Crooked Media - What A Day: Change of vaccinery

Highly effective coronavirus vaccines are finally just around the corner, which means all that’s left to do is figure out how to distribute them, convince Facebook users they don’t contain a microchip that makes you gay, and prevent the health-care system and economy from collapsing (further) in the meantime. What could be simpler?
 

• Both Pfizer and Moderna have submitted their vaccines for emergency use authorization (put on a party hat!) but the companies say they expect no more than 22.5 million doses to be available in the U.S. by January (wear it alone in your house!). A CDC advisory panel met today to issue recommendations for which Americans should be vaccinated first, while supplies are still limited, and put health-care workers and nursing-home residents and staff at the top of the list. The panel has hinted that essential workers will be next in line, followed by adults over 65 and those with medical vulnerabilities. If you’re young and healthy, you can expect to crawl out of your sweatpants cocoon by May or June, assuming things go according to plan.
   
• The Trump administration has left final authority over vaccine distribution up to the states, which means there could be substantial variation in how states prioritize access within those categories. (For example, should older health-care workers be vaccinated before young ICU nurses?) States will also have to contend with populations that have been flooded with online vaccine misinformation, and the challenge of ensuring people understand that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines each consist of two shots (to be taken three weeks apart for Pfizer, four weeks for Moderna), and that they cannot safely lick each other in the interim.
   
• Meanwhile, we still have a monster of a winter to get through. The U.S. reported more than four million new coronavirus cases in November alone, more than double the record total set in October, and hospitals all over the country are reaching capacity. Unimaginably, the worst is yet to come: It will be two or three weeks before we see the full fallout of last week’s Thanksgiving travel, right around the time people will be hopping on planes again to visit family for Christmas. In the impressively restrained words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, “all things considered, we are not in a good place.” 

That surge-on-a-surge will also hit right as federal aid programs expire, unless Congress can pass another stimulus package before the end of the year. 
 

• They’re working on it, but not all in good faith. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has circulated a warmed-over version of the narrow GOP stimulus proposal that Democrats have roundly rejected, which includes McConnell’s prized shield to protect corporations that infect their workers from legal liability, a whopping month-long extension of current unemployment benefits, and no additional funding for state and local governments. 
   
• At the same time, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a $908 billion stimulus proposal, which includes liability protections but would otherwise be a workable starting point, if McConnell had real interests beyond bailing out corporations and trying to blame the lack of aid on Democrats. While formally announcing his economic team (composed of advisors who are in favor of large-scale, worker-focused stimulus), Joe Biden called on Congress to pass a lame-duck stimulus package, but made clear that it would be just the start.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but we’ll have to army-crawl towards it. On the health front, that means staying home harder than we’ve ever stayed home before, even after months of isolation and fatigue. On the economic front, it means working our tails off in Georgia to elect a Senate that’s prepared to make it rain. We’re almost there. All hands on deck → 

We all want to win the Georgia runoffs, which is why we're supporting the people making it possible—the organizers on the ground. They delivered the win for Joe Biden this year, and we want to make sure they can do it again for January's Senate runoffs! 

Our Every Last Vote: Peaches and Dreams fund supports organizers on the ground via America Votes-Georgia, which has long been helping groups that have built the infrastructure to mobilize their communities to vote.  If you're in a position to chip in, donate at votesaveamerica.com/everylastvote → 

Michael Flynn’s sweeping monstrosity of a blanket pardon was likely just the first in a string. President Trump and Rudy Giuliani reportedly discussed the possibility of a pre-emptive pardon as recently as last week. (Giuliani denied this on Twitter, which, ok.) Giuliani has been under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan since last year, for a host of potential crimes related to his business dealings and election-meddling efforts in Ukraine. Preemptive pardons aren’t unheard of, but they’re not at all the norm, and they send the clear message that Trump considers his cronies to be above the law. It seems likely that Trump will hand out a version of Flynn’s pardon, which absolved him not just of the specific crime of lying to the FBI but any other related crimes that might arise, to a number of goons and/or family members before he leaves office.

• The Justice Department is investigating a potential bribery-for-presidential-pardon scheme, according to a heavily redacted court record released by the DC District Court. It’s important to go out on a big crime, any president will tell you this. 
   
• Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged that the Justice Department hasn’t found any evidence of substantial voter fraud in the 2020 election, like the deep state Antifa scum he’s always been.
   
• Donald Trump has nevertheless grifted more than $150 million from his supporters, only a portion of which will go towards super-legit legal efforts like asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to make election officials reverse the state’s certification of results and throw out a bunch of votes in blue counties. 
   
• A top Georgia election official begged Trump to stop inciting threats against election workers: "It has all gone too far. Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed. And it's not right."
   
• California is experiencing a new surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations, ICUs in the state could be overwhelmed by the end of the month, and Los Angeles County is under a confusing new stay-at-home order. Amidst all this, a Los Angeles COVID testing site nearly shut down for a She’s All That remake shoot until everybody yelled at the mayor.
   
• Former cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs suggested he might take legal action after Trump attorney Joe diGenova called for him to be shot for assuring Americans that the election was secure.
   
• Public-health menace Scott Atlas has resigned from the Trump administration—not in remorseful recognition of the immeasurable harm he’s caused, but because his allotted time had expired. 
   
• While Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) was proudly doing nothing to pass another coronavirus stimulus package, her husband Jeffrey Sprecher’s company Intercontinental Exchange (in which Loeffler holds millions of dollars in stock) took advantage of the pandemic’s impact on the housing market to turn a profit. We know her cohort Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) hasn’t been up to anything corrupt, though, because he’s running this ad: “David Purdue: Totally Exonerated, No Wrongdoing.” 
   
• Nestlé lawyer Neal Katyal argued before the Supreme Court that corporations can’t be held accountable for owning slaves, which is certainly A Take. 
   
• Juno star Elliot Page came out as trans in a moving letter on social media: “I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive. To all the trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse, and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you, and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better.”
   
• The coronavirus pandemic appears to have dragged down online reviews for scented candles. Light a candle for the scented candle industry (then write a bad review of it, we guess).

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has opened investigations into progressive groups trying to register new voters, as if to assure us all that his experiences of being harassed by Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham haven’t changed him, and he's still a Republican dork who sucks. While adamantly defending the integrity of Georgia’s elections, Raffensperger announced probes into registration efforts by America Votes, Vote Forward, and the New Georgia Project (founded by Stacey Abrams), alleging they sent applications to people in other states. Unless there are other probes into right-wing voter groups that haven’t been announced, Raffensperger sure seems to be singling out progressive efforts to reach eligible voters for no legitimate reason.

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The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and federal prosecutors in Montana have launched a pilot program to address the high rates of missing and murdered Native Americans. 

The Sunrise Movement aims to help register 10,000 to 20,000 Georgians who will turn 18 by January 5.

Every major U.S. bank has now come out against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and committed not to finance oil and gas projects there. 

Steve Kornacki has leveraged his map daddy status into a Gap donation of 500 pairs of khakis to the Boys & Girls Clubs Workforce Readiness program.