, two former US education secretaries have urged.
In a letter to the Democratic president-elect, the former top education officials – John King and Arne Duncan – said the education of more than 50 million children in US public schools provides a “critical opportunity” to prepare them for a world transformed by climate change, as well as the opportunities afforded by renewable energy and other potential solutions to the crisis.
“Supporting students today in learning about climate change and providing the opportunity to explore and consider climate solutions will increase the resilience of our society as well as our competitiveness in a green economy,” states the letter.
The statement was also signed by Christine Todd Whitman and Gina McCarthy, both former administrators of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Sally Jewell, the former interior secretary, and a dozen other climate activists, education specialists and teacher union representatives.
Biden has vowed to use the breadth of the federal government to address the climate crisis, from state department diplomacy to the levers of economic policy. But the letter urges Biden to not overlook the department of education in this quest, suggesting emissions could be cut from sources such as school buses as well as encouraging the uptake of climate-themed lessons.
“The education secretary could use the bully pulpit to talk about the importance of climate change education, which would be useful to leading the way,” King, who was education secretary in Barack Obama’s administration, told the Guardian.
“There are a lot of students not learning about climate change at all when the science is quite settled on this. Young people will have to navigate a world deeply impacted by climate change so they need to learn about that, not just the science of it but the social and economic consequences,” King added.
Read more of Oliver Milman’s report here: Teaching climate crisis in classrooms critical for children, top educators say
Trump administration bans cotton imports from Xinjiang, places visa restrictions on Chinese politicians
The Trump administration has expanded economic pressure on China’s western region of Xinjiang, banning cotton imports from a powerful Chinese quasi-military organization that it says uses the forced labor of detained Uighur Muslims.
Reuters report that the US. Customs and Border Protection agency said on Wednesday its “Withhold Release Order” would ban cotton and cotton products from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), one of China’s largest producers.
XPCC produced 30% of China’s cotton in 2015 and the ban could have a sweeping effect on companies globally involved in selling textiles and apparel to the United States.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kenneth Cuccinelli, who oversees the border agency, called “Made in China” a “warning label.”
“The cheap cotton goods you may be buying for family and friends during this season of giving – if coming from China – may have been made by slave labor in some of the most egregious human rights violations existing today in the modern world,” he told a news conference.
China’s Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded by saying that US politicians “concoct false news about forced labor so as to suppress Chinese firms and China.”
In a separate development, the New York Times is reporting that the Trump’s administration has restricted travel to the United States by Chinese Communist Party members and their families.
New rules issued on Wednesday limit the validity of travel visas for party members and families to one month and a single entry, the paper reported. Previously, party members, like other Chinese citizens, could obtain US visitor visas of up to 10 years’ duration.
“This clearly is an escalated form of political oppression towards China by some extreme anti-China forces in the US who act out of intense ideological bias and a deep-rooted Cold War mentality,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded at a news briefing.
The Trump administration has sought to cement the outgoing president’s tough-on-China legacy as relations between the world’s two largest economies have sunk to their lowest point in decades.
Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt at Reuters have a little more on potential coronavirus ‘czar’ Jeff Zients.
They write that when technical problems marred the ballyhooed launch of the Affordable Care Act’s website, Barack Obama turned to JZients, an economic adviser touted for his managerial skills, to repair Obama’s signature policy rollout.
Seven years later, Joe Biden is considering tapping Zients to tackle a far more daunting problem. The prominent coronavirus ‘czar’ position would be similar to the role that Ron Klain, Biden’s soon-to-be chief of staff, played for Obama administration during the Ebola crisis in 2014. While that outbreak ultimately killed only two people in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has already cost more than 270,000 US lives, and shows little sign of slowing.
Zients appears to be the front-runner for the job, which could be announced as soon as next week.
Jeff Zients was part of the Obama team at the White House. Photograph: Larry Downing/Reuters
In addition to confronting the disease’s spread after Biden is sworn in on 20 January, the coronavirus ‘czar’ will oversee a mammoth and unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies. The rollout of the first vaccines may begin this month, but it could be months before they are widely available.
Zients, a wealthy businessman who has moved between the public sector and corporate America, has played a central role in the transition since Biden beat Trump last month. He has also served as a pandemic liaison of sorts with governors and state officials, frequently joining calls to share data and discuss concerns, according to two sources familiar with the calls.
“Zients has been impressive,” said one state Democratic official who has participated in the calls. “If the people currently involved in the transition are involved come January, I think we are in good hands.”
Zients’ corporate background, however, has concerned some liberal groups that question whether he would be too business-friendly. “The Covid czar will have to make decisions on just how deferential to business to be,” said Jeff Hauser, head of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group that scrutinizes executive branch appointees for their corporate ties.
It is difficult to imagine more consequential picks for president-elect Joe Biden than his top health care officials.
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for Associated Press that one prominent candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has already faded from the scene. New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was offered another Cabinet post — interior secretary — and turned it down, a person close to the Biden transition said Wednesday.
Biden is expected to announce his choice for HHS secretary next week. That person has to have “the confidence of the president, the ability to operate collaboratively across the government, credibility within the health care world, and the capacity to work with the states,” said former HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who served under Republican President George W. Bush.
Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo has emerged as a focus of attention for the top health job. Although Raimondo has been aggressive in confronting the virus, her state is facing a dangerous surge and struggling to flatten the curve. Separately, Raimondo’s business-friendly orientation may raise objections from the left flank of the Democratic Party.
Also in the running is former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force. Murthy has a soft-spoken demeanor and a reputation for consensus building. He’s the author of a recent book addressing the human toll of loneliness, a problem that has become more widely recognized in the time of Covid-19.
Alongside his health secretary, Biden is expected to name a top-level White House adviser to coordinate the government’s extensive coronavirus response. Vaccines developed under the Trump administration will be delivered on Biden’s watch, a massive undertaking that’s bound to have its share of logistical problems.
Democratic health policy experts say the leading candidate is businessman Jeff Zients, an economic adviser in the Obama White House who was widely credited with rescuing HealthCare.gov after its disastrous launch in 2013.
Keeping the focus on the virus, Biden is also said to be close to nominating a commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration and a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health care will be a defining issue of Biden’s presidency even after expected vaccines defuse the threat of COVID-19, former HHS Secretary Leavitt predicted.
Addressing Medicare’s finances will become an urgent priority before the end of the first term. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare’s giant trust fund for inpatient care will be unable to cover expected costs in 2024. “If that is the case, they are going to have to deal with it legislatively in 2021 or 2022,” Leavitt said.
Someone not taking as many precautions as Hawaii seems to be secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Overnight the Washington Post has been reporting on the holiday party planning at the state department.
Following a sharp spike in coronavirus cases across the country, State Department leadership sent out a notice to employees one week ago recommending that “any non-mission critical events” be changed to “virtual events as opposed to in-person gatherings.”
That same week, event planners were told that the guidance did not apply to the upcoming functions they were working on: large indoor holiday parties hosted by Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, on the eighth floor of the State Department involving hundreds of guests, food and drinks.
A copy of one invitation welcomes guests to a 15 December event titled “Diplomacy at Home for the Holidays” in the Benjamin Franklin Room, the department’s flagship reception space. Invitations have already gone out to 900 people, said two US officials familiar with the planning, raising concerns about a potential superspreader event.
“I’m flabbergasted,” said Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. “An indoor event of this kind is dangerous on so many levels.”
A State Department spokesman said “we plan to fully enforce social distancing measures at this reception, and face coverings are mandatory for admittance.”
When asked how he could expect attendees to keep masks on at a reception that includes food and drinks, the spokesman did not offer a response.
Read more here: Washington Post – Pompeo invites hundreds to indoor holiday parties after subordinates are warned against hosting ‘non-mission critical events’
NBC News report that a couple in Hawaii face reckless endangerment charges after they boarded a flight with their 4-year-old son even though they had tested positive for Covid-19. Janelle Griffith writes:
The couple, Wesley Moribe and Courtney Peterson, knew they had tested positive when they boarded a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Lihue, Coco Zickos, a spokeswoman for Kauai police, said Wednesday. San Francisco International Airport officials had instructed them to isolate and not to travel.
When Moribe and Peterson arrived at Lihue Airport, they were escorted by police to an isolation room for further processing and investigation. Moribe, 41, and Peterson, 46, residents of Wailua, were arrested on second-degree reckless endangerment charges. A family member took their son home.
“They knowingly boarded a flight aware of their positive Covid-19 test results, placing the passengers of the flight in danger of death,” Zickos said in a statement.
The couple posted bail, which was set at $1,000. They could face up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted.
Read more here: NBC News – Couple who tested positive for Covid are arrested after boarding flight to Hawaii
The potential arrival of a vaccine before the end of the year is one glimmer of hope in the pandemic, but with public trust in vaccines in the US seemingly low, it also appears it may spark a public spectacle. Former presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton have all volunteered to get a coronavirus vaccine shot in public to prove it’s safe. CNN report:
The three most recent former presidents hope an awareness campaign to promote confidence in its safety and effectiveness would be a powerful message. Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN that the 43rd president had reached out to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx to see how he could help promote the vaccine.
“He wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN. “First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, president Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”
Clinton’s press secretary told CNN on Wednesday that he too would be willing to take the vaccine in a public setting in order to promote it. “He will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same,” Angel Urena said.
Obama, in an interview scheduled to air today said that if Fauci said a coronavirus vaccine is safe, he believes him. The former president said “I promise you that when it’s been made available for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it,” he said.
“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.
Read more here: CNN – Former Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton volunteer to get coronavirus vaccine publicly to prove it’s safe
Vivian Ho
California’s agricultural workers have contracted Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of other residents in the state, a new study has found, laying bare the risks facing those who keep a $50bn industry afloat.
Farmworkers have been deemed “essential” and thus continued to work throughout the duration of the pandemic. Epidemiologists already knew that this primarily Latino workforce was disproportionately affected by the virus, with Latino individuals experiencing five to seven times the risk of Covid-19 mortality relative to white individuals in the US.
But a study from the University of California, Berkeley, published Wednesday, is the first to explore the prevalence of infection rates among the workforce putting food on tables across America.
The study surveyed 1,091 farmworkers from mid-July through the end of November in the Salinas Valley, home to more than 50,000 agricultural workers. Key findings include that 13% of these workers tested over this five-month period tested positive. Comparatively, just 5% of all Californians tested came back positive. The study also found that one in five of the workers tested were antibody positive, meaning they had been infected some time before.
Of the positive cases among the farmworkers, 45% of those cases were asymptomatic. The study found that 57% of workers who reported experiencing symptoms and 58% who had symptoms and later tested positive had continued working when they had symptoms.
“One of the main takeaways from this study is that the Latino population is not just disproportionately affected by high positivity rates, but they’re also affected in the sense that they’re vulnerable because a lot of them are going to work when sick because they’re worried about losing their jobs and losing their pay,” said the principle investigator Ana Maria Mora, an assistant researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health. “More than half of the farmworkers we surveyed, their annual household income is less than $25,000. A lot of them are food insecure. They’re bringing food to our table but many can’t provide food for their families.”
Read more of Vivian Ho’s report from San Francisco: Covid and California’s farmworkers – study lays bare disproportionate risks
US records highest daily level of Covid deaths, as hospitalisations exceeded 100,000 for first time
The US recorded its highest daily level of coronavirus deaths yesterday, as hospitalisations with Covid exceeded 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
According to numbers from the Johns Hopkins University tracker, there were 3,157 new deaths recorded on Wednesday. The previous high was the 2,607 deaths recorded on 15 April at the beginning of the pandemic.
There were 200,070 new cases yesterday, marking only the second time that new cases have exceeded 200,000. With the total caseload now standing at 13,911,728, the US is set to record its 14 millionth case later today.
Yesterday Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaking at an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce, said that about 90% of hospitals in the country are at stretched capacity.
“We are at a very critical time right now about being able to maintain the resilience of our health-care system. The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that’s going to be put on our health-care system.”
Hospitalizations had been growing over the course of November, setting new records nearly every day. The 911 emergency call system has been described as “at a breaking point,” by the American Ambulance Association.
Task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx urged Americans who had traveled over the recent holiday weekend to behave as though they have the virus. “If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others.”
April’s peak of cases and deaths was concentrated mostly in the states of New York and New England, but the current spread of the virus is across the whole country, and shows no sign of slowing down. Over 1.1 million new cases have been recorded in the last seven days alone. 273,621 have died in total.
Vice president Mike Pence, who has been leading the Trump administration response to the pandemic, will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee later today.
Updated
Hi, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics for today. It is one month since the election. President-elect Joe Biden leads the popular vote count by 6.8m votes, and is projected to win the electoral college by 306 to 232, and is assembling his team to enter the White House on 20 January. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is posting 46 minute videos laden with conspiracy theories on Facebook. And the country is in the grip of an increasingly grim pandemic.
- According to Johns Hopkins University figures, yesterday the US recorded its highest ever level of daily Covid deaths, at 3,157.
- New cases topped 200,000 for only the second time, as the pandemic worsens, and the US heads for recording its 14 millionth case today.
- Hospitalizations from the virus topped 100,000 — more than double the number at the beginning of November.
- Vice president Mike Pence will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee later today.
- Joe Biden’s transition team are meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as the president-elect faces growing and critical pressure from interest groups about who he nominates to run major agencies in his incoming administration.
- Barack Obama chastised Democratic political candidates for using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police” that he argued could turn voters away.
- It emerged that Ivanka Trump was interviewed by attorneys alleging that Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misused donor funds, a new court filing reveals.
- Iran has passed a law threatening to halt nuclear inspections and boost enrichment, in a move sure to anger the Trump White House.
- Facebook and Twitter placed warnings on a 46-minute video statement released by Donald Trump on Wednesday, in which the president repeated baseless claims of voter fraud in November’s election, which he lost.
- The weekly unemployment claims report will be released at 8.30am ET, with the rise in coronavirus cases and restrictions expected to have a significant impact.
- Trump’s diary today includes presenting the Medal of Freedom to former college football coach Lou Holtz and signing an executive order about the responsible use of artificial intelligence in government.
- Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will give their first joint interview since the election this afternoon to CNN. It takes place at 4pm ET, and will air in full at 9pm tonight.
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