Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow dies with COVID  —  Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow has died at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport with COVID-19, a family friend confirmed Tuesday night.  —  Letlow, 41, was transferred from St. Francis Medical Center to the Ochsner LSU Health ICU …

Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago, report shows  —  NASHVILLE — Sixteen months before Anthony Quinn Warner's RV exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, officers visited his home in Antioch after his girlfriend reported that he was making bombs …

Pence refused to sign on to plan to overturn election, lawyers say  —  Lawyers representing Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Arizona's 11 GOP electors disclosed in a court filing Tuesday that Vice President Mike Pence rejected their request to join their attempt to subvert the results of the presidential election.

N.Y. prosecutor hires forensic accounting experts as Trump criminal probe escalates  —  NEW YORK — The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp …

US hits record for daily Covid-19 deaths.  Winter will be ‘awful’ before we see ‘some light,’ expert says  —  Nurse uses social media to warn public about Covid-19  —  (CNN)The US set two more devastating Covid-19 records as it counted down the hours to the end of what has been a calamitous year for the nation.

Strong early-vote turnout gives Dems hope in Georgia runoffs  —  Early voting in the Georgia Senate runoffs is breaking records — and Democrats have reasons for hope in the numbers.  —  More than 2.3 million people have voted as of Tuesday morning through mail-in ballots or in-person early voting …

Covid-19 Vaccine Made by AstraZeneca, Oxford Is Authorized by U.K.  —  Green light for emergency use comes as Britain grapples with a surge in cases and a new variant  —  LONDON—The U.K. authorized a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC …

Hilaria Baldwin Talks Spain, Boston, Alec and Instagram  —  Accused of a “decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person,” the entrepreneur (and spouse of Alec Baldwin) talks about being the main character in this last week of 2020.  —  The first signs that Hilaria Baldwin's life …

No fraud: Georgia audit confirms authenticity of absentee ballots  —  Law enforcement and election investigators didn't find a single fraudulent absentee ballot during an audit of over 15,000 voter signatures, according to a report by the Georgia secretary of state's office released Tuesday.

The Trümperdämmerung Is a Fitting End to 2020  —  As the awful year of 2020 and the awful tenure of Donald Trump both come to an end, the President has partied with the unmasked in Palm Beach and taken credit for a vaccine against a virus that he once counselled could be beaten with bleach.

The Cruise Ship Suicides  —  Confined mostly to tiny cabins as the pandemic unfolded, crew members struggled to cope.  —  At first, Jozsef Szaller's crewmates didn't think much of his absence.  Szaller, after all, usually skipped going to dinner on the Carnival Breeze …

Trump angered by Mar-a-Lago renovations, sources say  —  (CNN)His mood darkened as soon as he walked into his members-only club Mar-a-Lago, three days before Christmas, according to multiple sources.  The changes to his private quarters, many of which were overseen by his wife …

Louisville Officer Who Shot Breonna Taylor Will Be Fired  —  Detective Myles Cosgrove will be terminated along with Detective Joshua Jaynes, who was involved in planning the deadly raid.  —  The Louisville police officer who fired the shot that killed Breonna Taylor, a Black emergency room …

Biden's ‘Dark Winter’ Is A Warning About His Economy, Not The Virus  —  Should President Donald Trump's election challenges fail to keep Joe Biden out of the White House, it's a certainty that bleak days will be ahead.  We're staring into the barrel of at least four years of sclerotic economic growth.

Former Jewish American Spy Jonathan Pollard Lands in Israel  —  Pollard, who was convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, served 30 years in prison and five years on strict parole in the United States  —  Former Jewish American spy Jonathan Pollard and his wife Esther landed in Israel …

2020 Man of the Year: MAGA Matt Yglesias  —  You know how it goes: You oppose defunding the cops, and a million rose emojis scream at you for hours.  You sign a letter tepidly endorsing free speech, and your colleagues denounce you to your bosses and Twitter.

Anthony Fauci must go  —  How many passes does Anthony Fauci get?  How many times must he be categorically wrong before people stop ogling his every facial expression and treating him as some sort of minor deity?  —  Let me state unequivocally that enough is enough and it's time for him to step aside.

CNN's Don Lemon, PBS' Yamiche Alcindor and NBC's Chuck Todd to Guest Author Politico's Playbook (Exclusive)  —  Politico is turning to high-profile journalists, including Recode co-founder Kara Swisher and Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson, to helm Playbook until a new team starts later in January.

Operation Warp Speed at a crawl: Adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at current pace  —  The Trump administration's Covid-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans …

L.A. County hospitals turn away ambulances, put patients in gift shop: 'I've never seen anything like this'  —  At Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, the breaking point came Sunday night.  —  There was not one available bed for at least 30 patients who needed intensive or intermediate levels of care …

Why increasing the stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 is a bad idea  —  GIVEN HOW 2020 has gone, we probably should have known it would end with Congress and the president wasting their final days on one last bad idea: $2,000-per-person direct payments, supposedly to offset the hard economic times brought …

Timeline: Fox News misinformation in 2020 … Tucker Carlson: “The long-term agenda of refugee resettlement is to bring in future Democratic voters.”  [Tucker Carlson Tonight, 1/3/20]  —  Sean Hannity calls for Trump to discard rules of engagement with Iran and “bomb the living hell out of them.