Category: For Edit

The positive review for Moderna likely ensures that the F.D.A. will grant emergency authorization for a second coronavirus vaccine for millions of Americans this week.

— NYT: Top Stories

Royal staff members insist that Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are being depicted unfairly in “The Crown.”

 

— FOX News

How a leading man of legal journalism lost his sweetest gig.

 

— NYT: Top Stories

Families of some who perished have written pointedly about the virus in remembrances. They tell of agonizing final days. They plead for wearing of masks.

 

Also, the U.S. starts the vaccine rollout as shots are given in New York. High-risk health care workers are being given priority as the U.S. surpassed more than 300,000 virus-related deaths. Australia and New Zealand intend to establish a travel bubble.

 

— NYT: Top Stories

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers was unveiling a detailed COVID-19 aid proposal Monday as Congress labored toward a final agreement on a new round of virus relief.

Progress was being reported on other fronts, too, as lawmakers cobbled together a year-end catchall funding package that will be the basis for the last significant legislation of the Trump presidency.

The dozen or so lawmakers sealed agreement on their COVID relief plan over the weekend and decided to offer two bills. One is a $748 billion aid package containing money for struggling businesses, the unemployed, schools, and for vaccine distribution. The other bill proposes a $160 billion aid package for state and local governments and provisions shielding businesses from COVID-related lawsuits, a dynamic favored by Senate Republicans.

The path forward for their proposals — and for COVID-19 aid more generally — remains unclear. Parallel negotiations over virus relief and government funding are proceeding on the leadership level involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remains central to any agreement. Outstanding issues include a potential second round of direct payments to individuals, a plan for $300 bonus unemployment benefits, state and local aid, and the GOP-sought liability shield against lawsuits.

There’s a hoped-for deadline of midnight Friday to deliver the completed package to President Donald Trump, which is when a partial government shutdown would arrive with the expiration of last week’s temporary funding bill. But there’s no guarantee that the massive year-end measure will be completed in time. If the talks drag, further temporary bills could be needed.

Meanwhile, negotiations on a $1.4 trillion catchall spending bill are “essentially finished,” said a congressional aide participating in the talks. While details are closely held, “the status quo is prevailing.” That means Trump would get another $1.4 billion or so for a final installment to continue construction of his long-sought U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Republicans have succeeded in killing a $12 billion plan to break last year’s budget mini-agreement by using accounting maneuvers to pad veterans health care funding to accommodate big cost increases from expanding access to health care services from private providers. Instead, a different set of moves is being employed to provide for equivalent spending increases for other domestic programs.

At issue are two long-delayed pillars of Capitol Hill’s agenda under divided government — COVID-19 relief and the annual appropriations process by which Congress passes day-to-day agency funding bills. Election-year politics and the maddening dysfunction of the Senate have stalled legislation on both topics for months.

The post-election lame-duck session is the last chance to wrap up the unfinished work this year, a goal of all involved, though they have been slow until now to forge the often-tricky compromises required to pull the measure together.

Pelosi and Mnuchin spoke Sunday afternoon and are likely to be the crucial pair to watch going down the stretch. She has by no means thrown in the towel on her drive to obtain state and local aid, which was part of the almost $2 trillion CARES Act in March.

President-elect Joe Biden wants as much COVID relief as possible but has no direct influence on the negotiations. While he’ll empower Democrats after taking office next year, GOP leaders like McConnell are playing hardball and have forced Pelosi to scale back her demands. And while McConnell supported a $300 per week bonus unemployment benefit this summer, he’s pulled back after the November election.

No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland displayed flexibility in an appearance on CNN on Sunday that Republicans interpreted as a harbinger of further Democratic retreat.

“The legislative process is a give and take and the items that I just mentioned are absolutely critical to get done, and although I think state and local assistance is critically important, the others are critically important too,” Hoyer said.

Also in the mix is a deal to curb “surprise medical bills,” the astonishingly high fees charged to patients with health insurance when they are treated by a doctor or hospital outside of their insurer’s provider network. It’s a particular problem for people getting emergency services and for patients undergoing complex surgeries where another specialist might have to be called in.

Although there’s agreement among most lawmakers and the White House that patients should not face thousands of dollars in unexpected bills, legislation has been slow to gel. It’s been blocked by a lobbying war between consumer groups and insurers on one side, and on the other, doctors and investors in medical practices. The potential compromise would ban surprise bills for emergency room visits and scheduled procedures, but McConnell has yet to endorse the agreement.

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Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed.

— Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — What could be the main event in Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoffs — early in-person voting — got underway Monday, with lines trending shorter than during the first days of early voting for the general election.

More than half of the record 5 million votes in the Nov. 3 general election were cast during its three-week early voting period. Early in-person voting could be even more important in the Jan. 5 runoffs because of the short time frame for voters to request and send back ballots by mail, as the two races decide which party will control the U.S. Senate.

No one expects turnout to be as high as Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff try to oust Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. But Bernard Fraga, an Emory University professor who studies voting, said overall turnout could reach 4 million.

President Donald Trump has relentlessly pushed baseless claims of widespread fraud in the general election. In an overnight tweet just hours before early voting started, he continued his ongoing attack on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, pushing him to take action or risk harming Perdue and Loeffler’s chances.

“What a fool Governor @BrianKempGA of Georgia is,” the president tweeted. “Could have been so easy, but now we have to do it the hard way. Demand this clown call a Special Session and open up signature verification, NOW. Otherwise, could be a bad day for two GREAT Senators on January 5th.”

In contrast to the first day of early voting in October, when more than 125,000 people cast ballots and some people lined up for hours, few long lines were reported Monday.

One question is how many mail-in ballots will be cast in the election. By Friday, 1.2 million mail-in ballots had been requested and 200,000 returned. In the general election, Democrat Joe Biden won 65% of the 1.3 million absentee ballots that were returned in Georgia, a record fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

Fraga said it’s possible that mail-in ballots, if anything, will be even more favorable for Democrats in the runoff because of attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting by Trump and many Georgia Republicans.

That means early in-person voting, which Trump narrowly won in November, could be even more important for Republicans. Both parties may also drive voters toward the early polls with Christmas and New Year’s holidays looming before Jan. 5.

Republican attacks on mail-in voting also worry some Democrats. Meghan Shannon, 36, voted in person for Ossoff and Warnock on Monday at State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta partly driven by fears that absentee ballots will be overly scrutinized.

“I think the absentee ballots are going to be questioned when they count the votes,” the architect said. “I wanted to be here in person so my vote is counted and it’s uncontested.”

Melissa McJunkin, 40, voted in Rome, a solidly Republican area in northwest Georgia, and cast her ballot for Perdue and Loeffler, saying they “will help make decisions based on what I think is the right choice.” She’d heard allegations of voter fraud in the general election and was a bit worried about the integrity of the vote in the runoff.

“I’ve never had a problem before now trusting it, but now I feel like there may be something going on that I don’t trust,” she said.

Towanda Jones voted in downtown Atlanta for Ossoff and Warnock and dismissed the fraud allegations, which have been repeatedly denied by election officials.

“The system is working as it should, and I think our current president is just a sore loser,” she said.

The 54-year-old Black hairstylist said police reform was her main priority.

“I have two grown sons,” Jones said. “The amount of Black lives that have been lost due to police brutality upset me.”

Deborah Harp Gibbs of Lilburn said she voted for Perdue and Loeffler “to keep America great.”

Gibbs said it’s important for people to acknowledge the United States as a Christian nation. “I want prayer in school and God Bless America and apple pie,” Gibbs said, adding that she thinks the Republicans could keep things on “the right track.”

Tony Christy, 62, said he was concerned about the balance of power in Washington as he voted in Kennesaw, a conservative-leaning city just northwest of Atlanta, for the two Republicans. If the Democrats win, there will be 50 senators from each party and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would break a tie.

That would give too much power to the Democrats, he said, because “then not only will they have the presidency, but they’ll have the House and the Senate, which is not a good balance to have.”

But Araya Araya of Lilburn said he voted for Warnock in part to give Biden a chance to get things done.

“I didn’t want the Senate to be majority Republican where everything President-elect Biden is preparing to do is going to get blocked,” Araya said.

Each of Georgia’s 159 counties must offer at least one early voting location during business hours, with many in metro Atlanta offering multiple locations, extended hours and weekend voting. Early voting will continue through Dec. 31 in some places.

Preparation for early voting saw squabbles over cuts to the number of early polling places. The Center for New Data, a nonprofit group, counted 42 early polling sites statewide scheduled to close for the runoff. In some cases, polling places were relocated.

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Associated Press writers Haleluya Hadero and Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; and Sophia Tulp in Rome, Georgia; contributed to this report.

— Associated Press

Georgia’s secretary of state infuriated Donald Trump when he stood by Georgia’s presidential election results. Now he has the critical task of overseeing two U.S. Senate runoffs that will determine the fate of the nation.

— NYT: Top Stories