US Presidential Election & covid-19 updates: Trump, Biden, transition, results, cases, latest news

Tarsirachuyel

7 min readNov 30, 2020

Joe Biden: 306
Donald Trump: 232

US covid-19 cases: 13.25 million

US covid-19 deaths: 266,063 (Source: JHU)

- New stay-at-home order imposed in Los Angeles County as cases continue to rise

- Election fraud lawsuit donor sues Trump for $2.5 million after another defeat in Pennsylvania

- Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine begins its journey to US from Belgium ahead of FDA aproval

- Final days in office could see unprecedented activity from Trump

- Furious Trump tells WH reporters: “Don’t talk to me that way, I’m the President of the United States”

- Denver mayor forced to apologise for flying for Thanksgiving, after telling people to “avoid travel”

- Biden’s Thanksgiving message: “The small act of staying home is a gift to our fellow Americans”

- Trump to utilise military to distribute the vaccine, starting ‘next week’

- Over 2,000 coronavirus deaths in US on both Tuesday and Wednesday

- Attorney Sidney Powell files typo-ridden lawsuit against election integrity in Georgia
Joe Biden cabinet picks
Joe Biden has named Jen Psaki, a former Obama communications director, as his White House press secretary, who will work with an all-female communications team, reports the WSJ

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Biden is expected to name Cecilia Rouse to lead the Council of Economic Advisers, Wally Adeyemo as deputy Treasury secretary and Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The plan proposes rebuilding ties with common fronts on issues from digital regulation to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, the FT said. Relations between the United States and Europe have been strained under President Donald Trump. The EU and most of the bloc’s states have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden.

“As open democratic societies and market economies, the EU and the US agree on the strategic challenge presented by China’s growing international assertiveness, even if we do not always agree on the best way to address this,’ the FT cited the draft plan as saying. (Reuters)

US CDC reports 265,166 deaths from coronavirus
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported a total 13,142,997 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 143,333 from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 1,210 to 265,166.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as Covid-19, caused by the new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 28 versus its previous report a day earlier. The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Trump defends his handling of coronavirus on Fox
Trump has been severly critical of his once-beloved Fox News of late, but that has not stopped him from giving a phone interview to the Murdoch-owned broadcaster this Sunday.

Trump once again defended his administration’s handling of the pandemic: “I came up with vaccines that people didn’t think they would have for five years. And we have them; they’re going to be distributed in two weeks.

“Think of what we’ve done. Nobody is doing it like this and we’re doing much better than Europe by the way. You never hear about Europe. But we’re doing better than the rest of the world.”

Wisconsin counties finish recounts, Biden’s lead reconfirmed
The recount of presidential ballots in Wisconsin’s two largest counties finished on Sunday, confirming that Democratic President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the key swing state by more than 20,000 votes.

Dane County finished its recount on Sunday, according to the county clerk, a few days after Milwaukee County finished its. Each recount produced little change in the final breakdown of the more than 800,000 ballots cast in the state. In the end, Biden’s lead over Trump in Wisconsin grew by 87 votes. (Reuters)

Trump Claims FBI And Justice Department May Have Helped Rig Election
Despite having finally assented to allowing his administration to cooperate with the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump on Sunday continued to spout baseless voter fraud claims in his first interview since Election Day, including suggesting that the FBI and Department of Justice were involved in rigging the election against him.

“This is total fraud,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo during the interview on Fox Business’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding: “And how the FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know — maybe they’re involved, but how people are getting away with this stuff — it’s unbelievable.”

The president offered no evidence to back up this claim, and then went on to complain at length about how the two agencies had been “missing in action” in investigating his voter fraud claims.

Via Forbes

NYC to open elementary schools in abrupt shift
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that he would reopen public elementary schools, abruptly shifting policy in the face of widespread criticism that officials were placing more of a priority on economic activities like indoor dining than the well-being of New York City’s children.

Mr. de Blasio said that middle and high schools would remain closed, but he also signalled that he would overhaul how the city manages schools during the pandemic, which has forced millions of children in the United States out of schools and is widely perceived to have done significant damage to their education and mental health.

The mayor said the city would abandon a 3 percent test positivity threshold that it had adopted for closing the school system, the largest in the country, with 1.1 million children. And he said the system would aim to give most parents the option of sending their children to school five days a week, which would effectively end the so-called hybrid learning system.

Students can return only if they have already signed up for in-person learning, meaning fewer than 335,000 of the city’s schoolchildren, or roughly a third, are even eligible. Eliza Shapiro reporting for The New York Times.

NFL: Saints fined $500,000 for covid-19 protocol violations
The NFL fined the New Orleans Saints $500,000 and stripped them of a seventh-round draft choice for violations of the sport’s coronavirus protocols during a postgame locker room victory celebration without masks, reports Washington Post.

The Saints become the second NFL team to lose a draft pick because of protocol violations. The Las Vegas Raiders previously were fined $500,000 and stripped of a sixth-round selection because of violations.

The Saints, like the Raiders, were treated as repeat offenders. In September, Coach Sean Payton and the team were among the NFL head coaches and franchises fined for mask-wearing violations. Payton was fined $100,000 and the Saints were fined $250,000.

NFL fines, strips Raiders of draft pick, also penalises Steelers for coronavirus violations

In the latest case, video of the Saints’ celebration following a 38–3 triumph Nov. 8 over the Buccaneers in Tampa showed the violations. The Saints are appealing the penalties, according to ESPN, which first reported the sanctions.

Vaccine for 20 million Americans by end of 2020?
In an interview with CNN the White House testing czar Brett Giroir impresses the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines that are already being shipped across the US this weekend ahead of pending emergency use approval from the FDA.

Coronavirus: a reason to stop smoking?
Tom Frieden, ex-director of the CDC seems to think so. To read more about the initiative have a read of this scientific paper in The Lancet.

Pennsylvania supreme court throws out Republican bid to reject 2.5m mail-in votes
Pennsylvania supreme court throws out Republican bid to reject 2.5m mail-in votes
In the latest knock back to Donald Trump’s seemingly never ending run of losses in courts all over the US, Pennsylvania’s highest court has thrown out a lower court’s order that was preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests from the 3 November election, say the Guardian.

In the latest Republican lawsuit attempting to thwart president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, the state supreme court unanimously threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvania’s year-old mail-in voting law.

Justices also remarked on the lawsuit’s staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively. “They have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,” justice David Wecht wrote in a concurring opinion.

The state’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court’s decision “another win for democracy”.

Darth Vader crosses to the other side
The English actor who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films, although his voice was replaced with that of James Earl Jones, has died aged 85. RIP.

US Presidential Election & covid-19 updates: Trump, Biden, transition, results, cases, latest news

Written by Tarsirachuyel