Crooked Media - What A Day: Quisling past the graveyard

The predicted wave of coronavirus deaths has arrived, Republican leaders have backed away from a bipartisan relief deal, and the Trump administration has been caught trying to wipe incriminating fingerprints off its pandemic failures: Happy first night of Hanukkah! 
 

• CDC Director Robert Redfield ordered staff to delete an email from a Trump appointee seeking to water down the agency’s scientific reports on the pandemic, according to a senior CDC official in congressional testimony. The email was sent on August 8 by Paul Alexander, then-scientific advisor to HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo, and aimed to alter a report on the coronavirus’s risk to children to better align with Trump’s lies. (Yelling over the roar of industrial paper shredders) Just the Trump administration actively destroying evidence of political interference in the pandemic response, nothing to get worked up over.
   
• Destroying those records is a potential federal crime, and a pathetic attempt to evade accountability for the horrors now unfolding. The U.S. confirmed more than 3,000 daily coronavirus deaths for the first time on Wednesday. We can expect those unfathomable daily numbers to continue for the next few weeks; the CDC’s updated mortality model now projects a total death toll of 332,000 to 362,000 by January 2. Meanwhile, people in countries not run by ghouls are sharing milkshakes at rugby concerts, or whatever else it is people do in a post-pandemic world. 
   
• As we enter the Winter of Daily 9/11s and hospitals begin to ration care, Trump’s friends and associates continue to enjoy privileged access to potentially life-saving antibody treatments. Rudy Giuliani, who’s now been released from the hospital, openly admitted that he had an edge over the dozens of people he exposed to coronavirus while masklessly trying to overturn a presidential election: “If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital frankly. Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you they’re going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right.” 

That’s the GOP’s unapologetic position at the worst moment of a year-long pandemic: Treatments in short supply are for the president’s cronies, relief is for corporations, and the rest of you can eat Rudy’s farts. 
 

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has single handedly shot down the bipartisan stimulus proposal in negotiations, continuing to block urgently needed aid because it didn’t include a provision to let companies off the hook for negligently exposing workers to coronavirus. That move came as new unemployment claims rose sharply to 853,000, up 137,000 from the week before. 
   
• It’s difficult to fathom the full cruelty of McConnell’s obstruction. Hunger is chronic across the country, at unprecedented levels—one in eight Americans reported not having enough to eat in late November. People are increasingly shoplifting food in order to survive, and a $4.5 billion federal food program that was meant to provide support through the end of the year has run out of money and ended early in many areas. Things will get drastically worse when eviction moratoriums and other aid programs expire at the end of December, unless someone’s able to tape McConnell’s eyes open and tie him up in front of It’s a Wonderful Life within the next week. 
   

The power to turn this bleak nightmare around rests with Georgia voters, and the power to make sure their voices are heard rests with you. There are just a few weeks left to help relegate Mitch McConnell to the sidelines for the next two years; don’t wake up in the new year wishing you’d done more: votesaveamerica.com/georgia.

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Georgia Republicans have filed a lawsuit to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting based on voter-fraud concerns they made up. Republican state senators have also pledged to require a photo ID to obtain a ballot, ban the use of drop boxes, and get rid of a court agreement to promptly let voters know if their ballot has a signature problem so that it can be fixed. Their justification? A bunch of people believed the conspiracy theories they helped spread. “Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused. We will fix this.” Republicans are working on similar efforts across the country, and we can expect a wave of new voter-suppression restrictions based on Trump’s fictional fraud claims. We don’t want to see any reputable journalists pretending to believe this effort is based on “deep and heartfelt” anything. And we don’t want to see any of you not doing what you can to fight back.

• A total of 106 congressional Republicans have signed onto a brief in support of Texas’s deranged Supreme Court lawsuit aiming to overturn the election, at Trump’s request. Here’s a handy list of everyone in Congress who just declared themselves enemies of democracy. 
   
• Trump also called up Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and warned him not to rally other Republicans against the Texas lawsuit, and had lunch on Thursday with several attorneys general backing the coup. Convenient that there’s nothing else going on that might demand a president’s attention.
   
• Joe Biden has selected Susan Rice to lead the White House Domestic Policy Council, and former White House chief of staff Denis McDonough to lead the Department of Veteran Affairs.
   
• Some Senate Republicans have cited Trump’s ongoing coup attempt as a reason not to hold confirmation hearings for Biden’s cabinet picks, while others are focused on pretending that nominees’ tweets are somehow disqualifying.
   
• Those senators interestingly don’t seem to have a problem with the kinds of tweets that might have inspired a man with a manifesto to threaten to detonate a bomb at the Spokane County Democrats headquarters.
   
• The only Anne Frank memorial in the U.S. was defaced with swastikas, suggesting the need for a few more Anne Frank memorials.
   
• It is reportedly very much time for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to step down.
   
• Ellen Degeneres has tested positive for coronavirus, providing a rare opportunity to study whether patients can overcome coronavirus by being mean to it. 
   
• Taylor Swift will release her second album of the pandemic tonight, in a direct attack on everyone who’s spent the last nine months staring into the middle distance.

The Trump administration, true to form, has embarked on a last-minute anti-immigration push. Since the election, Trump has made the citizenship test more difficult and updated policy guidance to drag out the citizenship application process. On Thursday the administration finalized a regulation to drastically narrow asylum eligibility, allowing immigration officials to refuse protection to those who face persecution on the basis of gender, or who are being targeted by international gangs. Other asylum regulations could still be finalized before Inauguration Day. Trump is also rushing to finish 450 miles of the border wall and considering an executive action to end birthright citizenship. Biden can roll back most actions that haven’t already been blocked in court, but it could be a slow process for rules that have already gone into effect.

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The FDA's vaccine advisory panel has recommended authorization of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. The FDA is likely to do so within days, and the first doses could be available as early as next week.

The Minneapolis City Council voted to shift nearly $8 million from next year's police budget to other city services.
 
A new survey found that 90 percent of Black women voters in Georgia are likely to vote in the Senate runoffs. (No Complacency Zone Fine Print: By reading this you have agreed to sign up for a phone-bank shift this weekend.)

Argentina may be about to become the largest country in Latin America to legalize abortion.