AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Biden seeks to move quickly and build out his administration
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden signaled on Sunday he plans to move quickly to build out his government, focusing first on the raging pandemic that will likely dominate the early days of his administration.
Biden named a former surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, and a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, David Kessler, as co-chairs of a coronavirus working group set to get started, with other members expected to be announced Monday.
Transition team officials said that also this week Biden will launch his agency review teams, the group of transition staffers that have access to key agencies in the current administration to ease the transfer of power. The teams will collect and review information such as budgetary and staffing decisions, pending regulations and other work in progress from current staff at the departments to help Biden’s team prepare to transition. White House officials would not comment on whether they would cooperate with Biden's team on the review.
“People want the country to move forward," said Kate Bedingfield, Biden deputy campaign manager, in an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press, and see Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris "have the opportunity to do the work, to get the virus under control and to get our economy back together."
It's unclear for now whether President Donald Trump and his administration will cooperate. He has yet to acknowledge Biden's victory and has pledged to mount legal challenges in several closely contested states that decided the race.
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Nursing home COVID-19 cases rise four-fold in surge states
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite Trump administration efforts to erect a protective shield around nursing homes, coronavirus cases are surging within facilities in states hard hit by the latest onslaught of COVID-19.
An analysis of federal data from 20 states for The Associated Press finds that new weekly cases among residents rose nearly four-fold from the end of May to late October, from 1,083 to 4,274. Resident deaths more than doubled, from 318 a week to 699, according to the study by University of Chicago health researchers Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka.
Equally concerning, weekly cases among nursing home staff in surge states more than quadrupled, from 855 the week ending May 31, to 4,050 the week ending Oct. 25. That rings alarms because infected staffers not yet showing symptoms are seen as the most likely way the virus gets into facilities. When those unwitting staffers test positive, they are sidelined from caring for residents, raising pressures on remaining staff.
The administration has allocated $5 billion to nursing homes, shipped nearly 14,000 fast-test machines with a goal of supplying every facility and tried to shore up stocks of protective equipment. But the data call into question the broader White House game plan, one that pushes states to reopen while maintaining that vulnerable people can be cocooned, even if the virus rebounds around them.
“Trying to protect nursing home residents without controlling community spread is a losing battle,” said Konetzka, a nationally recognized expert on long-term care. “Someone has to care for vulnerable nursing home residents, and those caregivers move in and out of the nursing home daily, providing an easy pathway for the virus to enter.”
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Biden shores up fragile 'blue wall' in industrial north
Joe Biden shored up the Democrats' “blue wall,” — more sturdily in Michigan, more tenuously in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to rebuild the party's path back to the White House.
And while The Associated Press had called all three states and their combined 46 Electoral College votes for Biden, the Democrat's relatively narrow margins there reflect the nation’s continuing deep divisions more than a newly strengthened Democratic bulwark in the industrial north.
Trump had stunned the country four years ago by winning the three states that had been carried for decades by Democrats by a total of 77,000 votes. He did particularly well in rural areas and among non college-educated white voters, and his victory showed a fraying of the Democratic coalition as more working-class voters viewed their former party as dominated by coastal elites who considered their homes “flyover country.”
Biden, from the start, sought to reclaim at least some of those voters, making his appeal as a son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who attended a state college, had known financial struggle, and could relate to their concerns.
“Joe Biden won these states because he and his campaign focused on how to win them individually,” said Amy Chapman, a senior adviser to Democrat Barack Obama’s campaigns in Michigan.
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One week in an America riven by politics and the plague
On Nov. 1, as election week dawned, Dr. Juan Fitz lay dying in the same Lubbock, Texas, hospital where he had worked in the emergency room for nearly 20 years.
Months before, he had told a professional journal of his fear that he would bring COVID-19 home to his two young children. But the Army veteran persisted: “Like I tell my students and residents, 'I am airborne, I am cavalry, I go into the thick of it and, challenged by the situation, find ways to improve and sort things out.’”
Now he was on a ventilator, and his time was ticking away.
On that same day, President Donald Trump sprinted across the country, trying to seal the deal on his reelection in the waning moments of the campaign. At his fifth rally of the day, in Opa-locka, Florida, he lamented that when “You turn on the news, it’s COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.”
When the predominantly mask-less crowd of thousands responded with a chant of “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!” the president seemed to suggest that he might contemplate dispatching one of the world’s most trusted authorities on the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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Trebek remembered for grace that elevated him above TV host
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alex Trebek never pretended to have all the answers, but the “Jeopardy!" host became an inspiration and solace to Americans who otherwise are at odds with each other.
He looked and sounded the part of a senior statesman, impeccably suited and groomed and with an authoritative voice any politician would covet. He commanded his turf — the quiz show's stage — but refused to overshadow its brainy contestants.
And when he faced the challenge of pancreatic cancer, which claimed his life Sunday at age 80, he was honest, optimistic and graceful. Trebek died at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by family and friends, “Jeopardy!” studio Sony said.
The Canadian-born host made a point of informing fans about his health directly, in a series of brief online videos. He faced the camera and spoke in a calm, even tone as he revealed his illness and hope for a cure in the first message, posted in March 2019.
“Now normally, the prognosis for this is not very encouraging, but I’m going to fight this and I’m going to keep working,” Trebek said, even managing a wisecrack: He had to beat the disease because his “Jeopardy!” contract had three more years to run.
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Fraud claims aimed in part at keeping Trump base loyal
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has promised legal action in the coming days as he refused to concede his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, making an aggressive pitch for donors to help finance any court fight.
Trump and his campaign have leveled accusations of large-scale voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other states that broke for Biden, so far without proof.
But senior officials, campaign aides and allies told The Associated Press that overwhelming evidence of fraud isn’t really the point.
The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, the officials said. They spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
Trump aides and allies also acknowledged privately the legal fights would — at best – forestall the inevitable, and some had deep reservations about the president's attempts to undermine faith in the vote. But they said Trump and a core group of loyalists were aiming to keep his base of supporters on his side even in defeat.
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Christian churches mirror country's political division
NEW YORK (AP) — The messages in Christian houses of worship on the first weekend since the election were as divided as the country's electorate, with religious leaders mostly calling for peace and unification even as some bemoaned the result and others celebrated.
Hours after the news broke Saturday of Democrat Joe Biden's victory, St. Joseph on the Brandywine Deacon Michael Stankewicz led a prayer during afternoon Mass at the president-elect's home church in Wilmington, Delaware, in which he asked “that our newly elected officials lead with wisdom and integrity to bring about unity, peace and reconciliation in our country and around the world.”
In Oklahoma, which voted for President Donald Trump by a 2-to-1 margin, civil rights activist and minister Warren G. Blakney Sr. started the Sunday morning service at North Peoria Church of Christ by noting the toll the virus is taking on his hometown of Tulsa and mourning the death of a church member the day before.
He offered an exultant message of political change to parishioners, saying the election provides the catalyst “to begin to celebrate a new era.”
“Aren’t you glad that 74 million hearts don’t want that stuff no more? I voted for change. I know that in January better days are coming,” Blakney said, shouting to make himself heard over the car horns being honked in agreement by worshippers attending the parking lot service.
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How Biden navigated pandemic politics to win the White House
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden was fresh off winning the Michigan primary and effectively capturing the Democratic presidential nomination, a prize he'd sought for the better part of three decades. Instead of plotting a strategy to build momentum, he was contemplating an abrupt halt.
He gathered his senior team in a conference room on the 19th floor of his campaign's Philadelphia headquarters, the type of in-person meeting that would soon be deemed a public health risk. A former surgeon general and Food and Drug Administration commissioner joined on speakerphone.
As the coronavirus began to explode across the United States that March, Biden asked a question that would ultimately guide the campaign's thinking for months: “What should I be modeling?”
The health experts recommended the 77-year-old Biden step away from campaigning as soon as possible, both for his safety and that of staff and supporters. Biden agreed. He decided that he and every staff member would work from home starting that weekend. All field offices would be closed.
He wouldn't return to in-person campaigning for 174 days.
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Astronauts arrive at launch site for 2nd SpaceX crew flight
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday for SpaceX’s second crew launch, coming up next weekend.
For NASA, it marks the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations at the International Space Station, with private companies providing the lifts. There will be double the number of astronauts as the test flight earlier this year, and their mission will last a full six months.
“Make no mistake: Every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel. But it's also true that we need to routinely be able to go to the International Space Station," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in welcoming the astronauts to Kennedy.
The crew of three Americans and one Japanese are scheduled to rocket away Saturday night, provided approaching Tropical Storm Eta doesn’t interfere. It will be a speedy trip to the space station, a six-orbit express lasting under nine hours.
The astronauts have named their Dragon capsule Resilience given all the challenges of 2020: coronavirus and social isolation, protests against racial injustice, and a particularly difficult election and campaign season. They have been in quarantine for a week or two and taking safety precautions — masks and social distancing — long before that.
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Convention centers, museums become classrooms amid pandemic
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — In ordinary times, the airy convention center on a 61-acre site in Hesston, Kansas, hosts weddings, corporate retreats and church events. During the pandemic, it has become a schoolhouse for the district's seventh- and eighth-graders.
Megan Kohlman teaches literature and writing inside one of the rooms, separated from a math teacher's space by only a plastic sheet. It's hardly ideal, but for her it's an upgrade from distance learning in the spring, when she juggled instruction with care of her own young children.
“Everyone just really believes in the power of having kids with us as much as we can,” Kohlman said.
Some schools are getting creative about finding extra square footage to facilitate social distancing and reduce the health risks associated with in-person learning. Districts are setting up makeshift outdoor shelters, bringing in trailers to house classrooms and making use of otherwise empty spaces like museums. As infection rates rise across the county with the arrival of colder weather, some education leaders say they wish such approaches were taken more widely.
School systems could take cues from the health care system, which has found ways to increase capacity when coronavirus cases surge, said Joseph Allen, a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor of exposure science who runs the school’s Healthy Buildings Program. He said the costs of keeping kids out of school are “devastating.”