US news | The Guardian

Joe Biden laid out his plan for tackling the pandemic, while Donald Trump hosted a vaccine summit which boasted about ‘doing incredibly’. Plus, the supreme court rejected a Republican bid to overturn the electionGood morning. Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that 100m coronavirus vaccine shots will be administered during his first 100 days in the White House. Speaking in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday, Biden unveiled his new health team of scientists and doctors and a comprehensive plan to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. As the US passed 15m recorded cases of coronavirus, Biden told Americans that “out of our collective pain we are going to find a collective purpose”.In a parallel universe, Trump hosted a vaccine summit yesterday in which he made no mention of the 286,011 Americans who have lost their lives and boasted that “in many respects we’re still doing incredibly”. When asked why Biden’s transition team hadn’t been included in the summit, Trump said he hoped “the next administration will be the Trump administration because you can’t steal hundreds of thousands of votes”. Continue reading...

We need an informed public that sees through the poisonous myth billionaires want us to believe: that income is a measure of your market worth

The league was lauded for completing last season safely in isolation in Disney World. But the new campaign holds a fresh set of challengesAs other sports leagues went through myriad challenges as they resumed this year, the NBA proved that it was not only possible to safely play sports amid a pandemic, but that there was now a blueprint for safely returning to normal, as long as you have the funds. The league spent $180m creating an isolated “bubble” at Disney World in Florida, and completed the 2019-20 season with no new positive Covid-19 tests once play resumed at the end of July. The NHL and MLB reacted with bubbles of their own, and journalists wrote stories with headlines such as “What We Can Learn About Covid-19 Safety From the NBA.”But as the new NBA season approaches, the league is throwing caution to the wind. Despite the United States experiencing a third wave of coronavirus, with more than 200,000 new reported cases a day (compared with fewer than 70,000 when the NBA began its bubble in late July) the 2020-21 season will begin on 22 December. It will not take place inside of a bubble. Instead, teams will fly (privately) across the country during a 72-game schedule, staying in hotels and, in some cases, even playing in front of fans. Continue reading...

Move aimed at smoothing relations as president-elect Joe Biden prepares to take officeThe UK has abandoned EU tariffs on the plane manufacturer Boeing in the hope of securing a quick post-Brexit trade deal with the US.The UK’s move puts it at odds with the EU, which imposed retaliatory tariffs on US imports worth $4bn (£3bn) after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the US had given illegal state aid to Boeing, its aerospace champion. Continue reading...

With crises like Covid, it’s comforting to point the finger away from ourselves – but we don’t learn by doing so“It’s the last I’ve got, love,” said the man selling Christmas trees in our local market when I asked to see a larger specimen. “It’s 2020, you know. People want to see the end of it.”This was mid-November. Like many people, I started the countdown to the end of the year some time in mid-July. I panicked when I read reports from the British Christmas Trees Growers Association that some farms had already sold out, and took immediate action when I discovered that companies selling lights and decorations were struggling to meet customer demand. Continue reading...

Getting back to normal can’t be the aim of the incoming administration, as Covid has exacerbated existing inequalitiesAfter four punch-drunk years of Donald Trump, the weeks since the November presidential election have presented a chance, despite his machinations to overturn the result, to reflect on what might come next for the tens of millions of Americans struggling to get by. What lies around the corner after the departure of an administration that brought so much destruction matters to the lives of the least well-off and marginalised people?Related: 'Move with urgency': Joe Biden's economic team in their own words Continue reading...

When Jesse Lenz moved into his wife’s childhood farmhouse he felt no connection to the place ... until he was forced to see his new home through his children’s eyes Continue reading...

The age-old notion that eldest children go on to achieve more than their siblings has been debunked – but I am sticking to it anyway

Sketch: The president’s attempt at a victory lap offered a stark contrast to Joe Biden’s sombre yet ambitious eventThe US government’s drive for a coronavirus vaccine was named “Operation Warp Speed” by Peter Marks, an official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and longtime Star Trek fan.A staple of Star Trek storylines is alternative realities: someone slipping through a wormhole into a parallel universe where history took a radically different turn. Cable news viewers went through the wormhole at 2pm on Tuesday: two captains, two crews, two languages (one English, the other Klingon). Continue reading...

Lawsuit filed on behalf of Republican congressman took issue with 2019 state law that expanded mail-in votingThe US supreme court on Tuesday turned away a long-shot bid by Republicans to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 race. Continue reading...

Ohio congresswoman is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Vilsack served in the same role for Barack ObamaJoe Biden has reportedly selected Ohio congresswoman Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary and and the former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in his administration.Fudge was first elected to Congress in 2008 to represent a district that includes Cleveland, and is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Vilsack spent eight years as head of the US Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration and served two terms as Iowa governor. Continue reading...

Former New York City mayor, who is spearheading Trump’s effort to overturn election results, said he is feeling betterDonald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday said he is feeling better after contracting Covid-19 and expects to leave the hospital on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Party was one of many such events in recent months in direct violation of LA county and state mandated social distancing ordersNearly 160 people were arrested when authorities in Los Angeles county raided an underground house party over the weekend, officials reported on Monday. Continue reading...

President-elect warns of challenges amid Covid surge while Trump ignores gravity of crisis at parallel eventJoe Biden vowed on Tuesday to ensure 100m coronavirus vaccinations would be administered to Americans during his first 100 days in the White House – as Donald Trump held a parallel event where he ignored the deepening public health crisis, instead repeating his false claims that he, not Biden, won the November election.The Democratic president-elect on Tuesday introduced his new leadership team covering healthcare and laid out an aggressive plan to defeat the coronavirus pandemic that contrasted sharply with the Trump administration’s efforts. Continue reading...

State short on ICU beds and healthcare workers amid 70% increase in ICU admissions in two weeksHospitals across California are reaching a breaking point amid a shortage of ICU beds and healthcare workers, as the state faces its worst surge in Covid cases since the pandemic began.Millions of Californians are back under the nation’s strictest lockdown, but hospitalisations are already at record levels. The state has seen a roughly 70% increase in ICU admissions in just two weeks, leaving just 1,700 of its 7,800 ICU beds available. Continue reading...

Security firm with raft of UK government contracts accepts improved 245p a share offerSecurity firm G4S has agreed to a sweetened takeover offer from its US rival Allied Universal Security Services, which values the British company at £3.8bn.Under the terms of the cash offer, G4S shareholders would receive 245p a share. This is an improvement on the 210p a share previously offered by Allied Universal, which G4S said significantly undervalued the company. Continue reading...

Ex-FDA chief confirms administration turned down offer to reserve additional doses of vaccine, set to be first approved for US useThe Trump administration on Tuesday scrambled to justify a decision not to buy millions of backup doses of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer as the vaccine appeared likely to become the first approved for use in the United States.Related: Trump campaign official reportedly tests positive for coronavirus days after staff party – live Continue reading...

Rebekah Jones claims Governor Ron DeSantis, with whom she has clashed repeatedly since her dismissal in May, was involvedRebekah Jones, the Florida data scientist embroiled in a dispute with the state’s Republican governor over the handling of coronavirus figures, had her home raided on Monday by armed police who confiscated her computers.In a stream of posts on Twitter, Jones posted a video of the raid that showed state police carrying handguns escorting her out of her Tallahassee home. She can be heard saying: “He just pointed a gun at my children,” with her husband and two children apparently upstairs at the time. Continue reading...

Long-shot lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is latest legal effort intended to reverse Biden’s victoryThe state of Texas, aiming to help Donald Trump upend the results of the US election, decisively won by Joe Biden, said on Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the US supreme court, calling changes they made to election procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic unlawful. Continue reading...

Fort Worth police have still not said why Nelda Price and her husband John, who died weeks later, were restrained in their pajamasWhile the police in Fort Worth, Texas, ransacked Nelda Price’s home, an officer directed her to put her hands together – as if she were praying – so he could restrain her with zip ties.“I told him, ‘I am praying. Because I don’t understand why you’re here, and I don’t know what this is about,’” Nelda told the Guardian. Continue reading...

If states have resolved disputes, their electoral votes now qualify as ‘conclusive’ – but Republicans could still shake voter confidenceWhile Donald Trump continues to falsely insist he won the 2020 race, Tuesday marks an important deadline further cementing that Joe Biden will be inaugurated as America’s 46th president on 20 January.This year, 8 December is the so-called “safe harbor” deadline, which federal law says must fall six days before electors meet across the country to cast their votes for president. The statute says that as long as states use existing state law to resolve disputes about electors by the deadline, the votes cast by those electors will be “conclusive”. It is meant to act as a safeguard so that Congress, which will count the electoral votes on 6 January, can’t second-guess or overturn the election results. Continue reading...

Judges, whether appointed by Democrats or Republicans, rejected Trump’s election claims, underscoring their role in checking his efforts to stay in power

The unprecedented fires aren’t just caused by the climate crisis. Land use –especially real estate and animal husbandry – have a lot to answer forA good, natural fire can be a cleansing force. Yet, the recent and ongoing catastrophic fires around the world – including in Brazil, the US, Sweden, Russia and Australia – are not moments of a healthy fire cycle but conflagrations of a dying biosphere.Terrible as they are, the fires in the western American states are only middling on a global scale. As of early November, 8.6m acres (3.5m hectares) had burned nationally, with half of that total in California. This year has been the worst fire season on record for Colorado and California, the latter enduring five of its six largest fires since colonization. But the American catastrophe pales in comparison to Australia’s wildfires last summer, which incinerated an eye-watering 46m acres. More than a fifth of the country’s forests were destroyed in a single year. Siberia’s fires in 2020 were even bigger – 47m acres. A tenth of South America’s largest wetland, the Pantanal, went up in smoke this year – some 6m acres – coupled with the Amazon losing 8.5m acres. That latter figure is only half the size of last year’s fiery nightmare. Continue reading...

Trump administration refused an offer of millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus jab. Plus, Giuliani is ‘doing well’ but his condition is kept quietGood morning.The White House refused an offer to buy 100m additional doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, a decision which could cause delays in distribution. The Trump administration ordered an initial 100m doses, enough for 50 million Americans, from the US multinational but passing up the opportunity to buy a second batch could mean the US has to wait until Pfizer has supplied other countries before it can get further doses. Continue reading...

Yeager’s postwar exploits helped pave way to space exploration and were immortalised in The Right Stuff

The effort to rein in a surging pandemic comes as the public seems less willing or unable to comply with shelter-in-place rulesCalifornia has enacted new stay-at-home guidelines as coronavirus cases in the state have surged, placing 33m pandemic-fatigued residents under some of the harshest restrictions in the US in a last-resort effort to rein in the pandemic.The measures are the strictest since those enacted in March, when California’s early, aggressive lockdown helped keep the state’s death rate relatively low. Nine months on, however, a worn-out public seems less willing to comply with shelter-in-place and many workers – devastated by the economic toll of the pandemic – are unable to do so. Continue reading...

Georgia recertifies election results, confirming Biden’s victory, despite Trump’s continued refusal to formally concede Continue reading...

Before hibernating, these reptilian Casanovas have been at it like there’s no tomorrow. Now I’m having to lie to my colleagues about the soundAfter the eerie silence of lockdown, city centre life is back, judging by the nocturnal soundscape outside my window. There’s a constant, happy burble of chat, occasional singing and, last night, a proper fight – broken up by a waiter wielding a fire extinguisher: the scotch egg, served as a main meal, is a powerful intoxicant. My consolation – apart from the fact it’s quite nice to hear the city becoming a city again – is that the worst sound of autumn has stopped. You’re expecting me to say “leafblowers” aren’t you? No. This is a more esoteric pet hate, “pet” being the operative word: it’s tortoise sex. My husband’s tortoises come into the house in October for hibernation preparation and it is, frankly, harrowing.From the moment their heat lamp clicks on in the morning, my productive hours are numbered. First they rustle, maddeningly, as they wake and eat. Then, hopped up on dandelions, one of them will start ramming its shell repetitively into the walls of the wooden enclosure: thunk, thunk, thunk, audible across several floors. It goes on for hours: there are four tortoises and they appear to operate a thunking relay. Continue reading...

Following the release of the Christchurch shooting report, the government has to prove to the Islamic community it takes accountability seriouslyBy the time I reach my 62nd birthday, I will finally be able to find out what happened in the lead-up to 15 March 2019. That’s because the majority of evidence collected throughout the royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks will be suppressed for 30 years.In fact, the government ministers, police, immigration and intelligence officials questioned throughout the entire process have been promised they would remain anonymous – shielded from public scrutiny until the year 2050. These decisions were made by the commission to protect confidentiality and national security. Continue reading...

Decision could delay the delivery of a second batch until the manufacturer meets its orders for other countriesThe Trump administration passed up a chance last summer to buy millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, a decision that could delay the delivery of a second batch of doses until the manufacturer fulfills other international contracts.The revelation, first reported by the New York Times and confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday, came a day before Donald Trump aimed to take credit for the speedy development of forthcoming vaccines at a White House summit. Continue reading...

Austin, who would need a congressional waiver due to his recent military service, would be the Pentagon’s first Black leaderJoe Biden will nominate Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star army general, to be secretary of defense, according to four people familiar with the decision. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black leader of the Pentagon.Biden selected Austin over the longtime frontrunner for the position, Michele Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official and Biden supporter who would have been the first woman to serve as defense secretary. Biden also had considered Jeh Johnson, a former Pentagon general counsel and former secretary of homeland security. Continue reading...

US president Donald Trump's hospitalised personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is ‘doing well’ and does not have a temperature, the president said at the White House. ’He actually called me early this morning,' Trump said. ‘It was the first call I got.' Giuliani, the 76-year-old former New York City mayor, tested positive for Covid-19. He is the latest in a long string of people close to the White House, including Trump himself, sickened in a pandemic that has killed more than 280,000 Americans.

Congressional leaders hope to attach the stimulus bill to the $1.4tn catch-all must-pass funding packageCongress is poised to pass a stopgap funding measure that will avert a government shutdown and provide lawmakers more time to negotiate an emergency coronavirus stimulus legislation amid deepening economic pain.Negotiations over a $1.4tn catch-all spending package are playing out alongside bipartisan efforts to pass long-delayed Covid-19 economic relief. Continue reading...

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state, warned that Donald Trump's repeated claims the election had been stolen were causing damage, after two separate recounts confirmed Joe Biden had won the state. 'We have now counted legally-cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged,' Raffensperger said. 'Disinformation regarding election administration should be rejected. Integrity matters. Truth matters.'

Medical student Jonathan ‘Jack’ Stuef, 32, located trove stashed in wilds of Wyoming that inspired countless treasure huntersA grandson of Forrest Fenn has confirmed that a medical school student from Michigan found the million-dollar treasure chest that the retired art and antiquities dealer stashed in the wilds of Wyoming over a decade ago.Jonathan “Jack” Stuef, 32, found the treasure in June, Fenn’s grandson Shiloh Forrest Old posted on Monday on a website dedicated to the treasure. Continue reading...

First lady’s announcement sparked a slew of Twitter responses including a terse ‘282,345’ from Washington DC journalist David CornMelania Trump drew backlash on Monday after announcing that a new tennis pavilion is set to be unveiled on the south grounds of the White House, as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to surge across the country.“It is my hope that this private space will function as both a place of leisure and gathering for future first families,” the first lady said in a written statement on Monday, which came just weeks before the Trump family turns the White House over to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, who handily won the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading...

Jane Orient has promoted hydroxychloroquine and the idea that government vaccine mandates are a violation of human rightsThe doctor heading a controversial physician’s advocacy group opposing government involvement in medicine has been announced as a leading witness at a US Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee hearing on Tuesday.Jane Orient has rejected any “anti-vaxxer” label but her criticism of coronavirus vaccines has drawn scathing rebukes from some senior politicians infuriated by her invitation to testify to Congress. Continue reading...

Casey Goodson Jr was shot three times in the back as he entered his home and died with his keys in the door, according to familyThe family of a 23-year-old Black man shot dead by a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday have accused police of lying about the circumstances of the killing and demanded accountability for his death.Casey Goodson Jr was shot as he entered his home carrying sandwiches from Subway, according to multiple accounts by family members. His mother said he was shot three times in the back, according to a Facebook post attributed to her. He died on his stoop with his keys in the door, a lawyer for the Goodson family said. Continue reading...

Analysis shows Covid-19 spread among poll workers in many parts of America – in some cases hampering election resultsThis article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access.On 5 November, two days after election day, an employee in the Onondaga county, New York, board of elections office went home early. She felt exhausted, according to the election commissioner Dustin Czarny, and assumed the long shifts were to blame. Continue reading...

Think of Covid-19 as a feature, not a bug, for those in the president’s orbit – and New York’s one-time iconic mayor is the latest to get itHopefully, Rudolph Giuliani’s battle with Covid-19 will go better than his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Right now, New York’s one-time iconic mayor, has nothing to show for desperation-filled legal maneuvers except a string of losses.The battleground states have certified their election results while the courts have repeatedly rejected the president’s flailing gambits. For the moment anyway, the “will of the people” has prevailed. America’s systemic guardrails have shuddered not shattered. Continue reading...

Republican senator Kelly Loeffler repeatedly dodged questions about Donald Trump's election defeat during her debate with Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock ahead of a crucial Senate runoff election in January. Declining to acknowledge Joe Biden had won after a direct question from Warnock, Loeffler said Trump had the right to 'legal recourse' . Warnock replied by attacking Loeffler's response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Georgia.