Trump cementing death penalty legacy in post-election period

As President Trump spends his final days in the White House, his administration is throttling up the pace of federal executions despite a surge of coronavirus cases in prisons.

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  • Report: Biden picks Rochelle Walensky to lead CDC

    President-elect Joe Biden has picked Rochelle Walensky to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two people with knowledge of the matter told Politico on Sunday.Walensky is the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The CDC is now being led by Dr. Robert Redfield, who became director in March 2018.As director of the CDC, Walensky will have a major role in helping Biden and his administration navigate the coronavirus pandemic. Biden has been calling for a nationwide mask mandate, and said he will ask Americans to wear a mask during his first 100 days in office. On Friday, the CDC recommended, for the first time during the months-long pandemic, that people always wear a mask when they are not at home.More stories from theweek.com The post-Mitch McConnell GOP is going to be a carnival of madness As Trump rages, his appointees are rushing to tie Biden's hands, burnish their own careers I'm rooting for pro-democracy Republicans

  • Six supporters of hardline Indonesian cleric killed in shootout

    Six supporters of Indonesian Islamic cleric Rizieq Shihab were killed in a shootout on Monday, police said, raising worries the clash could reignite tensions between authorities and Islamist groups in the world's biggest Muslim majority country. Jakarta police chief Fadil Imran said the incident occurred just after midnight on a highway when the cleric's supporters attacked a police vehicle with firearms, sickles and a samurai sword. Police have been investigating the controversial and politically influential cleric for violating coronavirus protocols after several mass gatherings to celebrate his return from self exile in Saudi Arabia last month.

  • Covid: US vaccine chief Slaoui sees 'light at end of the tunnel'

    Moncef Slaoui says life should get back to normal in spring as US approval of a vaccine edges closer.

  • Rudy Giuliani says he's 'feeling good' after being admitted to hospital with Covid-19

    Rudy Giuliani said he was "feeling good" and "recovering quickly" after being admitted to hospital with coronavirus. The 76-year old former New York City mayor is being treated at Georgetown University Medical Centre and because of his age is likely to be considered as being in a high risk category. Mr Giuliani thanked all his supporters on Twitter for their kind thoughts and said he was feeling good. "Thank you to all my friends and followers for all the prayers and kind wishes," he wrote. "I’m getting great care and feeling good. "Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything."

  • China prepares large-scale rollout of coronavirus vaccines

    Provincial governments across China are placing orders for experimental, domestically made coronavirus vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country's 1.4 billion people. Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said during a U.N. meeting last week, as Britain approved emergency use of Pfizer Inc.'s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution. Developers have yet to disclose how effective their vaccines are and possible side effects.

  • New Zealand's Ardern vows accountability ahead of Christchurch attack report

    New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday vowed accountability for the families of last year's Christchurch mosque attack victims, ahead of the public release of a major report into the country's worst massacre. Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August for killing 51 Muslim worshippers and injuring dozens of others at two mosques in the South Island city on March 15, 2019. The findings of a royal commission inquiry into the attack will be made public in parliament on Tuesday.

  • Juan Guaido prepares to lose his seat in Venezuela - and his freedom

    When Juan Guaido raised his right hand and symbolically swore himself in as Venezuela’s interim president nearly two years ago, the tens of thousands watching on a main Caracas avenue rejoiced. As the country’s national anthem, “Glory to the Brave People,” then blasted through loudspeakers, some lifted their hands in a sign of victory, crying and overwhelmed with emotion. The trickle of news alerts in the following days advising that another country had recognised the 35 year-old as the country’s rightful leader seemed to confirm their certainty that Nicolas Maduro would soon be forced from the presidential palace. But two years on and Mr Maduro remains in power with complete control. And after parliamentary elections on Sunday, that claim will likely collapse entirely when he loses his seat and thus his claim as Venezuela's legitimate president. He may also lose his freedom. With Guaido’s term ending, so too will his parliamentary immunity. Mr Maduro may feel emboldened to detain the opposition leader or force him to flee the country.

  • EXPLAINER: How does AP choose which lawsuits to cover?

    The Associated Press has tallied roughly 50 cases brought by the campaign of President Donald Trump and his allies, challenging the result of elections. Trump has gotten one court win. It came in a Pennsylvania case about deadlines for proof of identification for certain absentee ballots and mail-in ballots.

  • Democratic Sen. Mark Warner challenges Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell on bipartisan relief bill opposition

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not a fan of the $908 billion pandemic relief bill that was put together by a bipartisan group of senators and subsequently received a nod of approval from Democratic congressional leadership.Sanders said he won't vote for the bill if it ever comes to the floor, taking particular issue with the liability provision, which he argues gives "100 percent legal immunity to corporations whose irresponsibility has led to the deaths of hundreds of workers." But his Democratic colleague, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who was part of the negotiating team that crafted the framework, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that Sanders had mischaracterized the bill. The main purpose of the package, Warner said, is to give states "some level of time out" to set their own coronavirus standards and serve as a holdover until a more comprehensive bill is put together. In the meantime, he questioned how politicians from either party could tell small business owners, unemployed workers, and people struggling to pay their rent that a $908 billion package wasn't enough for four months of emergency aid.> Democratic Sen. Mark Warner pushes back against Sen. Bernie Sanders' criticisms of the bipartisan Covid-19 relief proposal: "Sen. Sanders, respectfully, is not involved in these negotiations and his characterization is just not accurate" CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/7muYW89sgF> > -- State of the Union (@CNNSotu) December 6, 2020Later in the State of the Union interview, Warner said he'd ask Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose position on the proposal is unclear, a similar question. > Media: Sen. @MarkWarner (D-VA) to @jaketapper: "The same thing I said respectfully to @BernieSanders, I'd say to @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell: Do you really want to send us home without even a vote on something that I have pretty high assurance would get way beyond 60 votes?" pic.twitter.com/g7TFSsIRyD> > -- Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) December 6, 2020More stories from theweek.com The post-Mitch McConnell GOP is going to be a carnival of madness As Trump rages, his appointees are rushing to tie Biden's hands, burnish their own careers I'm rooting for pro-democracy Republicans

  • California faces strict new coronavirus lockdowns; some sheriffs push back

    More than 23 million people in Southern California were preparing on Sunday for the harshest lockdowns in the United States as COVID-19 cases spiked to record levels in the country's most populous state. The restrictions in California, ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom to take effect on a region-by-region basis as hospital intensive care unit beds are filled almost to capacity, call for bars, hair and nail salons and tattoo shops to close again. Newsom, a first-term Democrat, has threatened to withhold funds from local governments that refuse to carry out the restrictions.

  • Biden needs to take the Wayne Gretzky approach to foreign policy

    Opinion: Acting with conviction, not searching for compromise, has best chance of consensus on the most important international issues the US faces.

  • Exclusive: Matt Hancock says vaccine will loosen Covid tiers before end of March

    The fast-track approval of the coronavirus vaccine means restrictions could be loosened before the end of March, the Health Secretary has said. In an interview with The Telegraph, Matt Hancock said he "can't wait to scrap this tiered system altogether" and for the country to "get back to living by mutual respect and personal responsibility, not laws set in Parliament". It marks a change in rhetoric and tone from Mr Hancock, who until now has been seen in Whitehall as one of the strongest proponents of the strictest possible measures. Asked whether the start of administering the vaccine to Britons this week could bring about a quicker end to the restrictions in the first three months of next year, Mr Hancock said: "Yes it will." He later said: "There's no doubt that having the vaccine early... will bring forward the moment when we can get rid of these blasted restrictions, but until then we have got to follow them. Help is on its way." Mr Hancock also said he was looking for "some absolutely wonderful nonagenarians... to come forward and be vaccinated". He refused to say whether he was thinking about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, both of whom are in their 90s.

  • Israeli police cleared in shooting of maimed Palestinian boy

    Israeli authorities have cleared police of any wrongdoing in the case of a 9-year-old boy who lost an eye after apparently being shot in the face by an Israeli officer earlier this year. Malik Eissa was struck by what appeared to be a sponge-tipped munition last February and lost vision in his left eye, and his family says he hasn't returned to school because of recurring medical treatments and the embarrassment of being disfigured and reliant on a prosthetic eye. Residents said he had just gotten off a school bus in the Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya in east Jerusalem when police opened fire.

  • Indonesia names second cabinet minister as suspect in a graft case

    Indonesia's anti-graft agency named Social Affairs Minister Juliari Batubara on Sunday as a suspect in a million-dollar bribery case, along with four others, while President Joko Widodo warned officials against misuse of public funds. Juliari and two officials are suspected of taking bribes over the procurement of goods worth 5.9 trillion rupiah ($420 million) to be distributed as COVID-19 social assistance packages, agency chief Firli Bahuri said. Juliari was being questioned and will be taken into custody, said agency spokesman Ali Fikri.

  • How Joe Biden's Digital Team Tamed the MAGA Internet

    Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president's team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a "battle for the soul of the internet," my first thought was, Good luck with that.After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn't seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Biden's comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using "heal the nation" messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight.But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Trump's vaunted "Death Star" -- the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign's digital operation.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesFiguring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Trump's mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it's worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it.After the election, I spoke with Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn't get Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances.1\. Lean on Influencers and ValidatorsIn the early days of his campaign, Biden's team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Biden, "Here's the Deal." But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Trump's social media machine.So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Biden's reach by working with social media influencers and "validators," people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach."We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were," said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign.One validator at the top of the team's list was Brene Brown, a popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women -- a critical demographic for Biden's campaign -- and when Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup.Also high on the list was actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Johnson's endorsement this fall of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers -- including some who may have voted for Trump in 2016 -- to support Biden, members of the campaign staff told me.Celebrity endorsements aren't a new campaign strategy. But Biden's team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok.Perhaps the campaign's most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign's tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared -- as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials -- the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms."The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact," said Rebecca Rinkevich, Biden's digital rapid response director. "When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think."2\. Tune Out Twitter and Focus on 'Facebook Moms'A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Biden's digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat."The whole Biden campaign ethos was, 'Twitter isn't real life,'" Flaherty said. "There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyperaware of your own ideological corner."As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to "Facebook moms" -- women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Flaherty said, was women "who would go out and share a video of troops coming home or who would follow The Dodo," a website known for heartwarming animal videos.One successful clip aimed at this group showed Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times.Voters also responded positively to videos in which Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title -- "Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump's Recent Actions in the Middle East" -- the video became one of the campaign's earliest viral successes.The campaign experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom "Build Back Better" map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign's decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible."Our goal was really to meet people where they were," said Christian Tom, head of Biden's digital partnerships team.3\. Build a Facebook Brain TrustOne of the campaign's goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased "social trust" -- in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Trump has used to great effect.But Biden's digital strategy wasn't all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content.They called this group the "Rebel Alliance," a jokey nod to Parscale's "Death Star," and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign."I had the freedom to go for the jugular," said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin' With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page.Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages.During the Republican National Convention, for example, Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin' With Biden about Trump's comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Biden's official Twitter account."It was sort of a big, distributed message test," Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. "If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there."These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Biden to keep most of his messaging positive while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt.4\. Promote 'Small-Batch Creators,' Not Just Slick CommercialsIn its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads -- professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots -- were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Biden."All our testing showed that higher production value was not better," said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. "The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible."So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn't vote in 2016, talking about their regrets.In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called "small-batch creators" -- lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn't know about Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Biden.5\. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your BattlesOne of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Biden's health, unfounded questions about Harris' citizenship and spurious claims about the business dealings of Biden's son Hunter.The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the "Malarkey Factory." But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses.When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats -- worried that it would be 2020's version of the Hillary Clinton email story -- suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign's testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn't follow the complexities of the allegations and that it wasn't changing their opinion of Joe Biden."The Hunter Biden conversation was many times larger than the Hillary Clinton email conversation, but it really didn't stick because people think Joe Biden's a good guy," said Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive.The campaign still responded to the reports, and Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated countermessaging campaign.When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn't Biden's age or his health, per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left.The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events.Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign's focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign's entire digital strategy -- the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators -- was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed."It was about, how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?" he said. "We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when people were saying that was a trap."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

  • Sen. Loeffler refuses to say Trump lost reelection

    Sen. Kelly Loeffler repeatedly refused to acknowledge that President Trump lost reelection in November, as she debated her Democratic opponent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, ahead of twin Georgia runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate.

  • Britain will ban sale of animal fur after Brexit transition, George Eustice suggests

    Britain will impose an outright ban on the sale of animal fur once the Brexit transition period ends, the Environment Secretary has suggested. The passage of whale meat through British ports will also be outlawed, George Eustice said. The UK has already begun moves to ban live animal exports, which it was unable to do under EU law, and its post-Brexit freedom will allow a further tightening of the rules on animal welfare. Mr Eustice told Times Radio: "We're looking at a number of issues in the animal welfare sphere. Fur is one area. We banned the production of fur since at least 2002 in this country, one of the countries in the world that's been first to outlaw its production." Lord Goldsmith, the animal welfare minister and a close friend of Boris Johnson's fiancee, Carrie Symonds, is in charge of the policy, which would prohibit the import of wild animal fur and mean fur coats and clothes trimmed with fur would be banned. The peer has called the fur trade "one of the grimmest of human activities", while Ms Symonds has described people who want to buy fur as "sick". The British Fur Trade Association has claimed fur is increasingly popular with younger people looking for long-lasting natural products rather than man-made fast fashion. Around £200 million of fur products are imported into the UK every year, mainly from the EU. Being part of the single market has meant Britain could not choose to outlaw such products until now. Mr Eustice said: "There are a number of areas where EU law has prevented us from being able to act. It's prevented us from being able to ban the live export of animals, it's prevented us from preventing the trans-shipment of whale meat from some of the Nordic countries through our ports onward to Japan and we would like to look at that. "On fur in particular you wouldn't [currently] be able to have a ban on sale because it would be a violation of the single market rules. "The UK has always been a leader in this. We've seen with coronavirus some of the risk you have with intensive mink farming and we will be looking at whether we can take this forward."

  • 10 Indoor Plant Stands That Seriously Stand Out

    Take your home garden to the next level this winterOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • US Navy official says 'uneasy deterrence' reached with Iran

    The top U.S. Navy official in the Mideast said Sunday that America has reached an “uneasy deterrence” with Iran after months of regional attacks and seizures at sea, even as tensions remain high between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Vice Adm. Sam Paparo, who oversees the Navy’s 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, struck an academic tone in comments to the annual Manama Dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

  • Most of California to be under stay-at-home orders as COVID-19 surges

    California's two most densely inhabited regions and its agricultural breadbasket will be under stay-at-home orders by Sunday night as the COVID-19 pandemic strains hospitals in the most populous U.S. state, officials said. Designed to kick in when intensive care units in any of five regions have little remaining capacity, the order affecting Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley will close bars, hair salons and barbershops, and allows restaurants to remain open only for takeout and delivery service. The shutdowns, which go into effect at 11:59 pm Sunday, are triggered by an order announced Wednesday by Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.