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Experts on safer (and riskier) ways to see friends and family, keep kids busy, and give back — in a raging pandemic.

Winter and the holidays can be hard even in typical years: short days, cold winds, and family stress, to name a few. But the ongoing US Covid-19 surge, with more than 200,000 new virus cases reported every day since December 7 (about double what they were a month before), is putting the hallmark activities that help sustain us — holiday gatherings, meals with friends, volunteering, or a visit to see Santa — in more dire limbo.

Despite being more than nine months into the pandemic, figuring out whether and how to approach a previously routine event is still complicated. And the calculus seems to change with new case rates and evolving guidelines — and with our own fluctuating pandemic burnout.

Experts are still parsing the data on what role Thanksgiving played in the increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths. But the hard fact remains that, with case rates so high, “all activities are going to have some risk of being impinged upon by the virus,” says Amesh Adalja, a physician and faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health’s department of environmental health and engineering.

And doing things with people you know — but aren’t living with — can heighten that risk. Just because you love them, a family member or old acquaintance doesn’t have any lower risk of carrying or catching the virus than a stranger does. And it will likely make you less careful than if you were interacting with a stranger.

So this winter is going to be different, but it doesn’t have to be all bad unless we are determined to think of it that way. “Usually people find the holidays stressful, so this could potentially be the year with less stress — just see what it feels like not to go to or host all those parties,” Krysia Lindan, an epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco, notes in an email to Vox. She calls it a year for “some experimentation.” For example, she had a picnic on the beach for Thanksgiving this year. Other experts suggest trying different activities, like a distanced hike instead of gathering around a meal or at a party.

A big part of the challenge is that Covid-19 spreads before people start showing symptoms. So anybody can show up feeling the picture of health only to unwittingly spread the virus to those they come into close contact with.

Amanda Northrop/Vox

We talked with epidemiologists and other health experts about the safest — and riskiest — ways to see others, keep kids busy, help out, and travel this winter during the pandemic. (Note: Activities are ranked relatively within each category, so a “moderate” risk in one category does not carry the same relative risk as “moderate” in another category.) Here is what they said.

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Helping others out

As a result of the pandemic, millions of people in the US are struggling to put enough food on the table for themselves and their families. More people need help this winter than perhaps at any other time in the past 80-plus years. So there has been no better time to find ways to help others.

Helping out not only benefits others, it also has a knock-on positive effect for you. For example, thinking about and helping others is a really important way to combat anxiety and stress and a feeling of helplessness — all of which are currently pervasive.

“It’s always good to volunteer, and doing so might lighten the sadness of not being able to see family and friends as in years past,” Lindan writes.

Other experts agree: “I do think people are hungry for ways to help each other right now,” says Jodie Guest, vice-chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Safest: Give money

Charitable organizations can often stretch donated money further than donated goods. So financial contributions are especially helpful, in addition to being Covid-19 transmission-free. Established charity-rating sites, such as GuideStar or Charity Navigator, can tell you how much of your contribution will go directly to the cause.

Next safest: No-contact help

The next safest way to help out this season is through contact-free volunteering or donations. This could be a formal, organized effort, like contributing food to a local pantry, or it could be personal efforts, like arranging grocery or meal deliveries for higher-risk community members.

Guest notes that these kinds of efforts can also safely be turned into a shared experience of sorts — such as organizing a coat or blanket drive with friends, family, or neighbors. (She suggests quarantining the donated goods for three days before you touch them.)

Moderate: Helping out in person with a few others

There are many organizations that rely heavily on behind-the-scenes volunteers. Food pantries or clothing and household goods distribution centers might offer opportunities to donate time and help in a slightly safer environment than, say, serving meals. Before you go, find out how many other people you will be working with, if they require masks, and how long you will be expected to work (shorter shifts are better for limiting exposure).

You shouldn’t have to look far for opportunities to contribute this way in your area, says Guest: Since the start of the pandemic, “the need for volunteers has only gotten bigger.”

Riskier: Volunteering in person with larger numbers of people

If you want to do more personal work, first check in with places where you might want to volunteer and ask if they are accepting in-person help and what precautions they are taking. For instance, if you want to serve meals, ask how many people they allow in at any time, if people are required to have masks, how often the organization cleans the area, and whether you will be the only one touching serving utensils, Guest notes.

“You should continue to use the same precautions as always when in a group setting — masks, even face shields, hand-washing, and distancing to the extent possible,” Lindan writes.

Riskiest: Volunteering in congregate living settings

The highest-risk ways to give back this year are those where you volunteer in person in a place where lots of people live, whether that’s a homeless shelter or an assisted living facility. Each carries different risks in terms of acquiring the virus or passing it along. But, as Guest notes, most of these places are being quite careful in terms of their protocol around any outside people (and whether they allow them at all). Even so, it’s still good to check on their practices first. You can also ask if there are other ways your time or money could be even more valuable to them than serving in person.

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See people from other households

Amanda Northrop/Vox

Whether you usually celebrate Christmas, Festivus, New Year’s, or a birthday this time of year, it’s likely that plans for a get-together will need to be adapted — if not scuttled altogether.

For one, having people from different households together is risky. Before the pandemic, more than 85 percent of Americans planned to attend a gathering with extended family or friends for the holidays. And the average holiday meal included about 11 people.

Now, in many states, that exceeds the limit allowed for private gatherings. (The maximum is 10 or fewer — sometimes as few as five — in many places, including Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Washington, DC. And in some states — including California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, gatherings cannot include people from other households at all.)

Even if your state allows gatherings (decisions that are often made based on a variety of reasons including transmission rates and also political and economic interests), there are good reasons to reconsider get-togethers.

In many places, for example, “you shouldn’t do anything with people you aren’t actively living with [because] there’s so much virus spreading out in the community,” says Lisa Gralinski, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. For example, an area with more than 5 percent of tests coming back positive indicates that there is undocumented community spread. Just two states as of mid-December have test positivity rates below that. Even in those places, she says, “I would encourage people to be incredibly cautious.”

German Lopez/Vox

As Lindan notes, it is especially important to “avoid multi-generational gatherings that include older adults and those with pre-disposing health conditions.”

Expected family time might need to be skipped this year. “This may be the year not to invite your young adult children to come home or, conversely, to visit your parents or grandparents,” Lindan writes.

The final Covid-19 caution to remind others of is that this particular virus frequently spreads just before someone develops symptoms (as well as from people who never develop symptoms at all). So feeling fine provides little to no measure of safety.

With these things in mind, here are considerations for different formats of gatherings this season.

Safest: Virtual

It’s hard to pass the dessert when you’re celebrating on Zoom. But it’s also impossible to pass Covid-19.

Althoff said that although she loves visiting her “ginormous” family in Iowa, she won’t be seeing them in person this year. Instead, she is planning to partake in video toasts and virtual game nights with family and friends.

Other ideas include having everyone make the same food or drink to enjoy during the call or playing a game of charades — or even enlisting kids to provide entertainment.

Next safest: Small, short, outdoors, distanced, and masked — hold the food and drink

For some, seeing others in person is not something they are willing to hold off on until there is widespread vaccination. So the safest way to do this is by keeping gatherings small, brief, outdoors, distanced, and continuously masked — which means no food and drink.

“Outside is where we want to be if we want to be together,” Guest says. She also recommends keeping it under a total of 10 people — with only one or (if your area permits it) two other households — and keeping everyone separated by household pod.

One caution this time of year is to be mindful of outdoor heaters. They can help extend the outdoor season, but if too many people are crowded around them, that could increase the risk of disease spread. As Guest notes, she bought two heaters for her porch: one for her household and the other, spaced far away, for one couple they see regularly, outdoors.

Moderate risk: Outdoor meal

If eating and/or drinking are non-negotiable, “Consider having tables spaced around outside and people within bubbles or family units seated together,” Lindan writes.

Guest adds that everyone should be masked when they’re not eating or drinking. People should also be mindful of alcohol consumption, she says, as it reduces inhibitions, making people less likely to stick with safety protocols and more likely to revert to pre-pandemic socializing behaviors.

Riskier: Indoors, distanced, and masked — or testing and quarantining

If you decide having people together indoors is the only option, there are several things you can do to decrease the risk of turning your event into a Covid-19 outbreak. Most of the usual advice applies: Ensure people keep their masks on at all times and remain physically distant. Keeping households in different areas “is not perfect,” says Gralinski, “but it’s better than completely intermingling and being right next to each other.”

Keep the event short, and limit the number of people attending. And increase air circulation by opening windows, turning on fans, and cranking on the central AC or heat, Althoff said.

But be forewarned that although a gathering might be set up with the best of plans — distanced seats, open windows, masks — indoor risk is higher than outdoor risk, says Adalja. “Especially if it’s a social gathering with friends or family that [people] feel comfortable around.”

If strict distancing seems like it will be challenging, one option is to have everyone test and quarantine beforehand. It’s not a perfect strategy, but it can decrease risks a bit. Here’s how:

• Test: Have everyone get a Covid-19 test before the gathering — and if anyone is traveling, they should test before they make the trip.
• Quarantine after testing and before seeing others: This means households should avoid contact with others, including not going to the grocery store, work, or school in person. “Once you test, you need to quarantine as much as possible,” Guest says, so that you don’t then contract the virus in the interim. The CDC is recommending that people traveling should quarantine for at least a week upon arrival — as well as testing again three to five days after traveling.

Now, if everyone is negative, the gathering could proceed with slightly less worry about spreading Covid-19.

Adalja recommends doing some research on testing first. Many places are facing delays returning results, and the American Clinical Laboratory Association has warned of increased stress on testing capacity and shortages of testing equipment ahead of the holidays.

Also, as Adalja points out, “Test results are not ironclad — just look at the White House,” where top-level officials are tested regularly but there have still been numerous outbreaks. And tests are only a snapshot of one point in time and can even return negative results if someone is early on in their infection.

If someone is unable to effectively quarantine upon arrival (say, a young adult who comes home to their parents’ house and cannot remain entirely separate from other household members), the next best option is to at least get everyone tested and attempt as much of a quarantine as possible while awaiting results, says Lindan.

Riskiest: Indoors with few or no precautions

A standard, sit-down indoor meal with anyone outside of your household presents a substantially increased risk of transmitting the virus. Other things that further increase the risk include a large number of people, multiple households, a lengthy gathering, physical closeness — whether that’s people packed into a kitchen cooking together or around a table — limited mask-wearing, and shouting (it was an election year, after all) or singing (hold the holiday songs).

“I would just avoid large gatherings indoors at all costs,” Lindan says. “I know it’s really hard.”

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Travel

Amanda Northrop/Vox

Traveling during the holidays is usually a little hellish: crowded planes, overheated trains, and gridlocked automobiles. But this year, the specter of Covid-19 makes it that much more daunting.

“Given the rise in cases throughout many parts of the US, the best advice is to avoid travel at this time,” Lindan writes. The CDC has, in fact, asked people to avoid travel.

Travel right now can also get pretty complicated pretty quickly, and not just because you need to pack extra masks and hand sanitizer.

Some 24 states and the District of Columbia have travel advisories or orders — carrying fines of up to $10,000 for violating them — for some or all people to test, quarantine, and/or submit official paperwork if they will be visiting the state for more than 24 hours (i.e., not just traveling through). So that usual week-long visit to see family in California, New York, or Chicago, for example, isn’t going to be as feasible. (Specific guidance is also available through the CDC’s travel planner.) “It might be a logistical nightmare to make sure you’re in compliance,” Adalja said in a November press briefing.

In addition to state or city guidelines for travel, many employers, schools, and day cares are issuing rules about travel, so Althoff advised reviewing those as well. “Be ready to accept abrupt changes to your travel plans.”

If you must travel this winter, there are ways to reduce your risk of catching or spreading the virus. Much of it depends on how you travel.

Safer: Self-contained car trip with your household

In this case, while you’re in the car, you’re just with your pod. But the key is to make it household members only. Expanding the roster to other people vastly increases the risk of this mode of travel, especially since, “If you’re taking a road trip with a bunch of your friends, you’re more likely to be unmasked, and you’re less likely to distance,” Adalja says.

Things to consider along the way: where you’ll eat, where you’ll sleep, and where you’ll make pit stops.

Short pit stops to use a public bathroom should be okay, says Guest — wear your mask and wash and/or sanitize your hands. Some travelers are choosing to bring their own open-air facilities on car trips these days.

“The safest is going to be being self-contained as much as possible,” Gralinski says. For sleeping, that might mean renting a dwelling that you have entirely to yourself to stay in “and bringing as many supplies as you possibly can.” The idea is to minimize contact with others, which includes limiting trips to a local grocery store. For additional food, curbside pickup and drive-through are safest.

What about hotels? A November study in Nature, based on cellphone data of 98 million people in large cities, found that this spring, hotels and motels were fairly large drivers of Covid-19 spread — just below restaurants, gyms, and cafes. (Their data, though, is from March 1 to May 2, a period during which mask mandates and other Covid-19-prevention protocols were just starting.)

Adalja says these days hotels are taking many more precautions and should be fairly safe so long as you’re careful. “It’s not the hotel itself, it’s what you do in the hotel,” he says. So wear a face covering, wash your hands, and avoid other people (for example, skip the elevator, restaurant, bar, and lobby common areas).

For her part, Gralinski said she still avoids hotels. For a fall vacation she and her husband took, they rented a camper to travel in. “We had our own bedroom, our own bathroom, got curbside takeout; we were pretty self-sufficient,” she says. They would park in the driveways of friends’ houses and see them safely from a distance outdoors. Even though it was cold, it worked. “We got to see friends, and it was amazing.”

Moderate risk: Airplane

We still don’t have definitive data on the safety of air travel right now. Many of the studies that looked at airplane risk — which did show cases of transmission — were carried out before masks were required.

Increasing the safety is the fact that masks are now mandated, and planes have very high rates of air circulation — replacing the full air of the cabin with clean air about 20 to 30 times per hour, thus hopefully removing more virus from the air. “The data does show that airline travel is fairly safe right now if people are wearing face coverings,” Adalja says.

But there are other downsides to flying, and they mostly have to do with other people. Namely, you’re in close proximity to a lot of them — even with middle seats empty, as they remain on some, but not all, airlines — and you’re largely at the mercy of their choices. Do they keep their mask on for the entire flight or have it off for long stretches?

Another thing to be mindful of in air travel is that it involves a lot more than just sitting on a plane. ”It’s the whole experience,” Althoff says, including airport shuttles, lines, lots of high-touch surfaces, and people mingling from all over the country, including areas with very high rates of transmission. If you’re going to be in an airport, she advises to “practice your statement about how you will remind a stranger to maintain a distance.”

Also, be prepared to remind people about masks. In airports and even in airplanes, “insouciant mask-wearing — by having them dangle from earlobes or positioned under the nose — still seems to happen,” Lindan says. “Don’t be afraid to ask people to put on their masks when in the airport.”

How can you lower your risk if you do decide to fly? Wear not only a good mask but also eye protection, such as sunglasses, safety glasses, goggles, or a face shield (with a mask), says Guest. Also, you can check to see if a flight will serve snacks or beverages. This used to be a perk, but these things now up the odds of virus transmission as people remove their masks to eat or drink, so if possible you might want to avoid a flight with food and drink services. “If you need to eat or drink something on a plane, do so when other people are not eating,” Lindan writes. “Keep your mask on, and only lift it up to insert food or drink into your mouth.”

Slightly riskier: Train

There has been even less research on train travel than on plane travel. A study from passenger trains in China relatively early in the pandemic — mid-December 2019 through early March 2020 — found Covid-19 spread fairly easily to nearby passengers on these trips, especially if people were in close proximity for more than three hours. Based on these findings, which were published over the summer, the authors suggested physical distancing, mask-wearing, and improved air filtration would lower the rate of spread on trains.

These are all steps Amtrak has instituted, along with enhanced cleaning and other measures. Trains also have the advantage of generally having fewer passengers per square foot than planes, and you might be more able to get away from someone who is not following the rules or appears ill. (Amtrak also offers private rooms on some trains.)

However, experts we spoke with suggested it might still be slightly riskier than air travel. This is in part because distance train trips are more likely to be longer than a typical domestic flight, increasing your exposure time to others. Train cars also don’t quite have the same rate of air replacement as an airplane cabin — Amtrak is promising clean air exchange 12 to 15 times an hour.

Like airports, there are also train stations to contend with — and there might be even less enforcement of rules, as they are typically more open to the public (rather than the majority of airport space being behind TSA checkpoint screening).

Riskiest: Long-haul bus

We also don’t have a lot of solid scientific information about the risk of Covid-19 transmission on long-haul buses. But early research suggests this mode of travel could be riskier than planes or trains, especially when people aren’t taking proper precautions. One case study showed how a single sick passenger on a bus in China infected 23 of 67 others on a drive that was less than an hour. Of note, though, is that in this superspreading event, which occurred in January 2020, none of the passengers were wearing masks, and the bus was recirculating air.

Bus companies in the US have updated safety protocols to help reduce spread of the virus. Greyhound, for example, requires face masks, has upped cleaning and sanitizing of its buses, replaces the bus air about 12 times per hour, and is “encouraging” passengers to physically distance.

Epidemiologists, however, are still warier of bus travel over other modes of transport right now. “It might be harder on a longer ride to keep your mask on, and it’s probably not as enforced as it is on an airplane,” Adalja says.

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Keep kids occupied

Amanda Northrop/Vox

Outside, outside, and mostly outside is what experts say as a general rule for kid activities this winter. To that end, if you live in a colder climate, it’s an important year to make sure you have warm outdoor gear that fits your kids well.

That said, there are some caveats to this guidance. Not all outdoor activities are created equal, and there could be some indoor ones that, if done responsibly, could carry slightly less risk. It’s also important to remember that “the virus survives longer in the winter due to the lower temperature and lower humidity, resulting in increased risk of transmission in winter compared to summer,” Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious disease at the UC Davis Children’s Hospital, writes in an email to Vox.

Safest: Activity with only household members

The activities that carry the lowest risk of Covid-19 for kids are the same as adults: avoiding exposure to anyone outside the household, whether it’s indoors or out.

This could mean there’s more screen time this winter — including those video calls with family and friends. Or time offline doing crafts (particularly to give to people you cannot see in person) or house projects, such as cleaning out old toys and clothing to donate. Or bundling up for outdoor activities away from other households, such as exploring quiet parks, hiking, biking, or sledding.

Moderate: Quiet indoor activity with masks and distancing

What about all of those museums and movie theaters that were key — especially during long school breaks — in the Before Times? “If you’re going to a kids museum where you’re restricting the number of people, and everybody’s wearing a mask and hand-washing, and they have good air filtration, that’s probably okay,” Lindan says.

Adalja agrees. Even though a museum is indoors, “if they’re distanced and wearing masks, that becomes an obstacle that’s harder for the virus to overcome.”

That said, some experts caution that other indoor activities — even though they might seem to have similar precautions — carry higher risk, especially if local case numbers are high. “If there is increased transmission in your community, then an indoor activity like a movie theater is risky,” noted Blumberg. “There may be compromising of social distancing in common areas, such as corridors and bathrooms, and people may not be masking at all times as they sip their soda or snack.”

Riskier: Busy outdoor activity with intermittent distancing and masking

According to the experts we spoke with, a busy playground might bring higher risk of Covid-19 transmission than a quiet indoor activity in which all of the best protocols are being followed.

For example, “playgrounds — those are not ever going to be without risk,” Adalja says. Not all kids are diligent about wearing their masks, surfaces are very high-touch, and it’s essentially impossible to keep children physically distanced. “That’s a risk where you have to make an individual risk calculation,” he says.

Also, outdoor sports in which kids come into contact with one another increase the risk of transmission, as could crowded outdoor events or activities, especially those where people do not always have their masks on (such as for eating or drinking).

Riskiest: Close activities indoors with others

Families are all having to make the best decisions for themselves. And keeping kids isolated from others, especially on school breaks or when schools are remote, is not always feasible.

Adalja suggests some things families can do to lower the risk in these situations. Continue to avoid any crowded indoor spaces where you will come into contact with other households. Instead, work with another family or two (if permitted in your locality) to establish a small, closed group of children for in-person visits, ensuring everyone is comfortable with each household’s risks and behavior, and insist on hand-washing.

“The whole thing is about weighing risks and benefits,” he says. “Children playing is crucial for psychosocial development. It is a balancing act.” But high levels of community transmission can tip those scales and make in-person activities with friends too risky for many. And any time group visits can be outdoors, that will help lower the risk.

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A call for a new perspective

We have an opportunity, through our actions, to make a real impact on the spread of the pandemic — not just among our own circles but in the broader community. This has important implications for health justice and equity because when the virus spreads, it is more likely to hit and cause greater harm to essential workers, their families, and people of color.

“Our epidemic is only going to recede if people take the appropriate precautions,” Lindan writes to Vox. “The problem is that we just do not want to do what we have to do.”

So this winter will take some acceptance, perseverance, and perspective.

How are epidemiologists putting this difficult season into perspective for themselves? For one, by “acknowledging that this is hard and that the holidays of 2020 are going to look much different,” Guest says. “We need to be cautious and protect each other now so that when we do get together [in the future] everyone we care about is there. It’s important to keep that in mind so that these sacrifices now feel like they’re worth it.”

Lindan agrees. “It’s really difficult over the holidays. We want to see our family and friends, and it’s a really difficult task not to after living this way for so long. But it’s a small price to pay for the long-term benefit.”

And as Althoff reminds us, “We will be telling stories from these holidays for generations to come.” It’s largely in our control to make them the right ones.

Katherine Harmon Courage is a freelance science journalist and author of Cultured and and Octopus! Find her on Twitter at @KHCourage.

This past year has seen an increase in national protests against racial injustice and police killings of Black folks. As the national outcry for justice continues, video clips and recordings of police-induced violence continue to be revealed on social media, depicting the brutality police officials often respond with at various peaceful protests.

In one recently unveiled incident, bodycam footage of some Boston police officers confirmed protesters’ stories of officers pushing peaceful protesters, pepper-spraying crowds, and even talking about hitting protesters with a police vehicle. The video footage was shared by The Appeal on Friday and depicted officers beating protesters with batons and dousing crowds with pepper spray, in addition to a Boston Police Department sergeant bragging about hitting people with his car.

“Dude, dude, dude, I fuckin’ drove down Tremont—there was an unmarked state police cruiser they were all gathered around,” the sergeant said laughing. “So then I had a fucker keep coming, fucking running,” he continues. “I’m fucking hitting people with the car, did you hear me, I was like, ‘get the fuck—’” It wasn’t until another officer warned the sergeant that the camera was on that the sergeant changed his story.

“Oh, no no no no no, what I’m saying is, though, that they were in front, like, I didn’t hit anybody, like, just driving, that’s all,” he said in an attempt to change the narration. “My windows were closed, the shit was coming in.”

According to Boston.com, the footage is from a May 31 protest in Boston where more than 50 people were arrested and at least 18 bystanders were hospitalized. The video was provided to The Appeal by Carl Williams, an attorney representing some of the protesters arrested during the protest that followed the death of George Floyd. According to The Appeal, Williams received more than 40 videos, about 70 hours of body camera footage, as part of a discovery file. 

“I have placed a Sergeant involved in this incident on administrative leave and I will take any additional action as necessary at the conclusion of the investigation,” Boston Police Commissioner William Goss said in a statement on Friday after the footage was shared publicly. “I want to encourage people to bring these matters to our attention so that we can investigate them appropriately.”

But the sergeant in question wasn’t the only one who used excessive force or talked about abusing protesters. The footage also depicted another officer who forcefully hit a Black woman with his baton despite her hands being up. Additionally, another unidentified member of the force could be heard talking about his use of pepper spray on protesters. “I’ve used two of these already—I’ve got a little left, I want to hit this kid,” the officer said.

The extensive body camera footage continues, depicting similar dialogue in which officers are clearly abusing their position in power. Prior to the release of the footage, officers were praised by the commissioner for their ability to protect Boston amid these protests. “No one is going to take over our city and burn it to the ground,” Gross said the day after the May 31 protests, according to Boston.com.

In a conversation with CNN, Williams expressed that the narrative officers have shared of the night is not the full scope of what happened and that these videos depict that truth.

"Protesters, activists, organizers, Black Lives Matters folks were like, 'The police attacked us, and they used weapons, and they used advanced weapons and chemical weapons,'" Williams said.

The shared footage sheds light on the importance of officers wearing bodycams at all times while on duty. "We never want to see police officers using more force than necessary, even when tensions are high," Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement. "These types of situations are also exactly why we are implementing body worn cameras for all police officers, and why we convened a police reform task force committed to bringing necessary reforms and accountability to the police department.”

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There may not be a more vapid politician in America than Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler. I realize that is a bold statement, given the competition, but there's a strong case to be made.

HuffPost uses Loeffler's smiling meet-and-greet with white supremacist leader Chester Doles this week to point out that that Loeffler has made a habit of meeting with white supremacists, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazi sympathizers. The wealthy but almost-comically inexperienced Loeffler insists, through her camp, that she of course didn't know who Doles was, and that this was just the usual pictures with fans that all politicians engage in, you can't vet everybody, and so forth.

That would hold some weight except that, as HuffPost observes, this isn't even close to the first time this has happened, and many of Loeffler's other little meetups with white supremacists can't be written off by the campaign with the same gosh, how do all these violence-peddling far-right thugs keep showing up next to our candidate shrug.

Help Georgia's grassroots get Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected! Can you give $3 right now to the groups doing critical GOTV work for a January victory?

Loeffler fully knew who racist conspiracy-peddling candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene was, and the pair engaged in pro-gun self-promotion. No matter how incompetent Loeffler may be, there's still no bloody way Loeffler does not know what the "3 percent" militia movement is, or their racist obsessions.

This also wasn't the first time Doles, who leads the white supremacist group American Patriots USA, had met Loeffler.

A man bearing a large shield with the name of a hate group on it, and who claims his group provided "security" protecting Loeffler from Black Lives Matter activists, is not exactly the random bystander Loeffler's ever-cynical and dishonest staff is trying to play him off as.

In the end, though, HuffPost's most solid confirmation that Kelly Loeffler indeed has been courting the anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi elements of the far right was that she herself sat down for and publicly promoted an interview with OAN conspiracy host Jack Posobiec, of "Pizzagate" fame. Posobiec is an infamous would-be mainstreamer of white supremacist and neo-Nazi messages and causes, so notorious as to be the subject of numerous Southern Poverty Law Center reports. Even if they were all born in a cave, and yesterday, there is not a chance in hell that Loeffler and her staff did not know who Posobiec was when groveling to his pro-Trump conspiracy-peddling pseudonetwork.

This was Loeffler intentionally courting the racist far-right, as southern Republicans have done for decades while attempting to dodge consequences. This was Loeffler cynically attempting to enlist the pro-Trump conspiracy base, the QAnon adherents and the most shameless hoax-promoters, as her own advocates. And it was yet another of Loeffler's specific efforts to portray the Black Lives Matter movement, not the armed far-right or the con-artist hoaxers that sent an armed man looking for a basement sex dungeon in a basement-less and unremarkable pizza parlor, as the real danger to the nation.

So she's a race-baiting little snot, is what I'm saying, a huckster eager to staple herself to the violent far right's visions of imminent race wars and whatever other conspiracy theories she can attach herself to, knowing full well that there's a base of ultra-racist Georgia conservatives just waiting to be scooped up and poured into voting booths so long as you can tell them a few scary stories of Black people, Jews, and Socialists coming to do them nebulous harm.

Loeffler can't defend herself from that charge, because it is her campaign schtick. It is her only campaign schtick: woodenly delivered, pre-memorized one-liners about "socialism" blurted out as confusing non-responses to whatever question was just asked is her debate and rally staple. Have you actually heard Loeffler debate or answer reporter questions? She makes Donald Trump look like a philosopher. She's a Polit-O-Tron, a robot programmed with whatever pared-down talking points her staff can insert into her limited memory banks, non of it particularly believed but all of it focused at taking advantage of the con of the moment.

That, then, is where my claim that Kelly Loeffler is the most vapid politico in America comes from. There is no plausible argument that Loeffler doesn't know she's cozying up to far-right militias, neo-Nazi propaganda peddlers, hoaxers, and her state's most notorious racists as she echos claims that come directly from their own mouths. There is a plausible argument to be made that she doesn't actually give a damn about any of it one way or another, and is simply doing whatever her hired archconservative strategists are telling her to do.

When faced with a once-in-a-century worldwide pandemic, Loeffler's only notable response was to quickly shift her own stock holdings into companies that would benefit from required mass shutdowns. It was that and, to date, absolutely nothing else. This is not a person who gives a damn about any issue, no matter how life-endangering or enormous. If she later moves to some other state where the racism doesn't play as well she may well attempt to reinvent herself as anti-racist crusader. Whatever keeps her in office. Whatever keeps her in the halls of power, able to tweak things specifically to benefit her own holdings.

This isn't Sen. Mitch McConnell, a man whose nihilism is aimed at entrenching Republican power regardless of what the actual voters have to say about it. Loeffler is not a party booster. Loeffler is a Loeffler booster.

That's probably how her staff needs to respond to these racist-boosting meet and greets. Not by denying that they know who these shield-bearing white supremacist freaks and conspiracy hucksters are and what they stand for, but by pointing out that their candidate is simply to shallow a person to grasp the dangers of any of it. Oooh, is fomenting armed rebellion against the United States in order to purge non-whites bad? My goodness, we had no idea.

Or not. I'm not her keeper, and I don't care. But her claims that she is not aligning herself with the racist far right are bullshit, provably bullshit, and her little collection of paid-for hacks isn't fooling anyone with their claims of innocence.

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The Justice Department sued Walmart on Tuesday for what it said was the company's role in fueling the nation's opioid crisis by allowing its network of pharmacies to fill millions of prescriptions for opioids, thousands of which authorities said were suspicious. From a report: The 160-page civil complaint alleges that the retail giant knew that its system for detecting illegitimate prescriptions was inadequate and details numerous instances when Walmart's own employees warned federal authorities and company managers about possibly suspicious prescriptions. "As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids," Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil division, said in a statement. "Instead, for years, it did the opposite -- filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies." In one instance, an employee identified only by his or her initials admitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration to filling prescriptions that the employee knew were not legitimate, the lawsuit alleges.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's no question that President-elect Joe Biden's November victory, now reaffirmed a satisfying bajillion times from the Supreme Court on down to state courts and by state legislators and the Electoral College—so much winning!—helped House and Senate Democrats in negotiating the coronavirus relief package. One that they all consider, and Biden himself declares, is just a "down payment" for what has to happen as soon as he's sworn in in the new year.

Biden wants talks to resume next month for much more substantive aid, especially for state and local governments that Sen. Mitch McConnell has steadfastly shut out of picture since March. And that, of course, is and will be the problem next year: McConnell. No matter how long Biden and McConnell have known each other, no matter how vaunted Biden believes his negotiating skills are, McConnell has a vested interest in tanking the economy ahead of the 2022 midterms. He also has proved time and again he doesn't care how many Americans die getting there. Everything good for the nation really does come down to those two Senate seats in Georgia.

Ready to reach voters in Georgia, whether by phonebanking or textbanking, for the Jan. 5 runoff? Click to sign up for a training with Fair Fight—the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams—and they will set you up with what you need to start effectively reaching out to Georgia voters.

We've got one last shot at taking McConnell's Senate Republican majority away in January. Please give $3 right now to send the GOP packing.

That's the message Democrats need to be hammering in the state. McConnell did blink on the $600 direct payments stimulus checks, which he had been opposing because he thought they'd help the two Georgia Republicans who he reportedly promised a pre-Christmas deal to. And because he somehow thinks a one-time $600 check per person will be seen as a great and generous gift rather than the crumbs that it is. That's how out of touch with actual people he is. So the message that there could be real and actual help if McConnell loses his majority is a powerful one in the state.

Biden's vision, an official with the transition said, is more funding for "supporting the covid response effort, reopening schools and helping families, businesses, and state and local governments." Biden has said repeatedly that the package passed Monday night by Congress isn't enough. "This is not the end of the deal," he told reporters earlier this month about the negotiations. That's certainly his intent, and it's been the message from every Democrat who's spoken about the bill—this is a stop-gap, nothing more, and much more work needs to be done.

But now that the president is going to be a Democrat, Republicans' deficit peacock feathers will be hauled out of cold storage and on full display once more. McConnell will continue to obstruct and the nation will continue to suffer. The vaccine will help, but McConnell's refusal to provide adequate state and local aid to help its efficient distribution around the country will delay it. The pain will continue.

The start to fighting that is in Georgia. Once that's secured, if it's secured, then the fight is to nuke the filibuster and neuter McConnell to the greatest extent possible.

The newest from the animation studio combines jazz, comedy, and metaphysical inquiry in one glorious package.

Midway through Soul, our hero, Joe — or, sort of Joe, but you’ll have to watch the movie to know what I mean — is sitting in a barbershop, in desperate need of a haircut before a big make-or-break gig that night. Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a jazz pianist whose performance career has never really gotten off the ground; to make ends meet, he’s been teaching middle school band. But he’s confident that he was put on this earth to play jazz, and tonight’s gig might finally be his chance.

Joe’s barber, Dez (voiced by Donnell Rawlings), is talking about his own life, something the pair have never really discussed before. Dez wanted to be a veterinarian when he was younger, following his discharge from the Navy. But his daughter got sick, and, as he says, “barber school is a lot cheaper than veterinarian school.”

Joe is surprised — wasn’t Dez born to be a barber? Isn’t that his purpose? He’s great at it, and he seems to love it so much. “That’s too bad. Now you’re stuck as a barber, and you’re unhappy,” Joe says to Dez.

But Dez tells him to slow his roll, because, as he says, he’s “happy as a clam” doing what he does. Sure, it wasn’t his dream to be a barber; he never felt like it was his “calling.” But he gets to talk to interesting people all day and make folks happy. Dez loves his life. And Joe leaves the shop with a lot to ponder.

That’s the philosophical thesis of Soul, the latest Pixar film from director Pete Docter (Inside Out) and first-time Pixar collaborator Kemp Powers (who also wrote the terrific upcoming drama One Night in Miami). It is Pixar’s most imaginative and original venture in a long time, as well as its first with a Black protagonist and mostly Black characters, at least in its scenes set on earth. It bears some resemblance to other Pixar films — exploring meaning and purpose (Wall-E, Ratatouille) and the world beyond what our eyes can see (Coco, Inside Out) — while taking them in fresh, unexpected directions. And it’s a joy from start to finish.

(If that’s enough info for you, bail out now and go watch the movie. If you’re okay with some mild plot spoilers, come with me.)

But that barbershop scene serves as a distillation for the film because it’s not really Joe sitting in Dez’s chair. It’s 22 (voiced by Tina Fey), a soul who has been accidentally dropped into Joe’s body. Joe, meanwhile, is dwelling in the body of the cat sitting at 22’s feet. And the reason 22 and Dez are only now talking about Dez’s life, even though Dez has been cutting Joe’s hair for years, is that Joe only ever wants to talk about jazz. 22, on the other hand, is truly new to the world — they’ve never lived on earth before. And they’re just discovering that life on earth, among people, is kind of cool and interesting, not the joyless slog they’d expected.

Okay, so how did they get in those bodies? Honestly, I want to leave you the fun of finding out for yourself. What I will say is that a portion of the movie takes place in an imagined version of — well, not the afterlife, but a kind of holding pen for new souls before they’re ready to go to earth. It’s called the YouSeminar, and all of the little souls, which bop around like adorable rubber droplets, spend their time there acquiring pieces of their personality so they can jump through a portal to earth and start living.

Disney/Pixar

The last little piece for all of the souls to acquire before they can head to earth is a “spark.” A soul can get this by working with a mentor, which is the soul of a dead person that’s volunteered to help out the new souls. (Think Mother Teresa, or Sir Isaac Newton.) The spark is the focus of Soul, and — importantly — how a spark differs from a “purpose,” which one of the big beings that shepherds the souls around derides as one of those words the mentors use that don’t really mean anything. A spark is not your purpose. It is, instead, the thing that makes you feel like you’re living.

That’s such a compelling and imaginative concept for an animated children’s film that I had to rewatch the movie to make sure I got it right. Like Inside Out, which delved into “negative” and “positive” emotions in a more nuanced way than I’d seen in a film before, Soul teases out some distinctions that seem to run almost counter to our everyday way of talking about life. We talk about some kids being obviously born to take up a certain profession; we ask high school and college students to take tests that determine their purpose or their “gift,” then cast those in terms of occupations. And if we had a dream of doing one job, but life or necessity led us in another direction, then we struggle with feeling like failures.

Surely some of the reason so many adults feel like they have to land their “dream job” or else they’ve failed in some way is as a result of movies — especially, I might add, the Disney variety — that relentlessly exhort children to pursue their dreams and not let anyone else tell them who they are. It’s not that the sentiment is wrong; it’s just that, according to Soul’s cosmology, it’s getting things a little backward. In this world, you don’t have a predetermined purpose, which is to say that there’s no slot on earth into which you, specifically, are meant to fall. Instead, there’s something about living that, in turn, sparks life in you. And it may or may not overlap with how you make a living, or where you live, or myriad other things about you.

Disney/Pixar

Which means that your worth as a person isn’t tied to the job you have, either. For generations, we’ve caught on to the idea that our value to society is based on what occupation we’ll have, and we’ve devalued some (blue-collar work, like plumbing, bartending, and working a cash register) while elevating others (white-collar jobs, like investment banker, lawyer, or professor). We’re supposed to subscribe to the mantra of “do what you love.” And in a world where it’s harder and harder to make a living doing certain kinds of jobs, that’s especially dispiriting — a kind of utilitarianism that doesn’t capture the whole of a person. Soul tries to nudge the pendulum in the other direction, to say that a life lived in pursuit of the spark of joy, rather than some predetermined purpose, is the one to strive for.

The film dips into some other philosophical waters, too. There’s also a whole bit in the off-earth segments of the film about “the Zone” — that is, the place that athletes or artists or whatever go when they’re really into what they’re doing. There’s also an answer for what happens when people allow the thing that sparks them to become an obsession that takes them out of the act of truly living. (They become “lost souls,” blobby things with floppy arms that speed around a dark landscape unhappily, muttering things to themselves.) And we get to see what happens to souls after the humans who had them die — it’s quite spectacular.

But what’s most spectacular is the varied styles of animation, the way the different segments of the before- and afterlife are rendered. There’s line art that seems to bend around itself. There are starfields and dimension-bending images. The artists who made Soul went all out in depicting what it would be like to fall out of the normal rules of time and space and physics, and it’s simply wonderful, reminiscent in some ways of Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow series.

Disney/Pixar

And even in the sequences that take place on earth, there’s a specificity and texture to Soul that seems fresh in the Pixar universe. Ratatouille’s Paris is recognizably Paris, but it doesn’t make me long for Paris. The Dungeons and Dragons-like world of this year’s Onward is clever and amusing, but it feels a tad generic.

But Soul is set in New York City, in fall, and while some of my emotions about that probably have to do with a pandemic-induced feeling of missing New York even though I’m living in it, it’s also incredibly evocative. I know those streets, those specific corners. That barbershop is very recognizable, and so is the tailor, and the subway. And the rat dragging pizza along the ground. And the feeling of eating a slice of pizza, or walking along the sidewalk trying to keep the sauce on your gyro from dripping down your arm.

All of that specificity and wonder combines to make the feeling of the “spark,” and the film’s final thought — that whatever we’re doing with our lives, we ought to be living them — so vivid and enticing. Soul wasn’t made for a world that’s just gone through the nightmares of 2020, but coming out at the end of this harrowing year, it couldn’t feel more poignant. It’s funny, and it’s imaginative, but it’s also just very, very real.

Soul premieres on Disney+ on December 25.

The Wall Street Journal: To keep customers happy, which Mr. Bezos has long said is Amazon's fixation and growth strategy, executives behind the scenes have methodically waged targeted campaigns against rivals and partners alike -- an approach that has changed little through the years, from diapers to footwear. No competitor is too small to draw Amazon's sights. It cloned a line of camera tripods that a small outside company sold on Amazon's site, hurting the vendor's sales so badly it is now a fraction of its original size, the little firm's owner said. Amazon said it didn't violate the company's intellectual-property rights. When Amazon decided to compete with furniture retailer Wayfair, Mr. Bezos's deputies created what they called the Wayfair Parity Team, which studied how Wayfair procured, sold and delivered bulky furniture, eventually replicating a majority of its offerings, said people who worked on the team. Amazon and Wayfair declined to comment on the matter. Amazon set its sights on Allbirds, the maker of popular shoes using natural and recycled materials, and last year launched a shoe called Galen that looks nearly identical to Allbirds' bestseller -- without the environmentally friendly materials and selling for less than half the price. "You can't help but look at a trillion-dollar company putting their muscle and their pockets and their machinations of their algorithms and reviewers and private-label machine all behind something that you've put your career against," said Allbirds Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger. "You have this giant machine creating all these headwinds for us." This year, Amazon has zeroed in on Shopify, a fast-growing Canadian company that helps small merchants create online shops. Amazon has established a secret team, "Project Santos," to replicate parts of Shopify's business model, said people familiar with the project. Amazon executives often initiated efforts like these on their own, though in some cases examined by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bezos himself was involved, according to former Amazon executives and internal emails. From its start as an online bookstore 26 years ago, Amazon has expanded into an online retailer with a presence in nearly every major category. It is also the leading provider of cloud-computing services, a gadget maker, a major entertainment player and a rival to United Parcel Service and FedEx. Mr. Bezos is the world's richest man, with a net worth Forbes estimates at $187 billion. He still exhorts employees to consider Amazon a startup. "It is always day one," he likes to say. Day two is "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death." Mr. Bezos originally considered calling his company Relentless, and www.relentless.com still redirects to Amazon's site.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Was your devotion to Trump unwavering? Did you promote the stolen election myth? If you're a Republican, that could determine your fate.

Read 110 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The business of passing  pandemic relief and spending for fiscal year 2021 done, the Senate disbanded for the remainder of the week. That is, all but one. Of course it’s Sen. Rand Paul who decided to stick around and force the clerks and staff of the Senate to remain in the chamber, being exposed to him.

Trump has yet to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, and may not. For whatever reason, Paul wants to help him disrupt everything on his way out. So he’s just being a general pain in the ass, and fighting a bill that contains troop pay. Two weeks ago, he was threatening a government shutdown. Now he’s grandstanding on this. “I very much am opposed to the Afghan war, and I’ve told [leadership] I’ll come back to try to prevent them from easily overriding the president’s veto.” So Monday night’s performance was, well, pointless.

Yet there he was, for hours into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. He didn’t need to do this, because other than garnering attention it accomplished nothing. With no presidential veto yet, there’s nothing for the Congress to vote to override. They’re out now, and won’t be back until after Christmas. Should Trump veto the NDAA, the House will return on December 28 and vote to override it. 

The Senate has come to an agreement to return on December 29 and start the countdown for its override vote. "My intention was and is to ensure the Senate continues fulfilling our obligation to the men and women of our armed forces. I hope the president will not veto this bill," McConnell said on the Senate floor early Tuesday. If he does, they come back on the 29th and start the ball rolling, potentially having to stay in over New Years if Paul continues in his windmill tilting. It’s possible that a final veto override vote wouldn’t happen until January 3, the day the new Congress is sworn in. 

If Paul manages to delay it beyond noon on January 3, a Trump veto will stand because that’s when this Congress is dissolved. The new Congress would have to start over with the bill, waiting for President Joe Biden to sign it. It would be the first time in 60 years an NDAA wasn’t passed. 

Welp, the Fox News talking heads have screwed up big-time. Newsmax and "OAN" too. Fox News leadership is fine with Lou Dobbs and clan demanding the toppling of this nation's democracy, and Tucker Carlson is three shows away from burning a cross in his studio, but do something that is going to cost the network a big wad of money and suddenly, in swoop the lawyers.

The Fox News audience might have noticed something peculiar this weekend: A new three-minute segment appearing during multiple hosted shows that slapped down, hard, each host's previous conspiracy theories revolving around voting machine company Smartmatic. Similarly, conspiracy network Newsmax aired its own supposed "clarification" of previous conspiracy claims about the company.

The message from both networks: All those things we said to work our viewers into a possibly violent froth targeting a private company, the claims about Smartmatic and rival Dominion being in cahoots to overthrow 'Merica because reasons? Um, please ignore those. We now realize that the companies have a good shot at suing us all into oblivion.

Given that the hosts of each network sow conspiracy theories targeting innocent persons, companies, advocacy groups and you-name-it on a daily basis, you might have been curious as to what led to this one specific semi-retraction of falsehoods smearing one pair of companies. Yeah, no surprises here. It quickly turned out that it was indeed because Smartmatic and Dominion informed those networks that they were preparing to sue them into oblivion, and because it turns out they have an uncommonly solid case for doing so. News networks are shielded by a host of First Amendment protections, but turning two companies into targets for right-wing froth and potential violence based on purely fictional claims intended to boost Dear Leader's own propaganda efforts is quite likely not protected.

These segments distancing the networks from their own false claims are not likely to buffer the conspiracy producers from an upcoming lawsuit, because there is almost no chance that any of the hosts involved, whether on Fox News or its propaganda-premised competitors, can keep their lying gobs shut from here on in. The Trump premise is that Trump actually won the election but was denied victory by those meddling [insert conspiracy targets here]; you cannot sell that conspiracy without naming a target, and Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and the Newsmax/OAN stable of deplorables do not have the collective brains between them to remember that they are not allowed to slander two particular companies. They'll return to the conspiracy claims before the week is out.

Fox News will survive no matter what. The Murdoch family is filthy rich, everyone else involved is filthy rich, and they will shake the green room couch cushions until enough cash falls out to make the two companies go away and move on to slander new targets. For Newsmax and OAN, the lawsuit may be more existential. Both companies can claim damages well in excess of both "news" outlets' total invested cash, and the conservative vultures circling both as potential buyout targets—so as to gain access to the advertiser's dream: audiences pre-selected for maximum gullibility—are going to be less eager to buy into companies that come with giant legal bills attached.

So by all means, Smartmatic and Dominion, sue the ever-loving crap out of all three. Do it for the money. Do it for America. Do it because squeezing these professional liars for every dime they're worth will do more to tamp down on fascism's burping spread than any other possible act. Squish them.

Some of the Iran nuclear deal’s fiercest opponents are urging President-elect Joe Biden to let them have a say — and maybe even a seat at the negotiating table — in future talks with Tehran.

Representatives of some Gulf Arab countries as well as Israel are raising the idea in private and public conversations in the run up to the start of the Biden administration. After all, ambassadors of three of the countries argued in interviews with POLITICO, they have more at stake than the United States or the other countries who crafted the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran. Bringing them on board, they add, would beef up the U.S. leverage over Iran.

But it also could cause a clash with the Biden team, which has said explicitly that it would seek to revive the Iran deal, which President Donald Trump left in 2018 to emphatic cheers from Israel and some Arab states. Those same countries would prefer that Biden forget the original deal and start afresh in hopes of inking a tougher agreement that could even cover Iran’s non-nuclear programs, such as its ballistic missiles and use of proxy militias. And that’s to say nothing of what Iran’s Islamist leaders, who have defied and baffled U.S. presidents going back four decades, will agree to do.

The loosely coordinated Arab-Israeli calls are a reminder of how much the policy landscape has shifted since Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. Among other things, some Arab states have recently agreed to recognize Israel, which could give their demands more weight in U.S. foreign policy circles and might allow them to more explicitly join hands in lobbying the White House.

Yousef Al Otaiba, the well-connected United Arab Emirates ambassador in Washington, argued that in crafting the 2015 deal, U.S. officials operated as if they had to choose between European allies, who were involved in the negotiations, and Middle Eastern partners, who largely were cut out.

It’s a “false choice,” he said in an interview. “America should maintain strong relations with all its partners in Europe and the Middle East and show up with both groups at the negotiating table.”

The UAE is one of four majority-Arab countries that recently agreed to take steps to normalize their relationship with Israel. The agreements, also struck with Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, in some cases follow years of back-channel coordination, often to counter Iran. They are a profound shift for a region that has often been defined by Arab-Israeli hostilities.

On Monday, Otaiba and his Israeli and Bahraini counterparts took part in a “private, off-the-record” discussion with members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the prominent pro-Israel group confirmed.

Such once-unthinkable gatherings are becoming more common in the wake of the new Arab-Israeli accords, and the envoys have used the moment to discuss their views on what to do about Iran and the nuclear deal.

In mid-November, the same three ambassadors appeared together in a virtual session with The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. During that event, Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer noted that in the past, when the United States pursued the six-party talks with North Korea, U.S. regional allies Japan and South Korea were “at the table.”

“So the first thing I would say to the incoming administration, sit with your allies in the region, listen to us,” Dermer said. “Try to work out a common position, which I think is possible, not only to deal with nuclear issues but also to deal with the regional aggression of Iran.”

In the long run, Israel may choose not to be involved in face-to-face negotiations with Iran — a country whose leaders routinely threaten Israel’s existence. But close U.S. consultation with the Israelis could give them a voice in the process.

In an interview, Bahraini Ambassador Abdulla al-Khalifa noted that his country is particularly frustrated with Iranian interference in its internal affairs. Iran has supported Shiite Muslim groups that have challenged Bahrain’s Sunni rulers. Earlier this month, the Trump administration designated one such group, Saraya al-Mukhtar, as a terrorist organization.

“It is important for us to be a part of the conversation, because it is us who have a front row seat to any development, and it is us who will have to endure all the consequences,” al-Khalifa said.

The 2015 nuclear deal lifted many U.S. and international economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for severe curbs on the country’s nuclear program. The agreement, which took years to put together, involved the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. Its official title is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and officials frequently refer to it as the JCPOA.

The deal came about in part because of secret U.S. talks with Iran. The two countries have not had diplomatic relations in some four decades, following Iran’s Islamist revolution. The secret talks involved meet-ups in places like Oman, a Gulf Arab country that has had good ties with both Tehran and Washington. A handful of U.S. officials, among them Biden’s future national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, used military planes, service elevators and other tricks to hide their rendezvous with Iranian representatives. Word of their talks startled and upset some of America’s other Middle Eastern partners.

Israel and some Gulf Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, worried that the agreement didn’t do enough to eliminate the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The Arab states in particular were unhappy the deal didn’t cover other Iranian activities in the region, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went so far as to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress to express his opposition to an agreement he insisted “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

Trump voiced similar rationales when he decided to abandon the agreement and restore U.S. sanctions on Iran in May 2018. In the years since, as European countries have failed to give Tehran meaningful sanctions relief, Iran — which has always maintained its nuclear program was meant for peaceful purposes, not a bomb — has slowly backed away from its commitments under the deal, too.

Biden has said he’ll take the U.S. back into the deal (meaning he’ll lift sanctions) if Iran returns to compliance. Then, Biden and his aides say, the U.S. will pursue follow-on negotiations that would address the shortcomings of the original plan and possibly cover some non-nuclear issues. Their language has suggested that Iran needs to indicate an openness to follow-on talks before the Biden administration will rejoin the original deal.

A Biden transition team spokesperson declined to comment for this story. But the Biden team’s messaging also implies that Iran has to take the first step. Iran, meanwhile, wants the U.S. to lift sanctions first. This divergence isn’t insurmountable — former U.S. officials say negotiators can work out a simultaneous pattern of actions that can make both sides happy.

“There are multiple sequencing options that should satisfy all participants,” said a former State Department official familiar with the issue. “Sequencing should not prevent the U.S. and Iran from achieving their stated objectives of returning to the JCPOA.”

Among Arabs and Israelis, however, there’s skepticism that Iran will meaningfully engage in follow-on negotiations once the original deal is restored. In the skeptics’ view, this means Iran will strengthen economically while still hanging on to pieces of a nuclear program it can resume once key parts of the original deal expire.

As things stand now, the U.S. is in a much stronger position vis-a-vis Iran than it was back in 2015, Arab and Israeli officials say. Iran’s economy has been severely weakened by the sanctions as well as the coronavirus pandemic. The country also has been hit in other ways, including America’s killing of a top Iranian general and a strike, likely Israeli, that killed a top Iranian nuclear scientist.

As Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, put it in an interview, why return to the original agreement when you can demand more now?

“If you go back to JCPOA 1.0 in hopes that you will negotiate and get 2.0 it’s never going to happen. You’re giving up all your leverage,” Dermer said.

Added Otaiba: “We all want a deal. Nobody wants a deal more than we do. We benefit from the stability that a new deal would bring. Why should we give up on having a better deal that makes us more stable?”

Iran’s leaders have indicated an eagerness to rejoin the original deal; just last week, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “If sanctions can be removed, we shouldn’t delay, not even for an hour.” However, there’s little if any sign Tehran is interested in starting from scratch or having new parties at the table.

In a statement sent after this story was first published, the head of the media office at Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the country “will not renegotiate an accord already agreed to after careful and detailed back-and-forth.”

“To contrast, Iran has also always publicly said that we are ready to negotiate regional issues, but only with neighbors and countries in the region,” said the official, Alireza Miryousefi. “Iran does not believe that there is any need for foreign powers‘ presence at that dialogue, foreign powers who are literally thousands of miles away from the region. The sale of deadly weapons to countries in the region by these trans-regional powers has always been one of the most important causes of insecurity and problems in the region.”

For now, the president-elect’s transition team is barring contacts with foreign officials, an effort to avoid even the perception of foreign government interference that rocked Trump’s tenure. So Israeli and Arab officials say they have not been able to plead their case to Biden or his top aides in person.

But people in Biden’s orbit are aware of the Arab-Israeli desires, and they view them with some skepticism.

They bitterly remember how hard Netanyahu worked to scuttle the 2015 nuclear agreement, making moves many of them deemed downright insulting to Obama. While they are not ruling out some accommodation, there’s concern that Israel and the Arab countries might act as spoilers during future talks, not constructive partners.

Many Biden aides and others watching the process also disagree that going back to the original deal is a misstep or that it will mean giving up leverage. They point out that the U.S. and its partners can snap back sanctions on Iran when they want.

Some also worry about Iran’s political calendar — it holds presidential elections next year — and how that could affect Tehran’s desire to talk

“Renegotiating everything is just unrealistic to anybody who actually talks to an Iranian,” said one former U.S. official familiar with the issue. “The idea that we have leverage to just start over is nice in theory, but in practice there’s no way the Iranians will go for it. If Biden comes in and that’s the stand, the Iranians will be convinced that there’s no serious engaging with the U.S.”

In public writings and comments, Sullivan has indicated an openness to the broad concept of greater international involvement in talks with Iran. But he’s put it in the context of at least trying to restore the original nuclear deal first.

“If Iran decides they’re not going to come back into compliance in return for the U.S. coming back into compliance, then we have an opportunity to go to the rest of the world and say, ‘You’ve got to join us now in really showing the Iranians that there is no other choice but to deal with the program through this diplomatic option,’” Sullivan said during a forum hosted by The Wall Street Journal. “We believe this is a viable strategy.”

In a Foreign Affairs essay he co-authored with Middle East expert Daniel Benaim, Sullivan wrote that, aside from tackling the nuclear deal, the United States “should also push for the establishment of a structured regional dialogue” to resolve tensions between Iran and its neighbors.

The essay warns that “it is a recipe for failure to hold the opportunity to constrain Iran’s nuclear enrichment hostage to maximalist regional demands,” but says that a “phased” or a “loosely connected” approach could prove fruitful.

How Biden responds early on to Israel and the Arab states’ calls for more involvement in the Iran file could set the tone for his relations with those countries throughout his presidency.

He should learn from the past, some analysts said.

Under Obama, “the mindset was to freeze them out because their opposition was baked into the system,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It is no longer practical to freeze them out, nor should it even be desired. After all, what the Biden administration should want is not just an agreement that the Iranians accept but one that will last.”

Powerful hospital and physician groups that tied up Congress for nearly two years on how to end “surprise” medical bills saw their efforts pay off with the compromise lawmakers inserted in the giant year-end spending package.

The health care providers — including private-equity backed physician staffing groups — chipped away at leading legislative proposals through high-profile lobbying and tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads while promoting a solution that would submit their payment feuds with insurers to independent mediators.

The compromise in the year-end package settles what was supposed to be health care’s “easy fix” in the 116th Congress and ensures patients will no longer have to pay huge bills from out-of-network specialists, air ambulances and other clinicians. But it also underscores the clout of corporate medicine at a time when the health system and safety net programs are reeling from the effects of the pandemic.

Elizabeth Mitchell, president of the Pacific Business Group on Health, which represents large employers including Walmart and major tech companies, predicted the legislation will yield an “opaque, expensive bureaucratic process” favoring “those with the resources to navigate that most effectively.”

“These bills will still end up driving up premiums overall,” Mitchell said.

Patient advocates and policy experts have framed the policy battle over these reforms as a microcosm for why fixes to the U.S. health care system are so hard — and a grim harbinger for more ambitious overhauls, like President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promise to create a public health insurance option.

There was always strong bipartisan interest in addressing the billing issue. The problem was the way it divided health interests intent on avoiding picking up the extra cost of holding patients harmless.

Last year, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce and Senate health committees proposed settling disputes by pegging payments for providers to a federal benchmark payment based on in-network rates insurers paid for services and procedures. Doctor and hospital groups quickly raised the specter of “government rate-setting.” Meanwhile, conservatives pounced on the approach as the equivalent of price controls, saying it could also be a prelude to “Medicare for All.”

“There was a great amount of emphasis placed on making the term government rate-setting a politically toxic term,” said a consultant to provider groups.

The idea of outside arbitration instead played well with a vocal contingent of physician-lawmakers in Congress who backed a federal replica of New York’s own approach to settling billing disputes — using “baseball-style arbitration.” Critics say that policy has encouraged hospitals to charge more for care, which patients eventually pay for in the form of higher premiums.

Even in the last few days, providers secured changes from Congress to adjust the arbitration process and help boost their profits. Technical fixes, obtained Sunday by POLITICO, prevent independent mediators from considering the lower rates of Medicare and Medicaid when deciding how much money providers should get for their services.

Chip Kahn, CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals representing for-profit chains, said negotiators "came a long way” in recent days. He said his group could endorse the final version after it eliminated what he termed efforts to influence the payments providers get from the insurers in their network or insurers they're contracted with. “That wasn’t appropriate,” Kahn said.

Other provider groups like the private equity-backed physician staffing firm TeamHealth, which spent millions of dollars attacking the benchmark payment approach, have praised the agreement — while health insurer and employer lobbyists see it as a Pyrrhic victory.

One insurance lobbyist said the outcome showed how private equity-backed physician groups and hospitals dictate policy, adding,“For consumers, this will mean higher and higher costs, year over year, forever.”

The grinding nature of the debate and the tight congressional schedule also worked in the providers' favor. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tired of infighting among powerful committee leaders, forced Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) back to the negotiating table just days after he said he wanted to punt on addressing sky-high medical bills until next year, according to multiple sources. Neal's efforts were essential to making the bill more friendly to doctors and hospitals.

The fighting won’t end once the legislation is signed. Since the federal health agencies will have the ultimate say in how the mediation system works, the special interest lobbying will turn next to the executive branch, where the incoming Biden administration will be in charge of writing the rules. And the legislation still doesn't bar ground ambulances from sending massive bills to insured patients.

“Who ultimately wins and loses is something we’ll not know for years,” said Benedic Ippolito, an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute who consulted with key health committees on the legislation. “And what I worry about is, what does an arbitration system look like in five to 10 years when this isn’t under a microscope?”

The spending deal puts guardrails in place. Mediators can't weigh the sky-high charges providers bill when settling on the amount insurers will have to pay for their customers’ out-of-network care. But arbitrators also can't consider Medicare rates, which employer groups and others wanted to serve as the price peg in order to curb costs.

Loren Adler, who also consulted with Congress on the reforms as associate director for the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, is optimistic the system will work out as envisioned. While an arbiter adds complexity to the process, he sees the rules Congress put in place as sufficient to keep costs in check.

For instance, he noted, providers have to space out their appeals of settlements, meaning their incomes would dry up if they fought every payment. “It’s unclear how a provider can game the process,” Adler said.

House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who helped steer the reforms over the past 18 months, heralded the compromise as “the biggest victory for consumers” since Obamacare for the way it relieves patients from having to worry about getting shocked with a huge bill.

And though surprise billing headlined a host of patient protection reforms originally pushed by Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), other policy changes aimed at stopping anti-competitive practices among health insurers, hospitals, prescription drug middlemen and the pharmaceutical industry were either watered down or axed — to the chagrin of employer and patient groups that badly wanted them.

“They folded on every single issue that mattered to those of us who actually wanted to lower health care costs,” one employer lobbyist said.

Former Department of Health data manager Rebekah Jones has filed a lawsuit (PDF) against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, saying the Dec. 7 morning raid on her house was a "sham" to retaliate against her for not altering COVID-19 data. Tallahassee.com reports: Jones was fired in May for failing to change COVID-19 data, and soon launched her own online data dashboard. Gov. Ron DeSantis said her firing was because she disobeyed superiors; she said it was because she wouldn't alter data to cast Florida in a more favorable light to justify the governor's plans to reopen the state's economy. In the lawsuit filed Sunday night against FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen, the department and several agents in Leon County Circuit Civil Court, Jones claims her constitutional rights were violated, including against unlawful search and seizure. She is seeking in excess of $100,000, according to the lawsuit's cover sheet. She also claims she was unnecessarily roughed up. "We are trying to achieve some kind of redress," said Rick Johnson, the lead attorney in both the civil suit and a separate whistleblower case. "This is still America. This is the kind of thing that happens in tinhorn dictatorships in third world countries." Swearingen has defended the actions of the agents he said were "vilified" by the media. He blamed Jones for any risk of danger to herself or her family. He reiterated those comments in a statement released later Monday. "As I have said before, I am proud of the professionalism shown by our FDLE agents as they served a legal search warrant on the residence of Rebekah Jones. Our criminal investigation continues, and while I have not seen this lawsuit, I believe the facts will come out in court," Swearingen said.

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Recent opinion polls suggest that a united opposition could defeat the country's powerful prime minister.

[His rationale is both weak and would have justified keeping out his own father - a refugee from Cuba.]

 

On Friday, GOP Senator Ted Cruz blocked a bipartisan bill that would have granted political asylum to residents of Hong Kong fleeing China's increasingly oppressive rule there. Reason writer Eric Boehm has an excellent article critiquing Cruz's lame rationale for his actions. Among other things, he points out that the same theory would have justified keeping out Cruz's own father (who came to the US as a refugee from Cuba):

First, Cruz politicized the attempt to provide an exit strategy for Hongkongers, calling the bill a Democratic plot to "advance their long-standing goals on changing immigration laws." But the bill has a bipartisan list of cosponsors and passed the House earlier this month by a voice vote—usually an indicator of such broad support that no roll call is demanded.

Second, Cruz maligned Hong Kong refugees as potential spies, arguing that China would use the special immigration status to slip its agents into the United States. Except, well, China doesn't seem to have any trouble doing that already, and recipients of political asylum would have to undergo a background check before their status is granted. If anything, the bill's passage would ensure that immigrants from Hong Kong to America are subject to more vetting than they might otherwise receive.

Again, Cruz's father's story stands in stark contrast. Prior to fleeing to America, Rafael Cruz had worked for the Castro government in Cuba [small correction by IS: he actually supported Castro before the latter came to power, but later recanted those views after coming to the United States]. If Ted were a member of the U.S. Senate at the time, would he have viewed his own father as a potential spy who should not be trusted with political asylum?…

Cruz's biography aside, there is a more important and obvious point. Granting political asylum to Hongkongers looking to flee China is absolutely the right thing for the United States to do, politically and economically.

Politically, the image of tens of thousands of Hongkongers fleeing China's takeover of the city by relocating to the United States would be an international humiliation for the regime in Beijing. That's why China has tried to stop the United Kingdom from extending special immigration status to residents of Hong Kong—and the U.K. has responded, correctly, by turning its passport-making machines up to 11.

Economically, China's loss would be America's gain. An influx of people from Hong Kong—and the knowledge, skills, money, and entrepreneurship they would bring—would be an economic boon for the United States, particularly if they resettle in areas where the population is stagnant or declining.

Instead of seizing that opportunity, America got the spectacle of a child of a political refugee slamming a door in the face of people seeking the same opportunity that his own father once received.

I would add that the anti-espionage rationale could be and often has been used to bar refugees from almost any oppressive regime hostile or potentially hostile to the US. Among other things, it was one of the justifications used for barring Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is one of many objections to expanding migration rights that can easily be addressed by "keyhole solutions" that deal with potential problems by more targeted and less draconian means than keeping people out. We can simply vet people before giving them access to classified information, as is routinely done with native-born Americans applying for jobs with security clearances.

If the fear is that Hong Kong refugees might give the Chinese government information that isn't classified, but instead is readily available to the public, that is something Chinese intelligence (and other adversaries) can easily obtain anyway. One of the costs of having a generally free society is that anyone who wants to—including foreign powers—can easily obtain a wide range of useful information. But this disadvantage is outweighed by the may benefits of openness, as proven by the success of relatively free societies in outcompeting closed authoritarian and totalitarian states.

In this May post, I offered a more detailed defense of accepting Hongkongers -and of extending that openness to mainland victims of Chinese government oppression (some of whom have suffered far worse atrocities than anything yet seen in Hong Kong). In that post, I also address a range of other objections to opening the door to Chinese refugees, including claims that it might spread the Covid-19 virus, and that it would be unfair to privilege Chinese refugees over those facing comparable oppression elsewhere. Among other things, I highlighted how too many conservatives—including, now Cruz, who has especially strong reason to know better—have forgotten the lessons their ideological forbears learned during the Cold War:

During the Cold War, American conservatives readily understood that welcoming refugees from Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other communist nations was a major boost to America's prestige and a blow to that of the communists. The better political system is the one people "vote with their feet" to live under, not the one many risked their lives to flee. I myself was one of the fortunate beneficiaries of this understanding.

Tragically, today many conservatives have lost sight of what their predecessors knew. Instead of welcoming Chinese, they foolishly want to make it harder for them to come, by, for example, barring Chinese students from studying STEM subjects at US universities (after which many seek to stay in the US and continue contributing to the economy and our technological development). It is almost as if these supposed China hawks would prefer for the brutal Chinese government to retain control over as many talented people as possible….

We can, if we choose, once again be the nation that even the populations of our adversaries can aspire to join. That's a much better image than being the nation that closes its doors to almost all migrants and refugees seeking permanent residency, and brutally separates families at the border. Not only is the former nation more just than the latter. It also has a much better chance of effectively countering China in any geopolitical competition, and winning world opinion over to our side.

 

A provision built into the extension of unemployment assistance gives the GOP a weapon.

As COVID-19 cases skyrocketed before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, warned Americans to “be vigilant” and limit celebrations to “your immediate household.”

For many Americans that guidance has been difficult to abide, including for Birx herself.

The day after Thanksgiving, she traveled to one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island in Delaware. She was accompanied by three generations of her family from two households. Birx, her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren were present.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked Americans not to travel over the holidays and discourages indoor activity involving members of different households. “People who do not currently live in your housing unit, such as college students who are returning home from school for the holidays, should be considered part of different households.”

Even in Birx's everyday life, there are challenges meeting that standard. She and her husband have a home in Washington. She also owns a home in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where her elderly parents, and her daughter and family live, and where Birx visits intermittently. In addition, the children's other grandmother, who is 77, also regularly travels to the Potomac house and returns to her 92-year-old husband near Baltimore.

Birx's own experiences underline the complexity and difficulty of trying to navigate the perils of the pandemic while balancing a job, family and health, especially among essential workers like her.

Yet some of Birx's peers in public health say she should be held to a higher standard given her prominent role in the government's response to the pandemic and the current surge in COVID-19 deaths across the country.

Birx has expressed a desire to maintain a significant role on the White House coronavirus task force when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated next month, according to a person familiar with the Biden team’s personnel deliberations and a Trump administration coronavirus task force official. Neither was authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and both spoke on condition of anonymity.

“To me this disqualifies her from any future government health position,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security. “It’s a terrible message for someone in public health to be sending to the American people.”

After The Associated Press raised questions about her Thanksgiving weekend travels, Birx acknowledged in a statement that she went to her Delaware property. She declined to be interviewed.

She insisted the purpose of the roughly 50-hour visit was to deal with the winterization of the property before a potential sale — something she says she previously hadn't had time to do because of her busy schedule.

“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in her statement, adding that her family shared a meal together while in Delaware.

Birx said that everyone on her Delaware trip belongs to her “immediate household," even as she acknowledged they live in two different homes. She initially called the Potomac home a “3 generation household (formerly 4 generations).” White House officials later said it continues to be a four-generation household, a distinction that would include Birx as part of the home.

While in Delaware, she conducted an interview with CBS' “Face the Nation" in which she noted some Americans “went across the country or even into the next state" for the holiday weekend.

“Some people may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period," Birx said in the interview, adding that those who travelled should assume they were infected.

Birx’s job makes her an “essential worker” by federal guidelines, in a position that requires extensive travel to consult with state and local officials on the pandemic response. She has traveled to 43 states, driving 25,000 miles, she said, often to coronavirus hot spots. Birx also has an office in the White House, where numerous COVID-19 infections have been revealed.

Through it all, she said she has kept herself and her family safe through isolating, wearing a mask and regular testing.

Birx has not said how long she isolates for before visiting family. Medical experts say people who only recently became infected often do not test positive. They say wearing a mask has limited efficacy in an environment such as the White House, where few others use them.

Margaret Flynn, the children's other grandmother comes to the Potomac home to provide child care, then returns to her husband, who has health complications. Birx said that she hasn't seen the other grandmother since the beginning of the pandemic and does not know how frequently she visits the Potomac house.

Flynn confirmed that she hasn't spoken to Birx in months. Flynn declined to say how frequently she visits the home to look after the grandchildren.

From the podium at the White House, Birx has spoken about how she comes from a multigenerational family with her parents and her daughter's family, including grandchildren, all living under one roof. Many saw that as a relatable family dilemma.

In early April, she said she understood the sacrifices many were making and explained that she couldn't visit her Potomac home when one of her grandchildren had a high fever.

“I did not go there," she said, while standing next to President Donald Trump. "You can’t take that kind of risk.”

She has resumed her visits to the house since then.

Numerous elected officials, including prominent Democrats, have been forced to acknowledge that they have not heeded their own stern warnings to the public about the dangers of spreading the virus.

But Birx occupies a position of far greater authority when it comes to the pandemic. Many Americans rely on the advice that she and the government's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have given.

Kathleen Flynn, whose brother is married to Birx’s daughter who lives in the Potomac house, said she brought forward information about Birx's situation out of concern for her own parents, and acknowledged family friction over the matter.

“She cavalierly violated her own guidance," Flynn said of Birx.

Richard Flynn, her father, confirmed details of Birx's Thanksgiving holiday gathering and visits to the Potomac house, but said he trusted the doctor and believes she’s doing what’s right. He said Birx's visits to the house have occurred only every few weeks of late.

“Dr. Birx is very conscientious and a very good doctor and scientist from everything I can see,” Richard Flynn said during a recent interview.

Medical experts say public health officials such as Birx need to lead by example, including personal conduct that’s beyond reproach.

“We need leadership to be setting an example, especially in terms of things they are asking average Americans to do who are far less privileged than they are,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, a global health specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, about the high-profile lapses in judgment.

Birx came to the White House coronavirus task force with a sterling reputation. A public servant since the Reagan administration, Birx has served as a U.S. Army physician and as a globally recognized AIDS researcher. She was pulled away from her ambassadorial post as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator to assist the task force in late February.

Birx, however, has faced criticism from public health experts and Democratic lawmakers for not speaking out forcefully against Trump when he contradicted advice from medical advisers and scientists about how to fight the virus.

While she stayed in Trump’s good graces far longer than Fauci, who frequently contradicted Trump, the president by late summer had sidelined Birx, too.

Kathleen Flynn said she urged her brother and sister-in-law not to allow her mother to babysit, arguing it put her mother at risk by spending so much time in a household other than her own, while also posing a danger to Birx's elderly parents. Flynn, who said she has long had a strained relationship with her brother, is currently not on speaking terms with him and has never met Birx.

Flynn said her mother waited about a week after Birx’s Thanksgiving trip before returning to the Potomac home to provide child care help.

Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school who has known Birx professionally for years, said that he’s confident that Birx took all necessary precautions to minimize risks in her Thanksgiving travel. Still, he said it undercuts her larger goal to get Americans to cooperate with government officials’ efforts to minimize the death and suffering caused by the virus.

“It’s extraordinarily important for the leaders of the coronavirus response to model the behavior that they recommend to the public,” Gostin said. “We lose faith in our public health officials if they are saying these are the rules but they don’t apply to me.”

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hollywood Reporter: Providing relief via direct assistance and loans to struggling individuals and businesses hit hard by COVID-19 has been a priority for federal lawmakers this past month. But a gigantic spending bill has also become the opportunity to smuggle in some other line items including those of special interest to the entertainment community. Perhaps most surprising, according to the text of the bill being circulated, illegal streaming for commercial profit could become a felony. It's been less than two weeks since Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) released his proposal to increase the penalties for those who would dare stream unlicensed works. In doing so, the North Carolina senator flirted with danger. About a decade ago, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar made a similar proposal before it ended up dying as people worried about sending Justin Bieber to jail. This time, Tillis' attempt was winning better reviews for more narrowly tailoring the provisions toward commercial operators rather than users. That said, it's had very little time to circulate before evidently becoming part of the spending package. If passed, illegal streaming of works including movies and musical works could carry up to 10 years in jail. That's not the only copyright change either. The spending bill also appears to adopt a long-discussed plan to create a small claims adjudication system within the U.S. Copyright Office. [...] Among the other parts of the omnibus bill of interest to Hollywood is an extension of Section 181, a tax provision that allows for immediate deduction of television and film production costs up to $15 million. That incentive was scheduled to expire at the end of the year, but would now get an additional five years.

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But that's OK with them, because losing keeps your base angry.

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Once again, Republicans have forced a very pro-business, pro-rich coronavirus relief bill on Democrats. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but still:

If you’re on SNAP for basic subsistence, you have a lot of hoops to jump through. If you’re a wealthy businessman, you can eat out without any limits at all and write it all off on your taxes—100% of the costs of those meals, in the guise of assistance to restaurants. Because, sure, that’s why restaurants are failing. This will surely be incentive for hordes of people to do the one thing that epidemiologists have found to be among the most dangerous in this pandemic—going out to eat with other people.

Republicans have been on this for months (decades, actually) spurred on by Trump who, with restaurants in New York and D.C.—the twin epicenters of power lunches—will of course gain financially by it. At least Democrats got some additional assistance for the poorest out of it. 

News of a new strain of COVID-19 that could be up to 70% more infectious has led many countries to suspend travel from Britain. That includes Canada and France, among many others, but not the United States.

The good news, such as it is, is that experts expect the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that have begun distribution to be effective against the new strain. But the virus was already spreading faster than the vaccines, and this will make that effect much worse. Already the mutation has been found not just in Britain but in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Iceland.

Britain, meanwhile, is getting an early taste of Brexit, with massive backups at ports and worries about shortages of necessary goods, including fresh produce.

They know that even when they're comically villainous, Democrats are too disorganized to make them pay a price.

Listen closely, and you can already hear the expunging of the Trump disaster underway.

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