Biden stumps for Dems in Ga. Senate races, Pence to rally GOP support

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joins 'Fox News @ Night' to discuss election integrity in upcoming votes

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  • Exclusive: Fate Winslow, sentenced to life in prison for selling $20 worth of pot, is released after serving 12 years

    More than a decade into a life sentence for assisting in the sale of $20 worth of marijuana to an undercover cop in Louisiana, Fate Winslow is set to be released on Wednesday. "Today redemption has come," he told Yahoo News in an email.

  • One of the most isolated spots on earth faces a massive COVID wave

    Gaza has recorded just over 29,000 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, but it is now averaging about 1,000 new cases a day, driving that total figure up rapidly. While many countries have been hit hard by COVID-19, Gaza’s problems are made worse by blockade, which has devastated the economy.

  • An inmate who is scheduled to be executed just 5 days before Biden takes office tested positive for COVID-19

    The federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Dustin John Higgs is being held has over 300 confirmed cases among inmates.

  • Ex-FBI Agent Strzok Acknowledged Steele Dossier Was ‘Intended to Influence’ Media

    In newly declassified messages, ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok, who oversaw the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia, touted the Steele dossier’s ability to “influence” media.Senate Republicans on Thursday released a number of internal FBI messages from Strzok that provide insight into Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into the Trump campaign. The Justice Department declassified the records on December 1 after Senators Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) asked Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray to declassify the documents in October as part of their investigation into Crossfire Hurricane.Strzok’s messages suggest that he was aware that former British spy Christopher Steele, whose dossier was used by the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants against Carter Page, was a source for a Yahoo! News story alleging that Page had a secret meeting in Moscow with two Kremlin insiders.“Looking at the Yahoo article, I would definitely say at a minimum Steele’s reports should be viewed as intended to influence as well as to inform,” Strzok, who was fired from the FBI in August 2018, wrote on Sept. 23, 2016.It was later uncovered that Steele was a source for the article and he had met with a number of journalists in Washington, D.C. as part of an opposition research campaign commissioned by the DNC and Clinton campaign.Though Strzok expressed his suspicion that Steele was the source for the article, the Bureau continued working with the ex-spy and did not disclose Steele’s contact with journalists to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).The FBI later ended its relationship with Steele after he spoke to Mother Jones for another dossier story on October 31, 2016.A number of the allegations included in the dossier have since been discredited and a December 2019 report by the Justice Department inspector general criticized the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team for failing to communicate key details about Steele and the dossier to the FISC.

  • Pfizer says 'millions' of vaccine doses are waiting to be shipped — but the government hasn't told them where to go

    It's no secret that there aren't enough Pfizer vaccine doses for every American who wants one. But there are at least a few million more sitting in a warehouse, waiting for the government to decide where they're headed, Pfizer said.After receiving emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration last week, Pfizer said Thursday that it has since shipped out the 2.9 million vaccine doses the U.S. government told the company to distribute. But Pfizer "has millions more doses sitting in warehouses awaiting instructions for where to ship" Bloomberg reports. Pfizer also denied it was the cause of shipping delays some states complained about, saying it's the federal government causing the holdup.The vast majority of Americans have said they'll get the coronavirus vaccine, with many ready to take it as soon as possible. So far, there are only enough doses available to start vaccinating people in nursing homes and frontline health care workers, whom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed to prioritize.The U.S. bought 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine over the summer. But the Trump administration reportedly turned down Pfizer's offer to sell the U.S. more doses a few months later, meaning Pfizer may not be able to get another shipment to Americans until summer 2021. The U.S. did buy another another 100 million Moderna vaccine doses last week.More stories from theweek.com Trump has reportedly been convinced he actually won, tells advisers he may not vacate the White House 5 insanely funny cartoons about Trump's election-fraud failure FDA panel greenlights Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine

  • Iran’s president accuses Israel of killing nuclear scientist to provoke war

    Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Monday claimed that Israel was behind the killing of a scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program in the 2000s in an effort to start a war in the last days of President Trump's administration.

  • Kansas sheriff’s deputy accused of deliberately running over Black former detective

    Graphic dashcam video captures horrific event which led to federal lawsuit

  • White House aides reportedly stepped in to keep Trump from calling for $2,000 stimulus checks fearing it could torpedo relief negotiations

    The Post reported that White House aides talked Trump out of calling for larger direct payments than Republicans seek in stimulus talks.

  • Biodegradable plastic production in China outpacing ability to break down waste, says Greenpeace

    China has begun producing biodegradable plastic at such a rate that it can no longer break down the material at the same pace, according to a new report from Greenpeace. According to the report, companies in China have ramped up production of biodegradable plastic to a capacity of 4.4 million tonnes per year. That capacity is expected to reach five million tonnes in the e-commerce sector alone by 2025, when a nationwide ban on non-biodegradable plastics is set to come into effect. “Switching from one type of plastic to another cannot solve the plastics pollution crisis that we’re facing,” said Dr Molly Zhongnan Jia, a Greenpeace East Asia plastics researcher. “We need to take a cautious look at the effect and potential risks of mainstreaming these materials, and make sure we invest in solutions that actually reduce plastic waste." Non-biodegradable plastics take decades to decompose and release microplastics, which contaminates soil, water and the food chain.

  • 'Unbelievable' snowfall blankets parts of the Northeast

    The Northeast’s first whopper snowstorm of the season buried parts of upstate New York under more than 3 feet of snow, broke records in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and left snowplow drivers struggling to clear the roads. “It was a very difficult, fast storm and it dropped an unbelievable amount of snow,” Tom Coppola, highway superintendent in charge of maintaining 100 miles of roads in the Albany suburb of Glenville, said Thursday morning. The storm dropped 30 inches on Glenville between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. Thursday, leaving a a silent scene of snow-clad trees, buried cars and heavily laden roofs when the sun peeked through at noon.

  • AOC clashes with pro-Trump senator who chided top Biden official for calling Republicans ‘f***ers’

    New York congresswoman leaps to defence of Jen O’Malley Dillon

  • Turkey's Erdogan, EU's Michel discussed EU summit in call

    President Tayyip Erdogan told European Council President Charles Michel in a call that Turkey wants to build its future with the EU, calling for Ankara and the bloc to move on from a "vicious cycle" in ties, the Turkish presidency said late on Tuesday. At a summit on Friday, EU leaders agreed to prepare limited sanctions on Turkish individuals over a row with members Greece and Cyprus over hydrocarbon exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, but postponed discussions on any harsher steps until March. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the summit that EU leaders planned to discuss weapons exports to Turkey with NATO allies following a Greek push for an arms embargo on Ankara.

  • Trump has reportedly been convinced he actually won, tells advisers he may not vacate the White House

    President Trump was privately coming to terms with his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, but he "has now reversed and dug in deeper -- not only spreading misinformation about the election, but ingesting it himself," CNN reports, "egged on by advisers like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis who are misleading Trump about the extent of voting irregularities and the prospects of a reversal." One adviser told CNN, "He's been fed so much misinformation that I think he actually thinks this thing was stolen from him."Even the Electoral College formalizing Biden's win "did not appear enough to shake Trump from his delusions of victory," CNN says, "but it is adding urgency to a push by several of his advisers to gently steer Trump toward reality." Discussions of Trump's post-presidency future tend to go nowhere because Trump "all but shuts down," CNN reports. "In his moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge. The possibility has alarmed some aides, but few believe Trump will actually follow through.""To be perfectly clear about this, Trump 100 percent will leave the White House on Inauguration Day, if not well before," Jonathan Chait writes at New York. "Even the scholars who expressed the deepest fears of Trump's intentions to undermine the system did not put credence in the possibility he could defy the outcome by simply refusing to leave. Squatting is not one of the tools in his authoritarian tool kit." But the fact that Trump thinks that's even a viable option suggests he's "engaged in more than a scheme to grift his supporters," Chait says. He's "drinking his own poisoned Kool-Aid."If Trump does have to be forcibly removed from the White House, you can credit Bill Maher with the prediction. More stories from theweek.com 5 insanely funny cartoons about Trump's election-fraud failure FDA panel greenlights Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine Pfizer says 'millions' of vaccine doses are waiting to be shipped — but the government hasn't told them where to go

  • Why the Puritans cracked down on celebrating Christmas

    When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged “War on Christmas” heats up. In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups have sparked furor by wishing customers “happy holidays.” This year, with state officials warning of holiday gatherings becoming superspreader events in the midst of a pandemic, opponents of some public health measures to limit the spread of the pandemic are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday. But debates about celebrating Christmas go back to the 17th century. The Puritans, it turns out, were not too keen on the holiday. They first discouraged Yuletide festivities and later outright banned them.At first glance, banning Christmas celebrations might seem like a natural extension of a stereotype of the Puritans as joyless and humorless that persists to this day.But as a scholar who has written about the Puritans, I see their hostility toward holiday gaiety as less about their alleged asceticism and more about their desire to impose their will on the people of New England – Natives and immigrants alike. An aversion to Christmas chaosThe earliest documentary evidence for their aversion to celebrating Christmas dates back to 1621, when Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony castigated some of the newcomers who chose to take the day off rather than work.But why? As a devout Protestant, Bradford did not dispute the divinity of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Puritans spent a great deal of time investigating their own and others’ souls because they were so committed to creating a godly community.Bradford’s comments reflected Puritans’ lingering anxiety about the ways that Christmas had been celebrated in England. For generations, the holiday had been an occasion for riotous, sometimes violent behavior. The moralist pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes believed that Christmastime celebrations gave celebrants license “to do what they lust, and to folow what vanitie they will.” He complained about rampant “fooleries” like playing dice and cards and wearing masks.Civil authorities had mostly accepted the practices because they understood that allowing some of the disenfranchised to blow off steam on a few days of the year tended to preserve an unequal social order. Let the poor think they are in control for a day or two, the logic went, and the rest of the year they will tend to their work without causing trouble.English Puritans objected to accepting such practices because they feared any sign of disorder. They believed in predestination, which led them to search their own and others’ behavior for signs of saving grace. They could not tolerate public scandal, especially when attached to a religious moment. Puritan efforts to crack down on Christmas revelries in England before 1620 had little impact. But once in North America, these seekers of religious freedom had control over the governments of New Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. Puritan intoleranceBoston became the focal point of Puritan efforts to create a society where church and state reinforced each other.The Puritans in Plymouth and Massachusetts used their authority to punish or banish those who did not share their views. For example, they exiled an Anglican lawyer named Thomas Morton who rejected Puritan theology, befriended local Indigenous people, danced around a maypole and sold guns to the Natives. He was, Bradford wrote, “the Lord of Misrule” – the archetype of a dangerous type who Puritans believed create mayhem, including at Christmas. In the years that followed, the Puritans exiled others who disagreed with their religious views, including Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams who espoused beliefs deemed unacceptable by local church leaders. In 1659, they banished three Quakers who had arrived in 1656. When two of them, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, refused to leave, Massachusetts authorities executed them in Boston.This was the context for which Massachusetts authorities outlawed Christmas celebrations in 1659. Even after the statute left the law books in 1681 during a reorganization of the colony, prominent theologians still despised holiday festivities. In 1687, the minister Increase Mather, who believed that Christmas celebrations derived from the bacchanalian excesses of the Roman holiday Saturnalia, decried those consumed “in Revellings, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”The hostility of Puritan clerics to celebrations of Christmas should not be seen as evidence that they always hoped to stop joyous behavior. In 1673, Mather had called alcohol “a good creature of God” and had no objection to moderate drinking. Nor did Puritans have a negative view of sex.[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]What the Puritans did want was a society dominated by their views. This made them eager to convert Natives to Christianity, which they managed to do in some places. They tried to quash what they saw as usurious business practices within their community, and in Plymouth they executed a teenager who had sex with animals, the punishment prescribed by the Book of Leviticus. When the Puritans believed that Indigenous people might attack them or undermine their economy, they lashed out – most notoriously in 1637, when they set a Pequot village on fire, murdered those who tried to flee and sold captives into slavery.By comparison to their treatment of Natives and fellow colonists who rebuffed their unbending vision, the Puritan campaign against Christmas seems tame. But it is a reminder of what can happen when the self-righteous control the levers of power in a society and seek to mold a world in their image.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.Read more: * In the 1620s, Plymouth Plantation had its own MeToo moment * How the Nazis co-opted ChristmasPeter C. Mancall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

  • Poll: Republicans Loeffler, Perdue Hold Slight Advantages in Georgia Runoffs

    Both Republican U.S. Senate candidates in Georgia hold slight leads over their Democratic opponents in the January runoff election races, which will determine which party controls the chamber for at least the next two years, according to new polling out of Emerson College.The poll, released Wednesday, found Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue with nearly identical advantages, with each receiving support from 51 percent of respondents, compared to 48 percent for Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The races are essentially tied, because the advantages in both races fall within the poll’s 3.9 percent margin of error.The Democrats need to win both races to win control of the Senate. If both Warnock and Ossoff win, there would be a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker.The poll found little crossover support, meaning few voters will vote for a Republican in one race and a Democrat in the other.“Which suggests one party should win both seats,” Spencer Kimball, Emerson’s polling director, said in a prepared statement.The Democrats held large leads over the Republicans among younger voters and urban voters, while the Republicans were stronger with older and rural voters, and voters with a high school degree or less. The poll found Loeffler and Perdue with slight leads in the suburbs, with 52 percent support compared to 47 percent for Warnock and Ossoff.Thirty-one percent of poll respondents named the economy as their top issue, followed by COVID-19 response (24 percent), healthcare (15 percent) and social justice (12 percent).Another poll released earlier this week showed Loeffler and Perdue both holding slight 49 percent to 48 percent advantages over the Democrats.The recent polling shows support for the Republicans climbing. In early December, a poll by SurveyUSA found Warnock with a 52 percent to 45 percent lead over Loeffler, and Ossoff with a narrower 50 percent to 48 percent advantage.

  • Florida Gov. DeSantis said there’s a problem with vaccine shipments. Pfizer disagrees.

    Less than a week into its program to vaccinate millions of residents to protect them from the novel coronavirus, Florida has hit a potential speed bump.

  • Storm Gail: Two killed in 30- to 60-car pile-up as three feet of snow hit Northeast

    More than 40 inches of snow was reported in parts of New York State

  • Mike Pence will preside over Biden's final victory. 'Then he'll likely skip town.'

    Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, has the awkward responsibility of overseeing President-elect Joe Biden's final victory — and President Trump's official defeat — with the formal counting of Electoral College votes at a special Jan. 6 joint session of Congress. "Then he'll likely skip town," Politico reports. "According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6."Pence's tentative itinerary includes Bahrain, Israel, and Poland, and more stops may be added, Politico reports. The trip, which hasn't been finalized, is ostensibly designed to underscore the Trump administration's role in brokering diplomatic deals between Israel and a handful of Arab states, and it will helpfully bolster Pence's "already-strong credentials with the Christian right, which strongly supports Israel," Politico notes. But it also takes the vice president out of range of Trump's wrath following the final confirmation of Biden's win. "I suspect the timing is anything but coincidental," a Pence ally said.One White House official compared Pence's role in counting electoral ballots to delivering a death notice, telling Politico, "By no means is this going to be an easy moment for the vice president or president to stomach." Worse for Pence, Trump is currently "at a juncture when loyalty appears his principal concern, complaining repeatedly over the past weeks that Republicans are deserting him when he needed them to help overturn the election results," CNN reports. "When he is not phoning Republican lawmakers to assess their willingness to help him overturn the election results, he is busy devising ways to exact revenge on those he believes abandoned him."Pence hasn't traveled out of the country since last January. Read more about his emerging escape plan at Politico.More stories from theweek.com Trump has reportedly been convinced he actually won, tells advisers he may not vacate the White House 5 insanely funny cartoons about Trump's election-fraud failure FDA panel greenlights Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine

  • Man charged with DUI in box truck collision with bicyclists that killed 5 near Las Vegas

    The riders died on U.S. Highway 95 last week near Las Vegas due to "reckless behavior" by the defendant, the Clark County district attorney said.

  • Mexican president defends restrictive immigration policies

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday defended Mexico’s restrictive immigration policy, which has prevented many Central American migrants from crossing Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Mexico has sent National Guard officers and immigration agents to the southern border with Guatemala to prevent migrant caravans from entering Mexico and detain those who do manage to cross. “We have protected migrants, there have been no violations of their human rights," López Obrador said.