Month: November 2020

U.S. Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Monday that President Donald Trump could categorically exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to allot seats among the states in the House of Representatives. But it also appeared possible that the justices could avoid a final ruling on the issue until they know how broadly the Trump administration acts in its final days in office and whether the division of House seats is affected. No president has tried to do what Trump outlined in a memo in July — remove millions of noncitizens from the once-a-decade head count of the U.S. population that determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, as well as the allocation of some federal funding. The court, meeting by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, heard arguments in its second case in two years related to the 2020 census and immigrants. The census is also facing novel questions over deadlines, data quality and politics, including whether the incoming Biden administration would do anything to try to reverse decisions made under Trump.  One possibility outlined by acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, is that Trump might try to leave out of the count people who are in immigration detention or those who have been ordered to leave the country.  FILE – Associate Justice Elena Kagan at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, Novemebr 30, 2018.But under questioning from Justice Elena Kagan, Wall would not rule out larger categories of immigrants, including those who have protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs. “We can’t be certain at this point, and we don’t know what the president will decide to do with respect to that,” Wall said. FILE – President Donald Trump and Amy Coney Barrett stand on the Blue Room Balcony of the White House in Washington, October 26, 2020. Barrett was confirmed to be a Supreme Court justice by the Senate earlier in the evening.Justice Amy Coney Barrett was among several members of the court who said the administration’s argument for broad discretion in deciding whom to exclude is troublesome because “a lot of the historical evidence and long-standing practice really cuts against your position.” The court decided to hear the case on a fast track, based on the administration’s plea for a decision by early January, when Trump is required by law to transmit census numbers to Congress. The Census Bureau is supposed to send the data to Trump by December 31. But Wall told the court Monday, “We are not currently on pace to send the report to the president by the year-end statutory deadline.” He said census officials told him they hope some data is available in January. A delay of even three weeks would mean the Census Bureau would be turning in the numbers to a new president. President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office January 20. Several conservative justices suggested that the better course for the court would be to avoid ruling immediately on lawsuits filed by New York and other Democrat-led states, as well as immigration advocates because Trump’s intentions are speculative at this point. FILE – Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivers a speech in Atlanta, February 11, 2020.”Mr. Ho, if the additional information would be beneficial in a few weeks, wouldn’t it be beneficial to actually resolving this case? As the questioning seems to suggest, there’s some difficulty in assessing exactly what information will be available and what that information will be,” Justice Clarence Thomas said to Dale Ho, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing immigration groups. The court could simply sit on the case in front of it to see what happens or dismiss it as premature. The second option would allow Trump to move forward with his plan and lead inevitably to a new lawsuit. Trump has a mixed record at the high court on immigration. The justices upheld his ban on travel to the U.S. by residents of some largely Muslim countries. But the court shot down his attempt to end the DACA program and blocked his bid to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time in 70 years. 
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Drugmaker Moderna said Monday it is seeking emergency authorization in the United States and Europe to distribute its coronavirus vaccine after tests showed it is 94% effective.The U.S. biotechnology company’s request could mean that health workers will be able to inoculate patients against the virus as soon as mid-December with either of two coronavirus preventatives — Moderna’s or another equally successful test drug produced by the corporate tandem of Pfizer-BioNTech — if the companies win approval from drug regulators.Moderna said it conducted a 30,000-person clinical trial, and its results were on a par with the best pediatric vaccines.The drugmaker said that of the 196 volunteers who contracted COVID-19, 185 had received a placebo versus 11 who received the vaccine. Moderna reported 30 severe cases — all in the placebo group — including one COVID-19-related death. The Moderna and Pfizer requests for emergency use of their vaccines come as the number of coronavirus cases is surging in the U.S., where tens of thousands of new cases are being recorded daily.Health officials say they are especially worried about an even further spread of the virus because millions of people ignored warnings against traveling for last week’s Thanksgiving holiday and could travel again over the upcoming Christmas and New Year’s holiday weekends.Air travelers line up to go through a security checkpoint at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 25, 2020.The U.S. has 4% of the world’s population but nearly a fifth of its recorded coronavirus deaths — more than 266,000 — the most in any country, according to Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the death toll has topped 1.46 million.Top U.S. health experts say 20 million Americans could get vaccine shots in the latter half of December, possibly with front-line health care workers targeted initially, followed by elderly people living in nursing homes. An advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is meeting Tuesday to lay out the order in which Americans will be able to get vaccinated.Millions of people will likely be able to get one of the vaccines in the first months of 2021, although polls show that about four in 10 Americans say they will refuse to get a shot, either because they are opposed to vaccinations in general or are particularly wary of coronavirus inoculations.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering the Pfizer vaccine on December 10, with consideration of Moderna’s a week later. In addition to seeking U.S. approval, Moderna said it would apply for conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency. 
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From instant coffee to Cheetos, packaged cookies and energy bars, the U.S. military helped invent many of the snacks Americans love to eat.    The effort accelerated during World War II, when military scientists needed to develop compact yet nutritional ways to feed the troops.   “There was a tremendous need for the military to develop modern rations, and it ended up not only inventing a bunch of new food processing techniques but putting in place a food science research system that exists to this day,” says food writer Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of “Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat”. “Out of that came a lot of new techniques and food, and after the war, those were incorporated into snack and convenience foods.” Those new techniques include high pressure processing, which makes uncooked food safe to eat. The process is routinely used in packaged foods like guacamole, salsa and hummus. Cheetos, one of America’s favorite cheesy, crunchy snacks, are made possible by the dehydration process the military worked on to remove the water from cheese. That gave cheese both a longer shelf life and made it lighter to transport to troops overseas. Energy bars are a snack food that resulted from a long period of development to produce a small and nutritionally dense emergency ration.Military scientists discovered that pet food companies were working on a way to make the water level low enough to prevent bacteria and fungi from being produced, making the food safe. “Once they figured that out, they were able to keep foods moist and chewy at room temperature and with regular packaging,” Marx de Salcedo says. “And in fact, that tactic is not only used in energy bars, it’s used in the bakery aisle. If you go into a grocery store, and you see moist and chewy cookies, those are all that same technique that comes out of the military research.” The military also adopted a candy-coated chocolate snack found in Europe that service members could carry around in their pockets without the chocolate immediately melting. That’s how M&M candies were born. Today, some of the biggest military contractors continue to search for the perfect meltless chocolate that will be able to withstand extreme temperatures.  The Army hopes vacuum-microwave drying technology will allow them to put fruit and vegetables into rations. The vacuumed microwaved banana is about a third of its original size while still being springy and pliable. (Courtesy: US Army)The next known frontier in military food science has arrived in the form of mini-food that is shrunk to one-third of the normal size, resulting in foods that are small but still dense.  “They use microwave vacuum dehydration to reduce the water content of foods and what essentially that does is it miniaturizes the food so you get these little tiny carrots, but you can have a fresh carrot,” Marx de Salcedo says. “It still has the same amount of calories even though it’s small.” Whether American civilians will one day be packing miniature lunch boxes in order to lighten their load during their daily commute to work remains to be seen. 
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The United States is bracing for news that the recent Thanksgiving holiday will result in more cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Michelle Quinn reports.Produced by: Mary Cieslak   
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The top U.S. infectious disease expert warned Sunday of a possible, upcoming spike of the coronavirus.    Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking on “This Week” on ABC-TV, said the infection rate would not “all of a sudden turn around” and in the coming weeks, following the recent Thanksgiving holiday, “We may see a surge upon a surge.”  Also Sunday, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS-TV, that people who traveled during the holiday “have to assume that you were exposed, and you became infected and you really need to get tested in the next week.” She also called on people who had traveled during the holiday to avoid people older than 65 or who have an underlying disease.In this Nov. 19, 2020, file photo, healthcare workers process people waiting in line at a United Memorial Medical Center COVID-19 testing site in Houston.The U.S. has 13.3 million of the world’s 62.7 million COVID-19 cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. has more cases of the virus than any other country in the world. India and Brazil follow the U.S. in case numbers with 9.3 million and 6.3 million respectively.  India recorded nearly 42,000 new COVID infections Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins.  In Europe, some countries are hoping for a continent wide agreement to shut down ski resorts during the Christmas holidays to help prevent spreading the coronavirus.  No unified pact, however, has yet been reached.   The World Health Organization warned Monday that malaria deaths will likely exceed COVID deaths in Africa because of the health care disruptions caused by the pandemic.    
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No word as to whether Star Trek’s Scotty beamed it up, but the mysterious, shiny monolith that was spotted in a remote southeastern Utah desert two weeks ago is gone. A state crew that buzzed through the wilderness, counting bighorn sheep from a helicopter, found the alien-looking object on November 18 and touched off international sci-fi speculation, harkening to the classic Stanley Kubrick 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In the Kubrick movie, an alien monolith is a recurring symbol that appears to play a role in the development of human evolution. The riddle in the desert, twice as tall as an average adult, drew scores of the curious to see it, even though its exact location was not made public, according to accounts on social media. No one seems to know where it went. Neither the federal Bureau of Land Management nor the state’s Department of Public Safety said they had any idea. “We have received reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the ‘monolith,’ has been removed from Bureau of Land Management public lands by an unknown party,” the state agency posted on Saturday on its website. It said the object was reportedly removed Friday evening. A representative was not immediately available for comment Sunday. Guesses as to what happened ran wild online, with one person postulating, “The space aliens returned to remove it.” The art world has speculated that the object was the work of John McCracken, a sculptor who died in 2011. His son, Patrick McCracken, told The New York Times his father told him in 2002 that “he would like to leave his artwork in remote places to be discovered later.”
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President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced an all-women communications team Sunday. “Communicating directly and truthfully to the American people is one of the most important duties of a president, and this team will be entrusted with the tremendous responsibility of connecting the American people to the White House,” Biden was quoted as saying in a press release from the transition team office. “These qualified, experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better,” he added. Kate Bedingfield, who served as the communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, was named the White House communications director.  “It will also be an honor to work alongside the incredible women who are taking on these roles together,” Bedingfield wrote on Twitter, detailing her relationship with the other women named to the team. Bedingfield previously worked for Biden when he was the vice president in the Obama administration. I’m unspeakably proud to have the opportunity to serve as White House Communications Director for @joebiden. Working for him as VP and on this campaign gave me insight into what kind of capable, compassionate, clear-eyed president he will be and it will be a profound honor to 1/— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) November 29, 2020Pili Tobar, who served as deputy director of America’s Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group, will serve as her deputy. Ashley Etienne, who served as the communications director for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was named as the communications director for Harris. Symone Sanders, who worked for Senator Bernie Sanders during his bid to be the Democratic nominee, will serve as a senior advisor and chief spokesperson for the vice president.   Jen Psaki, who held several communications positions under the Obama administration, has been named White House Press Secretary.  Karine Jean-Pierre, who worked for NBC and MSNBC as a political analyst, will serve as her deputy. Biden’s transition to the presidency officially began last week after a government agency declared him the apparent winner of the 2020 presidential election, even as President Donald Trump continues his long-shot attempt to upend Biden’s victory at the polls. Biden has named a number of people to positions in his administration, including members of his national security team, secretary of state, and secretary of the treasury. 
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Two top U.S. coronavirus experts assured Americans Sunday that vaccines against the pandemic would soon become available but warned that not taking precautions against the spread of the virus before then could prove disastrous. “We should have enough vaccine by the end of the year to immunize 20 million Americans and we have to immunize for impact,” Admiral Brett Giroir, the White House virus testing chief, told CNN. “But the American people have to do the right things until we get that vaccine widely distributed.” FILE – Adm. Brett Giroir, director of the U.S. coronavirus diagnostic testing, testifies at a Senate committee hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, June 30, 2020.Giroir described two prospective vaccines, which are now under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as “lifesaving,” saying, “This puts an end to the pandemic.” But until then, he said, “The American people have to do the right things until we get that vaccine widely distributed, wear a mask, avoid indoor crowded spaces, all the things you know.”   Giroir said he believes there will be a “smooth, professional transition” in handling the vaccine distribution from the administration of outgoing President Donald Trump to that of President-elect Joe Biden when he is set to be inaugurated on January 20. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, speaking to ABC’s “This Week” show, said, “Help is on the way,” and that the initial supply of vaccines might be available by mid-December. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Hearing on the federal government response to COVID-19, Capitol Hill, Sept. 23, 2020.Fauci said health experts are “empathetic about the fatigue” of Americans being careful about becoming exposed to the virus. But he said wearing face masks and people physically distancing themselves from others “do make a difference.” Millions of Americans curtailed their traditional family gatherings for last Thursday’s annual Thanksgiving holiday, yet millions of others ignored warnings from health care experts against traveling to visit far-flung relatives for fear of spreading the virus. “I don’t see how we’re not going to have the same thing” happen with people traveling — and potentially spreading the virus — for Christmas visits with their families, Fauci said. He said there is “a considerable risk” for people getting together. FILE – Travelers wait to check in for flights at LaGuardia Airport, Nov. 25, 2020, in Queens, New York.Fauci called on state and municipal officials to “close the bars, keep the schools open,” to keep “the community level of spread low.” “Let’s try to get the kids back, and let’s try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we’re trying to avoid,” Fauci said. “And those are the things that you know well – the bars, the restaurants where you have capacity seating indoors without masks.” “Those are the things that drive the community spread — not the schools,” he said. Teresa Nguyen, a respiratory therapist, treats a patient inside a room for people with COVID-19 at a hospital in Hutchinson, Kan., Nov. 20, 2020.The assessments came as the United States topped 13 million confirmed cases on Friday, just six days after it reached 12 million cases. The highly contagious virus that causes the COVID-19 disease has killed more than 266,000 Americans, more than in any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University. More than 91,000 infected individuals are currently hospitalized in the U.S., an all-time high, with more than 18,000 in intensive care units.   
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden gained 87 votes in Wisconsin as a partial recount of ballots cast was completed Sunday, cementing his 20,000-vote victory over President Donald Trump in the Midwestern political battleground state.The Trump campaign paid $3 million for the recount of the 800,000 votes in the two most heavily Democratic areas of the state, in Wisconsin’s biggest city of Milwaukee and in Madison, the state capital, in hopes of upending Biden’s claim to the state’s 10 electoral votes.Instead, however, Wisconsin became the latest state where Trump, a Republican, has failed in recounts to overturn the November 3 vote favoring his Democratic challenger or win lawsuits alleging vote and vote-counting fraud cost him a second four-year term in the White House.  Biden holds an unofficial 306-232 advantage in the Electoral College that determines the outcome of U.S. presidential elections, not the national popular vote, although Biden leads there, too, by more than 6 million votes.  Biden is set to be inaugurated as the country’s 46th president on January 20, and, at 78, its oldest leader. Last week, he named his first Cabinet nominees and plans to announce the names of key economic officials this week.  The Electoral College balloting occurs on December 14, with the largest states casting the most votes. Trump said last week he would leave the White House when his term ends, if Biden, as expected, wins the Electoral College vote.Trump has yet to concede the election, and his campaign has lost more than 30 lawsuits contesting the outcome in key states.Ahead of the outcome of the recount in Wisconsin, Trump said Saturday on Twitter, “The Wisconsin recount is not about finding mistakes in the count, it is about finding people who have voted illegally, and that case will be brought after the recount is over, on Monday or Tuesday. We have found many illegal votes. Stay tuned!”Election workers, right, verify ballots as recount observers, left, watch during a Milwaukee hand recount of presidential votes at the Wisconsin Center, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nov. 20, 2020.But in Dane County, where Madison is located, election official Scott McDonell said the recount uncovered no instances of fraud and that the second look at the vote count there should “reassure” the public about its accuracy.Trump, however, continued his unfounded accusations about irregularities in the election in a Sunday interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.“Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes,” Trump contended. “I got 74 million votes, and everybody thought it was over” on Election Night.“And then all the mail-in voting started happening,” he said. “This election is a total fraud.”Democrats supporting Biden, by millions more than Republicans voting for Trump, cast mail-in ballots that often were counted in the days after the election, in some instances because state laws did not permit them to be counted until after polls closed.Without evidence, Trump alleged, “They stuffed the ballot boxes, you know that. How come there are thousands of dead people voting?”“My mind will not change in six months,” he concluded. “There was tremendous cheating.”Trump said his campaign is pursuing appeals of lawsuits he has lost to the U.S. Supreme Court.Increasingly, Republican officials, although hardly all of them, are acknowledging Biden’s victory.On Sunday, Republican Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, who is overseeing the inauguration planning at the U.S. Capitol, told CNN, “We’re working with the Biden administration, the likely administration, on both the transition and the inauguration as if we’re moving forward,” although he stopped short of acknowledging Trump lost the election.Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas is one of a few Republicans to refer to Biden as the president-elect.”The transition is what is important. The words of President Trump are not quite as significant,” Hutchinson told “Fox News Sunday.” 
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Dave Prowse, the British actor behind the menacing black mask of Star Wars villain Darth Vader, has died, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday.”It’s with great sadness that we have to announce that our client Dave Prowse… passed away yesterday morning at the age of 85,” Bowington wrote on Facebook.”May the force be with him, always!” the agent told the BBC.Bowington added that Prowse’s death was “a truly and deeply heart-wrenching loss for us and millions of fans all over the world.”A former bodybuilder turned actor, Prowse’s towering stature at almost two meters clinched him the role of the instantly recognizable antagonist in the original Star Wars trilogy.But while he donned the glossy black armor and cape, the Bristol native’s strong western English accent meant the filmmakers turned to James Earl Jones for the chilling voice that would emerge from behind the mask.Prowse nevertheless remained attached to the character, telling AFP in 2013 that he was “the greatest big-screen villain of all time.”Since the original Star Wars trilogy was released in the late 1970s and early 80s, Prowse had travelled the world meeting hardcore fans.
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Mike Tyson stepped through the ropes in his signature black trunks and heard the opening bell in a boxing ring for the first time in 15 years.The former heavyweight champion of the world traded lively punches with Roy Jones Jr. for eight entertaining rounds that ended with two middle-aged legends wearily hugging each other in mutual admiration.Their fight was only an exhibition, and it ended in a draw. But for Tyson, the experience evoked the joy and excitement he felt so long ago at the start of his boxing career — and it was likely the start of a new chapter in his epic life.“I’m happy I’m not knocked out,” Tyson said. “I’ll look better in the next one.”Tyson showed glimpses of his destructive prime Saturday night during the 54-year-old boxing icon’s return to the ring against the 51-year-old Jones.Tyson had the most impactful punches, showing off versions of the footwork and combinations that made him the world’s most feared fighter. After eight two-minute rounds, both Tyson and Jones emerged from Staples Center smiling and apparently healthy.“This is better than fighting for championships,” Tyson said of the heavyweight exhibition, which raised money for various charities. “We’re humanitarians now. We can do something good for the world. We’ve got to do this again.”Tyson’s return to the ring for this show attracted international attention, and Iron Mike did his best to demonstrate his months of work to recapture a measure of the form that made him a legend to a generation of boxing fans.Tyson tagged Jones with body shots, head shots and a particularly nasty uppercut during a bout that was required by the California State Athletic Commission to be a reasonably safe, glorified sparring session.Tyson was exhausted two hours afterward, but also clearly energized as he recounted his emotions with his wife and team looking on.Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. pose with their belts after a split draw during a heavyweight exhibition boxing bout for the WBC Frontline Belt at the Staples Center on Nov. 28, 2020. (Photo: Joe Scarnici/Handout Photo via USA TODAY Sports)“I took my youth for granted,” Tyson said. “This event made me find out what I was really made of. … My body feels splendid. I want to beat it up some more.”Tyson intends to fight in more exhibitions next year, perhaps heading to Monte Carlo next to challenge a European fighter. He didn’t close the door on the possibility of a full-fledged comeback, although that would be many fights in the future.For one night, Tyson and Jones were back at the center of the sports world, and they reveled in it.“I’m happy to scratch that off my bucket list and move on with my life,” said Jones, the former four-division world champion widely considered the most skilled boxer of his generation. “He hit harder than I thought. Everything hurt. His hands hurt. His head hurts. Everything hurt when I made contact. He’s an exceptional puncher still. He can do anything he wants next.”Neither fighter was deceived by the quality of the bout. While both came out throwing punches that evoked echoes of their glorious primes, they also tied up frequently on the inside, and their occasionally labored breathing could be heard on the microphones in the empty arena.Hip hop star Snoop Dogg’s witty television commentary was among the loudest noises inside Staples, and he had a handful of zingers: “This is like two of my uncles fighting at the barbecue!”But Tyson and Jones were the headliners in the most improbable pay-per-view boxing event in years, engineered by social networking app Triller and featuring fights interspersed with hip hop performances in an empty arena.The event was derided as an anti-sporting spectacle by some critics, yet both Tyson and Jones appeared to handle themselves capably and safely. Their fans were clearly enthralled, with the show getting enormous traction on social media.Some of that success was due to the co-main event, in which YouTube star Jake Paul knocked out former NBA player Nate Robinson in the second round of Robinson’s pro boxing debut. Paul, in his second pro fight, recorded three knockdowns against Robinson, the three-time NBA Slam Dunk contest champion, before an overhand right put Robinson flat on his face and apparently unconscious.
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Pennsylvania’s highest court on Saturday night threw out a lower court’s order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its Nov. 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans attempting to thwart President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state.The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the 3-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the expiration of a time limit in Pennsylvania’s expansive year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it.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.”President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that Democrats falsified mail-in ballots to steal the election from Trump. Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.The week-old lawsuit, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania, had challenged the state’s mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.As a remedy, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law — most of them by Democrats — or to wipe out the election results and direct the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.In any case, that request — for the state’s lawmakers to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors — flies in the face of a nearly century-old state law that already grants the power to pick electors to the state’s popular vote, Wecht wrote.While the high court’s two Republicans joined the five Democrats in opposing those remedies, they split from Democrats in suggesting that the lawsuit’s underlying claims — that the state’s mail-in voting law might violate the constitution — are worth considering.Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued the order Wednesday to halt certification of any remaining contests, including apparently contests for Congress.It did not appear to affect the presidential contest since a day earlier, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, had certified Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.Wolf quickly appealed McCullough’s decision to the state Supreme Court, saying there was no “conceivable justification” for it.The lawsuit’s dismissal comes after Republicans have lost a flurry of legal challenges brought by the Trump campaign and its GOP allies filed in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania.On Friday, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the Trump campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.In that lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had complained that its observers had not been able to scrutinize mail-in ballots as they were being processed in two Democratic bastions, Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which is home to Pittsburgh.Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”
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COVID cases are exploding across the US and it’s unclear how long the pandemic will last. But in Washington, the Kennedy Center is cautiously working on a comeback, as Karina Bafradzhian reports.
Camera: Andrey Degtyarev
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A former Trump campaign associate who was the target of a secret surveillance warrant during the FBI’s Russia investigation says in a federal lawsuit that he was the victim of “unlawful spying.”The suit from Carter Page alleges a series of omissions and errors made by FBI and Justice Department officials in applications they submitted in 2016 and 2017 to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on Page on suspicion that he was an agent of Russia.”Since not a single proven fact ever established complicity with Russia involving Dr. Page, there never was probable cause to seek or obtain the FISA Warrants targeting him on this basis,” the lawsuit says, using the acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.Page has received death and kidnapping threats and has suffered economic losses and “irreparable damage to his reputation,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in Washington.The lawsuit to some extent echoes the conclusions of a Justice Department inspector general report that found significant problems with the four applications. Former FBI and Justice Department leaders who were involved in signing off on the surveillance have since testified they wouldn’t have done so had they known of the extent of the issues, and the FBI has initiated more than 40 corrective steps aimed at improving the accuracy and thoroughness of applications.In the complaint, Page accuses the FBI of relying excessively for information on Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research during the 2016 campaign into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was funded by Democrats. It says the FBI failed to tell the surveillance court that Steele’s primary source had contradicted information that Steele had attributed to him, or that Page had denied to an informant for the FBI having “any involvement with Russia on behalf of the Trump campaign.”The complaint also accuses the FBI of having misled the surveillance court about Page’s relationship with the CIA, for whom Page had been an operational contact between 2008 and 2013. A former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty in August to altering an email to say that Page had not been a source for the CIA.The suit names as defendants the FBI and the Justice Department, as well as former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and additional officials who were involved in the Russia investigation.Despite the problems with the warrant applications, the scrutiny of Page, who was never charged with any wrongdoing, accounted for only a narrow portion of the overall investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.The same inspector general report that detailed problems in the applications also concluded that the FBI had a legitimate basis for opening the Russia investigation, and did not find evidence that any of its actions were influenced by political bias. 
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Sarah Fuller was playing around with a teammate a couple months ago when she kicked a soccer ball through the uprights from 45 yards away. She joked about being able to kick a football with teammates during the Southeastern Conference soccer tournament.On Saturday, she made history.Fuller became the first woman to participate in a major conference football game when she kicked off for Vanderbilt to start the second half at Missouri, a moment that may take some time to soak in for her.”I just think it’s incredible that I am able to do this, and all I want to do is be a good influence to the young girls out there because there were times that I struggled in sports,” Fuller said. “But I am so thankful I stuck with it, and it’s given me so many opportunities. I’ve met so many amazing people through sports, and I just want to say like literally you can do anything you set your mind to.”Fuller kicked with a holder rather than using a tee in a designed squib kick, and the senior sent a low kick to the 35-yard line where it was pounced on by Missouri’s Mason Pack. Fuller didn’t get any other opportunities in Vanderbilt’s 41-0 loss to Missouri.Vanderbilt Commodores place kicker Sarah Fuller is pictured before a game against the Missouri Tigers, Nov. 28, 2020, in Columbia, Mo. (Denny Medley – USA Today/Reuters)Coach Derek Mason made clear that Fuller kicked for the Commodores because of need, not for history or publicity. COVID-19 protocols and restrictions left Mason with very few options, prompting him to reach out to the soccer team for help.Fuller, a 6-foot-2 goalkeeper, decided she was up for the challenge.”I’m not about making statements,” Mason said. “This was out of necessity. You look at our week. Our students had gone home. The ability to have access to students and tryouts was almost nil in terms of like what’s available. … That just happened to be the most viable option.”After Fuller’s kick, she went straight to the sideline, where she high-fived some of her new teammates and swapped some elbow bumps. Fuller’s parents watched and cheered from the stands along with her boyfriend and best friend.Fuller wore “Play Like A Girl” on the back of her helmet. The senior will get to keep the No. 32 jersey she wore Saturday, the same as her number when playing soccer.After her kickoff, reaction poured in on social media. Fuller was the No. 2 trending topic on Twitter, followed by Vandy. Her soccer team wrote on Twitter: “Glass. Everywhere.”As in glass ceiling.Pat McAfee, a former National Football League punter, reviewed Fuller’s squib kick, noting the ball didn’t go out of bounds and there was no chance of a return, setting up the defense.”Congrats to @SarahFuller_27 for being THE FIRST EVER WOMAN TO KICKOFF A POWER 5 GAME,” McAfee wrote. “Incredibly rare to be the ‘1st ever person to do something’ these days..this is really cool.”Fuller also made clear she’d be up for continuing to help the football team if needed. She believes she can refine her timing and technique with more practice.Vanderbilt (0-8) visits No. 13 Georgia next week.”If she wants to kick and she’s available, we’d love to have her,” Mason said.
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