James.galbraith

Black people account for 42% of HIV diagnoses but only 13% of the population, and the government statistic is hardly an unusual one. The general trend is that when a disease touches the majority population, it ravages the Black community, already facing unparalleled inequity. And so went the coronavirus pandemic, with the Black population accounting for 70% of COVID-19-related deaths in early cases in Louisiana alone. So understand that many interpret who the president-elect nominates to key health positions as a mirror of how he prioritizes Black health. Joe Biden’s nomination of Rochelle Walensky, an infectious-disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows quite simply that the president-elect cares about Black people, about American people.

Walensky tweeted on Monday, when she was nominated to the position, that she is honored to serve and ready to combat the pandemic “with science and facts.” “I began my medical career at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and I've spent my life ever since working to research, treat, and combat infectious diseases,” she said in the tweet. But it was more than just a tweet.

Walensky testified before Congress last May about the exorbitant costs of medication to treat HIV. She said the sale of Truvada, which is used to treat and prevent HIV, has resulted in profits of $36 billion and has seen a price increase of 150% since 2004. “Fewer than 150,000 have ever received it. Over 75% of those are white gay men in the northeast and the west coast,” she said. The most affected population is, however, Black gay men, and it was estimated in 2016 that one in two of them would be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. Pharmaceutical companies have “already profited enormously,” Walensky said. “Now in the spirit of saving lives, of preventing new infections, of realizing public health, putting forth a cohesive public health response, and realizing a presidential call to action,” she added, “I simply ask that these drugs be reasonably priced so that those most marginalized in that risk can reap their benefit.”

Walensky’s complete speech:

“My name is Dr. Rochelle Walensky. I'm a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, a practicing clinician, and a researcher on the cost-effictiveness of HIV care both in the U.S. and internationally. In 1995, we told patients with AIDS, they would, with certainty, die. AIDS plagued my internship. By the end of that year, we had an FDA-approved HIV cocktail. Three drugs, up to 14 pills a day, which, if taken without fail, allowed AIDS patients to live. At the time, the three drugs of the cocktail cost a total of $15,000 per person per year, and our research team reported its cost-effectiveness. We demonstrated it was good value for many.

Today, we definitively have the tools to end this epidemic. The HIV-three-drug cocktail, termed antiretroviral therapy, is frequently co-formulated into a single daily pill. The regimens have high resistance barriers. That’s good. They have and low toxicity profiles. That’s also good, and projections suggest a normal life expectancy for adherent patients with HIV. We also know that people who take these drugs and effectively suppress their virus cannot transmit it to anyone else. But the cost of these drug regimens today is 40-to-50 thousand dollars per person per year. A 300% increase in 25 years.

Truvada is a co-formulation of two of these three drugs used for treatment, scientifically known as the combination of Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate and Emtricitabine. It was FDA approved for HIV treatment in August 2004 and has since then been a mainstay of HIV care. In 2012, following remarkable scientific work, much of which was left by Dr. (Robert) Grant, the FDA approved the expanded indication of Truvada for Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, for HIV prevention. The cost of Truvada when FDA approved in 2004 was $ 7,800 per year. Today, it costs $20,000 per year. A similar drug combination is available internationally at a cost of $60 per year. Please understand I’m not proposing that this is what the price should be in the United States. I simply provide that benchmark for national pricing to put it into global context.

In his February state of the union address, the president announced his initiative to end the HIV epidemic. This will not be easy. The benchmarks for the end-the-epidemic initiative are a decrease in the number of new HIV infections by 75% in five years and by 90% by 2030. Our research group has published work highlighting that even if we get 90% of people with HIV diagnosed, treated, and virologically suppressed, we can only decrease the number of new infection by 40%. In short, to end this epidemic we need both treatment and prevention. Aside from treatment, PrEP offers the most efficacious prevention intervention known.

Make no mistake, even if it was free, PrEP is difficult. In addition to drug adherence, it requires quarterly doctor visits for HIV testing, sexually transmitted infection screening, and laboratory monitoring. But right now the biggest problem with PrEP is access. The CDC estimates that more than 1.1 million people in the United States are at high enough HIV risk to warrant prep. Fewer than 150,000 have ever received it. Over 75% of those are white gay men in the northeast and the west coast. But today's uncontrolled HIV epidemic is rampant among Black gay men and continues to disproportionately affect women of color, especially in the south.

In 2016, it was estimated that one in two Black gay men would be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. We need prevention tools like PrEP to reach these marginalized populations if we are ever even going to make a dent in the epidemic, nevermind to reach the auspicious end-the-epidemic goals. The sale of Truvada has resulted in profits of $36 billion and Truvada, unchanged, has seen a price increase of 150% since 2004. That price tag is simply too high.

We have the scientific tools to end this HIV epidemic, and we are fortunate that Pharma has developed these drugs to get us there. They have already profited enormously. Now in the spirit of saving lives, of preventing new infections, of realizing public health, putting forth a cohesive public health response, and realizing a presidential call to action, I simply ask that these drugs be reasonably priced so that those most marginalized in that risk can reap their benefit. And finally, I would like to applaud Congress for holding this hearing and bringing this issue to the forefront in the public dialogue. I hope that some of these companies, including Gilead, will begin to do the right thing. It's never too late for that.”

RELATED: Biden announces top health and medical advisers, bringing science back

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Sony is pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offering full refunds for anyone who bought the game from the digital storefront, the company said on Thursday. The Verge reports: If you want to start a refund, Sony says to visit this site and sign into your PlayStation account to submit a request. The game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store for a few Verge staffers on their PS5s, and the game doesn't come up in a search for "Cyberpunk 2077" on the web version of the store. Players have found that Cyberpunk 2077, which has only been out for a week, has been riddled with bugs. The game looks good on PS5, but in my few hours with the game, I've run into a few complete crashes to the PS5's home screen and a number of distracting visual glitches. On PS4, the game fares a lot worse -- Eurogamer reported poor performance, low framerate, and texture pop-in. Further reading: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The socialist regime once cracked down on bitcoin miners. Now it's mining the digital asset itself. From a report: At a military base outside Caracas, Venezuela, state video footage shows officers in green fatigues cut a blue ribbon donned with a cluster of glossy balloons. Then, the men pry open the doors of a narrow, dimly-lit bunker. But the balloons weren't inaugurating a new weapons factory or training facility. They marked the opening of a new bitcoin mining farm. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro needs cash to sustain his grip on power after muddling through one of the worst economic implosions seen in recent modern history in the Western Hemisphere. It appears that Maduro's last ditch effort to buoy Venezuela's shriveling economy is to dig deep for this digital asset and sell it for hard cash. "In a strategic alliance with private capital, the Bolivarian army inaugurated the first center for the production of digital assets at the Fuerte Tiuna facilities," said a spokesperson in footage published by state television in late November. Venezuelan General Domingo Antonio Hernandez Larez details the project in a cramped conference room, then he and other officers fondle a few S9 AntMiners, a type of specialized computer used to mine bitcoin, the volatile cryptocurrency whose price is scraping all-time-highs of just under $20,000 per coin. "This center of digital asset production will ensure self-financing sufficiency within the military," the Venezuelan state TV official explains. "These mining activities will be key for increasing revenues for the country."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft says in a blog post that PepsiCo is using their Project Bonsai "machine teaching" service to "help ensure its Cheetos cheese-puff snacks all have the same texture, crunch and shape," reports The Wall Street Journal. From the blog post: PepsiCo built a computer vision system that continually monitors Cheeto attributes. Data about qualities such as density and length are fed to the Project Bonsai solution, which makes adjustments to bring the product within spec. This approach reduces the time it takes to correct inconsistencies and allows operators to focus on parts of the line that require human expertise. PepsiCo is preparing to use the solution in a production plant and exploring how to use the solution with other products, including the tortilla chip manufacturing process. An out-of-spec product can't be sold, which leads to wasted resources, time, and money. Greater consistency helps PepsiCo maintain high quality products while maximizing throughput. To make an ideal Cheeto, the solution needed examples of what wasn't ideal -- and needed to know what to do in those cases. The extruder line is self-contained and well-suited for developing and testing an autonomous system solution. Operators had been running it manually, which gave developers the opportunity to build the solution from scratch, instead of on top of other software. The AI solution has a recommendation mode and a closed loop control mode. In both modes, a computer vision system continuously measures the quality of the Cheetos. In recommendation mode, the AI will alert an operator if the product drifts out of spec, displaying on an instrument panel the attributes that are not ideal as well as a recommendation to correct it. The operator can push a button to make any or all recommended adjustments. In control mode, the only difference is that the AI solution skips the recommendation step and adjusts the extruder line specifications independently. The company expects that running this intelligent control system will return product to acceptable attributes faster. In the current extruder line, operators measure product attributes manually at defined intervals. If the Cheetos are out of spec, the operator makes adjustments based on guidelines or experience to return the product to acceptable quality. The problem: Infrequent sampling meant that the line could be producing out-of-spec Cheetos for a longer period of time without anyone realizing. The Project Bonsai solution will monitor the product almost continuously, using sensors to oversee characteristics such as length and bulk density. That way, it knows as soon as the product strays outside a defined range.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Once Moderna’s vaccine gets a final authorization, it will begin rolling out within days.

An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Thursday 20-to-0, with one abstention, to recommend the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine for an emergency use authorization for people ages 18 and older, determining that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. This makes the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine the second one to receive a green light from the committee.

The FDA is expected to accept the recommendation from the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee within days, at which time the vaccine, which has an efficacy of almost 95 percent, can begin being distributed to health workers and high-risk populations.

“We’re in an unparalleled crisis, and I did not think an EUA was the way to go, but since the train has left the station, I appreciate that Moderna has given us a very transparent and thorough study that even from the beginning seemed very well organized,” said A. Oveta Fuller, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Michigan and a temporary voting member of the committee, explaining her vote in favor.

The vote in favor of the Moderna vaccine comes a week after a similar approval for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which also uses an mRNA platform to generate immunity and is administered as two doses spaced several weeks apart. That vaccine has begun deliveries in the United States this week across all 50 states.

Operation Warp Speed, the $10 billion program from the Department of Health and Human Services aimed at accelerating Covid-19 vaccine development, is expecting to have 12.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine ready to dispense before the end of the month. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a press conference Wednesday that the program has purchased 100 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 100 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be delivered by the end of March.

Unlike Pfizer, Moderna received direct support from the US government for its research and development, totaling $4.1 billion for clinical trials and manufacturing. Moderna’s vaccine also has less strict cold storage requirements. It demands long-term storage at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) and is stable for 30 days between 2° and 8°C (36° to 46°F). Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine, on the other hand, requires temperatures of minus 70°C (minus 94°F) or lower.

An emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine would give the company the green light to increase manufacturing to deliver protection from Covid-19 to more Americans. But as with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, there will not be enough doses to go around right away, so health officials will have to make tricky decisions about who gets the shots first.

And an EUA is still a step short of full approval, which means there remain some critical questions about the vaccine that need to be addressed with further clinical trials.

What we learned recently about the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

The public received details about the Moderna vaccine for the first time outside of the company’s press releases in a briefing document published by the FDA on Tuesday.

FDA

Looking at 30,351 participants in their phase 3 clinical trial, Moderna’s latest results showed its vaccine had an efficacy of 94.1 percent against confirmed Covid-19 illness that produced symptoms. The study detected 185 Covid-19 cases in the placebo group and 11 cases in the group that received the vaccine.

The vaccine is administered as two doses spaced 28 days apart. However, it seems to begin to offer protection against Covid-19 shortly after the first dose, with protection continuing to build after the second.

In a presentation to the FDA vaccine committee, Moderna also highlighted that its vaccine not only prevents disease but also seems to prevent infection, including infections that don’t generate any symptoms.

“There were approximately 2/3 fewer swabs that were positive in the vaccine group as compared to the placebo group at the pre-dose 2 timepoint, suggesting that some asymptomatic infections start to be prevented after the first dose,” according to Moderna’s briefing.

This is hugely valuable for fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus has shown an ability to spread between people before the infected show any symptoms and some of the infected can be completely asymptomatic. That means people can unwittingly spread the virus. But with a vaccine that lowers asymptomatic infections in addition to disease, the spread of Covid-19 can be more easily controlled.

However, the results this week also shed some light on the side effects of the Moderna vaccine. In the phase 3 trial, about 16 percent of people in the vaccine group had a severe adverse reaction, defined by the FDA as a reaction that requires medical attention and prevents people going about their daily lives.

“The most common solicited adverse reactions associated with mRNA-1273 [Moderna vaccine] were injection site pain (91.6%), fatigue (68.5%), headache (63.0%), muscle pain (59.6%), joint pain (44.8%), and chills (43.4%); severe adverse reactions occurred in 0.2% to 9.7% of participants, were more frequent after dose 2 than after dose 1, and were generally less frequent in participants ≥65 years of age as compared to younger participants,” according to Moderna’s briefing to the FDA.

The briefing also acknowledged that there are many critical questions that remain unresolved. One is how long the protection from the vaccine will last, something that will require continued monitoring of the participants in the clinical trial and potential recipients under an EUA.

There is also limited information about how well the vaccine works in people with compromised immune systems and pregnant people. There is no information about the efficacy of the vaccine in people under the age of 18 since they were excluded from the clinical trials. It’s also not clear how well the vaccine blocks transmission relative to other measures like wearing face masks and social distancing.

Moderna has committed to monitoring its trial pool for two years and will conduct additional studies among the people who receive the vaccine under an EUA in order to get answers to these questions.

In the meantime, the FDA will consider the recommendation from its advisers. The FDA granted an EUA to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine just over a day after it received a vote of confidence from the vaccine advisory committee, so an authorization for the Moderna vaccine could come as soon as Friday.

There may be a more sinister goal behind McConnell's opposition to state and local aid.

But they need to change the way they talk about it, since Republicans are preparing to use debt as a weapon against the Biden presidency.

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.

They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.

The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.

The officials said that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been helping to manage the federal response to the broad hacking campaign, indicated to FERC this week that CISA was overwhelmed and might not be able to allocate the necessary resources to respond. DOE will therefore be allocating extra resources to FERC to help investigate the hack, even though FERC is a semi-autonomous agency, the officials said.

Several top officials from CISA, including its former director Christopher Krebs, have either been pushed out by the Trump administration or resigned in recent weeks.

Federal investigators have been combing through networks in recent days to determine what hackers had been able to access and/or steal, and officials at DOE still don’t know whether the attackers were able to access anything, the people said, noting that the investigation is ongoing and they may not know the full extent of the damage “for weeks.”

Shaylyn Hynes, a DOE spokesperson, said that an ongoing investigation into the hack has found that the perpetrators did not get into critical defense systems.

"At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only, and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department, including the National Nuclear Security Administration," Hynes said in a statement. "When DOE identified vulnerable software, immediate action was taken to mitigate the risk, and all software identified as being vulnerable to this attack was disconnected from the DOE network.”

The attack on DOE is the clearest sign yet that the hackers were able to access the networks belonging to a core part of the U.S. national security enterprise. The hackers are believed to have gained access to the federal agencies’ networks by compromising the software company SolarWinds, which sells IT management products to hundreds of government and private-sector clients.

DOE officials were planning on Thursday to notify the House and Senate Energy committees, House and Senate Energy and Water Development subcommittees, House and Senate Armed Services committees, and the New Mexico and Washington State delegations of the breach, the officials said.

CISA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the “ongoing” cybersecurity campaign in a joint statement released on Wednesday, saying that they had only become aware of the incident in recent days.

“This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,” the statement read. The U.S. government has not blamed any particular actor for the hacks yet, but cybersecurity experts have said the activity bears the hallmarks of Russia’s intelligence services.

NNSA is responsible for managing the nation's nuclear weapons, and while it gets the least attention, it takes up the vast majority of DOE's budget. Similarly, the Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs conduct atomic research related to both civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The Office of Secure Transportation is tasked with moving enriched uranium and other materials critical for maintaining the nuclear stockpile.

Hackers may have been casting too wide a net when they targeted DOE's Richland Field Office, whose primary responsibility is overseeing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state. During World War II and the Cold War, the U.S. produced two- thirds of its plutonium there, but the site hasn't been active since 1971.

The attack on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission may have been an effort to disrupt the nation's bulk electric grid. FERC doesn't directly manage any power flows, but it does store sensitive data on the grid that could be used to identify the most disruptive locations for future attacks.

Sen. Pat Toomey is leading a Republican push to curtail the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authority in the economic relief deal taking shape, a move that would seal off major avenues of future aid without congressional action.

The language would prevent Treasury Secretary-designate Janet Yellen from restarting Fed lending programs for small and midsized businesses, as well as for state and local governments, that are set to wind down at the end of the year. Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the move had “very broad support” from Senate Republicans.

The bill would prevent any money from the Treasury’s rainy day fund, even money not set aside in March as part of the CARES Act, from being used to resume those programs after 2020. It would also prohibit any similar programs from being created in the future.

In a call with reporters Thursday, Toomey said he was “hoping and expecting” that the language would be included in a final agreement.

“This is the most important thing to me,” he said, adding that it was about “preventing the Fed from being politicized” and misused by being pressured into bailing out municipalities and companies.

“This is not at all an effort to in any way hamstring the Biden administration or weaken our economy,” Toomey said, noting that he’s been trying since the summer to clarify that the programs are legally required to end after this year.

The provision takes some power away from the Fed just as Joe Biden prepares to enter the White House and the economy is facing a new slowdown amid a resurgence of the coronavirus.

But Toomey said only the handful of programs that are backed by money from the CARES Act would be affected by the provision. “This is not a broad rewrite of” the Fed’s emergency powers, he said.

The news prompted quick blowback from Democrats, including Toomey’s fellow member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, Bharat Ramamurti. Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), warned that the language amounted to a “huge rewriting” of Fed powers.

“Even if Sen. Toomey thinks that all he’s trying to do now is make sure you can’t restart a facsimile of the current CARES Act programs, it’s possible that a future Congress or a future Fed could read the language much more broadly than that,” he said. “That’s why I’m shocked that they’re trying to squeeze this in at the last minute without any hearings, without any debates. I think that’s just really dangerous.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin angered Democrats by deciding to wind down the CARES-backed programs at the end of the year. Republicans, including Toomey and Mnuchin, argue that the CARES Act legally required this decision, but that interpretation has been contradicted, including by the Congressional Research Service.

Meanwhile, two powerful committee chairs demanded that Mnuchin reverse that decision and expected him to “agree no additional legislative steps should be taken to prohibit future use of these emergency lending facilities.”

“We should instead be using every tool at our disposal to support our economic recovery,” House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters and special coronavirus subcommittee Chair Jim Clyburn wrote in a letter to the Treasury chief.

Since the Great Depression, the central bank has had the authority in emergency situations to lend to any borrower to ensure the proper functioning of financial markets.

The Fed used that authority expansively during the 2008 financial crisis, including to bail out firms deemed too interconnected in the economy to fail, such as AIG. Afterward, in the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, Congress required the central bank to only create “broad-based” lending programs for a subset of companies, rather than lending only to a single firm. It also required the Treasury secretary to sign off on any such programs.

At the onset of the pandemic, when key debt markets began freezing up, the Fed employed many of the same emergency programs as in 2008, such as lending to companies against collateral ranging from bundled credit card loans to packages of loans to highly indebted businesses. That program is designed to spur more loans to consumers and businesses by increasing demand for securities containing those loans.

The Fed and Treasury used CARES Act funds to cover any losses under that program. That means — under the restrictions advocated by Toomey — the central bank would never be able to open another similar program without congressional approval.

The central bank also wouldn’t be able to take many of the actions that were newly deployed in this emergency, including the municipal lending program and “Main Street” business lending program, which were created at the behest of Congress.

And it wouldn’t be able to buy up corporate bonds as it did after economic shockwaves from the pandemic sparked a panic and raised fears of a full-blown credit crunch. That program has been the Fed’s most controversial during this crisis, but lawmakers including Toomey have praised it as successfully restoring order to allow companies to continue borrowing cheaply without needing to turn to the government.

For its part, the Fed has said it would like the emergency programs to remain operating until the crisis has ended. Still, Chair Jerome Powell has said he accepted Mnuchin’s interpretation that the programs should cease at year end.

He avoided answering at a press conference Wednesday on whether he would accept a new interpretation from a new Treasury secretary. He also declined to say whether the central bank had plans for any future emergency programs.

“We have the authorities we have, we will use them if they’re needed and if the law permits us to do so,” Powell said.

Corporate leaders from OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma expressed contrition on Thursday for their company’s role in fueling the opioid crisis amid a torrent of criticism from lawmakers of both parties over the drug manufacturer’s conduct.

“I still feel absolutely terrible that a product created to help, and has helped so many people, has also been associated with death and addiction,” David Sackler, a member of the family that owns Purdue and a member of the company’s board from 2012 to 2018, told the House Oversight Committee at a hearing on Thursday.

“My heart breaks for the parents who have lost their children,” Kathe Sackler, David’s cousin and another former board member, told lawmakers at the hearing. “I am so terribly sorry for your pain.”

The admissions, however, rang hollow to most committee members, who noted that the family benefited immensely from the billions in profits OxyContin generated for the company they owned.

“To the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, let me make this clear as I can be: You all are bad actors,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said.

In November, Purdue pleaded guilty to three criminal charges as part of a more than $8 billion settlement that the Department of Justice announced the prior month. Purdue's owners, members of the Sackler family, also agreed to pay $225 million in a civil settlement.

The company, more than any other, has been blamed for driving the nation’s opioid epidemic with its aggressive promotion of OxyContin. Thursday’s hearing was the first time the drug manufacturer’s representatives have testified under oath before Congress about Purdue’s role in the ongoing crisis, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past two decades.

Both David and Kathe Sackler, denied personal culpability in the company’s misdeeds, while Purdue chief executive officer Craig Landau — who also appeared Thursday — stated that the company accepted “full accountability and responsibility” for its crimes.

“There’s nothing that I can find that I would have done differently based on what I believed and understood then” said Kathe Sackler.

David Sackler also repeatedly lashed out at the media for what he said is a “wrong and highly distorted” depiction of Purdue and the family that owns it as having fueled addiction.

Members of the committee fumed at the responses given by all three witnesses throughout the hearing, but testimony from the two Sackler family members drew the most ire from lawmakers.

“I’m not sure that I’m aware of any family in America that’s more evil than yours,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said, adding that their testimony made his “blood boil.”

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called the group “morally bankrupt.”

“Everything that was in fact designed to take advantage of people and exploit their weakness was presented by Sackler and Purdue as trying to help those patients,” he said.

Landau and the Sacklers’ appearance came only after Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) threatened to issue subpoenas to compel their testimony.

“This company played a central role in fueling one of America’s public health crises,” Maloney said.

Maloney also promised future hearings on the issue. At the onset of the hearing, the committee played a series of recordings from various people whose family members died from opioid addiction after using OxyContin.

As part of the agreement with the Trump administration, members of the Sackler family are required to relinquish all ownership and control of Purdue, which is also mandated to dissolve and the assets of which would be diverted to a government-owned “public benefit company” that will produce the drug and use the profits to address the opioid crisis.

More than two dozen state attorneys general have urged against the creation of such a company, arguing the government should not profit off the continued sale of the drug.

The agreement has also been criticized for not pursuing criminal charges against members of the Sackler family to hold them accountable, though the settlement leaves open the possibility of future charges.

“I think it’s clear your family has tried to fraudulently shield money for your own personal benefit. I think it’s appalling. Those profits, in my opinion, should be clawed back,” Maloney told David Sackler.

Purdue is also party to a separate legal matter filed by thousands of U.S. counties, cities and localities against various drugmakers, pharmacies and drug distributors. A bloc of state attorneys general has pressed to bring the protracted litigation battle to a close with a $48 billion global settlement, while others involved with the suit want to hold out for a larger amount.

Purdue last year filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to freeze lawsuits against it while working out a separate settlement with the states, counties and localities, a decision that has also drawn fire from lawmakers and others as another attempt to evade repercussions.

“It’s my belief that the bankruptcy process offers the best and most transparent and most equitable way to address the opioid epidemic,” David Sackler said. “I know it’s been widely criticized in the media, but I think that’s a lack of understanding.”

Democrats in Texas and New Hampshire are forming committees to examine the party’s failings in last month’s election. Less formal autopsies are underway in states across the country.

But the party that lost the presidential election isn’t soul-searching at all.

For the final act of his showman-like presidency, Donald Trump has convinced the Republican Party that despite losing the White House by 7 million votes — and despite seeing five states flip in 2020 — things could hardly be better inside the GOP.

Even as the Electoral College this week confirmed Joe Biden’s victory, interviews with more than two dozen GOP state and local chairs and Republican National Committee members reflect a party that, far from reassessing its embrace of Trumpism, is hell-bent on more of the same.

“Our president absolutely grew our party,” said Jennifer Carnahan, chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, noting the GOP’s down-ballot victories and explosive turnout with Trump on the ticket. “He totally advanced our party … I think that as Republicans, we just need to continue to remain on the course.”

It hardly matters that Trump couldn’t beat Biden in the Rust Belt. Or that Trump ceded the longtime Republican strongholds of Georgia and Arizona to Democrats and, in defeat, became the first incumbent president since 1992 to fail to win a second term.

Six weeks after the election, Republicans are beginning to chart a multi-state effort to undo mail ballot expansions that disadvantaged the party in November. But that’s a mechanical concern. As it prepares for the midterm elections and 2024, the direction of the party is set.

“As far as I’m concerned, everything’s great,” said Stanley Grot, a district-level Republican Party chair in Michigan, a state Trump won four years ago but lost to Biden in November.

In one of the more surreal role reversals in modern post-presidential election history, the winning party nationally is poring over its congressional and legislative losses, while the party that lost the White House isn’t.

When Mitt Romney lost the national popular vote by 5 million votes in 2012, his defeat sparked a devastating, 100-page RNC post-mortem based on conversations with more than 2,600 people, in-depth focus groups and polling, a survey of pollsters, and an online survey featuring the participation of more than 36,000 individuals. Trump lost by 2 million more votes than Romney, and there is nary a peep.

To many Republicans, that makes total sense. After all, GOP turnout was up, and down-ballot Republicans over-performed, reducing Democrats’ House majority and positioning the GOP — depending on the result of two runoffs in Georgia — to hold the Senate. Even if the president did get swamped by Biden — an outcome most Republicans don’t accept — there is little belief among Republicans that it had anything to do with him.

“It wasn’t a matter of our candidate,” said Bill Pozzi, chair of the Republican Party in heavily Republican Victoria County, Texas. “It was a matter of the process.”

Republicans are traditionally less prone to hand-wringing than their Democratic counterparts. But not always — especially in unsuccessful presidential years. Recriminations inside the GOP followed John McCain’s loss to Barack Obama in 2008, and four years later, after Romney’s defeat. Many of the concerns Republicans raised after that — including the party’s difficulties with younger voters and people of color — persist today. And in any other year, Republicans might once again be asking what went wrong.

But in the Republican Party of 2020, second-guessing is heresy. Trump ignored the lessons of the 2012 post-mortem when he ran in 2016, and he won. And even in defeat this year, Trump received more votes than any presidential candidate in history except for Biden, dramatically expanding the Republican Party’s ranks and making some modest inroads with Latinos, a growing segment of the electorate. More important, he persuaded Republicans, without evidence, that the election was rigged.

It’s hard for a party to draw lessons from an election it doesn’t think it lost.

As a result, Republicans mostly aren’t reckoning with their erosion in the suburbs or their weakness with women. Instead, they’re turning Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud into a cause that will animate the party for years, spinning forward frustration with the November election’s administration to advance voter ID laws and measures to limit mail voting in future elections.

“I don’t think there’s a post-mortem about losing the election,” said Allen West, the chair of the Texas Republican Party. “The real post-mortem is about how do we protect our electoral system,” which he said will be “the No. 1 legislative priority for the Republican Party of Texas.”

Republicans are making similar plans in other states where they control legislatures, while continuing to pepper the courts. Already, Republicans have filed litigation challenging absentee ballot procedures in Georgia ahead of the runoff election there next month.

“I think nationally there’s going to be a huge focus on absentee voting and election integrity,” said Michael Whatley, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. “There has to be a significant tightening of the rules around absentee balloting, and we need to have that conversation with state legislatures all around the country.”

If there's room inside the GOP for reflection, it’s primarily on how to campaign more effectively if those challenges fall short — and if expanded mail-voting procedures remain intact. Republicans downstream from Trump warned repeatedly this year that his criticism of mail balloting was hampering the party’s effort to turn out voters — a concern that has been amplified in Georgia ahead of the Senate runoff elections. Democrats in many states built a superior operation to track absentee voters and chase their ballots.

“The Republican Party hasn’t been matching that,” said Jason Shepherd, the chair of the Republican Party in Cobb County, Georgia. ‘Hopefully we will have something going soon, but the Democrats are well ahead of us on this.”

Like Shepherd and other Republicans, Glenn Clary, the chair of the Alaska Republican Party, said that if Republicans can’t change mail ballot laws, the party “will need to improve our method” of turning out mail voters and “get on the bandwagon, so to speak.” Victor Fitz, the Cass County, Mich., prosecutor and a district GOP chair, said Republicans need to develop a firmer “backbone” to counter what he called “a very flawed election process.”

At the same time, he said, "The game has changed some, and it's important for Republicans to recognize that."

Republicans are not without some traditional concerns about threats to the party. They complain about what they view as a liberal media bias, and Clary said Republicans must “find unique and less expensive ways to get the message out.” Other party chairs express concerns about fundraising, after Biden raised record sums, overwhelming Trump on the airwaves. Some GOP organizers — though mostly former ones, after Trump overhauled the party’s apparatus in the states — see the party’s erosion in the suburbs as a source of grave concern.

But the dominant post-election focus of the GOP is about how to emerge from 2020 bolstering Trumpism, not softening its edges. Heading into the midterm elections after a presidential race in which Trump drew out scores of non-traditional voters, Whatley said, “the Republican Party’s going to need to figure out how to translate Trump voters into Republican voters.”

“When you look at the numbers that Trump got here in North Carolina,” he said, “he carried other Republican candidates across the line, and there was a huge surge in enthusiasm for him over the last month of the election that really translated into wins across the board for us.”

For Democrats licking their wounds, the optimism of Republicans can be disorienting. In Texas, where Democrats are conducting a postmortem on the party’s shortcomings in 2020, Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, said the lack of a similar review by Republicans nationally is “just strange.”

However, Hinojosa could rationalize it: “But they didn’t lose,” he deadpanned. “I think that’s exactly why they’re not doing it. There is not a recognition that they lost, not just because they’re afraid of Donald Trump, which I think has a lot to do with it, but because they live in this fantasy world that whatever he says is gospel, and if he says it, it’s true.”

Hinojosa said, “It’s [Trump’s] electoral version of alternative facts.”

It’s possible that elements of the GOP will conduct an analysis of Trump’s loss after he is out of office. But his shadow over the party is likely too long — and no review of Trump’s performance is likely to be hard on him.

He expressed his disdain for election postmortems as far back as 2013, the day after the RNC released its infamous 100-page report. ".@RNC report was written by the ruling class of consultants who blew the election," he tweeted. "Short on ideas. Just giving excuses to donors."

In New Hampshire, a state where the Democratic Party chair, Ray Buckley, recently announced a task force to examine his party’s down-ballot losses, Wayne MacDonald, a former state Republican Party chair, said, “A lot of Republicans haven’t accepted the outcome of the presidential yet.”

“Once that new term begins, once the Biden presidency — if the Biden presidency begins — I think you’re going to see postmortems then,” MacDonald said.

For now, he said, “Republicans are feeling good.”

It's not looking good for Republicans trying to suppress the vote of Georgians. Almost 75,000 new voters have registered to vote in the state's upcoming Senate runoff, and 57% of them are under 35 years old, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Georgians learned on Nov. 3 that if they register and vote, that their vote has power,” Fair Fight Action spokesman Seth Bringman told the newspaper. “If Georgians used their collective power, we could create change in our state.”

The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot.

President-elect Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 11,000 votes in Georgia, flipping the state blue for the first time since 1992 when most Georgia voters backed former President Bill Clinton. Propelled by the coronavirus pandemic, many voters opted to cast absentee ballots in the presidential election. So Republicans, likely noticing the writing on the wall, are trying their hardest to restrict voting by mail.

GOP lawsuits aimed at tightening rules on using drop boxes to return absentee ballots will be heard today in Georgia, Politico reported.  Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are up against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the runoffs, said in a joint statement Politico obtained last week that their lawsuit is aimed at "reasonable and actionable steps we can take immediately to further ensure the integrity and accuracy of our January 5 elections." 

“Georgia election officials, from the state level to the local level, have undertaken significant efforts to assure the integrity of the Georgia election process in the runoff,” attorneys said in the suit. “Those efforts should be commended, and this lawsuit is brought to augment and further improve them.” The suit also claims "there are constitutional flaws in the current process for checking absentee voter signatures that must be remedied before county clerks begin processing absentee ballots on December 21."

Even though photo identification is required to obtain an absentee ballot in Georgia, Republicans maintain in the suit that the vote-by-mail process doesn't go far enough to verify signatures. Attorneys stated in the suit:

"When votes are cast in person, Georgia requires photo identification to protect the integrity of the election process. O.C.G.A. 21-2-417. In contrast, absentee ballots are verified by signature comparison, not secure photo identification. By statute, a single election official compares the signature on the absentee ballot oath to the voters’ signature on file. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(B). If the signature is missing or rejected, then the ballot is segregated and the office contacts the voter to provide an opportunity to cure the invalid ballot. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(C). As explained in more detail below, many counties in Georgia in the November 3, 2020 general election accepted virtually all absentee ballot signatures, rejecting impossibly low numbers of mismatched signatures, and even failing to find any missing signatures. The lax signature validation process stands in conflict with any fair or consistent process for verifying signatures."

The suit, which is obviously nothing more than a shot at legal justification for Trump's election loss, alleges things that Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger himself has repeatedly denied. “Let me be clear: Before an absentee ballot is ever cast, a signature match is confirmed twice,” he said. “Not once, twice. As in the signature is matched twice. I don’t know how much clearer I can make that for everyone to understand.” More than 378,000 voters have already cast vote-by-mail ballots in Georgia, and more than 846,000 absentee ballots have been sent to voters but not yet returned, Politico reported.

Sen. Rand Paul and his ilk apparently couldn’t care less about those who’ve already legally obtained absentee ballots actually being able to cast their votes. He flat out opposed Fox News solicitations encouraging Georgia voters to vote by mail, and admitted his concern is purely political. “I’m very, very concerned that if you solicit votes from typically non-voters, that you will affect and change the outcomes,” he said. “I’m very worried the Democrats will control all three branches of government, and they really truly will transform America but not for the better.”

RELATED: Georgia is changing, and 75,000 new registered voters for the runoff is proof

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President-elect Joe Biden wants Georgians to know that his ability to respond to the urgent health and economic crises facing the nation is directly dependent on the election of the two Democrats running to unseat Senate Republicans in the state.

"Let me be clear, I need Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the United States Senate," Biden says, in a direct appeal to Georgia voters worried about the pandemic crisis gripping the nation. "There are folks in Congress threatening to do everything in their power to block our efforts," Biden explains, adding, "We need them in the Senate."

Electing Warnock and Ossoff would give Democrats a bare majority in the U.S. Senate, giving them a measure of control over the upper chamber that will be absolutely critical to Biden’s ability to enact his agenda.

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

“On Day 1 as your President, I am prepared to sign a COVID relief package that fully funds the public health response needed,” Biden says, “It will ensure free testing and vaccination for every American and will get small businesses the assistance they need right now.

“Let me be clear, I need Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the United States Senate to get this done. There are folks in Congress threatening to do everything in their power to block our efforts. We need you to get out there and vote for Jon Ossoff as well Raphael Warnock. We need them in the Senate.”

We need all hands on deck to win the Georgia Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, and you can volunteer from wherever you are: More than 23,000 Daily Kos volunteers already have. Click here to see the Georgia volunteer activities that work best for you.

In a move pushed by more than 100 Native tribes, environmental advocates, and scores of members of Congress, President-elect Joe Biden picked Rep. Debra Haaland, the progressive representative from New Mexico’s 1st District, to serve as secretary of the Interior, it was announced Thursday. She has been on his short list for the post for months. But there had reportedly been concern among some Democratic leaders that Biden was pulling too many people out of the House of Representatives where the Democratic majority is already slim. On Wednesday, it was reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had given her okay for Biden to pick Haaland despite that concern.

If confirmed by the Senate, the 60-year-old congresswoman will be the first American Indian to serve in the Cabinet. Haaland will only resign from her current post once confirmed, at which time the New Mexico secretary of state will have 10 days to set the date of a special election to fill the 1st District seat. By law that must take place within 77-91 days of its becoming vacant.

A long-time Democratic activist, Haaland is an enrolled member of the 7,500-member Laguna Pueblo. The symbolism of picking her can’t be stressed enough. Interior is charged with managing the nation’s natural resources and public lands, including millions of acres from which Natives were forcibly removed as well as 55 million acres held in trust for the tribes. Encompassing a dozen bureaus and agencies, among them the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Interior also has the obligation—poorly carried out according to reports dating back to the 1920s—of fulfilling treaty commitments via the chronically underfunded and understaffed Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education. 

Since her election to Congress in 2018, Haaland has served on two key committees—Armed Services, and Natural Resources, the latter as vice chairwoman, and as chairwoman of its subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands. She also serves on Biden's Climate Engagement Advisory Council. She has a reputation as a strong fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

At the virtual Democratic National Convention this year, Haaland gave this speech:

One of Haaland’s most prominent supporters has been Raul Grijalva, the veteran Arizona congressman who heads the Natural Resources Committee. Last month he told Emma Dumain at E&E Daily:

"As her colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, I have seen first-hand the passion and dedication she puts into these issues at the forefront of the Interior Department from tackling the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women to crafting thoughtful solutions to combatting the climate crisis using America's public lands," he wrote in a letter to members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which had put Grijalva's own name forward as possible contenders for the post.

"It is well past time that an Indigenous person brings history full circle at the Department of Interior," Grijalva said. "It should go without saying, Rep. Haaland is absolutely qualified to do the job."

The vigor of support from the tribes was unprecedented. One coalition of Native groups affiliated with the Indigenous Environmental Network pushed hard for Haaland to lead Interior, sending a letter to Biden on Nov. 14 that stated in part:

We are grassroots Indigenous Peoples, tribal citizens enrolled in our respective Native Nationsthat embrace Indigenous Knowledge, and maintain our spiritual and cultural ways. We areorganized as Indigenous non-governmental entities and have always expressed our voices, withinthe sovereignty of our Native Nations, afforded the same opportunities to participate in USgovernment decision-making processes as would any other US citizen or non-governmentalorganization. We want a future for our children in which these ways continue to thrive. In thepast it has always been a struggle to have government agencies understand this. Sometimesprogress has been made and sometimes we have faced major setbacks. There is a uniqueopportunity at this time to have a highly competent person take the reins at the Department ofInterior that understands all of its dynamics and does not have to be educated on the depth oftheir meaning.

Our belief is that Representative Haaland will help facilitate the Biden/Harris vision for dealing with climate change, addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in Indian Country, ensuring an effective economic just recovery plan for Tribes and communities, overseeing the protection of public lands and fulfilling all treaty and statutory obligations.

The following interview was conducted by Daily Kos in 2019.

In a study that shocks absolutely no progressive but is nonetheless important, we once again have evidence that Reagonimics benefits the rich more than anyone else. In this case, the paper comes to us from researchers out of the London School of Economics and King’s College of London, where data that spanned a period of 50 years suggests that tax cuts for the wealthy simply spurred inequality without significant help for anyone else, including little job growth. This sort of study is always relevant, but especially as we continue to face the novel coronavirus pandemic with meager relief from our federal government. The data does end in 2015, so it does not actually include the coronavirus, but the big-picture message still stands: It’s perfectly fine to tax the rich, because not taxing them doesn’t actually help anyone else anyway.

David Hope of the London School of Economics shared the same sentiment in an interview with Bloomberg, though phrased a bit more diplomatically. “Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope told the news outlet. In fact, according to their studies, he added to Bloomberg, policies that disproportionately help the rich actually “don’t deliver the sort of trickle-down effects that proponents have claimed.” Bingo.

As reported by The Washington Post, nearly 8 million Americans have dropped into poverty since last summer alone. Photos of long, long lines waiting for food pantries have gone viral, small businesses have faced day after day of precarious survival, and gig and service workers often have to choose between potentially unsafe conditions and making ends meet. Who does this impact? Certainly not the super wealthy.

A number of people took to Twitter to share the study and affirm what many of us already believe: helping the rich helps the rich, but it does not “trickle” down to the rest of us. And that’s a big problem.

Absentee voting worked well for Republicans for years. Then Democrats won one election through heavy absentee voting, and now Republicans are trying to crack down on that. The effort is most pressing in Georgia, thanks to the two Senate runoff elections there on January 5, 2021, and Georgia Republicans are all in.

More than 378,000 Georgia voters have already sent in their absentee votes, and another 846,000 ballots have been mailed out but not yet returned. But Republicans are in court trying to make it easier to toss out ballots over signature matching questions and trying to end the use of drop boxes for turning in absentee ballots.

“Let me be clear: Before an absentee ballot is ever cast, a signature match is confirmed twice,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has explained, referring to the signature matching when an absentee ballot application is received and when the ballot itself is received. “Not once, twice. As in the signature is matched twice. I don’t know how much clearer I can make that for everyone to understand.”

However, Republicans are targeting the fact that under current signature-matching procedures, two of three election officials inspecting an envelope have to say that a signature doesn’t match the one on file before it will be rejected. Instead, they want to reject ballots based on the say-so of one out of three officials. Talk about a situation ripe for abuse. 

That’s one lawsuit. Another challenges drop boxes, takes its own whack at signature verification, and wants to delay absentee ballots from being processed until Election Day, just to make sure the vote-counting process drags out as long as possible. And then, reports Politico, “A third suit filed in state court by the Republican National Committee and state Republican Party seeks to restrict the use of drop-boxes to business hours and suggests changes related to poll observers.”

Phew. That’s a lot.

Democrats are filing their own suits, with Marc Elias suing four counties on behalf of the New Georgia Project, trying to get early voting times extended.

On Fox Business, Sen. Rand Paul (of Kentucky, not Georgia) spewed out a lot of lies about voter fraud and then explained some of the logic behind attacks on absentee voting—which, again, was a big Republican voting strategy right up until Donald Trump decided he didn’t like it and Republicans stopped doing it but Democrats won by doing it a lot—saying “I’m very, very concerned that if you solicit votes from typically non-voters, that you will affect and change the outcome.”

All the lies about voter fraud and the crux of it is still the concern that people will vote who don’t usually do so. Not people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Just people who don’t always do so. That’s the danger Republicans are worried about. That’s the reason to fight to make it harder to vote. It’s literally just about keeping people from voting. Which we knew, but it’s still amazing that they say it right out.

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.

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Yes, it's just a poll. But it's not a horse race poll and its data holds value, even if it underrepresents Donald Trump's supporters. So with those caveats, let's take a look at a Fox News survey released this week suggesting that recent events might depress turnout among some Republican voters in the near future.

The poll asked respondents whether "this presidential election has made you more or less likely to vote in the next presidential election.” And although the next presidential contest is light years away from now, the responses could have implications for more immediate contests, particularly the Georgia Senate runoffs.

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

In total, 75% of respondents said the election had made them more likely to vote in the next presidential contest, while only 11% said they were less likely to do so. But the partisan breakdown was notable: While 84% of Democrats counted themselves more likely to vote, just 69% of Republicans agreed, a 15-point difference. In fact, 16% of GOP respondents said they were less likely to vote next around compared to just 6% of Democrats who said the same.

The results are to be taken with a grain of salt for several reasons, including the failure of surveys throughout the 2020 cycle to accurately capture support for Trump. But even if this poll failed to get the right mix of conservative voters, the responses are still telling for the Republicans who did participate in the survey. In addition, as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, self-identified Trump voters formed the group most likely to signal doubt about their future participation, with nearly 1 in 5 (or 19%) saying they were less likely to vote next time around.

The results generally reflect the potential for a somewhat depressed GOP base heading into the Georgia runoffs. And while it's hard to conclude much—if anything—about turnout in those all-important races on Jan. 5th, the data can't be welcome news for GOP strategists already fretting over what effect Trump's continued attacks on the state's voting systems will have on conservative voters.

The survey also represents a departure from past post-election polls. In 2016, for instance, 80% of both Democratic and Republican voters signaled the election had made them more likely to vote in the next election. Those results were also consistent with results in 2000, with 80% of voters on both sides of the aisle indicating they would be more likely to vote next time around even as post-election litigation continued over the race's outcome.

Turnout in the Georgia runoff is a total mystery, with zero comparable priors to lend insight. We’re all flying blind here but at least Democrats are coming off a win in the state and aren’t weighted down by an ongoing civil war within their party. 

We need all hands on deck to win the Georgia Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, and you can volunteer from wherever you are. Click here to see the Georgia volunteer activities that work best for you.

  

A stark admission about the vulnerability of Georgia's two GOP senators.

The move comes as false rumors about Covid-19 vaccines are surging online.

On Wednesday, Twitter announced that it will begin to take down Covid-19 vaccine misinformation starting next week. The company plans to remove false vaccine content that it considers “the most harmful,” and later on it will start labeling other posts that could be misleading.

“In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge — and we all have a role to play,” the company said in a blog post. “We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the biggest potential harm to people’s health and wellbeing.”

Twitter’s announcement follows similar pledges from both Facebook and YouTube, which recently said they’ll remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. The announcement also comes after the US Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

As the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine begins to be administered to health care workers and people in long-term care homes, misinformation related to vaccines has flourished online. For instance, unproven narratives that the Covid-19 vaccine has links to the Chinese Communist Party, or that the vaccine has a proven connection to a condition called Bell’s palsy, have gained tens of thousands of mentions in the past week, according to data collected by Zignal Labs.

This surge of misinformation has exacerbated concerns that part of the US population may be unwilling to get the vaccine, or will delay doing so. Recent polling suggests that while most Americans say they’ll probably or definitely get vaccinated against Covid-19, many may not do so immediately.

In a blog post, Twitter explained that it will take a two-pronged approach to vaccine content: taking down misinformation that poses the most harm while labeling content that’s misleading or out of context. Posts that could be removed, the company says, include anything that suggests that a Covid-19 vaccine is part of a “deliberate conspiracy” or that falsely claims Covid-19 is a hoax and so vaccines aren’t necessary. The company also said it would tackle misinformation related to vaccines more generally, including claims that have been “widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations.”

A Twitter spokesperson told Recode that when someone posts this type of misinformation, the platform will hide that content from public view. The person who posted it can then appeal the decision to Twitter or log on and remove that content themselves before they’ll be allowed to post again from their account.

Beginning next year, Twitter will also start adding labels to posts that the platform decides need further context, like rumors, contested claims, or claims about the Covid-19 vaccine that are “incomplete.”

Back in October, YouTube announced that it planned to remove Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, and it banned vaccine claims that went against what health experts and the World Health Organization said.

Earlier this month, Facebook said that under its policy requiring the removal of content that could lead to “imminent physical harm,” it too would remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. For instance, the company said it would take down content that said vaccines include microchips — a common and false conspiracy theory related to the Covid-19 vaccine. It’s also removing posts that claim that “specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine’s safety.”

Just a month ago, Twitter had told Recode that while it recognized the importance of its platform to public health, it was still working out how it would approach moderating content surrounding a Covid-19 vaccine. Twitter would not comment on whether it worked with the other social media companies in developing the policies announced today.

Throughout the pandemic, Twitter has used a sliding scale between posts that deserve a label and posts that require removal, depending on how harmful that content could be. The company has also frequently used labels on posts sharing election misinformation.

Twitter’s new rules on vaccine misinformation suggest the fight against this problem is likely to continue. In fact, many of the same accounts that have pushed other types of false claims, like election misinformation, are now turning their attention toward the Covid-19 vaccine, indicating a significant challenge ahead for social media platforms.

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Chris Krebs stole the show.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and a group of other Senate Republicans finally acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory this week — and then Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a Wednesday hearing aimed at undermining it.

Biden’s decisive Electoral College victory on Monday forced Johnson and some of his Republican colleagues to belatedly recognize the reality of President Donald Trump’s defeat, after weeks of suggesting Trump might still somehow be declared the winner of November’s election. Now unable to deny Biden will be the next president, the hearing basically served as a platform for Republicans to lie about Biden’s win being tainted.

“The election in many ways was stolen,” claimed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) at one point, in the bluntest example of how Republicans tried turning reality on its head.

But Paul didn’t even try to offer evidence to back his assertion up. And state officials spanning the political spectrum have one and all reported no irregularities that affected the result — many swing states held multiple recounts to ensure that this was the case.

The witness list illustrated how Johnson tried to stack the deck. Among them were two attorneys for the Trump campaign, a Republican state legislator from Pennsylvania, and Ken Starr, the former Bill Clinton investigator who is perhaps best known these days as a Trump-friendly talking head on Fox News.

All of those witnesses either had obvious bias or little to no firsthand information about the security of the 2020 election. But the exception to that was Chris Krebs, the former head of the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who Trump fired by tweet last month after he refuted Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories by calling the election “the most secure in American history.”

Krebs, a Republican, repeatedly knocked down suggestions from Johnson and others that the election results were somehow manipulated by pointing out that the counts in all the states the Trump campaign contested are backed up by paper ballots.

“It’s important to step back and actually look at how votes are cast in the country, particularly with paper ballots, and that regardless of any internet connections, regardless of foreign hacking, as long as you’ve got the paper receipt ... you can check your math.”

“Georgia did that three times and the outcomes were consistent,” Krebs added, alluding to the repeated recounts in Georgia that all showed Biden defeating Trump.

Krebs tried to patiently explain the safeguards that were in place to prevent election fraud, but at other points he didn’t try to hide the fact that he thinks Republicans needs to move on.

“I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” Krebs said, adding later: “We have to stop this. It’s undermining confidence in democracy.”

Much of Johnson’s hearing could’ve been mistaken for a Fox News segment

The ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), began the hearing by castigating Republicans for wasting time with a hearing aimed at delegitimizing President-elect Biden in particular and US elections in general.

“Whether intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies and is a destructive exercise that has no place in the US Senate. Joe Biden won the election,” Peters said during his opening statement.

“There were no widespread election irregularities that affected the final outcome. These claims are false. And giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy,” he added.

But those comments didn’t sit well with Johnson, who called them “galling” and sparked a heated exchange with Peters by calling him a liar.

“This is not about airing your grievances,” Peters fired back, prompting Johnson to repeatedly bang his gavel in an effort to silence him.

In fact, Johnson’s hearing did appear to be mostly about airing grievances. For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) made a case that Republicans raising conspiratorial questions about the election results is no different from Democrats’ “Russia hoax.” An important difference, however, is that while there’s lots of evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, there’s no evidence of significant election irregularities.

Hawley also shared that “yesterday I was talking with some of the constituents back at home — a group of about 30 people — every single one of them, every one of them, told me that they felt they had been disenfranchised, that their votes didn’t matter, that the election had been rigged. These are normal, reasonable people, these are not crazy people.”

But the fact that Trump voters believe the conspiracy theories Republicans have been pushing about election fraud is not evidence that they’re true. And when Republicans have been challenged in courtrooms and elsewhere to produce evidence that rises beyond insinuation and anecdote, they’ve come up with nothing.

If there was any doubt that Hawley’s comments about election fraud were coming from a place of bad faith, it was resolved by the fact that he directed each of the string of loaded questions he asked to cable news talking head Ken Starr — and not a single one to Krebs, the witness with by far the most firsthand information about the election.

By pandering to Trump, Republicans are putting themselves in bind

Even as more Republicans succumb to the reality of Biden’s win, Wednesday’s hearing illustrated how many of them continue to try to curry favor with Trump, whose lies about the election continue to get more outlandish.

On Tuesday night, for instance, Trump tweeted a debunked conspiracy theory about voting machines switching votes from Trump to Biden — a claim not backed up by any of the recounts that have taken place, including recounts of the paper ballots Krebs mentioned.

As if on cue, Trump wasted no time after the hearing ended highlighting how effortlessly he lies about anything and everything. He tweeted that Krebs “was totally excoriated and proven wrong at the Senate Hearing,” even though anyone who watched it knows that nothing of the sort happened.

The defeated president has obvious self-interested reasons for falsely insisting that he only lost because of cheating, but Republican senators are playing a dangerous game. Not only are they delegitimizing US elections, but they’re running the risk of demoralizing Republicans votes who are being told voting doesn’t matter because election results are predetermined.

Just weeks ahead of Georgia runoffs in which control of the US Senate is at stake, the conspiracy theories Republicans like Johnson, Paul, and Hawley are pushing could do serious damage to their cause. But whether they’re thinking beyond crafting the perfect 30-second soundbite for Sean Hannity’s Fox News show is unclear.

This is not a joke. Trump’s old Twitter password was “maga2020!”

The first rule of securing yourself on the internet is to ensure your password isn’t easily guessable. But it looks like someone pretty important didn’t follow that advice: President Donald Trump.

Dutch media reported that in October, a hacker got into Trump’s Twitter account by guessing his password. And, I kid you not, the password was “maga2020!” — because of course it was.

Despite insistence from the White House and Twitter that there was no evidence of a hack, public prosecutors in the Netherlands confirmed details of an intrusion on Wednesday. The hacker, 44-year-old Victor Gevers, was facing potential jail time for accessing the president’s infamous social media account. But prosecutors said Gevers had acted in an “ethical” way by immediately disclosing what he had done to Dutch authorities.

“We believe the hacker has actually penetrated Trump’s Twitter account, but has met the criteria that have been developed in case law to go free as an ethical hacker,” the Netherlands’ public prosecutor office said on Wednesday.

Gevers said he was looking for vulnerabilities in high-profile social media accounts ahead of the US presidential election, just in case they got hacked by someone with malicious intent. That’s a good thing, especially since Trump apparently didn’t have two-factor authentication activated on his phone, which would have added an extra security step besides a password. Luckily, Gevers found a problem before someone else did. “The hacker released the login himself,” Dutch police said about Gevers’s actions two month ago.

For that and other reasons, Gevers won’t face any charges.

One can only hope this led to Trump’s account being made more secure than it had been, especially after Twitter required more robust passwords from leading politicians in September. As long as nobody tries logging in using “StopTheSteal2020!”

Georgia GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler locked herself into an impossible political position Wednesday when she signaled she hadn't ruled out objecting to the election results on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to officially tally the votes from the Electoral College.

“I haven't looked at it,” Loeffler told reporters Wednesday, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist Greg Bluestein. “January 6 is a long way out and there’s a lot to play out between now and then,” she added, while also refusing to acknowledge that President-elect Joe Biden won the race.

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

Loeffler may have simply been bluffing in a nod to tantalizing Donald Trump's rabid base, but walking back that potentiality will be next to impossible without thoroughly galvanizing the right wingers against her.

Loeffler's Democratic challenger, Rev. Raphael Warnock, was quick to respond, tweeting, "Say it with me @KLoeffler: @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris won the election. It’s disrespectful to Georgia voters to say anything else."

Warnock's retort was also targeted at motivating the Democratic base to action on Jan. 5 over Loeffler and her GOP counterpart Sen. David Perdue’s continued refusal to recognize the rightful winners of the state's presidential contest: Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who will become the first woman and person of color to serve as the nation's second in command. 

Loeffler's gambit comes just one day after GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell finally conceded Biden had emerged victorious. McConnell's acknowledgement came after Senate Republicans had underwritten Trump's all-out assault on U.S. election for more than five weeks, but it still drew a rebuke from Trump in the wee hours of Wednesday morning claiming he won the election "by a lot."

"Too soon to give up. Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry!” Trump added. 

Following McConnell's concession to Biden Tuesday, the GOP Senate leadership team had explicitly implored members of their caucus not to contest the election results during congressional certification on Jan. 6—a doomed bid that would require at least one GOP senator to join forces with a Republican representative from the lower chamber. Loeffler clearly decided Trump's tweet had left her little choice but to continue spinelessly paying lip service to his fascist fantasies and those of his supporters. 

It's not much a surprise, frankly. Loeffler—who has repeatedly leveraged her Senate post to profit off the nation's pandemic crisis—is nothing if not an opportunist. 

The only real surprise these days is when Republican lawmakers take a stand in favor of our democracy instead of attacking it. But doing that involves the type of integrity that virtually ensures someone will also have to renounce their membership in the Republican party. Loeffler’s only saving grace is that congressional certification takes place one day after the Jan. 5 runoff. By then, she’ll have dropped Trump’s voters like a hot potato to get back to placing more impeccably timed stock trades for profit. 

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["All know: talk is cheap; Liars can claim anything; No evidence?! Balk!"]

From In re Wizenberg, decided yesterday by the Eleventh Circuit (in a per curiam before Judges Charles Wilson, Adalberto Jordan, and Britt Grant):

Anna Wizenberg's death in 2010 sparked a long and bitter intrafamily dispute between her sons, Peter and Howard Wizenberg. What started as a probate case and then moved into bankruptcy court is now before us as an appeal of a district court order imposing sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 against Peter, a pro se debtor. The district court's order adopted the bankruptcy court's report, which recommended sanctioning him for his conduct in an adversarial proceeding filed by his brother Howard, who is a creditor in the bankruptcy case.

Peter, a member of the Florida bar who holds himself out as a bankruptcy attorney, argues that the district court abused its discretion in sanctioning him. The conduct that led to the sanctions included, among other things, his repeated "shushing" of opposing counsel during a deposition; his submission of lengthy and superfluous filings, one in which he wrote a nonsensical haiku; his argument that the bankruptcy court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to preside over a dispute explicitly provided for in the Bankruptcy Code; and his assertion that he did not know what a privilege log was despite being a barred attorney….

[At one point in the litigation,] Peter filed a 153-page motion for reconsideration of the bankruptcy court's order denying him summary judgment, including in it accusations of domestic violence against Howard, as well as other immaterial details about family life. The filing concluded with what the bankruptcy court would later describe as "pointless poetry"—the haiku, which read: "All know: talk is cheap; Liars can claim anything; No evidence?! Balk!" The bankruptcy court denied the motion for reconsideration.

Howard deposed Peter on August 6, 2018, and Peter deposed Howard the next day. Throughout Howard's deposition, Peter engaged in several hostile exchanges with Howard and opposing counsel. Peter asked repetitive and unprofessional questions, told opposing counsel to "[s]hush, shush, shush," and bickered with opposing counsel on the record.

The next day, Howard moved the bankruptcy court to compel Peter to produce a privilege log, and said that when Peter was deposed, he testified to the existence of relevant and responsive documents that he did not produce based on attorney-client privilege. Howard said that Peter had not produced a privilege log and that he claimed not to know what one was. The bankruptcy court granted Howard's motion and ordered Peter to produce a privilege log detailing which documents and communications he thought were protected.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the sanctions, and concluded Peter made frivolous arguments on appeal as well:

Because Peter relied on "clearly frivolous arguments," we grant Howard's motion for appellate attorney fees. We limit the award to the costs that he incurred for this appeal, because there is a corresponding Rule 38 motion pending in the district court seeking fees for that appeal. The costs for this appeal total $3,390, and we award Howard fees in that amount.

As the father of two sons (born 1½ years apart), I can confidently say: There's no bickering like sibling bickering.

Commenters: Bonus points if your comment is in haiku form. UPDATE: The commenters are rising to the occasion; check it out.

UPDATE: David Nieporent rightly chastises me for omitting this passage from the opinion:

Peter, a self-proclaimed bankruptcy attorney, filed an 88-page opening brief littered with exclamation points and rants about what he views as a grave miscarriage of justice. He fails to coherently cite case law, though he cites Bugs Bunny. The brief is difficult to follow, and deciphering and reorganizing his arguments wasted taxpayer resources that otherwise could have been spent on cases "worthy of consideration."

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I just don't see why everyone's so pro-consciousness.

Today's News:

The theory goes that Donald Trump, once he has gotten another month of pathetic narcissistic whining out of his system, will in January permanently move to Mar-a-Lago to spend time with—well, not with his family, but at least with an ever-present rotation of paying admirers. It'll be his own little theme park—a one-figure wax museum with himself as the feature attraction.

If this sounds like hell on Earth to you, rest assured that Trump's wealthy Palm Beach neighbors share your opinion. They don't like the idea of living next to Nazi Disneyland and are once again demanding that the city force Trump to keep his past promises (ha) that the property will not be used as a residence. The Washington Post reports that Mar-a-Lago's neighbors delivered a new letter to the city reminding them of such, which may once again put the city on the spot when it comes to enforcing their agreements with Trump or once again caving in.

This is all in dispute because of the arrangements Donald Trump set up when he turned the mansion into a private rich-person club. At the time, Trump assured the city of a great many things, including that the compound would not be used as full-time residence by him or by anyone else. Trump went on to of course break every one of the past agreements whenever he had a desire to do so, because that is literally how he does "real estate" deals: He lies, daring the other party to spend the enormous amounts of cash required to enforce their contract.

One of the latest Mar-a-Lago breaches was the installation of a private helipad, which Trump claimed was now a Secret Service necessity but which his team promised would for sure be removed again when the Secret Service didn't need it. Photographs soon after its construction proved that Trump's family was using it for their own purposes, and the odds that Trump will agree to not do that when he is no longer in office are approximately zero. Get used to helicopters, Mar-a-Lago neighbors.

And, in fact, Trump has already been claiming that Mar-a-Lago is his permanent residence. He did so when he voted in these last elections, asserting in his voter registration forms that he lived at the Mar-a-Lago address, not the White House, in order to vote absentee in the state. This is the sort of fraud that (not white) Americans can face heavy prison time for attempting, but if you are a rich and powerful ultraturd, nobody bats an eye.

Now Palm Beach is in a familiar position: fight Trump in court, for years, at great expense, or simply allow him to break the agreement forbidding him from using the property both as for-profit club and private home and admit once again they got played. It's almost certain that they will. The possibly most appropriate compromise, in which Trump agrees to turn the property back into a private residence and end its use as a business, will never happen because Trump very, very, very much needs every dime he can squeeze out of his devotees. He has very big loans coming due soon, and few ways of making anything close to the amount of money needed to avoid bankruptcy.

Especially if bank fraud charges make him an even more toxic figure in the non-crooked segments of the finance world.

So this will be fun to watch, in a glad-we're-not-them way. Will Trump's wealthy neighbors succeed in getting the worst person in America to not move in next to them? Will Trump really decamp to Mar-a-Lago at all, when Trump Tower offers so much more privacy and freer access to Russian organized cri—I mean, to the other Trump Tower residents?

Will Trump instead decide that he has a new, irresistible desire to live in some nation that has no extradition agreements with the United States?

I'm still betting on the last one; the man has now gotten used to being able to break laws with reckless abandon while relying on a staff of government officials to shield him from the results. He's not going to be able to stop, which means he's going to have to go shopping for a city and nation that lets its oligarchs violate laws with even less oversight than Palm Beach, Florida, and the United States can be bothered to provide. Somewhere in the Middle East, probably. No helipad rules at all in some of those places.

Due to the coronavirus, American work culture is changing. Office holiday parties should too.

I’ve become nostalgic about last year’s office holiday party, as one does in 2020. It was lightly snowing that night, and I was on the deck of some Manhattan rooftop, surrounded by clear plastic igloos that have become hot commodities in pandemic times. Donald Trump was being impeached by the House of Representatives, and my colleagues from Vox Media’s New York office were singing off-key karaoke downstairs — and I sometimes wish I had joined them.

For better or worse, the coronavirus has changed the nature of office work, and for many white-collar employees like me, it has been months since they’ve last shared a physical workspace with colleagues. Holiday party season has rolled around again, but the concept of an office gathering carries some uneasy weight, especially for cash-strapped businesses that have had to lay off workers. The unprecedented nature of the pandemic has prompted companies to rethink the social obligations tied up in the office holiday party — who these events are for, what purpose they serve in American work culture, and whether it’s even necessary to pivot to virtual.

According to an American survey of almost 200 human resources representatives, just 23 percent of companies are planning a year-end celebration. And of those celebrations, nearly three-quarters will be held online. This is a staggering decline from last year’s survey, also released by the executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in which 76 percent of respondents announced plans to host a holiday party.

In separate polling conducted by Vox and Data for Progress, 26 percent of the 1,136 respondents said they were planning to host a holiday party with attendees outside of their immediate household. Meanwhile, only 10 percent said their workplace was hosting some sort of year-end event — with 70 percent of those planning to attend. Nearly half of respondents said they aren’t currently working.

From a human resources perspective, holiday parties are not just an important aspect of employee appreciation, but a means to foster a friendly work environment by bringing together workers from across the company. This year, bringing people together — safely, at least — doesn’t feel so together. Some companies are keeping it simple by focusing on virtual entertainment, while others are diverting extra budget money to charity. What was once a festive occasion for company bonding or, in some cases, financial stunting has little value in a world where workplace interactions have transitioned online.

For years, Silicon Valley has developed a reputation for hosting ostentatious parties, with some spending millions of dollars on expensive employee gifts, free booze, and winter decor. Wall Street, too, has started splurging again on luxury venues and holiday-themed frivolities since the 2008 financial crisis, when corporate spending dipped. (Wall Street’s holiday party spending is still down, though, compared to pre-Great Recession levels.) And this year, even some finance and law firms are scaling back and settling on cheaper remote alternatives, Business Insider reported. For example, Morgan Stanley is hosting a virtual benefit show to raise money for children’s hospitals, while PayPal’s global event is a 29-hour online “party” employees can tune in to.

But these year-end corporate events naturally vary by size and grandeur depending on a company’s finances. Many Americans are employed by smaller businesses, in which intimate holiday gatherings are a crucial part of building camaraderie despite the potential for awkwardness to emerge from a night of casual drinking. These companies don’t usually outsource their holiday planning process, relying instead on workers to coordinate the event schedule.

Alex Long, a program associate at the Wilson Center, a DC-based think tank, traditionally plays host for the center’s various end-of-year events, from its Halloween bake-off to its Christmas party. This year’s party was hosted over Zoom and Long improvised as Santa Claus, taking questions from employees’ kids. “To be honest, it was really cute,” Long told me over Twitter. “I think while the virtual holiday party is hard to pull off without it feeling stale or forced, having something or someone for people to laugh at rather than forcing any conversation felt sweet to be able to provide.”

Even though the Zoom party was only an hour long, Long felt there was an added layer of responsibility to keep the audience entertained. “We run a relatively small operation, about 100 to 150 employees, so the familiarity with each other helps take some of that pressure off,” he added. Without the ability to mingle in person, however, the entertainment factor becomes much more crucial.

For Finn Partners, a marketing and communications firm, employees could choose to participate in one of three virtual party options: trivia, a murder mystery game, or a sip-and-sketch art class. The firm’s New York office usually throws a traditional holiday bash with food, drinks, and a DJ, but this year’s change was a pleasant surprise, according to one employee. They were able to select food items for delivery, and for the murder mystery game, the company hired eight actors to play out scenes while employees were tasked with determining the killer.

Yet there is a subset of workers who believe the coronavirus should spell the end of the office holiday party. This might sound Grinchian, but some argue that employees can be better appreciated through holiday benefits or time off, not through raffles or corporate merchandise. The Harvard Business Review published a story in 2014 that urged companies to rethink the purpose of holiday parties. It cited studies that suggest these corporate-funded events aren’t accomplishing much at all: People don’t mingle with strangers, and there’s added risk of bad behavior, especially when alcohol is offered.

“I would so much rather get off work an hour early, but instead we’re going to be staring at frozen screens with BYOB drinks pretending it isn’t grim,” said Zelda, an employee at a tech startup based in New York. “You’re expected to go party hard and then still roll online and finish up work.” Zelda attributed the “work hard, party hard” mentality to startup culture. And while attendance isn’t mandatory, Zelda felt pressure to attend since she began the job remotely and hasn’t socialized with many colleagues.

Over-the-top celebrations and perks are meant to delight employees, but some are reassessing the ethics of financing such elaborate festivities. Honda Wang, a former employee of a popular coffee roaster company from Philadelphia, told me that corporate employees were, as a whole, treated better than baristas — which was reflected not just in the scale of their holiday parties but also in wages and benefits.

“Baristas also got holiday parties, but as the company grew, the budget didn’t grow with it, so it became more austere as time went on,” said Wang, who graduated from barista into a corporate role. “This is a separate issue, but I believe the money generated [from the team I was on] could have easily gone back into paying baristas a $15 minimum wage.”

Wang admitted he enjoyed the perks of working in corporate, beyond the office parties: The company paid for expensive dinners, and managers actively encouraged his team to splurge on clients. Over time, though, he became uneasy at how poorly the baristas were treated as the business expanded. It was “a microcosm of income inequality all within a single coffee company,” Wang concluded.

Wang’s anecdote is reflective of a pervasive labor problem, in which companies favor and court certain types of workers over others. Silicon Valley’s tech behemoths, for example, rely on contract workers to fulfill certain temporary roles. But these white-collar contract workers aren’t able to revel in the many corporate perks dished out by the likes of Google and Facebook.

As KQED reported last April, these contractors don’t work directly for tech companies, and usually earn less than their employee counterparts. Experts, academics, and labor advocates who spoke with the radio station estimated more than 100,000 contractors are working in tech, filling in for both white- and blue-collar roles. Last December, The Verge’s Casey Newton reported that Pinterest slashed contractor pay during the holidays. The company traditionally pays its culinary and maintenance workers during the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. That perk was only extended to full-time employees in 2019 as the company sought to cut costs.

Sure, company budgets are opaque and complex, and the fact that contractors and less skilled employees are poorly treated is more complicated than an indictment of corporate party culture; celebrating workers is not the only outsize cost companies may have on their balance sheet. It does, however, reveal disparities in employee treatment and highlights how a certain type of worker is often prioritized — to the point of excess — over others.

The coronavirus has pulled back the curtain on America’s staggering inequalities: The pandemic is disproportionately affecting low-wage workers in the hospitality, travel, and meatpacking industries, compared to the college-educated professional class. Employees are saying they’d rather receive hazard pay or bonuses for their work than cursory gestures of year-end appreciation. Online, people are urging companies to devote their party budget to local food pantries or charitable causes. The British property firm Landmark Investments, for example, has launched a campaign called Xmas Party Heroes, urging big corporations to pledge their party budgets for charity.

In a year of adapting to the “new normal,” maybe companies should consider shirking tradition when it comes to appreciating employees and building collegial camaraderie. American work culture is evolving, and as the new year approaches, managers and workers should forge an environment that collectively benefits all employees, not just a select few.