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Distribution of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is underway in all 50 states and authorization of the Moderna vaccine could be hours away—two much-needed bright spots in an impossibly dark December surge. Now if the Trump administration would just stop leaning on the dimmer switch.
- The U.S. set two brutal new single-day coronavirus records on Wednesday, with more than 3,600 confirmed deaths and more than 245,000 new confirmed cases. The average number of people dying per day has tripled in the past three months. California has become the latest epicenter in the wake of Plague Thanksgiving; if it were a country, it would rank third in new infections. The state reported more than 60,000 new cases and 398 deaths on Wednesday, and is rapidly running out of ICU beds. The situation is so dire that Sacramento has dispatched Tom Cruise on a door-to-door scolding campaign.
- The good news is, a second coronavirus vaccine is on the way. The FDA’s vaccine-advisory panel met today to greenlight the Moderna vaccine, which could receive emergency use authorization as soon as Friday. Unlike the Pfizer vaccine that has to be kept in super-cold Dippin’ Dots conditions, Moderna’s can be stored in normal freezers, making it much more accessible for smaller facilities and communities outside of major cities. That authorization will launch the shipments of six-million doses across the country.
- The bad-if-unsurprising news is, the Trump administration appears to be either bungling or sabotaging the distribution process, and lying about it. Officials in multiple states were notified late on Wednesday that their second shipments of the Pfizer vaccine had been substantially reduced, after HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that Pfizer was facing “manufacturing challenges.” On Thursday, Pfizer released a statement noting that the company had no issues, actually, but did have millions of doses sitting in warehouses and awaiting shipment instructions from the federal government. State officials are now frantically revising their distribution plans, while somewhere, Jared Kushner frowns at the UPS website and slowly types “vaxxine” into the search bar.
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You’ll be relieved to know that Vice President Mike Pence’s own dose has not been affected.
- The head of the wildly successful White House coronavirus task force will publicly receive his vaccine on Friday, providing Pence some convenient protection for when he flees the country immediately after affirming Trump’s defeat in Congress on January 6. Biden is expected to get a vaccine as soon as next week: “I don’t want to get ahead of the line, but I want to make sure we demonstrate to the American people that it is safe to take.”
- As infuriating as it will be to watch Pence receive the vaccine before most of the frontline workers he’s put at extreme and unnecessary risk, it’ll be a net positive if it persuades skeptics to get vaccinated when their turns roll around. Right-wing conspiracy firehoses like Sidney Powell and Marjorie Taylor Greene have begun refocusing their posting energy from fictional voter fraud to vaccine disinformation, as have outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax. On Wednesday, Twitter joined Facebook and YouTube in banning coronavirus-vaccine misinformation; in the wake of those bans, some anti-vaxxers have begun holding in-person events to attract attention from local news stations, with worrying success.
Between delaying funding for vaccine distribution, refusing to plan the logistics, and gleefully amplifying every wild-eyed conspiracy theorist in sight, the Trump administration has made an immensely complicated vaccination program infinitely harder. Trump only has one more month to slam on the brakes, but to get the recovery back on track, Democrats will need the Senate.
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Crooked just released a new pod in collaboration with Tenderfoot TV called Gaining Ground: The New Georgia. It’s hosted by Atlanta natives, Jewel Wicker and Rembert Browne, and will be telling the story of the MASSIVELY important Georgia runoff happening in January.
In this multi-part podcast, visit the frontlines with Jewel and Rembert as they detail the struggles and triumphs that led to this moment, and hears from the organizers, strategists, and voters hoping to change the South forever.
The trailer and Episode 1 are out now, so go check it out and subscribe to Gaining Ground: The New Georgia wherever you get your podcasts →
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The Trump administration will withhold $200 million in Medicaid funding from California in the first quarter of 2021, as punishment for the state’s mandate that health-insurance providers include coverage for elective abortions. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that another $200 million would be withheld for each quarter that the policy remained in place, which makes perfect sense in the alternate universe where Trump got re-elected. In addition to threatening the health of older, low-income, and disabled Californians during a pandemic to score points with anti-abortion groups, Azar announced a Justice Department lawsuit against a Vermont hospital that the Trump administration says forced a Catholic nurse to participate in an abortion against her will. Over 300,000 Americans have died of coronavirus and the Trump administration is on track to complete the most federal executions in modern history, but let’s hear it for the pro-life president.
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- Joe Biden has selected Rep. Deb Haaland (N-NM) to lead the Interior Department, making her the first Native cabinet secretary in American history. Additionally, Michael Regan will become the first Black man to lead the EPA.
- Trump’s former DHS advisor Tom Bossert has published an op-ed on the staggering scale of the Russian hack that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has called a "grave threat," and which Trump still hasn’t acknowledged.
- And that was before we learned that the Energy Department, along with its subsidiary National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the country’s nuclear stockpile, have evidence that their networks were compromised in the hack, which on a gut level doesn’t feel like great news.
- Billionaire Kevin Griffin gave $2 million to a super PAC supporting Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that his company had reached an agreement to buy one of its competitors. That deal required approval from the NYSE, which is owned by Loeffler’s husband. Toss it on Loeffler’s Very Innocent Lucrative Coincidences pile.
- The House plans to continue pursuing former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s testimony in 2021. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said in a court filing that he’ll reissue a subpoena early in the next Congress.
- French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for coronavirus.
- A nine-year-old girl who died of a fatal asthma attack in 2013 is thought to be the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death, after a landmark coroner’s ruling.
- The White House now has a spreadsheet to keep track of all of Trump’s pardon requests, and Trump has reportedly floated the idea of refusing to leave the White House on Inauguration Day. Please sir, don’t make us watch you get dragged outside by the Secret Service, we would be so owned.
- Republicans are pretending to be appalled that Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon called them “a bunch of fuckers,” when they could simply stop acting like a bunch of fuckers, and Dillon has apologized for calling Republicans “a bunch of fuckers,” when she could simply stand behind the good take that Republicans are a bunch of fuckers.
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Members of the Congressional Oversight Commission have requested an investigation into why Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin moved to end the Fed’s coronavirus lending program on December 31, when that wasn’t stipulated in the CARES Act. If there was any doubt that it was purely to sabotage the Biden administration, this should clear things up: Senate Republicans are pushing to include language in the next relief bill that would explicitly cut off that funding at the end of the year, radically rewriting the Fed’s emergency lending powers to severely limit Biden’s options for responding to the economic crisis. Holding desperately needed aid hostage for the sole purpose of pinning GOP failures on the Biden administration: Kinda sounds like a bunch of fuckers!
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Federal judges rejected two efforts from Georgia Republicans seeking to make mail-in voting more difficult in the Senate runoffs.
The New York City Council has passed a bill that protects fast-food workers from being fired without a valid reason.
New York has banned the sale or display of any hate symbol, including the Confederate flag, on state grounds.
Major League Baseball announced that it will recognize the players and teams of the Negro Leagues as major leaguers.
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