Scientifically illiterate.....

Supreme Court's scientifically illiterate decision will cost lives

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Last month, I wrote that Amy Coney Barrett would help to usher in a new post-truth jurisprudence on the Supreme Court. While I had cited her anti-science statements on climate change, her arrival on the court has created a new 5-4 majority against public-health science at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

When it ruled this week against New York state's decision to limit religious gatherings in a few high-incidence parts of New York City, the court proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence.

The immediate effect on New York City is moot because the state had already lifted the particular orders under review. The grave, imminent danger lies in the rest of the country, where public health authorities will feel hamstrung to restrict religious gatherings even when the virus is spreading out of control.

The two cases under review were brought by two religious bodies: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group. Both objected to stringent limits on religious gatherings in particularly hard-hit neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The court's five conservative justices, a new majority with Barrett now on the bench, argued that the state's limits on religious gatherings violated "the minimum requirement of neutrality" to religion under the First Amendment.

The court majority characterized the violation of neutrality this way:

"In a red zone, while a synagogue or church may not admit more than 10 persons, businesses categorized as 'essential' may admit as many people as they wish. And the list of 'essential' businesses includes things such as acupuncture facilities, camp grounds, garages, as well as many whose services are not limited to those that can be regarded as essential, such as all plants manufacturing chemicals and microelectronics and all transportation facilities."

In his concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch opines as follows:

"So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience? ... The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn't as 'essential' as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all 'essential' while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued similarly:

"The State argues that it has not impermissibly discriminated against religion because some secular businesses such as movie theaters must remain closed and are thus treated less favorably than houses of worship. But under this Court's precedents, it does not suffice for a State to point out that, as compared to houses of worship, some secular businesses are subject to similarly severe or even more severe restrictions ... Rather, once a State creates a favored class of businesses, as New York has done in this case, the State must justify why houses of worship are excluded from that favored class."

The problem is that the apparently scientifically illiterate majority on the court missed the entire point of the restriction on religious services. Gorsuch mistakenly claims that New York state deems laundry and liquor as essential but religious services as not essential. That is false. Kavanaugh mistakenly claims that New York state failed to justify why houses of worship are excluded from the "favored class" of businesses with lesser restrictions. This too is false.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, writing in the minority, explained the basic scientific facts that were completely overlooked by the majority:

"But JUSTICE GORSUCH does not even try to square his examples with the conditions medical experts tell us facilitate the spread of COVID-19: large groups of people gathering, speaking, and singing in close proximity indoors for extended periods of time ... Unlike religious services, which 'have every one of th(ose) risk factors,' ... bike repair shops and liquor stores generally do not feature customers gathering inside to sing and speak together for an hour or more at a time. ('Epidemiologists and physicians generally agree that religious services are among the riskiest activities'). Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily."

In fact, the great risks for transmission are indoor places like religious services, restaurants, concert halls and theaters where large groups are together for a considerable period of time, typically an hour or more. As Justices Sotomayor and Kagan point out, "New York treats houses of worship far more favorably than their secular comparators," by "requiring movie theaters, concert venues, and sporting arenas subject to New York's regulation to close entirely, but allowing houses of worship to open subject to capacity restrictions."

A recent study by Stanford University researchers published in Nature Magazine made the same point regarding the highest risks of viral transmission: "on average across metro areas, full-service restaurants, gyms, hotels, cafes, religious organizations, and limited-service restaurants produced the largest predicted increases in infections when reopened."

What is especially disappointing in the Supreme Court decision is that the lower court had made the correct points very clearly in a decision that was brazenly overlooked by the majority decision. The Federal District Court had noted that: "Among the other problematic features of religious gatherings, congregants arrive and leave at the same time, physically greet one another, sit or stand close together, share or pass objects, and sing or chant in a way that allows for airborne transmission of the virus."

None of this is to argue that New York state's regulations were perfectly drawn. That is not the point. The point is that the Supreme Court should be on the side of saving lives and urging rational, science-based behavior by all, especially at this moment of maximum peril to the population. Even more than the Supreme Court, religious groups should also be siding actively and energetically with public health authorities, both to protect their own congregants and all of society. Pope Francis succored Catholics around the world by shifting to an online Mass in response to the quarantine. His recent New York Times op-ed eloquently makes the point that the common good takes precedence over simplistic appeals to "personal freedom" in protests against justified public health measures.

Our religious faiths are the great teachers of the supreme value of human life, and they can be great healers for those in mental distress during the pandemic. The message to the American people should be a united one, with the nation's faith leaders, public health specialists, the politicians and, yes, Supreme Court justices using scientific knowledge combined with compassion to end the pandemic with the maximum speed and the least further suffering and loss of life.

Posted his $2 million bail

The story I had to share after Kyle Rittenhouse posted his $2 million bail

Opinion by Elizabeth Leiba

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a phrase we can all recite without even thinking about. It's as synonymous with America as "Liberty and justice for all" or "Land of the free and home of the brave."

But scrolling through social media recently, I felt a pang of sadness at just how hollow those statements ring for Black people in America.

Posts heralded as a "triumph" Kyle Rittenhouse's release on bail. Rittenhouse is the teenager accused of shooting dead two men and injuring another at a Black Lives Matter protest march in Kenosha, Wisconsin, held after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August. The 17-year-old faces two felony charges of homicide and one misdemeanor charge for possessing a dangerous weapon while under 18. He is free after posting his $2 million bail with the help of donations, according to his lawyer in a tweet, including from celebrities like former "Silver Spoons" child star Ricky Schroder and Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, Inc. and vocal Donald Trump supporter. 

Rittenhouse's attorney said that there is evidence that the teen acted in self-defense.

The thought that enough people -- after hearing details of the shooting -- could see Rittenhouse, who is White, as innocent or justified enough in his actions to supply $2 million to get him released, made me think back to an experience I had in 1993: the moments that led up to my arrest as a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida, where I was on a full academic scholarship.

I had entered an Eckerd drug store in Gainesville early on a Sunday morning to drop off film to develop pictures from my camera. My roommate was still sleeping, so I quietly slipped into a hoodie, jean shorts and sneakers, and left the dorm room, carrying my JanSport book bag with my rolls of film inside.

That book bag would be at the center of my arrest and ultimately why I felt compelled to post about my encounter on LinkedIn recently. Seeing Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tweet her disbelief over the supportive treatment Rittenhouse was getting and comparing it to Kalief Browder's three years in Riker's Island -- two years of which were spent in solitary confinement -- for allegedly stealing a book bag, triggered memories of my own encounter.

Batteries inside my book bag had caused the theft detector to beep as I exited Eckerd's that Sunday morning. The clerk called me back to ask if I'd purchased anything. I rifled through my book bag and found a four-pack of AA batteries I had purchased days earlier. I frantically attempted to resolve the misunderstanding. He asked if I had a receipt for them. I knew I did somewhere among my folder, papers and other receipts. I continued to rifle. I was even more frantic. My heart pounded as I scanned the contents of my bag. I knew the receipt was there.

Minutes later, I was in a brightly lit office in the back of the store. The manager, an older White woman, slid an immaculate sheet of white paper, with tiny black text printed on it across her brown desk. I would need to sign it, she said. The small font blurred together, as I held it in shaking hands. I asked her to explain. I didn't understand.

What was it? An admission of guilt and a trespass warning. If I couldn't produce the receipt for the batteries immediately, I would need to sign it right then and there, she said. But I wasn't guilty, and I didn't steal the batteries. So that would be a lie. I couldn't do that. No.

As a journalism major with hopes of attending law school, my next line of defense to her became logic and reasoning: I attended the university. I was a student on scholarship. I came into this store all the time to shop. I had the receipt, if they could just give me a moment to look. I just needed to think for a minute. I know I kept it. I keep all receipts. I had been taught at a young age to never leave a store without ensuring I had a receipt for the items I had purchased -- one of the many lessons Black children grow up having to learn. Just in case you were approached by a security guard, you always wanted to have proof of purchase. Could they look at the security footage? I had walked straight to the photo department without stopping to even browse. I wasn't a thief.

None of those arguments swayed her. She dialed 911 and two police officers arrived within minutes.

Sitting in the back seat of a police car, the strangest thoughts went through my head: Handcuffs are heavier than they look on TV. If someone isn't deemed a threat, their hands are cuffed in the front. There are no door handles on the inside of the back seat of a police car and the windows are tinted so you can see out, but no one can see your shame as you sit inside.

I stared down at my cuffed wrists, hands in my lap, as the officers stood outside filling out the arrest report and chatting casually. They laughed at some inside joke. I was numb. This seemed like a dream.

And I would carry that shame and disbelief for a while: The shame that people would think I was a thief. The shame that I had been arrested. The reality that I was seen as guilty before proven innocent.

My mother picked me up from jail, making the five-hour drive from South Florida after posting my bond there. I was booked and placed in a holding cell for four hours and then I was allowed to wait in the lobby until she came to get me. When I got into her car in the jail parking lot, I rifled through the book bag again. Where was that receipt? I had to find it! I found it there neatly folded inside a bright red folder. I cried hysterically. It was there. It was there all along.

We decided to talk to a lawyer about what could be done to get some semblance of justice. He was baffled. He had never seen a case where police were even called for a $2.49 item and suggested I pursue a lawsuit to ensure the store would never do it again. I wouldn't get much, he cautioned. But it wasn't about the money. It was about getting them to admit what they had done was wrong. It was about getting them to admit that the trauma I had experienced and the effect on the rest of my life was wrong. And the jury in the civil case ultimately agreed. But it would take three years for the case to go to trial and finally reach that settlement. Eckerd's refused to accept responsibility for what they did and fought it every step of the way. Eckerd's attorney at trial argued that the pharmacy had probable cause for their actions because the manager had checked the anti-theft equipment that day and the employees had no reason to believe it was malfunctioning.

My lawyer produced a copy of the receipt for the state attorney's office and the criminal charges had been dropped immediately.

As these memories flood my mind, I can't help but ask: How is it that the employees in that pharmacy couldn't give me the benefit of the doubt over a $2.49 package of batteries, but Rittenhouse, who has been charged with killing two people, can be extended this courtesy?

To be clear, I understand that this campaign to raise money for Rittenhouse was orchestrated specifically by people on the political right, and yes, the incidents happened in different times and places. I also know that people are free to donate to whatever cause they want.

But we live in a country where Black people routinely see themselves being treated unfairly compared to their White counterparts. It's a problem that we can't and shouldn't ignore. And it's a problem that instantly causes Black people to collectively ask any time the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world come across our screens: "I wonder how this situation would have played out if he were Black?"

Sworn in as a US senator.

Former astronaut Mark Kelly to be sworn in as a US senator Wednesday

By Chandelis Duster

Former astronaut Mark Kelly will be sworn in as a US senator for Arizona at noon ET on Wednesday, a senior Democratic aide told CNN.

Kelly defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally in a special election by more than 78,000 votes.

A retired Navy captain and NASA astronaut, Kelly was widely viewed as one of the Democratic Party's strongest recruits of 2020. He is married to former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot and nearly killed in 2011 and is now a leader in the movement against gun violence.

McSally was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, to fill the seat formerly held by the late Sen. John McCain after she narrowly lost a race to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema for Arizona's other Senate seat in 2018.

With Kelly's election, the fight over which party controls the chamber hangs on the outcome of two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will take place in January.

Kelly and his identical twin brother, Scott, were chosen to be astronauts in 1996.

The senator-elect flew his first mission into space in 2001 onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, and he completed three more missions. Kelly, 56, also spent more than 50 days in space and lived on the International Space Station before retiring from NASA in 2011.

Kelly campaigned on improving gun safety laws, improving services for veterans, and quality healthcare for Arizonians. In 2013, he and Giffords co-founded Giffords, an organization to prevent gun violence after the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Fucking still nuts....

Justice Department rushing to expand execution methods like firing squads for federal death row inmates

By Christina Carrega

The Justice Department has rushed to change the rules around federal death penalties as they expedite a slew of scheduled executions in the final days of the Trump administration, including expanding possible execution methods to include electrocution and death by firing squad.

The approved amendment to the "Manner of Federal Executions" rule gives federal prosecutors a wider variety of options for execution in order to avoid delays if the state in which the inmate was sentenced doesn't provide other alternatives.

The rule was included among three dozen policy changes President Donald Trump is attempting to push through before the end of his term. The proposed changes were first reported by ProPublica.

Attorney General William Barr and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs pushed the rule forward. Once the approved amendment is published in the Federal Register -- which a Justice Department official had said could have come as early as Friday -- it will become effective in 30 days.

It ultimately may be moot since President-elect Joe Biden campaigned to abolish the federal death penalty and four of the five inmates scheduled for execution already have their manner selected -- lethal injection.

"The (Federal Death Penalty Act), which was signed into law by President Clinton, requires that federal sentences be carried out in the manner prescribed by the states, some of which use methods other than lethal injection. The regulations were proposed in August to account for this," a Justice Department official told CNN in an email.

The Justice Department did not answer additional questions about why the new rule was made.

The proposed amendment, which was published in August, calls for alternative means for federal executions if the lethal injection is not available in the state in which a defendant is given a sentence of death.

It also suggests that if the state where the crime occurred does not permit death sentences, a judge can designate another state with those laws and utilize their facilities to carry out the execution.

But a Justice Department official said "the federal government will never execute an inmate by firing squad or electrocution unless the relevant state has itself authorized that method of execution."

Attorneys involved in death penalty cases have argued that the use of "non-prescribed" pentobarbital lethal injection is a violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and subjects an inmate to suffer "the effects of flash pulmonary edema" -- a respiratory condition where fluid quickly floods the lungs, according to court documents.

Those arguments have been shut down by the Supreme Court and a federal judge, which have ruled it is not "certain" or "likely" that such an event could take place if the lethal injection is used and that it does not rise to the level of a Constitutional violation of "cruel and unusual punishment," according to court documents.

Earlier this year, Oklahoma resumed executions after a 2015 incident where Clayton Lockett, a death row inmate, received the wrong drug for the lethal execution. Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after receiving the injection, according to earlier reports.

There are 28 states that allow federal and state executions, and the lethal injection is the primary manner of execution. At least nine of those states allow for alternative methods such as electrocution, lethal gas, firing squad and hanging. Hangings were not mentioned in the amended rule.

"No one on federal death row committed the offense in a state that uses the firing squad to execute prisoners," Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said on Twitter Thursday.

When the Justice Department's rule is published for future death penalty cases, prosecutors could request that the judge transfer the case to another state like Oklahoma, Utah, or Mississippi, where firing squads are allowed.

Barr announced on November 20 the schedule for the last three death row inmates before Biden is sworn in, and two are expected next month. If all the executions scheduled since July are completed, the Trump administration will have put the most federal inmates to death during a presidential transition since 1884, Dunham told CNN on Monday.

Four of the inmates, including Brandon Bernard -- the youngest in the United States to be sentenced to death for a crime he committed as a teenager -- and Lisa Montgomery -- the only woman on federal death row, who would be the first to be executed in nearly 70 years -- are expected to receive the lethal injection.

Montgomery was granted a stay on her execution until December 31 after her attorneys were diagnosed with the coronavirus. Her execution date is set for January 12.

The Trump administration has rejected Montgomery's request for a reprieve. Bernard's last request to stay his execution was denied by the Supreme Court last week.

Dustin Higgs, who in 2000 was the first person in Maryland to be sentenced to federal death row, does not have a manner of execution determined. Higgs' attorney did not return a request for comment.

There are 54 people currently on federal death row. Bernard's is the next scheduled execution on December 10.

This story has been updated Sunday with more information from the Justice Department about the proposed regulations.

Diverse economic team

Biden names diverse economic team with four women in top roles to help build recovery

By Jeff Zeleny and Kate Sullivan

President-elect Joe Biden named key members of his economic team on Monday, with the long-expected announcement of Janet Yellen as treasury secretary along with three other women in top roles on a diverse team that will help him navigate the nation's punishing fiscal headwinds in hopes of building an economic recovery.

Biden named Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget, elevating Tanden, the CEO and president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, into the top ranks of his administration. Tanden would be the first woman of color and first South Asian American to become director of the Office of Management and Budget if confirmed by the Senate.

The announcement of Tanden sparked more outrage than any nominee has so far, with progressive Democrats and Republicans expressing opposition. A spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Tanden "has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators, whose votes she'll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed."

He named Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economist, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers, which puts another Black woman in a high-profile role of Biden's top advisers. Rouse would be the first woman of color to chair the Council of Economic Advisers if confirmed by the Senate. She served on the council during the Obama administration.

Among the barrier-breaking nominees Biden announced is Adewale "Wally" Adeyemo, president of the Obama Foundation in Chicago, for deputy Treasury Secretary, serving under Yellen. If confirmed, he would be the first Black deputy Treasury Secretary. Adeyemo served on the National Economic Council of the Obama administration and last fall was named as the first president of the Obama Foundation.

"As we get to work to control the virus, this is the team that will deliver immediate economic relief for the American people during this economic crisis and help us build our economy back better than ever," Biden said in a statement. "This team is comprised of respected and tested groundbreaking public servants who will help the communities hardest hit by COVID-19 and address the structural inequities in our economy."

Biden also named Jared Bernstein, a longtime economic adviser to Biden, as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Bernstein previously served as the executive director of the White House task force on the middle class and as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama. He was also the deputy chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

The President-elect announced Heather Boushey, who has been one of Biden's chief economic policy advisers during the campaign, would serve as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Boushey is a longtime economic counselor to Biden and currently serves as president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a nonprofit she cofounded in 2013.

The new team is set to be formally introduced by Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris during an event Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, according to the transition team.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Biden's expected top economic picks.

The economic team is among the most critical pieces of the new administration, whose successes or failures will play a large role in determining the course of the Biden presidency.

Biden is also still set to name the leader of the National Economic Council, officials said, as well as United States Trade Representative, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other posts.

It is unclear whether Biden will name his Commerce Secretary nominee this week, officials said, and the timing of other key economic positions also could be shifted based on final decisions and last-minute adjustments.

Several people close to the transition tell CNN this is a glimpse of leading contenders for other key roles on the economic team:

Brian Deese, a former top economic adviser in the Obama-Biden administration, is among the leading contenders to head the National Economic Council, officials said. He served as deputy director of the OMB and the NEC and is now a top official at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager.

Roger Ferguson Jr., who served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is also seen as a leading contender for the National Economic Council, officials said, but could also be named to another top economic post.

Katherine Tai is among the leading contenders to serve as US Trade Representative, officials said, a critical position as the Biden administration moves beyond the trade policies of the Trump era. Tai is the top Democratic trade counsel on the House Ways and Means Committee and oversaw trade enforcement for China during the Obama administration. She also played a key role in negotiating trade policy for Democrats in the US-Mexico Canada Agreement.

The roster of contenders for the various economic posts inside the West Wing also includes Gene Sperling, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, and Ben Harris, who also worked in the Obama administration.

Several other candidates have also risen to the top for high-profile economic jobs, officials said, including Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State who also worked in the Obama administration.

Austan Goolsbee, who served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the second term of the Obama administration, has also been mentioned for top posts in the Biden White House. But Goolsbee dismissed that possibility on Sunday, telling CNN's Manu Raju: "I don't plan to be going into the administration."

Slips deep into a grim pandemic winter

A leaderless America slips deep into a grim pandemic winter

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

America is sliding into a winter limbo of alarming spikes in Covid-19 cases and deepening economic pain while an apathetic lame duck White House and a deadlocked Congress provide no political leadership.

There is also a remarkable contrast between what is shaping up as the darkest holiday season in modern history and hope for the future. Hugely encouraging data on several vaccine candidates apparently near approval by government health regulators suggests normal life could begin to resume by the middle of next year. But President Donald Trump, who is sulking after his election defeat, is not emulating health experts and other world leaders by encouraging Americans to redouble preventative measures to save lives in the short term before vaccines become widely available.

Leadership is also missing in Congress. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and GOP-led Senate will return to Washington this week, but have shown no signs they can get together to ease the consequent economic pain of millions of unemployed Americans amid scenes of long Great Depression-style lines outside food banks.

President-elect Joe Biden is moving quickly to put a diverse and experienced team around him -- he rolled out an all-female senior communications team Sunday, and he is expected to announce top economic officials this week.

But even a President-elect who promises to replace Trump's neglect with a science-based approach to the pandemic can only do so much before he takes office on January 20, when the health crisis and economic toll are likely to be far worse.

The current President spent Sunday firing off delusional new claims to bolster his fantasy that the election was stolen, which did nothing to advance his inept legal cases but further poisoned hopes of national unity when he's gone.

By contrast, top government health experts blanketed Sunday talk shows, warning of an alarming post-Thanksgiving rise in Covid cases, overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted health workers and pleaded with a country beset by pandemic fatigue to mitigate the pain and death for a few more months.

The US is now averaging 162,365 new coronavirus cases per day, a number that could be artificially low because data slowed over the Thanksgiving break. An average of 1,430 Americans are dying every day, according to Johns Hopkins University data. A record setting 93,238 Covid-19 hospitalizations were reported on Sunday.

"This is a really dangerous time," government testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

Biden waits in the wings

Developments over the Thanksgiving weekend reflected a juxtaposition between an incoming President who is gearing up to tackle a staggering national crisis and a sitting commander-in-chief who retains his authority but is pursuing baseless claims over election fraud that will complicate the task of his successor.

It was left to the heads of government health agencies, some of whom were effectively muzzled by the President ahead of the election, to muster national resolve.

Since Biden has little capacity to limit the explosion in Covid-19 cases, his most critical initial task will be to preside over the distribution of a vaccine developed by private companies in coordination with the current White House.

Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, said on "State of the Union" that he was "really" confident in the plan to distribute the vaccine, ahead of Food and Drug Administration meetings in the coming weeks to consider an emergency use authorization. Highest risk groups, including health workers and elderly people living in assisted living facilities, could start getting injections before the end of the year. A decision is expected after a December 10 meeting of an FDA committee but it could be late spring before most Americans see a vaccine -- or the double shots that some require.

A second company, Moderna, said Monday it will ask the FDA to review an expanded set of truly striking data showing that the vaccine is 94.1% effective at preventing Covid-19 and 100% effective at preventing severe cases of the disease. Pfizer also applied for FDA certification for its vaccine candidate earlier this month.

Giroir's confidence on distributing the vaccine is encouraging. But it must be seen as another upbeat assessment from an administration that has made repeated optimistic assessments on the provision of protective equipment for front-line workers, falling death rates, expanding testing and forecasts about hospital occupancy that have all proven to be empty.

Dr. Megan Ranney, a Brown University emergency physician who has been treating Covid patients, said Sunday that political failures had brewed a disaster in the nation's hospitals.

"We have been talking for months about the need for increased supplies of personal protective equipment, about the need for increased testing supplies, we still desperately need those," Ranney said on CNN "Newsroom."

"But even if those were all available, the trouble is that the surge in Covid-19 patients right now is so great, it is overwhelming hospitals, it is overwhelming available beds and worst of all, it is overwhelming the number of available staff."

Grim warnings from top health officials

The unity of messaging from government health experts over the weekend was remarkable and ominous — and only emphasized the silence of Trump, who has repeatedly lied about the US "rounding the corner" on the crisis, or Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force.

Giroir told CNN's Dana Bash that he was "very concerned" about high levels of Thanksgiving travel and asked Americans to avoid high risk areas like bars and other indoors spaces.

America's top infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned of a potential "surge superimposed upon that surge that we're already in" heading into December.

"We're entering into what really is a precarious situation because we're in the middle of a steep slope," Fauci said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

US Surgeon General Jerome Adams pleaded with Americans to stick to mask wearing and social distancing.

"I want to be straight with the American people, it's going to get worse over the next several weeks," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "The actions that we take in the next several days will determine how bad it is or whether or not we continue to flatten our curve."

And another senior member of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, who said she hopes to begin briefing Biden's team this week after a transition delayed by the President, said people who traveled for the holiday should get tested and avoid vulnerable relatives.

"To every American, this is the moment to protect yourself and your family," Birx said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Pressure mounts on Congress to avert economic devastation

With the President absent, it will fall to governors and mayors to pick up the mantle of leadership again. But a flurry of new restrictions on public gatherings and restrictions on restaurants is likely to further damage an economy that has been hammered by the pandemic.

So pressure is rising on Congress to break out of its partisan stasis and offer more help to millions of Americans who are out of work because of the pandemic.

Lawmakers will return to Washington after the holiday this week after months of the two chambers failing to pass a new and combined Covid-19 aid package. The prospects for progress still look grim with a funding deal needed to avert a partial government shutdown by December 11. In the past, however, such deadlines have sometimes spurred a modicum of political cover that allows incremental deals. Still, a more comprehensive pandemic package may have to await the arrival of the new President in January. But the reality of divided power in Washington -- pending two runoffs in Georgia that will decide control of the Senate -- and the likelihood that Senate Republicans will rediscover their budget hawk instincts with a Democrat in the White House, only add to Biden's huge problems. There is also concern that the failure of Congress to act will hamper the ability of states to train workers and effectively distribute several vaccine candidates.

Biden, who will have further meetings with his transition team this week and is finally due to receive the President's Daily Brief, is pressing ahead with building out his White House team.

On Sunday, he named an all-female White House messaging operation, which will include former Obama White House communications director Jen Psaki, a former CNN political commentator, returning to the White House as press secretary and Kate Bedingfield, a top campaign official, as the new West Wing's communications director.

The President-elect is also expected to make official the nomination of former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to be the first woman to serve as Treasury secretary. If confirmed, Adewale "Wally" Adeyemo -- Biden's pick for deputy Treasury secretary -- would be the first Black person to hold that powerful position.

Biden is expected to build out his diverse economic team with Neera Tanden, who would be the first woman of color to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Tanden, the chief executive of the Center for American Progress, is a controversial figure among some progressives after working as a campaign aide to Hillary Clinton in her 2016 battle for the nomination against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden is also poised to name Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economist, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers, elevating another Black woman in a high-profile role in the incoming administration.

While Biden was building a new administration, Trump spent the weekend playing golf, and at Camp David while launching fresh, spurious claims about election fraud. He claimed there was "tremendous cheating" by Democrats in a Fox Business interview that featured almost no pushback from sympathetic anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Providing no evidence for his lies about the "greatest fraud in the history of our country," the President more importantly offered no answers or responsibility for the testing days ahead in the worst domestic crisis to afflict the country since World War II.

Maybe this will be the last time we have to do this????

The 40 most utterly unhinged lines from Donald Trump's first post-election interview

Analysis by Chris Cillizza

Breaking from his regular post-election schedule of tweeting and playing golf, President Donald Trump took time Sunday morning to call into Maria Bartiromo's show on Fox Business to rehash many of the warmed-over conspiracy theories -- happy post-Thanksgiving! -- he has touted about why he lost the 2020 race to President-elect Joe Biden.

Bartiromo, who was once a serious and credible journalist, offered little in the way of, you know, facts to dispute Trump's entirely false and disproven claims. Which, in turn, allowed the President to make more and more outlandish claims. (Note: He did not claim that he had invented the question mark.)

I went through the transcript of the "interview." The lines you need to see are below.

1. "You have leaders of countries that call me, say, that's the most messed-up election we have ever seen."

Really? Leaders of foreign countries are calling Trump and saying that the 2020 election is "the most messed-up" one that they have seen? Who, you ask? Oh, Trump didn't name any names. And away we go!

2. "They had glitches. You know what a glitch is. That's -- a glitch is supposed to be when a machine breaks down."

"We fixed the glitch." -- The Bobs

3. "We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden's account. And these are glitches. So, they're not glitches. They're theft. They're fraud, absolute fraud."

NOPE!

4. "I think we caught four or five glitches of about 5,000 votes each, and different states. And, again, they're not glitches."

False.

5. "And what happened, if you watched the election, I was called by the biggest people, saying, congratulations, political people. Congratulations, sir. You just won the election. It was 10:00."

The "biggest people" called at 10 p.m. EST to congratulate Trump on winning a second term? These "biggest people" must be unaware of how elections work.

6. "And then they did dumps. They call them dumps, big, massive dumps, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and all over."

"Dumps" are rightly understood as areas with large populations -- mostly in cities -- reporting their votes.

7. "And they did these massive dumps of votes. And all of a sudden, I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little."

Stay with me on this: In cities where lots of people live and where Trump is not popular, he lost by large margins. Those large margins for Biden helped offset Trump's wins in rural, less populated areas in these swing states. Which is how elections, um, work.

8. "I said, well, I hear bad things about the machines. I hear bad things about corruption."

[nods head knowingly ... looks around to see if anyone else is nodding]

9. "But even worse, dead people were applying to get a ballot. They were making application to get ballots, many. And, you know, we're not talking about 10 people. We're talking -- there are a lot of dead people that so-called voted in this election."

Nah, bro.

10. "And how the FBI and Department of Justice -- I don't know. Maybe they are involved. But how people are allowed to get away from this stuff -- with this stuff is unbelievable."

OK, wait. So, the FBI and the Department of Justice -- run by Trump loyalist Bill Barr -- may well be in on this plot to steal the election from Trump? This thing goes deeper than any of us thought!

11. "I mean, you're doing something. You're actually very brave, because you're doing something."

"Brave" is not the word I would have chosen for Bartiromo's role in this interview ...

12. "This is the greatest fraud in the history of our country, from an electoral standpoint. And I guess you could build it up bigger than an electoral stand -- what's bigger from an electoral standpoint? What is bigger than this?"

Even when it comes to false claims of fraud, Trump has to be No. 1.

13. "Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes. Now, we were -- we were planning -- we -- I got 63 million votes four years ago and won quite handily in the Electoral College, won quite handily. We did very well. I got 63."

Biden didn't get 80 million votes ... he got 80,259,147 -- and counting.

14. "I'm telling you, at 10:00, everybody thought it was over."

[narrator voice] They didn't.

15. "We are trying. We have so much evidence."

"Trump Lawyer to Pennsylvania Judge: Nope, I've Got No Evidence of Voter Fraud"

16. "You know, the poll watchers -- and this is true with all of the states, just about, that you're talking about, I think all of them. They weren't allowed to have poll watchers."

NOPE!

17. "And from what everybody is saying, and from what -- I don't think we even have to prove this."

"I don't think we even have to prove this" -- the President of the United States, claiming widespread voter fraud and a rigged election.

18. "They say that I was doing so much better than they thought that they panicked, and they started just doing ballot after ballot very quickly and just checking the Biden name on top. They didn't have time."

"They."

19. "I would like to file one nice, big, beautiful lawsuit, talking about this and many other things, with tremendous proof."

"Big, Beautiful Lawsuit" was the name of my high school band. We were extremely litigious.

20. "And they had electoral officials making deals, like this character in Georgia, who is a disaster. And the governor's done nothing. He's done absolutely nothing. I'm ashamed that I endorsed him."

In which Trump attacks the Republican secretary of state and Republican governor of Georgia because, uh, they won't say he actually carried the state? Or something? Also, here's Trump on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp two weeks before the November election: "Brian Kemp, and he's a really smart guy, a really good guy and I endorse him and he went on to win and his wonderful wife, Marty, is even better than him." So, yeah.

21. "Joe Biden did not get 16 million more votes than Barack Hussein Obama. He didn't get it."

Trump's proof for this claim? Are you new here? None! Also, the not-even-a-dog-whistle of "Hussein" thrown in for good measure!

22. "There are so many different things."

So true.

23. "They watch the votes being counted. It's so important. It is, like, the most important. Otherwise, people will cheat, unfortunately."

This is the President of the United States. Speaking about poll watching. Which is "like, the most important."

24. "Everyone knows that the poll watchers were thrown out of buildings."

Still no!

25. "When they are voting for dead people, and when dead people are signing applications, meaning they're not, meaning somebody else is fraudulently signing, I mean, in the name of a dead person, well, that tells you a lot."

Not true! Still!

26. "Well, how come there are thousands of dead people voting?"

[narrator voice] There weren't.

27. "Missing in action. Can't tell you where they are. I ask, are they looking at it? 

Everyone says, yes, they're looking at it."

This is Trump on his own Department of Justice. Which has, largely, done his bidding since Barr was appointed as attorney general. Of course, nothing is ever enough for Trump. Ever.

28. "And what happened to Durham? Where's Durham?"

"Where's Wallace at?"

29. "And I know FBI."

"I know FBI." -- the President of the United States.

30. "You would think, if you're in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is -- this is the biggest thing you could be looking at. Where are they? I have not seen anything. I mean, I just -- they just keep moving along, and they go on to the next president."

Again, Bill Barr, the head of the Department of Justice, was appointed by Donald Trump.

31. "But many ballots -- many ballots with the name Trump on were thrown out. You have read that. They found ballots in a river with the name Trump on from the military. They were signed. And they were floating in a river."

Trump has seized on this story as evidence of widespread voter fraud. The incident, which happened in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, involved a total of nine ballots. And local officials determined it was an error made by a "temporary seasonal independent contractor."

32. "It was a Russia, Russia hoax. It was just pure hoax. It was a pure hoax and a very -- a very sad thing for the country."

"Over the course of my career I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. 

The Russian government's effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious." -- Special Counsel Robert Mueller

33. "If I wasn't here, Antifa would be running this country right now. They'd be running the country."

Uh, what?

34. "And if I'm not here -- I'm sort of your wall. You know, we're completing the wall, like I said I would. Everyone said, you would never be able to do it."

So, the wall was Trump all along? This was all a huge metaphor? World rocked.

35. "We could have a great case. We do have a great case. We have the greatest case ever."

"The greatest case ever."

36. "I came up with vaccines that people didn't think we'd have for five years. And we have them."

Trump came up with the Covid-19 vaccines? I had not heard that!

37. "We're doing better than the rest of the world. We're doing better."

As of Monday morning, the US had more than 13 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and nearly 267,000 deaths from the virus. Both are the most in the world.

38. "But actually, I watched -- I watched a few of the shows last night. I got to see a couple of them."

All he does is watch TV.

39. "Sean Hannity, he knows. He gets it. He gets it."

Uh huh.

40. "In other words, my mind will not change in six months. There was tremendous cheating here."

In other other words: He's never conceding. This feels like a good place to end.

Official WINNER!

Arizona certifies Biden's victory

By Bob Ortega

Arizona certified its election results on Monday, awarding the state's 11 electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden and clearing the way for Senator-elect Mark Kelly, a Democrat, to be sworn in this week.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, certified the election results Monday morning, saying the elections process was the most secure in recent history, "despite unfounded claims to the contrary." The state's Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, along with Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, witnessed the certification, as required by state law. These three officials are Republicans.

Ducey, who echoed Hobbs' comments and praised the integrity of Arizona's election system, also said he would sign official documentation on Monday and have it hand-delivered to the president of the US Senate, so that Kelly "can be sworn in as swiftly as possible."

Biden beat Trump by 10,457 votes, the secretary of state's office said.

Certifying election results is typically a formality, but the process had been the subject of President Donald Trump's longshot attempt to cling onto power. His campaign has unsuccessfully tried to block or delay certification in key states in hopes of overturning Biden's victory through the Electoral College.

Kelly, who defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally in a special election, will be sworn in at noon on Wednesday, according to a senior Democratic aide. That will reduce the current Republican advantage in the Senate to 52-48.

Trump's efforts to challenge the results were in full view on Monday, with his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, in Arizona meeting with some GOP members of the state's legislature to discuss unsubstantiated allegations that the election was fraudulent, though the discussion didn't prevent the certification.

Shortly before the certification, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward took part in a hearing in state court in connection with a planned challenge to the election results that her attorney said he planned to file later in the day. Ward filed documents last week in state superior court indicating she would challenge Arizona's election results as soon as they were certified. Under state law, any legal challenges must be filed within five days of certification.

Ward's attorney was asking to inspect up to 2% of voters' signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes in Maricopa County, and ballots that were "duplicated," or copied by election workers, because they couldn't be read by the machines. Four prior lawsuits involving the Arizona GOP, the Trump campaign or other parties challenging election processes in Arizona failed to derail the certification process.

Before the formal certification on Monday, Hobbs noted that more than 3.4 million ballots were cast in Arizona for the general election, with a turnout of nearly 80%. More than 88% of the ballots were cast early, she said.

"Despite the unprecedented challenges" posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Hobbs said, "Arizonans showed up for our democracy."

Openness....

Why Joe Biden's broken foot reveals how different his White House will be from Donald Trump's

Analysis by Chris Cillizza

Days before Thanksgiving last year, President Donald Trump made an unannounced and previously unscheduled trip to Walter Reed medical center. The White House said the trip was for a "quick exam and labs." We still don't know why he actually went -- or what the outcome of his visit was.

On Sunday, three days after Thanksgiving this year, President-elect Joe Biden slipped and hurt his foot while playing with his dog, Major. We were quickly told -- via the traveling press pool -- that Biden was going to see his orthopedist out of an abundance of caution. Within two hours, there was a statement from Dr. Kevin O'Connor noting that Biden's foot had been X-rayed and it appeared as though he had a sprain. A CT scan was going to be conducted just to confirm the diagnosis, however.

Then, 90 minutes after that, came this, again from O'Connor: "Initial x-rays did not show any obvious fracture, but his clinical exam warranted more detailed imaging. Follow-up CT scan confirmed hairline (small) fractures of President-elect Biden's lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones, which are in the mid-foot. It is anticipated that he will likely require a walking boot for several weeks."

Notice the difference?

Now, I -- and probably you -- don't know or care all that much about Joe Biden's "lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones." But that isn't really the point.

The point is this: Transparency in matters of health and, well, everything else, is fundamental to a functioning democracy. And we have had the opposite of that for these last four years.

Go back to Trump's unannounced and still unexplained visit to Walter Reed back in November 2019.

The initial explanation, offered by White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, for the unannounced visit was this: 

"Anticipating a very busy 2020, the President is taking advantage of a free weekend here in Washington, D.C., to begin portions of his routine annual physical exam at Walter Reed."

Which, weird -- because the President doesn't make unscheduled visits almost anywhere, and certainly not to a hospital for tests. The White House has never offered any further explanation of the Walter Reed trip. But in a book by New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt that came out last fall, he wrote this of the incident:

"In the hours leading up to Trump's trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized."

Which seems an odd precaution for a "quick exam and labs," right? Right.

Especially when you consider we know less about Trump's medical history than any previous candidate for president in the modern era.

Trump released zero medical records when he ran for president in 2016, What he did release was a letter from Dr. Harold Bornstein, his longtime personal physician, that asserted simply: "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary." (Bornstein later distanced himself from the letter, saying that Trump effectively dictated it to him.)

Biden, who at 78 is the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House (he broke the record Trump set), released a summary of his medical records in late 2019. At the time, O'Connor wrote that Biden was "a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency."

(Worth noting: Biden occasionally bristled when questioned about his health on the campaign trail; "If you want to check my shape, let's do push-ups together man," Biden told a man in Iowa in the fall of 2019. "Let's run, let's do whatever you want to do. Let's take an IQ test.")

The transparency coming from Biden's transition team about hairline fractures in the President-elect's foot suggests that the effort by the Trump White House to actively obfuscate when asked basic questions about the President's health is over.

It's a good start. But only a start. Let's see if the President-elect and his team can stay committed to full transparency about his health in the coming years.

More sea damage...

The Gitana Team interrupts its Jules Verne Trophy attempt

Lorient, Friday, November 27, 2020 - After three days at sea on their first round the world record attempt, Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier, in agreement with Cyril Dardashti, the director of the five-arrow racing stable, have this evening taken the decision to interrupt their record bid and return to their port of registry. This announcement comes as a result of damage that occurred when the boat collided with a UFO* yesterday, rendering it impossible for the crew to sail the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild at her full potential. Currently situated to the north of the Cape Verde archipelago, the sailors that make up Gitana Team are positioned some 1,900 miles from Lorient. Gitana 17 is now pointing her bows towards this destination.

“The decision to turn back really hasn’t been an easy one to make. It was carefully thought out and all the different parties involved in the project were consulted and the crew made the decision. It is motivated by two elements: the incident that occurred yesterday and the technical consequences discovered this afternoon, together with the quality of the window we’ve enlisted in. Indeed, day after day, our weather observations are confirming that the South Atlantic will not be showing us her best side, with a Saint Helena High that is a long way south, forcing us not just to take a big detour around the outside but also to plunge deep into the south to round the Cape of Good Hope. Even though the routing is still giving us a passage within the record time, we know that such a feat would require us to be at our full potential, which unfortunately is no longer the case. Turning back today means we can quickly return to our technical base, effect the necessary repairs and then very quickly get back on standby ready to set sail again this winter to conquer the Jules Verne Trophy”, concluded Cyril Dardashti.

 

When setting sail from Ushant in the early hours of Wednesday, the possibility of turning back was clearly mentioned by Franck Cammas before leaving terra firma. Though the doubts of the co-skipper of the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild were more geared around the reliability of the weather window that his crew were preparing to take on, this scenario of breaking gear was also among the cases discussed within the team in the run-up to the departure. This is not an unprecedented situation in the Jules Verne Trophy, in fact it even forms an integral part of the history of the record! Ironically, on this exact same date some 4 years ago, the crew of Idec opted to turn back whilst it was making headway to the south of the doldrums following a deterioration in the weather window. However, this first aborted attempt did not prevent them from setting sail again nineteen days later and returning to Ushant on 26 January 2017, the record and an exceptional new reference time in the bag.

26 November 14:00 UTC – On Thursday afternoon, whilst slipping along downwind at over 30 knots between the Azores and Madeira, the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild hits a UFO (Unidentified Floating Object). The impact is violent, immediately causing the 32-metre giant to slow. Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier’s crew alerts the shore team and begins its investigations. The effect of the impact on the rudder of the port float and more precisely its trim tab, has caused a piece of the steering system to break. David Boileau immediately switches back to his role of boat captain and quickly proceeds with the repair. After 1hr at a reduced pace, the latest addition to the Gitana fleet gets back out on the hunt for the record at high speed. Visually, the rudder blade is not damaged but the appendage proves to be hard to manipulate, which suggests there is damage to the system for raising and lowering the port rudder. For all that, a check is impossible as the area located at the end of the float is too exposed and too dangerous to venture out to. The Maxi Edmond de Rothschild continues her course towards the equator.

27 November 09:00 UTC – To adjust their trajectory towards the equator, the men of Gitana put in several gybes. During the second, completed in the morning, when switching onto port tack, those on watch on deck notice that the port foil is also damaged and the evidence the crew discovers leave no room for doubt; they are the result of an impact, likely the same one suffered yesterday afternoon. Despite the crew being motivated to carry on, a series of exchanges throughout the day with their technical director, Pierre Tissier, and the manager of the design office, Sébastien Sainson, conclude that the appendage can be repaired at sea but the crew would no longer be able to use it at its full potential.

The Gitana Team wish the crew of Sodebo every success with their attempt.

Vendée Globe update...

Kevin Escoffier, 40, who is racing in third place in the Vendée Globe solo non-stop around the world race, positioned some 550 nautical miles SW of Cape Town, has triggered his distress beacon. He was racing in a strong SW’ly air stream on starboard tack behind a weather front.

At 1346hrs (UTC), Escoffier managed to send a message to his shore team, explaining that he had an ingress of water into his boat. The rescue authorities (MRCC Cape Town and CROSS Griz Nez) are preparing an action plan in collaboration with his PRB shore team, with Jacques Caraës and the Vendée Globe Race Direction team. Jean Le Cam, the nearest competitor, has changed course to sail to the last position given by the boat when the beacon was triggered (40°55 S 9°18 E).

Le Cam is expected to reach the area at around 1600hrs UTC.

NGC 6822: Barnard's Galaxy

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like nearby NGC 6822, also known as Barnard's Galaxy. Beyond the rich starfields in the constellation Sagittarius, NGC 6822 is a mere 1.5 million light-years away, a member of our Local Group of galaxies. A dwarf irregular galaxy similar to the Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC 6822 is about 7,000 light-years across. Brighter foreground stars in our Milky Way have a spiky appearance. Behind them, Barnard's Galaxy is seen to be filled with young blue stars and mottled with the telltale pinkish hydrogen glow of star forming regions in this deep color composite image.

Cygnus

The sky is filled with faintly glowing gas, though it can take a sensitive camera and telescope to see it. For example, this twelve-degree-wide view of the northern part of the constellation Cygnus reveals a complex array of cosmic clouds of gas along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. The featured mosaic of telescopic images was recorded through two filters: an H-alpha filter that transmits only visible red light from glowing hydrogen atoms, and a blue filter that transmits primarily light emitted by the slight amount of energized oxygen. Therefore, in this 18-hour exposure image, blue areas are hotter than red. Further digital processing has removed the myriad of point-like Milky Way stars from the scene. Recognizable bright nebulas include NGC 7000 (North America Nebula), and IC 5070 (Pelican Nebula) on the left with IC 1318 (Butterfly Nebula) and NGC 6888 (Crescent Nebula) on the right -- but others can be found throughout the wide field.

Was always an option for the orange turd....

20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump's quest to overturn the election

Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Amy Gardner

The facts were indisputable: President Donald Trump had lost.

But Trump refused to see it that way. Sequestered in the White House and brooding out of public view after his election defeat, rageful and at times delirious in a torrent of private conversations, Trump was, in the telling of one close adviser, like "Mad King George, muttering, 'I won. I won. I won.' "

However cleareyed that Trump's aides may have been about his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, many of them nonetheless indulged their boss and encouraged him to keep fighting with legal appeals. They were "happy to scratch his itch," this adviser said. "If he thinks he won, it's like, 'Shh . . . we won't tell him.' "

Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin, for instance, discussed with Trump a poll he had conducted after the election that showed Trump with a positive approval rating, a plurality of the country who thought the media had been "unfair and biased against him" and a majority of voters who believed their lives were better than four years earlier, according to two people familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. As expected, Trump lapped it up.

The result was an election aftermath without precedent in U.S. history. With his denial of the outcome, despite a string of courtroom defeats, Trump endangered America's democracy, threatened to undermine national security and public health, and duped millions of his supporters into believing, perhaps permanently, that Biden was elected illegitimately.

Trump's allegations and the hostility of his rhetoric - and his singular power to persuade and galvanize his followers - generated extraordinary pressure on state and local election officials to embrace his fraud allegations and take steps to block certification of the results. When some of them refused, they accepted security details for protection from the threats they were receiving.

"It was like a rumor Whac-A-Mole," said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Despite being a Republican who voted for Trump, Raffensperger said he refused repeated attempts by Trump allies to get him to cross ethical lines. "I don't think I had a choice. My job is to follow the law. We're not going to get pushed off the needle on doing that. Integrity still matters."

All the while, Trump largely abdicated the responsibilities of the job he was fighting so hard to keep, chief among them managing the coronavirus pandemic as the numbers of infections and deaths soared across the country. In an ironic twist, the Trump adviser tapped to coordinate the post-election legal and communications campaign, David Bossie, tested positive for the virus a few days into his assignment and was sidelined.

Only on Nov. 23 did Trump reluctantly agree to initiate a peaceful transfer of power by permitting the federal government to officially begin Biden's transition - yet still he protested that he was the true victor.

The 20 days between the election on Nov. 3 and the greenlighting of Biden's transition exemplified some of the hallmarks of life in Trump's White House: a government paralyzed by the president's fragile emotional state; advisers nourishing his fables; expletive-laden feuds between factions of aides and advisers; and a pernicious blurring of truth and fantasy.

Though Trump ultimately failed in his quest to steal the election, his weeks-long jeremiad succeeded in undermining faith in elections and the legitimacy of Biden's victory.

This account of one of the final chapters in Trump's presidency is based on interviews with 32 senior administration officials, campaign aides and other advisers to the president, as well as other key figures in his legal fight, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details about private discussions and to candidly assess the situation.

In the days after the election, as Trump scrambled for an escape hatch from reality, the president largely ignored his campaign staff and the professional lawyers who had guided him through the Russia investigation and the impeachment trial, as well as the army of attorneys who stood ready to file legitimate court challenges.

Instead, Trump empowered loyalists who were willing to tell him what he wanted to hear - that he would have won in a landslide had the election not been rigged and stolen - and then to sacrifice their reputations by waging a campaign in courtrooms and in the media to convince the public of this delusion.

The effort culminated on Nov. 19, when lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell spoke on the president's behalf at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee to allege a far-reaching and coordinated plot to steal the election for Biden. They argued that Democratic leaders rigged the vote in a number of majority-Black cities, and that voting machines were tampered with by communist forces in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader who died seven years ago.

There was no evidence to support any of these claims.

The Venezuelan tale was too fantastical even for Trump, a man predisposed to conspiracy theories who for years has feverishly spread fiction. Advisers described the president as unsure about the latest gambit - made worse by the fact that what looked like black hair dye mixed with sweat had formed a trail dripping down both sides of Giuliani's face during the news conference. Trump thought the presentation made him "look like a joke," according to one campaign official who discussed it with him.

"I, like everyone else, have yet to see any evidence of it, but it's a thriller - you've got Chávez, seven years after his death, orchestrating this international conspiracy that politicians in both parties are funding," a Republican official said facetiously. "It's an insane story."

Aides said the president was especially disappointed in Powell when Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News's most-watched program, assailed her credibility on the air after she declined to provide any evidence to support her fraud claims.

Trump pushed Powell out. And, after days of prodding by advisers, he agreed to permit the General Services Administration to formally initiate the Biden transition - a procedural step that amounted to a surrender. Aides said this was the closest Trump would probably come to conceding the election.

Yet even that incomplete surrender was short-lived. Trump went on to falsely claim that he "won," that the election was "a total scam" and that his legal challenges would continue "full speed ahead." He spent part of Thanksgiving calling advisers to ask if they believed he really had lost the election, according to a person familiar with the calls. "Do you think it was stolen?" the person said Trump asked on the holiday.

But, his advisers acknowledged, that was largely noise from a president still coming to terms with losing. As November was coming to a close, Biden rolled out his Cabinet picks, states certified his wins, electors planned to make it official when the electoral college meets Dec. 14 and federal judges spoke out.

A simple and clear refutation of the president came Friday from a Trump appointee, when Judge Stephanos Bibas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit wrote a unanimous opinion rejecting the president's request for an emergency injunction to overturn the certification of Pennsylvania's election results.

"Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy," Bibas wrote. "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here."

For Trump, it was over.

"Not only did our institutions hold, but the most determined effort by a president to overturn the people's verdict in American history really didn't get anywhere," said William Galston, chair of the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution. "It's not that it fell short. It didn't get anywhere. This, to me, is remarkable."

- - -

Trump's devolution into disbelief of the results began on election night in the White House, where he joined campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Miller, and other top aides in a makeshift war room to monitor returns.

In the run-up to the election, Trump was aware of the fact - or likelihood, according to polls - that he could lose. He commented a number of times to aides, "Oh, wouldn't it be embarrassing to lose to this guy?"

But in the final stretch of the campaign, nearly everyone - including the president - believed he was going to win. And early on election night, Trump and his team thought they were witnessing a repeat of 2016, when he defied polls and expectations to build an insurmountable lead in the electoral college.

Then Fox News called Arizona for Biden.

"He was yelling at everyone," a senior administration official recalled of Trump's reaction. "He was like, 'What the hell? We were supposed to be winning Arizona. What's going on?' He told Jared to call [News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert] Murdoch."

Efforts by Kushner and others on the Trump team to convince Fox to take back its Arizona call failed.

Trump and his advisers were furious, in part because calling Arizona for Biden undermined Trump's scattershot plan to declare victory on election night if it looked like he had sizable leads in enough states.

With Biden now just one state away from clinching a majority 270 votes in the electoral college and the media narrative turned sharply against him, Trump decided to claim fraud. And his team set out to try to prove it.

Throughout the summer and fall, Trump had laid the groundwork for claiming a "rigged" election, as he often termed it, warning of widespread fraud. Former chief of staff John Kelly told others that Trump was "getting his excuse ready for when he loses the election," according to a person who heard his comments.

In June, during an Oval Office meeting with political advisers and outside consultants, Trump raised the prospect of suing state governments for how they administer elections and said he could not believe they were allowed to change the rules. All the states, he said, should follow the same rules. Advisers told him that he did not want the federal government in charge of elections.

Trump also was given several presentations by his campaign advisers about the likely surge in mail-in ballots - in part because many Americans felt safer during the pandemic voting by mail than in person - and was told they would overwhelmingly go against him, according to a former campaign official.

Advisers and allies, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., encouraged Trump to try to close the gap in mail-in voting, arguing that he would need some of his voters, primarily seniors, to vote early by mail. But Trump instead exhorted his supporters not to vote by mail, claiming they could not trust that their ballots would be counted.

"It was sort of insane," the former campaign official said.

Ultimately, it was the late count of mail-in ballots that erased Trump's early leads in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other battleground states and propelled Biden to victory. As Trump watched his margins shrink and then reverse, he became enraged, and he saw a conspiracy theory at play.

"You really have to understand Trump's psychology," said Anthony Scaramucci, a longtime Trump associate and former White House communications director who is now estranged from the president. "The classic symptoms of an outsider is, there has to be a conspiracy. It's not my shortcomings, but there's a cabal against me. That's why he's prone to these conspiracy theories."

This fall, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark, Republican National Committee counsel Justin Riemer and others laid plans for post-election litigation, lining up law firms across the country for possible recounts and ballot challenges, people familiar with the work said. This was the kind of preparatory work presidential campaigns typically do before elections. Giuliani, Ellis and Powell were not involved.

This team had some wins in court against Democrats in a flurry of lawsuits in the months leading up to the election, on issues ranging from absentee ballot deadlines to signature-matching rules.

But Trump's success rate in court would change considerably after Nov. 3. The arguments that began pouring in from Giuliani and others on Trump's post-election legal team left federal judges befuddled. In one Pennsylvania case, some lawyers left the Trump team before Giuliani argued the case to a judge. Giuliani had met with the lawyers and wanted to make arguments they were uncomfortable making, campaign advisers said.

For example, the Trump campaign argued in federal court in Philadelphia two days after the election to stop the count because Republican observers had been barred. Under sharp questioning from Judge Paul Diamond, however, campaign lawyers conceded that Trump in fact had "a nonzero number of people in the room," leaving Diamond audibly exasperated.

"I'm sorry, then what's your problem?" Diamond asked.

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In the days following the election, few states drew Trump's attention like Georgia, a once-reliable bastion of Republican votes that he carried in 2016 but appeared likely to lose narrowly to Biden as late-remaining votes were tallied.

And few people attracted Trump's anger like Gov. Brian Kemp, the state's Republican governor who rode the president's coattails to his own narrow victory in 2018.

A number of Trump allies tried to pressure Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, into putting his thumb on the scale. Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler - both forced into runoff elections on Jan. 5 - demanded Raffensperger's resignation. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump friend who chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, called Raffensperger to seemingly encourage him to find a way to toss legal ballots.

But Kemp, who preceded Raffensperger as secretary of state, would not do Trump's bidding. "He wouldn't be governor if it wasn't for me," Trump fumed to advisers earlier this month as he plotted out a call to scream at Kemp.

In the call, Trump urged Kemp to do more to fight for him in Georgia, publicly echo his claims of fraud and appear more regularly on television. Kemp was noncommittal, a person familiar with the call said.

Raffensperger said he knew Georgia was going to be thrust into the national spotlight on Election Day, when dramatically fewer people turned out to vote in person than the Trump campaign needed for a clear win following a surge of mail voting dominated by Democratic voters.

But he said it had never occurred to him to go along with Trump's unproven allegations because of his duty to administer elections. Raffensperger said his strategy was to keep his head down and follow the law.

"People made wild accusations about the voting systems that we have in Georgia," Raffensperger said. "They were asking, 'How do we get to 270? How do you get it to Congress so they can make a determination?' " But, he added, "I'm not supposed to put my thumb on the Republican side."

Trump fixated on a false conspiracy theory that the machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and used in Georgia and other states had been programmed to count Trump votes as Biden votes. In myriad private conversations, the president would find a way to come back to Dominion. He was obsessed.

"Do you think there's really something here? I'm hearing . . . " Trump would say, according to one senior official who discussed it with him.

Raffensperger said Republicans were only harming themselves by questioning the integrity of the Dominion machines. He warned that these kinds of baseless allegations could discourage Republicans from voting in the Senate runoffs. "People need to get a grip on reality," he said.

More troubling to Raffensperger were the many threats he and his wife, Tricia, have received over the past few weeks - and a break-in at another family member's home. All of it has prompted him to accept a state security detail.

"If Republicans don't start condemning this stuff, then I think they're really complicit in it," he said. "It's time to stand up and be counted. Are you going to stand for righteousness? Are you going to stand for integrity? Or are you going to stand for the wild mob? You wanted to condemn the wild mob when it's on the left side. What are you going to do when it's on our side?"

On Nov. 20, after Raffensperger certified the state's results, Kemp announced that he would make a televised statement, stoking fears that the president might have finally gotten to the governor.

"This can't be good," Jordan Fuchs, a Raffensperger deputy, wrote in a text message.

But Kemp held firm and formalized the certification.

"As governor, I have a solemn responsibility to follow the law, and that is what I will continue to do," Kemp said. "We must all work together to ensure citizens have confidence in future elections in our state."

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On Nov. 7, four days after the election, every major news organization projected that Biden would win the presidency. At the same time, Giuliani stood before news cameras in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, near an adult-video shop and a crematorium, to detail alleged examples of voter fraud.

The contrast that day between Giuliani's humble, eccentric surroundings and Biden's and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris's victory speeches on a grand, blue-lit stage in Wilmington, Del., underscored the virtual impossibility of Trump's quest to overturn the results.

Also that day, Stepien, Clark, Miller and Bossie briefed Trump on a potential legal strategy for the president's approval. They explained that prevailing would be difficult and involve complicated plays in every state that could stretch into December. They estimated a "5 to 10 percent chance of winning," one person involved in the meeting said.

Trump signaled that he understood and agreed to the strategy.

Around this time, some lawyers around Trump began to suddenly disappear from the effort in what some aides characterized as an attempt to protect their reputations. Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who had appeared at a news conference with Giuliani right after the election, ceased her involvement after the first week.

"Literally only the fringy of the fringe are willing to do pressers, and that's when it became clear there was no 'there' there," a senior administration official said.

A turning point for the Trump campaign's legal efforts came on Nov. 13, when its core team of professional lawyers saw the writing on the wall. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia delivered a stinging defeat to Trump allies in a lawsuit trying to invalidate all Pennsylvania ballots received after Election Day.

The decision didn't just reject the claim; it denied the plaintiffs standing in any federal challenge under the Constitution's electors clause - an outcome that Trump's legal team recognized as a potentially fatal blow to many of the campaign's challenges in the state.

This is when a gulf emerged between the outlooks of most lawyers on the team and of Giuliani, whom many of the other lawyers thought seemed "deranged" and ill-prepared to litigate, according to a person familiar with the campaign's legal team. Some of the Trump campaign and Republican party lawyers sought to even avoid meetings with Giuliani and his team. When asked for evidence internally for their most explosive claims, Giuliani and Powell could not provide it, the other advisers said.

Giuliani and his protegee, Ellis, both striving to please the president, insisted that Trump's fight was not over. Someone familiar with their strategy said they were "performing for an audience of one," and that Trump held Giuliani in high regard as "a fighter" and as "his peer."

Tensions within Trump's team came to a head that weekend, when Giuliani and Ellis staged what the senior administration official called "a hostile takeover" of what remained of the Trump campaign.

On the afternoon of Nov. 13, a Friday, Trump called Giuliani from the Oval Office while other advisers were present, including Vice President Mike Pence; White House counsel Pat Cipollone; Johnny McEntee, the director of presidential personnel; and Clark.

Giuliani, who was on speakerphone, told the president that he could win and that his other advisers were lying to him about his chances. Clark called Giuliani an expletive and said he was feeding the president bad information. The meeting ended without a clear path, according to people familiar with the discussion.

The next day, a Saturday, Trump tweeted out that Giuliani, Ellis, Powell and others were now in charge of his legal strategy. Ellis startled aides by entering the campaign's Arlington, Va., headquarters and instructing staffers that they must now listen to her and Giuliani.

"They came in one day and were like, 'We have the president's direct order. Don't take an order if it doesn't come from us,' " a senior administration official recalled.

Clark and Miller pushed back, the official said. Ellis threatened to call Trump, to which Miller replied, "Sure, let's do this," said a campaign adviser.

It was a fiery altercation, not unlike the many that had played out over the past four years in the corridors of the West Wing. The outcome was that Giuliani and Ellis, as well as Powell - the "elite strike force," as they dubbed themselves - became the faces of the president's increasingly unrealistic attempts to subvert democracy.

The strategy, according to a second senior administration official, was, "Anyone who is willing to go out and say, 'They stole it,' roll them out. Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell. Send [former acting director of national intelligence] Ric Grenell out West. Send [American Conservative Union Chairman] Matt Schlapp somewhere. Just roll everybody up who is willing to do it into a clown car, and when it's time for a press conference, roll them out."

Trump and his allies made a series of brazen legal challenges, including in Nevada, where conservative activist Sharron Angle asked a court to block certification of the results in Clark County, by far the state's most populous county, and order a wholesale do-over of the election.

Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman was incredulous.

"How do you get to that's sufficient to throw out an entire election?" she said. She noted the practical implications of failing to certify the election, including that every official elected on Nov. 3 would be unable to take office in the new year, including herself.

Sturman denied the request. Not only was there no evidence to support the claims of widespread voter fraud, she said, but "as a matter of public policy, this is just a bad idea."

- - -

As Trump's legal challenges failed in court, he employed another tactic to try to reverse the result: a public pressure campaign on state and local Republican officials to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf.

"As was the case throughout his business career, he viewed the rules as instruments to be manipulated to achieve his chosen ends," said Galston of the Brookings Institution.

Trump's highest-profile play came in Michigan, where Biden was the projected winner and led by more than 150,000 votes. On Nov. 17, Trump called a Republican member of the board of canvassers in Wayne County, which is where Detroit is located and is the state's most populous county. After speaking with the president, the board member, Monica Palmer, attempted to rescind her vote to certify Biden's win in Wayne.

Then Trump invited the leaders of Michigan's Republican-controlled state Senate and House to meet him at the White House, apparently hoping to coax them to block certification of the results or perhaps even to ignore Biden's popular-vote win and seat Trump electors if the state's canvassing board deadlocked. Such a move was on shaky legal ground, but that didn't stop the president from trying.

Republican and Democratic leaders, including current and former governors and members of Congress, immediately launched a full-court press to urge the legislative leaders to resist Trump's entreaties. The nonpartisan Voter Protection Program was so worried that it commissioned a poll to find out how Michiganders felt about his intervention. The survey found that a bipartisan majority did not like Trump intervening and believed that Biden won the state.

House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said they accepted the invitation as a courtesy and issued a joint statement immediately after the meeting: "We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan."

A person familiar with their thinking said they felt they could not decline the president's invitation - plus they saw an opportunity to deliver to Trump "a flavor of the truth and what he wasn't hearing in his own echo chamber," as well as to make a pitch for coronavirus relief for their state.

There was never a moment when the lawmakers contemplated stepping in on Trump's behalf, because Michigan law does not allow it, this person said. Before the trip, lawyers for the lawmakers told their colleagues in the legislature that there was nothing feasible in what Trump was trying to do, and that it was "absolute crazy talk" for the Michigan officials to contemplate defying the will of the voters, this person added.

Trump was scattered in the meeting, interrupting to talk about the coronavirus when the lawmakers were talking about the election, and then talking about the election when they were talking about the coronavirus, this person said. The lawmakers left with the impression that the president understood little about Michigan law, but also that his blinders had fallen off about his prospects for reversing the outcome, this person added.

No representatives from Trump's campaign attended the meeting, and advisers talked Trump out of scheduling a similar one with Pennsylvania officials.

The weekend of Nov. 21 and on Monday, Nov. 23, Trump faced mounting pressure from Republican senators and former national security officials - as well as from some of his most trusted advisers - to end his stalemate with Biden and authorize the General Services Administration to initiate the transition. The bureaucratic step would allow Biden and his administration-in-waiting to tap public funds to run their transition, receive security briefings and gain access to federal agencies to prepare for the Jan. 20 takeover.

Trump was reluctant, believing that by authorizing the transition, he would in effect be conceding the election. Over multiple days, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, one of the president's personal attorneys, explained to Trump that the transition had nothing to do with conceding, and that legitimate challenges could continue, according to someone familiar with the conversations.

Late on Nov. 23, Trump announced that he had allowed the transition to move forward because it was "in the best interest of our Country," but he kept up his fight over the election results.

The next day, after a conversation with Giuliani, Trump decided to visit Gettysburg, Pa., on Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, for a news conference at a Wyndham Hotel to highlight alleged voter fraud. The plan caught many close to the president by surprise, including RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, three officials said. Some tried to talk Trump out of the trip, but he thought it was a good idea to appear with Giuliani.

A few hours before he was scheduled to depart, the trip was scuttled. "Bullet dodged," said one campaign adviser. "It would have been a total humiliation."

That afternoon, Trump called in to the meeting of GOP state senators at the Wyndham, where Giuliani and Ellis were addressing attendees. He spoke via a scratchy connection to Ellis's cellphone, which she played on speaker. At one point, the line beeped to signal another caller.

"If you were a Republican poll watcher, you were treated like a dog," Trump complained, using one of his favorite put-downs, even though many people treat dogs well, like members of their own families.

"This election was lost by the Democrats," he said, falsely. "They cheated."

Trump demanded that state officials overturn the results - but the count had already been certified. Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes will be awarded to Biden.