“The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency alerted Congress Tuesday about plans for a $290 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia that would include 3,000 precision guided munitions,” Axios reports.
“The State Department’s approval of the potential deal in the Trump administration’s final weeks comes despite President-elect Joe Biden vowing during his election campaign to end weapons sales to the Saudis.”
Stat News: “The logistics of the rollout have been largely left up to states to navigate. States and local public health officials have warned for months that they would need more than $8 billion in additional funding to stand up the infrastructure needed to administer vaccines.”
“The Trump administration instead provided states $340 million in funding to prepare for vaccinations. Congressional lawmakers also balked for months at appropriating additional funding for vaccine distribution, although the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Trump on Sunday included $8 billion in funding for that effort.”
“The UK drugs watchdog has approved the coronavirus vaccine made by Oxford university and AstraZeneca, boosting hopes that millions more Britons can be inoculated against the disease in the coming months as a new viral variant of Covid-19 takes hold,” the Financial Times reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The green light represents the third emergency-use approval of a Western-developed vaccine this month and comes as cases rise sharply in the U.S. and Europe.”
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Politico: “Democrats are buoyed by the strong early vote numbers, which show Black voters making up a larger percentage of the electorate than in November and higher early turnout in Democratic congressional districts in the state. Both are positive signs for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the two challengers, easing fears that the typical voter dropoff that has plagued Democrats in past years would doom the party’s chances with control of the Senate on the line.”
“Meanwhile, early-vote turnout has lagged in Republican-held congressional districts, likely leaving GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue with a larger deficit heading into Election Day than they had to make up on Nov. 3, with early voting concluding this week leading up to the New Year’s holiday.”
The Washington Post reports President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris “will both travel to Georgia in the closing days before its pair of Senate runoff elections, underscoring the importance of contests that will determine which party controls the chamber next year.”
“As President Trump continues to level baseless claims of voter fraud almost two months after his Nov. 3 election loss, Republican lawmakers in states Trump contested are pushing new voting restrictions for future elections,” USA Today reports.
“That includes proposals to roll back laws in Georgia and Pennsylvania that allowed all registered voters to vote by mail – moves that civil rights and voting advocates say could suppress turnout.”
Associated Press: “More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China.”
“The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military… But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by The AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.”
An additional 3,725 Americans lost their lives to the coronavirus on Tuesday—the highest single-day death toll since the pandemic began, CNN reports.
Politico: “The law that guides the proceedings, the Electoral Count Act — passed in 1887 to address the disastrous election of 1876 — is vaguely written and full of gaps that have perplexed constitutional scholars for a century. Now, Trump and his allies are working to exploit those gaps to try to muscle their way to a second term. There’s little doubt that Biden will be certified as president by the end of the day on Jan. 6 or in the wee hours of Jan. 7, but Trump’s allies could cast a cloud over the process — grinding it to a halt, attempting to force votes on alternate slates of Trump-supporting electors and raising untold objections to the proceedings that could disrupt the traditionally ceremonial event.”
“But the lack of clarity also creates enormous opportunities for those who wish to limit or prevent the day-long spectacle that Trump’s allies are promising. That could include both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been working to tamp down GOP support for challenges in recent days — drawing Trump’s fury.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “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.”
“Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R) died Tuesday evening from complications with COVID-19, shaking the Louisiana political world weeks after being elected to represent Louisiana’s 5th District in Congress as the state’s youngest U.S. representative,” the New Orleans Times Picayune reports.
“Lawyers representing Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) 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,” The Hill reports.
Susan Glasser: “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 counseled could be beaten with bleach. He has pardoned mercenary child-killers and Paul Manafort. He has golfed. He has raged. He has vetoed the annual defense bill and threatened to shut down the government over the holidays. He has turned against even some of his most loyal henchmen, and some, in turn, have finally flipped on him. ‘Mr. President . . . STOP THE INSANITY,’ the New York Post blared on Monday, after four years of relentless cheerleading.”
“But, of course, the President did not, and he will not. He continues to refuse to accept his defeat in the election, and just the other day he retweeted a claim that ‘treason’ kept him from winning. Injecting still more political drama into the most ministerial of constitutional processes, Trump and his most fanatical supporters now want Congress to refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s Electoral College win on January 6th—which is both pointless, in that it will not happen, and incredibly destructive. Meanwhile, more than a hundred thousand Americans have died of the coronavirus just since the election, and only two million Americans—not the hundred million he once promised—have so far received the vaccine.”
“The Trümperdämmerung is finally here, and it is every bit the raging dumpster fire that we, the unlucky audience for this drama, have come to expect.”
“State Department officials have drawn up a proposal to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a final-hour foreign policy move that would complicate plans by the incoming Biden administration to relax increased American pressure on Havana,” the New York Times reports.
“With three weeks left until Inauguration Day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must decide whether to sign off on the plan, according to two U.S. officials, a move that would also serve as a thank-you to Cuban-Americans and other anti-communist Latinos in Florida who strongly supported President Trump and his fellow Republicans in the November election.”
“President Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Wisconsin’s high court, set aside the state’s presidential election and allow Republicans who control the Legislature to decide how to cast the state’s 10 electoral votes,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“It’s the latest in a string of dozens of challenges by the Republican president and his allies to overturn the Nov. 3 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his supporters have failed to make headway in the courts.”
Incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NPR the outgoing Trump administration still isn’t providing information in the way President-elect Joe Biden’s lieutenants feel is appropriate for a team poised to take the reins of power.
Said Sullivan: “It kind of comes back to the lack of visibility that we have right now into a number of critical issues relating to military operations because of DoD’s obstruction and roadblocks, and that will mean that we are going to have to take time at the beginning of the administration after Jan. 20 to take a hard look at how we’re postured, and what threats we’re up against, and what continuing the drawdowns look like in the way of risk to force and other considerations.”
“The first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado,” the AP reports.
“The new strain could be as much as 70% more transmissible.”
Washington Post: “Researchers have now detected the more transmissible variant in viral samples in at least 17 countries outside the United Kingdom, including as far away as Australia and South Korea, as of Tuesday afternoon.”
“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 up their scrutiny of his company’s real estate transactions,” the Washington Post reports.
“District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. opened the investigation in 2018 to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier. The probe has since expanded, and now includes the Trump Organization’s activities more broadly.”
Edward Foley: “President Trump and his supporters are trying to turn the Jan. 6 congressional session for counting electoral college votes into something that it is not and was never intended to be: a forum for litigating Trump’s claims of voter fraud.”
“Never mind that Trump has no evidence to support his assertion that massive fraud is what caused Joe Biden to win the popular vote in enough states for an electoral college victory. The critical point is this: Even if there were such proof, the Jan. 6 session is not the place to present it.”
For members: How Many Republicans Will Keep Up Their Fight?
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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