Good Tuesday morning, CivMixers. It’s a big day, politically speaking. The balance of power in the U.S. Senate and the very fate of the country is at stake.
And it all comes down to Georgia.
There are two races to watch. One is a regularly scheduled contest between Republican Sen. David Perdue, who is seeking a second term and is being challenged by Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Perdue in November came close to winning, but didn’t quite make a majority, receiving 49.7 percent of the vote to Ossoff’s 47.9 percent, which triggered a runoff under Georgia law.
The second race is a special election between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat, and the Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat. The two ran as part of a crowded field in the November general election, in which Warnock received 32.9 percent of the vote and Loeffler, 25.9 percent.
The winner of this runoff will serve out the remainder of former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, which ends in 2022.
If both Democrats win, there will be a 50-50 split in the Senate, which will be broken by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, herself a soon-to-be former senator from California.
If one or both Republicans win, the GOP will retain control of the upper chamber, and make President-elect Joe Biden’s life very difficult – not to mention creating some serious roadblocks to achieving his administration’s lofty policy goals.
Three million Georgia voters cast their ballots early, so it’s possible that it will be a few days before we have the final results. It’s also expected that there will be long lines at the polls today, which could further complicate matters.
Both President Donald Trump and Biden spoke in Georgia yesterday, with the outgoing president reiterating baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Trump’s problems down south are much bigger than these two races, however, as he well may face an investigation for his now infamous phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, demanding that he “find” enough votes to throw the state to him and not Biden, who carried the state by just about 12,000 votes.
For those of you who aren’t so interested in politics, or maybe have just had enough of it to last you a very long time, thanks very much, I bring you this:
It’s National Bird Day – a day created by the Avian Welfare Coalition in 2002 to raise awareness about the benefits of, and challenges faced by, our fine feathered friends, and also to highlight how we can build better relationships with them and improve their chances of survival.
The Coalition is also very big on keeping birds wild as opposed to maintaining them in captivity as pets. It turns out that exotic bird breeding and housing remain largely unregulated in the U.S., which is something the Coalition is advocating to change.
Now without going too deeply into detail, I may or may not be living with someone who suddenly has become a huge bird nerd. There are three – THREE – bird feeders in the backyard, and many computer files full of photos of birds – lots of eagles, also some owls and sundry other stuff. This is a pandemic hobby, but it looks like it might stick.
I’m not necessarily for or against birds. They’re nice and all, but personally, I prefer dogs. It turns out that dogs are very much unwelcome on birding expeditions, something about them making too much noise and scaring the subjects away. Bah.
Oh, and the deer are enjoying the bird feeders quite a bit.
Not much to report on the weather front. We’re going to have a basic cloudy and cold day, with temperatures in the mid-30s.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump zeroed-in on the vice president’s role in certifying the 2020 election results as a potential Hail Mary during a rally meant for a pair of Georgia GOP Senate candidates, saying that he hoped Mike Pence would “come through for us.”
Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, led by the very leader charged with defending our democratic system.
The top federal prosecutor in Atlanta left his position yesterday – a day after an audio recording was made public in which Trump called him a “never-Trumper.”
During his infamous Georgia phone call, Trump floated several baseless conspiracy theories that were primarily pushed by QAnon followers over the last two months, including a widely debunked theory about voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he never thought it was appropriate to speak to Trump about the 2020 election results and the conversations Trump has had with him and other elections officials could pose a conflict of interest that warrants investigating.
President-elect Joe Biden made his final pitch to Georgia voters to give him a Democratic Senate to work with in Washington, asking them to elect Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in today’s runoff elections.
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who is on the ballot today, said she will oppose the certification of the Electoral College results tomorrow.
Also planning on objecting to the certification of those results: Republican North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik.
I do not take this action lightly,” Stefanik said in a video posted on Twitter. “I am acting to protect our democratic process. Article II in the 12th Amendment of the Constitution make clear that I have an obligation to act on this matter if I believe there are serious questions with respect to the presidential election.”
Nearly 200 top U.S. business leaders pressed Congress to certify Biden’s electoral victory, the latest attempt by corporate executives to publicly urge a smooth transition of power as Trump and many Republicans continue to dispute his election defeat.
An attorney in President Trump’s administration said that the census count to determine how many congressional seats each state gets will not be completed until February.
The White House said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes in a ceremony yesterday morning. No pool reporters were present for the event.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested and accused of destroying a Black Lives Matter sign at a historic Black church in Washington, D.C., last month.
The New York Stock Exchange reversed its decision to delist China’s three largest telecommunications companies, after consulting with regulatory authorities about a recent U.S. investment ban.
A group of Google employees has formed a union to organize workers across the technology company’s sprawling global operations, a rare move within Silicon Valley and one that reflects growing employee activism in the sector.
The Environmental Protection Agency is issuing new rules that will give preference in future decisions about public health to scientific studies that disclose their underlying data.
Attorney General William Barr personally questioned the last inmate to share a cell with Jeffrey Epstein before the perv died by suicide, a source told the NY Daily News.
A pharmacist who was arrested on charges that he intentionally sabotaged more than 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine at a Wisconsin hospital was “an admitted conspiracy theorist” who believed the vaccine could harm people and “change their DNA.”
Contract-manufacturing companies working to accelerate the global availability of Covid-19 vaccines are struggling with a shortage of their own: There aren’t enough workers to meet this year’s big production push.
New York, the onetime center of the pandemic, faced a growing crisis over the lagging pace of coronavirus vaccinations, as deaths continue to rise in the second wave and Gov. Andrew Cuomo came under mounting pressure to overhaul the process.
To date, the state has administered about 300,000 initial doses of three-quarters of a million doses distributed. The governor says the ratio should be higher. Hospitals statewide have only used 46 percent of total allocated vaccine doses thus far as of yesterday.
The state announced a new app designed to help New Yorkers determine their COVID-19 vaccine eligibility.
An employee at a Saratoga Springs jeweler has tested positive for the highly contagious variant strain of the coronavirus that is engulfing the United Kingdom, marking the first time the variant has been found in New York.
A man in his 60s connected to N. Fox Jewelers on Broadway has been confirmed to have that strain, and is recovering. The governor said three more COVID-19 cases occurred in connection with the store, but it’s unclear if they were the same strain.
The Saratoga County man had not traveled recently, leading state officials to believe he got the virus through community spread. “He was symptomatic, but he is on the mend and he’s doing better,” Cuomo added.
The identification of the new strain in New York came as Covid-19 hospitalizations and positivity rates continue to climb around the state, mostly in areas north of the Hudson Valley.
New vaccine rules: Any provider must use its inventory this week or receive a fine up to $100,000. Going forward, providers must use all doses within seven days of receipt – and if they fail to do so, they could be disqualified from future vaccine distributions.
“I don’t want the vaccine in a freezer,” Cuomo said. “I want it in somebody’s arm. So yes, I’m being aggressive.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio slammed Cuomo’s plan to use fines to speed the heretofore slow vaccine rollout, calling it “arrogance,” and adding: ““Does he think that our health care professionals are uninterested in vaccinating people?”
Sandra Lindsay, the Queens ICU nurse who was first in the country to receive an authorized COVID vaccine, got her second and last shot of the drug yesterday, making her the first person in the country to be fully vaccinated.
The FDA said there is no adequate scientific evidence that supports changing the authorized COVID-19 vaccine schedule or dosing, calling the request “premature.
The number of inmates and guards known to have been infected with the coronavirus at American correctional institutions has exceeded 500,000.
The Philippines added the United States to its current list of 20 countries with travel restrictions due to the rising cases of the new coronavirus variant that was first identified in the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed a strict new national lockdown as Britain’s desperate race to vaccinate its population risked being overtaken by a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus that was on track to overwhelm the nation’s beleaguered hospitals.
A new coronavirus variant identified in South Africa poses even more of a risk than the strain discovered several weeks ago in England, Britain’s top health official warned.
I’m incredibly worried about the South African variant,” U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on BBC radio, citing a conversation over the Christmas holiday with his counterpart in South Africa.
NYC real estate brothers Bill and David S. Mack allegedly personally arranged for a host of their wealthy friends from Manhattan and the ritzy Palm Beach Country Club to get the COVID-19 vaccine at a Florida retirement home.
Since the pandemic hit, NYC car ownership has soared, stoking tensions over parking spots. Advocacy groups for mass transit don’t have much sympathy.
Cuomo announced new metrics to guide school closures, requiring districts in counties with a COVID-19 positivity rate above 9 percent to test a percentage of on-site students and staff or shift to remote learning.
Districts in communities with community infection rates above 9% will be allowed to keep their schools open if they can show through testing of students and staff that the positivity rate in schools is lower than that of the surrounding community.
The NYC teachers union said that all schools should close if the city hits a 9 percent coronavirus infection rate per state calculations.
New York state transportation officials said that despite the coronavirus pandemic they are on schedule to complete a $2.6 billion project that will expand rail capacity on one of the nation’s busiest commuter railroads.
New York state leaders have moved ahead with minimum-wage increases over objections from some groups who said businesses battered by the coronavirus pandemic couldn’t afford the increased labor costs.
New York Police Department investigators were searching for a suspect with extremist right-wing views who left a fake bomb in a vehicle that led to the evacuation of a Queens mall yesterday morning, police officials said.
New York City’s online system used to post bail and access other information about people in jail has been down for over two weeks, leaving lawyers and families without a crucial avenue to those behind bars.
Real estate sales in New York City picked up, but not enough to make up for the shutdown in the early months of the pandemic.
A recently appointed top staffer to Queens Borough President Donovan Richards suddenly withdrew from the position, reportedly after facing scrutiny over old tweets critical of Israeli policies and lobbying efforts.
A Brooklyn Democratic Party vice chair resigned her post in the face of a firestorm of criticism for writing “I can’t even look at Chinese food” during an anti-China social media rant.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wouldn’t rule out challenging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a primary battle for his seat in 2022.
A group of Lower East Siders want to stop the city from moving 70 homeless men into a local hotel — claiming the packed quarters that would exist there could spread the coronavirus “like wildfire,” new court papers show.
A man driving a van fatally struck a 4-year-old boy and critically injured a 6-year-old boy moments after he had dropped them off at a yeshiva in Brooklyn yesterday morning.
New York conservatives continue to hammer a bill introduced six years ago that they’re holding up as proof that Cuomo is pursuing detention camps in response to some New Yorkers’ unwillingness to quarantine for the coronavirus.
A little over two thirds of the moves involving New York households last year were outbound, a higher proportion than any other state except New Jersey, according to data released by United Van Lines.
Thousands have signed a change.org petition seeking to bar Cuomo from attending this weekend’s playoff game at Bills stadium.
The Legislature is poised to convene tomorrow for the start of this year’s session, but political insiders say this week’s business will focus on nominating legislative leaders and other internal business.
The Capital Region is to receive $28.4 million in transit aid, part of the more than $5.6 billion for agencies across the state that was included in the recently passed federal government funding bill.
A 28-year-old Poughkeepsie man was charged with robbing a State Street bank across from the Capitol.
Mayor Meg Kelly will not run for a third term, Saratoga Springs Democratic Chair Sarah Burger said.
Skiers and snowboarders are showing up at area mountains despite the ongoing pandemic.
Tanya Roberts, the actress known for starring opposite Roger Moore in his final turn as James Bond and for her roles in “Charlie’s Angels” and “That ’70s Show,” is not dead after all.
Veteran talk show host Larry King, suffering from COVID-19, has been moved out of the intensive care unit at a Los Angeles hospital and is breathing on his own, a spokesman said.
In a message taped for what turned out to be his final week as “Jeopardy!” host, Alex Trebek urged the game show’s viewers to honor the season of giving by helping victims of the coronavirus epidemic.
The fast food chicken sandwich war continues.
