Top Items:
Karen Tumulty / Washington Post:
Republicans suddenly discover they don't like naughty words — Could someone please find Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) a cold compress and a place where he might lie down for a few minutes? — The senator, whom you might recall from the time he implied during a presidential campaign …
Discussion:
The Atlantic, The Hill, The Wrap, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story and Crooks and Liars
RELATED:
Sabato's Crystal Ball:
Georgia Senate Runoffs: Breaking Down November, Looking to January — Dear Readers: This is the last issue of the Crystal Ball this year. We wanted to finish off our 2020 publishing schedule by taking a deep look at the Georgia Senate runoffs, which will decide control of the Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 5.
Discussion:
CNN, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, FiveThirtyEight, National Review and CBS News
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
Kelly Loeffler's latest nonsense exposes the worst of GOP nihilism — Our country confronts two of its most monumental crises of the modern era. More than 3,300 Americans died of the coronavirus on Wednesday alone. The latest weekly jobless claims are a shocker, totaling nearly 900,000.
Discussion:
DSCC, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Raw Story
Politico:
Congress faces ‘fork in the road’ on stimulus — Negotiators on Capitol Hill and at the White House have still not wrapped up talks over a nearly $1 trillion coronavirus relief package ahead of a Friday deadline, as Republicans and Democrats spar over tens of billions of dollars in government spending.
Discussion:
ABC News, Washington Examiner, CBS News, Roll Call, The Federalist, Bloomberg and One America News Network
Politico:
GOP launches legal war on absentee voting ahead of Georgia runoffs — Federal judges in Georgia will hear arguments Thursday in Republican-led lawsuits to restrict absentee voting ahead of next month's Senate runoffs — the first salvos in a GOP effort to change voting rules …
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
Mitch McConnell gives away the game: ‘Kelly and David are getting hammered’
Mitch McConnell gives away the game: ‘Kelly and David are getting hammered’
Discussion:
American Prospect, New York Times, The Daily Beast, CNN, The Atlantic, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Daily Kos, The Sun, Reuters and Raw Story
Amber Phillips / Washington Post:
What you need to know about the Georgia Senate runoff elections
What you need to know about the Georgia Senate runoff elections
Discussion:
NBC News, Mic, The Daily Caller, Fox News, WTOP and Washington Times
Thomas P. Bossert / New York Times:
I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We're Being Hacked. — The magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate. — Mr. Bossert was the homeland security adviser to President Trump and deputy homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
Discussion:
CNN, GeekWire, emptywheel, New York Post, Forbes, Mediaite, Politico, Raw Story, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Dispatch, TheBlaze and Crooks and Liars, more at Techmeme »
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Jonathan V. Last / The Triad:
Where Is the President of the United States? — Donald Trump is AWOL. And his disgrace is hiding in plain sight. — Before we start: Tonight we're doing a livestream that I'm hoping will go down in legend as The Bulwark version of the Star Wars Holiday Special. The first 12 minutes will be entirely in Wookie.
Discussion:
Raw Story, HotAir and New York Times, more at Techmeme »
Jennifer Horn / USA Today:
Texas lawsuit was the last straw. I'm leaving the Republican Party: Former NH GOP chair — The GOP has ransacked our Constitution and attempted a coup. The Republican Party of Lincoln is no more. I'm switching my registration to independent. — My mother spent a lifetime trying to teach me to stand for what is right.
Discussion:
Raw Story, The Hill, New York Post, Conservative News Today and The Texas Tribune
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Politico:
Never-Trump movement splinters as its villain heads for the exit — The defeat of Donald Trump might have been the easy part for never-Trump Republicans. Next up: taking on the more elusive target of Trumpism with their boogeyman gone from office. — More than a dozen leaders …
Discussion:
Fox News, Salon, The Gateway Pundit, The Week, Raw Story, Crooks and Liars and National Review
David Siders / Politico:
'Everything's great': GOP ditches election post-mortems — Democrats in Texas and New Hampshire are forming committees to examine the party's failings in last month's election. Less formal autopsies are underway in states across the country. — But the party that lost the presidential election isn't soul-searching at all.
Politico:
Pence prepares to oversee Trump's loss — and then leave town — On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden's victory. — Then he'll likely skip town. — As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding …
Discussion:
CNBC, The Hill, LGBTQ Nation, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, The Week, Axios, Election Law Blog, Business Insider, BuzzFeed News, HotAir and Washington Examiner
Washington Post:
Biden picks top North Carolina environmental official to run EPA — Michael Regan has forged a multibillion-dollar clean up of coal ash and worked with the state's GOP legislature — President-elect Joe Biden will choose to nominate Michael S. Regan, who heads the North Carolina Department …
Discussion:
Bloomberg, The Hill, Reuters, Washington Examiner, Politico, CNN and New York Times
Alan Feuer / New York Times:
Dominion demands that Sidney Powell retract ‘baseless and false allegations’ about voting machines. — Dominion Voting Systems sent a blistering letter on Wednesday night to the right-wing lawyer Sidney Powell, demanding that she publicly retract her “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations” …
Discussion:
Forbes, The Hill, Law & Crime, Business Insider, Washington Examiner, Axios, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, The Daily Caller, Raw Story and The Gateway Pundit
us-cert.cisa.gov:
Alert (AA20-352A) — Advanced Persistent Threat Compromise of Government Agencies, Critical Infrastructure, and Private Sector Organizations — Summary — The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is aware of compromises of U.S. government agencies …
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xkcd.com:
2020 Election Map — Permanent link to this comic: https://xkcd.com/2399/ — Image URL (for hotlinking/embedding): https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/2020_ election_map.png — Comics I enjoy: — Three Word Phrase, SMBC, Dinosaur Comics, Oglaf (nsfw), A Softer World, Buttersafe …
Discussion:
CNN
Lisa Bonos / Washington Post:
Pete Buttigieg is right. Airports are romantic. — In accepting his pending appointment to be the next U.S. transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg spoke about how travel, in his mind, “is synonymous with growth, with adventure — even love.” Then he went for a laugh line, adding …
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Zeynep Tufekci / The Atlantic:
Hang On for Three More Months — Hunkering down to wait out the coronavirus isn't easy. The costs of isolation are steep. Quarantine fatigue is real. The chance to gather with extended family and friends this holiday season is particularly alluring to those of us battling loneliness.
Roger Sollenberger / Salon:
This hedge-fund billionaire is a huge fan of Sen. Kelly Loeffler — but why? — Finance mogul Ken Griffin gave big chunks of cash to Kelly Loeffler's PAC — and the timing is intriguing — On Oct. 9, billionaire Ken Griffin, the head of a multinational financial services company …
Kyle Smith / National Review:
Jill Biden's Doctorate Is Garbage Because Her Dissertation Is Garbage — Her dissertation is not an addition to the sum total of human knowledge. — You can tell someone is smarting from an inferiority complex when he insists on being addressed as “Dr.” on the basis of holding an academic doctorate rather than being a physician.
Discussion:
Twitchy, Instapundit and Arizona Mirror
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Justin Baragona / The Daily Beast:
Obsessed Tucker Carlson Calls Jill Biden ‘Illiterate’ and ‘Our National Shame’
Obsessed Tucker Carlson Calls Jill Biden ‘Illiterate’ and ‘Our National Shame’
Discussion:
The Hill, The Daily Caller and The Wrap
Andrew Heavens / Reuters:
Sweden's king says ‘we have failed’ over COVID-19, as deaths mount — STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Sweden's king said his country had failed in its handling of COVID-19, in a sharp criticism of a pandemic policy partly blamed for a high death toll among the elderly.
CNN:
Biden's search for an attorney general complicated by ‘competing questions’ — Washington (CNN)The deliberations among President-elect Joe Biden's tight circle of advisers about whom he should nominate as attorney general have emerged as some of the more complicated of the transition …
Discussion:
New York Times, American Prospect, Issues & Insights, The Gateway Pundit, Mic, HotAir and Washington Free Beacon
Bloomberg:
Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a McJob — Amazon.com Inc. job ads are everywhere. Plastered on city buses, displayed on career web sites, slotted between songs on classic rock stations. They promise a quick start, $15 an hour and health insurance.
Mark Niesse / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
75K new Georgia voters registered before US Senate runoffs — Nearly 75,000 new voters registered in Georgia since before the presidential election, enough to make a difference in the U.S. Senate runoffs if they turn out. — The number of new voters was revealed in an updated voter …
Discussion:
Fox News
Sam Mellins / The Appeal:
The Election That Could Thwart New York City's War On Drugs — The office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor is on the chopping block in Manhattan's 2021 DA race. — This article is published as part of a partnership between New York Focus and The Appeal: Political Report to cover Manhattan's 2021 elections.
Suzanne Hirt / USA Today:
Florida blames mothers when men batter them - then takes away their children — Her memory of the midnight attack was muddled, but her battered body bore the story. — Purple bruises peppered her arms, legs and chest. Blood dried on her busted lip. Dark, swollen skin circled her bloodshot right eye.
Brian Beutler / Crooked Media:
The Immense Stakes of the Biden COVID Response — Like Barack Obama before him, Joe Biden will inherit the presidency at a moment of national crisis, after the country has been failed once again by right-wing contempt for empiricism and federal regulatory power.
Discussion:
Jacobin, Lawfare and Blue Virginia
Mackenzie Mays / Politico:
California teachers unions mobilize against Democratic school reopening bill — SACRAMENTO — California teachers unions are demanding that the Legislature maintain pandemic restrictions on school reopenings and have begun mobilizing against a Democratic bill introduced last week that could force schools to reopen in March.
Discussion:
Los Angeles Times
Sanjana Karanth / HuffPost:
Chicago's Top Prosecutor Blasts Mayor Over Suit To Block Bodycam Video Of Botched Raid — Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx spoke against the city trying to conceal footage of police raiding the wrong home and handcuffing a naked Black woman. — Chicago's chief prosecutor, Kim Foxx …
Discussion:
Twitchy, NewsOne, Chicago Sun-Times, CBS Chicago, Associated Press and Fox News
Justine Coleman / The Hill:
Trump cuts $200M in health care funds to California over abortions — President Trump's administration announced on Wednesday an upcoming cut of $200 million in federal Medicaid funding to California over the state's requirement for abortions to be covered under health care plans.
Michelle Ruiz / Vogue:
How Savannah Guthrie and Kristen Welker Won the 2020 Election Coverage — FIVE MINUTES before NBC called the 2020 election for Joe Biden, Kristen Welker was sprinting. After rising at 4 a.m. and coanchoring Weekend Today in New York, the White House correspondent darted into a car …
Chuck Ross / The Daily Caller:
Peter Strzok's Declassified Messages Give Insider View Of FBI's Trump Campaign Probe — The Justice Department declassified a batch of internal FBI messages from Peter Strzok, the former counterintelligence investigator who oversaw Crossfire Hurricane. — The messages provide a real …
Discussion:
The Federalist and The Gateway Pundit
Washington Post:
Interior Secretary Bernhardt tests positive for covid-19 — Two other top Interior officials contracted the virus last month — Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt, 51, tested positive for covid-19 Wednesday, the department spokesman confirmed after an inquiry from The Post.
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, CNN, The Daily Caller, Talking Points Memo, KNSD-TV, NBC News, NBC New York, NBC4 Washington, The Week, The Hill, Associated Press, USA Today, Axios and New York Post
Samantha Melamed / The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Police shot a Philly man, then accused him of rape. He was exonerated after 19 years. — It was before dawn on Nov. 27, 2001, and Termaine Joseph Hicks was at the wrong place at precisely the wrong time. — A woman had been pistol-whipped, dragged into an alleyway behind …
Discussion:
The Hill
Justine van der Leun / New Republic:
“No Choice but to Do It”: Why Women Go to Prison — Tanisha Williams met Kevin Amos on December 29, 2002, the last day of his life. — Kevin, 19, lived with his parents, but sometimes visited his girlfriend and their infant daughter at the red-shingled apartment complex in Saginaw …