Molicandcf

But even that number will fall short. Pfizer is only expected to have 6.4 million doses of vaccine ready by mid-December.

A CNN analysis of the state breakdowns of what they plan to receive shows all will fall short of what they would need to fully vaccinate health care workers and long term care residents. CNN was able to confirm the expected size of the first shipment of vaccine for at least 45 states.

Now states must decide how they will ration the vaccine among their top priority groups and how the small first installment affects the timetable of when groups down the line can be vaccinated. Some states are already being forced to triage — choosing which healthcare workers are a higher priority than others.

California must vaccinate 2.4 million healthcare workers first and Governor Gavin Newsom said earlier this week that the state is only receiving 327,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer to start with.

Since that covers just a fraction of the healthcare workers needed to get vaccinated, Newsom said Thursday the state would be trimming its list of top priority group of healthcare workers even further to decide who gets vaccinated first.

“It’s one thing when you hear the national news about, well, we broadly all agree that our healthcare workers and skilled nursing residential care and assisted living facilities should be prioritized, but that is millions and millions of people. When you only have a few hundred thousand doses of vaccines – doses, you need two doses — you can cut that in half in terms of the total number of people that actually will be fully vaccinated. We have to look at some prioritization of those doses, and we’ve done just that,” Newsom said Thursday.

The Covid-19 vaccine in California will now go first to acute care facilities, nursing homes, dialysis centers and first responders before going to groups like home healthcare workers.

Alabama is receiving far less of the Pfizer vaccine than they were first promised from the initial shipment. Instead of their first shipment being 112,000 doses from Pfizer, the state will receive 40,950 doses, according to Alabama Department of Public Health Officer, Karen Landers. The state has designated 300,000 health care workers and 22,000 residents of long-term care facilities as among the highest priority group to be vaccinated.

“The Alabama Department of Public Health will follow its Phase 1a allocation of Covid-19 vaccine and, as necessary, ask providers to sub-categorize persons within Phase 1a based upon supply,” Landers told CNN. “For example, healthcare personnel who work in emergency rooms, Covid-19 units, have underlying health problems, or other factors, may receive the initial vaccines.”

Montana is only receiving around 9,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the first shipment when it has more than 40,000 healthcare workers to vaccinate before moving on to the rest of the state’s population.

“We’ll likely be receiving several thousand subsequent doses in the coming weeks” Governor Steve Bullock said in a news conference earlier this week.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state will receive 170,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine on December 15th. The state’s highest priority groups include 85,000 nursing-home residents and 130,000 nursing home facility workers.

For some states, the difference between the amount of vaccine they expect to receive and the number of people labeled as the state’s highest priority are not as far off.

In Texas, the state expects 224,250 doses of the Pfizer vaccine the week of December 14, but will end up with 1.4 million doses when combining shipments from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of December. The state estimated it needs to vaccinate 1.6 million health care workers to complete its first phase of the process.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice gave more detail in his Friday announcement of what the state will be receiving by sharing not only the initial shipment, but the ordering cap for each week. Justice said that West Virginia is expected to receive 60,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer on December 15 and 26,000 from Moderna the week after. The state can order up to 16,000 new doses from Pfizer a week and up to approximately 5,000 from Moderna each week.

The state has said its first priority group is approximately 100,000 healthcare workers, long-term care facility staff and residents, individuals critical to community infrastructure and emergency response, public health officials, and first responders.

The current President spent Sunday firing off delusional new claims to bolster his fantasy that the election was stolen, which did nothing to advance his inept legal cases but further poisoned hopes of national unity when he’s gone.

Biden waits in the wings

It was left to the heads of government health agencies, some of whom were effectively muzzled by the President ahead of the election, to muster national resolve.

Since Biden has little capacity to limit the explosion in Covid-19 cases, his most critical initial task will be to preside over the distribution of a vaccine developed by private companies in coordination with the current White House.

Giroir’s confidence is encouraging. But it must be seen as another upbeat assessment from an administration that has made repeated optimistic assessments on the provision of protective equipment for front-line workers, falling death rates, expanding testing and forecasts about hospital occupancy that have all proven to be empty.

Dr. Megan Ranney, a Brown University emergency physician who has been treating Covid patients, said Sunday that political failures had brewed a disaster in the nation’s hospitals.

“We have been talking for months about the need for increased supplies of personal protective equipment, about the need for increased testing supplies, we still desperately need those,” Ranney said on CNN “Newsroom.”

“But even if those were all available, the trouble is that the surge in Covid-19 patients right now is so great, it is overwhelming hospitals, it is overwhelming available beds and worst of all, it is overwhelming the number of available staff.”

Grim warnings from top health officials

The unity of messaging from government health experts over the weekend was remarkable and ominous — and only emphasized the silence of Trump, who has repeatedly lied about the US “rounding the corner” on the crisis, or Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force.

Giroir told CNN’s Dana Bash that he was “very concerned” about high levels of Thanksgiving travel and asked Americans to avoid high risk areas like bars and other indoors spaces.

“We’re entering into what really is a precarious situation because we’re in the middle of a steep slope,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I want to be straight with the American people, it’s going to get worse over the next several weeks,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The actions that we take in the next several days will determine how bad it is or whether or not we continue to flatten our curve.”

And another senior member of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, who said she hopes to begin briefing Biden’s team this week after a transition delayed by the President, said people who traveled for the holiday should get tested and avoid vulnerable relatives.

“To every American, this is the moment to protect yourself and your family,” Birx said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Pressure mounts on Congress to avert economic devastation

With the President absent, it will fall to governors and mayors to pick up the mantle of leadership again. But a flurry of new restrictions on public gatherings and restrictions on restaurants is likely to further damage an economy that has been hammered by the pandemic.

So pressure is rising on Congress to break out of its partisan stasis and offer more help to millions of Americans who are out of work because of the pandemic.

Lawmakers will return to Washington after the holiday this week after months of the two chambers failing to pass a new and combined Covid-19 aid package. The prospects for progress still look grim with a funding deal needed to avert a partial government shutdown by December 11. In the past, however, such deadlines have sometimes spurred a modicum of political cover that allows incremental deals. Still, a more comprehensive pandemic package may have to await the arrival of the new President in January. But the reality of divided power in Washington — pending two runoffs in Georgia that will decide control of the Senate — and the likelihood that Senate Republicans will rediscover their budget hawk instincts with a Democrat in the White House, only add to Biden’s huge problems. There is also concern that the failure of Congress to act will hamper the ability of states to train workers and effectively distribute several vaccine candidates.

Providing no evidence for his lies about the “greatest fraud in the history of our country,” the President more importantly offered no answers or responsibility for the testing days ahead in the worst domestic crisis to afflict the country since World War II.

“Let’s begin the work to heal and unite America and the world,” Biden said.

His recruits, many of them protégés, represent the antithesis of the philosophy, style and comportment of Trump’s authoritarian, “America First” and anti-science White House that is driven by conspiracy theories and a personality cult.

Biden’s domestic, health and economic policy teams, expected to be revealed after Thanksgiving, will likely share the same blend of experience and knowledge after catching the eye of a President-elect who has more years on his Washington clock than any modern predecessor.

“The purpose of our administration is once again uniting. We can’t keep this virulent political dialogue going. It has to end,” Biden said.

His overarching point is this: the American people, after watching chaos, nepotism and anti-intellectualism in government amid a pandemic that killed a quarter million of their fellow citizens and as the US turned its back on its friends abroad, now just want people who know what they are doing and don’t make too much noise doing it. Each of his nominees highlighted on Tuesday from Thomas-Greenfield, who is Black, and Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Hispanic, represent individual departures from Trumpism in personality, background and qualifications.

Multilateralism, diplomacy, quiet competence, scientific rigor, inclusivity, collegiality between top officials, respect for civil servants, the intelligence community and a welcome for immigrants are in.

Bashing allies, populism, nationalism, White House backbiting, despot coddling, ring-kissing Cabinet meetings, political hacks running spy agencies, and downplaying politically inconvenient threats — like killer viruses — are out.

Former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu believes that Biden’s nominees reflect the man who chose them.

“The President-elect has been demonstrating and modeling what presidential behavior looks like,” Landrieu told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin.

“He is just trying to demonstrate to the people of America what it looks like when you have a president that is balanced, that is stable that is thoughtful and experienced,” he said.

The President-elect is likely to adopt that persona again when he delivers a Thanksgiving address to the American people from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday.

A completely different America

The sharp turn that America will take on Inauguration Day on January 20 reflects the stark choice that was before voters on November 3 — which has been only made more clear during Trump’s subsequent attempt to steal the election. It also underscores the elasticity of an American political system that has the ingrained capacity to counter the excesses of its leaders and often produces presidents who are the opposite of their predecessors.

Four years ago, Trump won an election after a campaign in which he vowed to destroy the political and economic establishment in Washington. His presidency tore at the institutions of federal power and the consensus of elites on economic, domestic, immigration and foreign policy.

In many ways, in placing his faith in seasoned Washington hands like Blinken and Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines, Biden is rebuilding that administrative state. Perhaps only the President-elect himself is a more establishment, experienced and conventional figure than former secretary of state and long-time senator John Kerry, who will serve as presidential climate envoy and is exactly the kind of global citizen that Bannon and his fellow travelers decry.

Biden is not hiding his belief that more government is good. In a statement released on Monday after the Trump administration finally agreed to begin a transition, his team vowed to gain a complete understanding of Trump’s “efforts to hollow government agencies.”

And several of Biden’s national security nominees on Monday made a point of paying tribute to the unseen functionaries of government who keep the country running but were treated like an enemy within during the Trump years.

“My fellow career diplomats and public servants around the world. I want to say to you, America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back,” said Thomas-Greenfield. Haines spoke publicly to members of the covert community who were often on Trump’s target list.

“The work you do, oftentimes under the most austere conditions imaginable, is just indispensable,” said Haines. Several nominees offered fealty to the American ideal, Congress, the American public and democracy. While they all praised Biden, there was little of the exaggerated praise and expressions of personal loyalty that Trump requires of his subordinates. Haines told her new boss that she’d tell him bad news that he’d rather not hear, in another implied criticism of the Trump administration.

A different breed of official

The impression of professionalism and competence given by the group was a contrast to the late-term personnel on whom Trump has relied, who in many cases were unqualified for the great roles of state but prospered by prioritizing loyalty to the President.

Not all of Trump’s initial Cabinet picks were in the same mold. Those like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were experienced and experts in their fields. But their attempts to play the role that Biden expects of his appointees were frustrated when they were constantly undermined by Trump who saw his government as in exclusive service to his personal needs. And these officials, who were dubbed “adults” in the press, frequently spent their time reigning in an erratic President’s worst impulses.

Biden’s approach is designed for the circumstances in which he will take office. With Covid-19 raging out of control he will face a nation badly in need of an organized strategy to roll out the vaccine that could restore normal life. Just not being Trump and signing back up to the Paris climate accord will give him instant wins on the world stage.

But in the longer term, the test of his presidency will be whether his vision of calm, deliberative leadership can pacify a nation whose politics resembles an unruly jungle, where his opponents didn’t wait until he won the election to try to delegitimize him and where there is no longer a common version of truth.

After all, President Barack Obama once tried to engage his opponents with facts and logic within the traditions of the US governing system. It didn’t get him far with Republican opponents whose political existence was directed towards thwarting whatever he proposed.

If things go wrong, Biden will face claims that the return of the administrative state triggered disaster, which will fuel Trump if he runs again in 2024 and the candidates who hope he won’t so they get a shot.

Abroad, Biden must prove whether indulging allies, a methodical policy process and the grunt work of dialogue can constrain a world of rising US rivals who have rocked the fraying global system in which he came of age. Experience and foreign policy expertise in successive administrations never solved some of the thorniest issues — like North Korea’s nuclear quest.

One reason Trump won four years ago is that many Americans believed that the globalized instincts of a generation of Washington elites caused their jobs to go abroad and the wars in which their kids were sent to fight.

“Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline,” Rubio tweeted. “I support American greatness. And I have no interest in returning to the ‘normal’ that left us dependent on China.”

His tweet, which overlooked the fact that many Trump officials also went to Ivy League schools, encapsulated the duel between Biden’s traditional White House leadership at home and abroad, and the populism harnessed by Trump.

And Rudy Giuliani is still ginning things up. On Thursday afternoon, Giuliani, hair dye dripping down his face, gave a wild press conference where he alleged a massive multi-state conspiracy to steal the election from the President. As evidence, he pointed to votes in Philadelphia, a barely concealed mimic of the Detroit complaint and a clear effort to disenfranchise voters in cities with large Black populations.

“That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky,” said Chris Krebs, the DHS election security official recently fired by Trump, in a tweet.

The multi-pronged conspiracy is not millions more voters choosing Biden. It’s the expanding effort to overturn results in at least three states and undo a solid electoral defeat. It would be sad and funny if it weren’t quite literally about ignoring the voters to keep Trump in power.

And so it’s extremely distressing that Trump is on the phone with Republican officials who now say they want to rescind their certification of votes in Wayne County, which covers Detroit — a step that is normally just a technicality.

Much of Wall Street views the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election results as a desperate sideshow destined to fail. But JPMorgan is telling clients there’s still a chance that this process descends into chaos. It is 2020, after all.

Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management, warned in a report Wednesday of the “remote risk of an American horror story” and “constitutional mayhem.”

: Trust the votes

It was not that long ago that Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney was leading the GOP. Now he’s “shunned” by some, as he told David Axelrod in an Axe Files podcast released Thursday.

Mistrust of democracy. But I heard Romney say something else that completely hits the mark:

“Both here and around the world we are seeing a reduction in the confidence people have in voting,” Romney said.

“And if people don’t believe in voting, and don’t have confidence in voting, how can you have democracy, because democracy is fundamentally based on people voting.”

“And if the United State of America doesn’t believe that we have voting that’s reliable, why, how can you expect a country that’s just becoming a democracy to adopt this practice and use it as a basis for determining its future.”

The counterargument to this is that the 2020 election, despite Trump’s silly allegations of rigging, drew a record number of voters. For now, at least, voters are voting. And that’s a good thing. Georgia’s hand recount of its election reaffirmed Biden’s victory over Trump and found no widespread voter fraud — just like we thought it would.

Paralyzed Senate. He also described how the Senate, which is necessary to pass any major legislation, votes on very little major legislation.

“Over the years the Senate has moved and moved to a point where I think there’s a reluctance to vote on things that might be bad votes for members of the majority’s party,” Romney said.

“As a result we don’t vote on much. Not either up or down, things we agree with, but if it’s bad for Senator X, Y or Z, why then we don’t want to take that vote. We vote very rarely on matters of substance. Just as a particular, I think in the two years I’ve been in the Senate, we haven’t had a single vote on a matter related to health care, immigration, tax policy, climate change, the list goes on.”

: Where schools are closed but restaurants are open

As more people around the country deal with new restrictions on schooling and movement, Greg Krieg writes about the special situation in New York City, where schools were shut after school ended Wednesday — so suddenly that kids left their textbooks in class. Some excerpts from Krieg:

Poor delivery. It is a demoralizing setback for a city that slowly re-opened after seeing more than 30,000 pandemic deaths and now faces a deadly winter surge of new Covid-19 infections. The news was delivered to principals by the city’s schools chancellor at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, after hours of uncertainty, and set off a scramble among parents juggling child care needs and work responsibilities.

…

Conflicting standards. Part of the public confusion — and private differences — centered on how the city and state measure coronavirus test positivity rates. Some nine months into the pandemic, they are still employing different metrics to settle some of the most pressing issues facing New Yorkers.

…

Bars and gyms stay open! Frustration over the process and timing of the shutdown bubbled over almost immediately after the mayor, following hours of uncertainty, tweeted out his decision. That anger was compounded by the fact that city restaurants, bars and gyms — the places most experts say the virus is most apt to spread — remain open at limited capacities in accordance with guidelines set by the state.

: Now, reconsider Thanksgiving plans

“The reason that we made the update is that the fact that over the week we’ve seen over a million new cases in the country,” Dr. Erin Sauber-Schatz, the CDC’s lead for Community Intervention and Critical Population Task Force, said during the briefing.

I changed my plans this week and it didn’t make me sad so much as angry. When will this end?

I will admit to complaining about Thanksgiving in recent years. There are hassles. How to cook the turkey. Where to celebrate. Who’s coming. Who isn’t. Traffic. Those frustrations seem silly today, like the complaints you hear from people who don’t like to to celebrate their birthday.

So skip the big meal this year, but definitely celebrate your birthday. You don’t know how many more you’ll get.

The President spent most of Saturday golfing and tweeting his baseless and debunked conspiracy theories about how the election was rigged, and driving by a crowd of his supporters who gathered in Washington to protest the election results on the basis of his lies and propaganda.

He barely addressed the virus on Twitter Saturday, tweeting: “Congress must now do a Covid Relief Bill. Needs Democrats support. Make it big and focused. Get it done!”

Amid that leadership vacuum, many doctors and top medical experts are bracing for even greater holiday spikes, noting that Americans have simply let their guards down and given in to the desire to return to normal life. The President unquestionably played a role in those attitudes as the administration abandoned its coronavirus task force briefings months ago and he tried to win reelection by advancing the falsehood that the US was “rounding the corner.”

Given the complexities of rapid vaccine distribution and the potential for catastrophic consequences if doctors, hospitals and first responders don’t have what they need to handle the current rise in Covid-19 cases, Democrats — and even some Republicans from past administrations — are sounding the alarm about the need for more communication between the outgoing and incoming administrations in this grave moment of national crisis.

“We have a president who has gone AWOL,” said Leon Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton and as CIA director and secretary of defense under former President Barack Obama. “AWOL from the election and its results, AWOL from Covid-19 and the impact it’s having, AWOL from the transition and frankly AWOL from the presidency.”

“That has created a dangerous moment here,” Panetta told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Saturday night on “The Situation Room.”

Lack of communication raises alarm about virus response

“This crisis demands a robust and immediate federal response, which has been woefully lacking. I am the president-elect, but I will not be president until next year,” Biden said, underscoring the limitations of his position. “The crisis does not respect dates on the calendar, it is accelerating right now…. Right now is a moment for shared responsibility and shared action. Together, we have the power to rein in this virus. And I promise you, from the moment I am sworn in on January 20, I will do everything in my power to lead this unified national effort.”

The President-elect’s advisers have been increasingly vocal about their concerns about the lack of information sharing between the current and future administrations.

“This is truly a national security threat,” Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist, epidemiologist and Biden Transition Covid-19 board member, said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Friday evening. “I cannot even imagine another situation — if we were in the midst of a war — that you wouldn’t have handoff of information and plans to a succeeding president.”

“We’re at a point now, even pre-Thanksgiving, where we are surging beyond any level that we have seen over the last eight months,” Murthy, a former surgeon general under President Barack Obama, said on “The Situation Room.” “What we do over these next few weeks is going to have a profound impact on whether this spread increases or whether we ultimately control the spread of this virus.”

Local leaders weigh stronger measures to curb the virus

In the absence of a vigorous federal response, local leaders are once again considering more dramatic action to control the spread, which could create major economic and logistical disruptions.

The 2.4% test positivity rate in New York City is now close enough to the 3% threshold that could lead the city to close schools and transition students to remote learning, a possibility that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo discussed during a call with journalists Saturday where he added that some schools might be able to “test out” of closures if they have a much lower positivity rate than the surrounding area.

The resurgence in Oregon, where cases topped more than 1,000 a day for the third day in a row Saturday, led Gov. Kate Brown to announce a “two week freeze” on Friday that will limit social gatherings to six people and two households, close restaurants and bars and place new limits on the number of people who can gather within faith-based organizations. The freeze will span from November 18 to December 2.

“I know it’s hard and I know everybody is weary but we are trying to stop this ferocious virus from spreading,” Brown said.

In Los Angeles, where cases have surged from about a 1,000 a day three weeks ago to nearly 4,000 on Saturday, according Mayor Eric Garcetti, officials created the largest testing center in America at Dodger Stadium — ushering some 8,000 people through the testing regimen on a single day this past week.

On Saturday, the Navajo Nation ordered a new three-week stay-at-home lockdown, restricting travel and only allowing residents to leave their homes for emergencies or to pick up groceries, medicine and firewood.

“We are inching closer and closer to a major public health crisis in which we could potentially see our hospitals filling up with patients,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said in a statement. “Our health care system on the Navajo Nation cannot sustain a long-term surge in Covid-19 cases. The safest place to be is at home.”

Esper’s firing reflected the President’s capacity to rock key agencies of the government in his remaining weeks in office to make it easier to enforce his will and create disruption in the government that could hobble Biden’s early days in office.

“Frankly, he can do a lot of damage, by destabilizing every major agency, by firing a whole series of senior leaders,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday.

Monday’s developments emphasized that while Biden’s margins in states where the result of the election have yet to be finalized make any overturning of results almost impossible, Republicans are seeking to create a shadow over his triumph in order to delegitimize his presidency in the minds of millions of conservative voters. That may end up being Trump’s most destructive legacy.

A transition that is more important than normal

Traditionally, and in accordance with law, an outgoing administration makes available financing, office space and other federal resources to make the business of inheriting an entity as vast as the multi-trillion dollar US government as smooth as possible, on the principle that even political opponents share a desire to preserve the national interest. Typically, this process begins within hours of an election being called.

New administrations swiftly send “landing teams” into federal agencies to get up to speed in operations, to consider staffing needs and to receive briefings on vital programs. In national security and military departments, incoming officials learn of covert activity under way, behind-closed-doors diplomacy and threat information that a new president needs to know. The process also allows officials to get a jump on establishing their national security clearances.

His attitude — hardly surprising after his consistent prioritization of his personal and political goals — and the organizational roadblocks mean the next few months will be as acrimonious and chaotic as the previous three-and-a-half years of his presidency.

“I think this is going to be the most hostile and tumultuous presidential transition in modern history, at least since the 1932 transition in the middle of the Great Depression,” said Rebecca Lissner, a non-resident scholar at Georgetown University and co-author of the new book “An Open World” that lays out a new roadmap for US foreign policy.

“What we need to fear is what can happen when you have an outgoing Trump administration that actively hobbles the incoming Biden team whether by virtue of incompetence or whether by virtue of outright sabotage, something that does become a more distinct possibility in light of the President’s refusal to accept the result of the election,” Lissner said.

Biden team steps up rhetoric

Some national security experts are worried that the President could take steps such as ordering all US troops out of Afghanistan or seek to radically change the US footprint in Asia — moves that might be difficult for Biden to reverse.

And if a President who has consistently chafed at the limits of his power and politicized the Justice Department pursues pardons for his acolytes caught up in criminal cases — or even seeks to create prospective immunity for his family members or himself — he will stoke massive controversy and recriminations.

So far, the Biden team has sought to give the President space to digest his defeat. But with the Trump campaign vowing to pursue long-shot legal challenges, delays in starting the transition become more serious the more time passes.

Trump’s obstruction contrasts with recent handovers of power in which presidents have ordered their staff to do everything to accommodate their successor’s teams. Obama administration officials were surprised and grateful with cooperation from President George W. Bush’s White House during the last economic crisis in 2008-09. President Barack Obama sought to offer the same courtesy to Trump’s nascent administration, but in many cases incoming officials on a mission to gut the federal government turned a blind eye.

It was an almost surreal moment, after months of Trump’s misinformation over the virus, when a figure of authority who is close to assuming the mantle of the presidency pleaded with Americans of all political persuasions to wear masks.

“It’s not a political statement,” Biden said.

One advantage for Biden is that his staff numbers seasoned Washington hands such as Ron Klain — who served as chief of staff to vice presidents Biden and Al Gore — and Jake Sullivan, a former senior national security aide, who are prepped for senior West Wing roles. Despite such experience, however, Democratic operatives have been on the outside for the last four years. So it was significant to see Coons strike a new note of urgency on Monday evening on the need to get the process moving properly as the Biden camp realizes a contested transition is a possibility.

“President Trump needs to accept that he has lost the election. His allies and colleagues here in the Senate need to speak up about this matter and we need to move forward,” Coons said on “The Situation Room.” Those remarks will be interpreted as a calculated escalation of the Biden camp’s rhetoric since Coons is close to Biden and is considered a possible candidate for a Cabinet post, including secretary of state.

The GOP calculation

Only a minority of Republicans, including Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have publicly accepted that Biden won the election. Others, as they have throughout the Trump administration, have treated the situation with delicacy because they hope to have a political future.

“Let’s not have any lectures. No lectures, about how the President should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election and who insinuated that this one would be illegitimate too, if they lost again,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, referring to Democrats.

Still, there is also a sense that Republicans are going out of their way to give the President time to accept reality — just the latest occasion when his ego has dictated the course of governance over the last four years.

As the days pass, and the Trump campaign fails to produce convincing evidence and arguments to back up the President’s claims of electoral fraud, the inevitability of Biden’s assumption of power will set in.

Many foreign leaders are already looking past Trump. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a photograph of himself during a telephone conversation with he President-elect on Monday.

But that doesn’t mean the next two months are going to be an easy ride.

“The President of the United States is accusing the medical profession of making up Covid deaths so they make more money. Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives. They do their jobs. Donald Trump should stop attacking them and do his job,” Biden said in Minnesota.

Biden delivered a closing argument grounded in his desire to unify the country and be a president for all people, pledging to work “as hard for those who don’t support me as those who do.”

The former vice president told Minnesota voters that Trump has “simply given up” and questioned how many lives could have been saved if Trump had been candid with the American people about the risks the virus posed early this year. The former vice president also pleaded with voters not to give up their sense of optimism, while acknowledging that was a difficult request at a time when nearly 230,000 Americans have died from the virus.

Meanwhile, Trump slashed against the “arrogant, far-left political class,” suggested Biden would flood Minnesota with terrorist refugees, and made the wild claim that Democrats like Biden want to “imprison you in your homes while letting anarchists, agitators and vandals roam free as they destroy your cities and states.”

Trump’s claims about profiteering doctors sparked a backlash beyond the campaign trail. Susan Bailey, the president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement that the claim that doctors are overcounting Covid-19 patients or “lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge.”

“Covid-19 cases are at record highs today,” Bailey said as Friday marked the highest single day of cases in the United States since the pandemic began. “Rather than attacking us and lobbing baseless charges at physicians, our leaders should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work — wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing.”

Emergency physician and former Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday night that doctors are risking their lives at a time when one person is now being diagnosed with Covid-19 every second.

“We have one American dying of coronavirus every two minutes, and that number is increasing,” Wen said on “The Situation Room.” “In some states, one in two people who are getting tested are testing positive. That means that we’re not doing nearly enough testing, and that every person who tests positive is a canary in a coal mine.”

Wen added that there are likely to be “many more dozens of other cases that we’re not detecting, and that escalation is going to increase in the weeks to come.”

Trump rails against nation’s Covid-19 focus

The angry tone of Trump’s rallies and his attacks on doctors stem in part from his frustration that the country is so focused on the pandemic in the closing days of the election. Poll after poll has shown that coronavirus is the top issue on the minds of American voters and a broad majority of the electorate disapproves of Trump’s handling of the virus.

While Trump has gotten away with holding large rallies in other states, Minnesota has been particularly vigilant both with enforcement and contact tracing, and Trump lashed out on Friday at Minnesota officials who curtailed the size of his rally due to safety concerns.

But dismissing safety concerns as irrelevant, Trump argued that state officials, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, have created two sets of standards — one for the protesters who demonstrated against police brutality after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May and a different set for his supporters.

“Keith Ellison sided with flag burning extremists over law-abiding Americans. He treats you like second-class citizens,” Trump said in Rochester, Minnesota, on Friday night where state officials limited the crowd to 250 people. “He believes that the pro-American voters have fewer rights than anti-American demonstrators.”

As part of that argument, Trump once again conflated Black Lives Matter demonstrations, which were largely peaceful across the country this year, with the far smaller number of protests that turned violent and have served as a helpful foil as he tries to argue that Biden would coddle criminals while fomenting what he described as “vile anti-police rhetoric.”

Speaking in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Biden refuted that argument by zeroing in on the difference between peaceful protesters and violent agitators who took advantage of this year’s movement for racial justice.

“Burning and looting is not protesting, it’s violence clear and simple — and will not be tolerated,” Biden said at his event, which he said was seven miles from where Floyd was killed by a police officer. “But these protests are a cry for justice.”

The former vice president argued that Trump’s divisive language about the protests and his effort to pit Americans “against one another based on race, gender, ethnicity and national origin” are part of an effort to distract from his handling of the pandemic.

During his final event of the day in Milwaukee, Biden noted that the state is now experiencing a record level of coronavirus hospitalizations.

“This week, Wisconsin, like other states, set a new record for daily cases. Hospitals are running short on beds, just had to open a field hospital. That’s what we’re facing. We’ve now hit 9 million cases,” Biden said Friday night. “Millions of people out of work; on the edge and they can’t see the light. They’re not sure how dark it’s going to remain … and the thing that bothers me the most was a President who gave up.”

The latest signs that Trump is putting his political priorities ahead of his duty of care to the American people come as the President plans a frantic week of packed rallies that flout good social distancing practice.

Meadows sends shock waves through Washington

The extent to which the White House has all but given up fighting the pandemic — for instance, public briefings by top government scientists have disappeared — was made clear by Meadows.

Biden leapt on Meadows’ comments as he tries to make a case that Trump’s denial and downplaying of the greatest public health crisis in 100 years means he should be disqualified from serving a second term.

He said the White House chief of staff had “stunningly admitted this morning that the administration has given up on even trying to control this pandemic, that they’ve given up on their basic duty to protect the American people.

“This wasn’t a slip by Meadows, it was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

The President and Pence — the head of the coronavirus task force — have consistently refused to model the social distancing and mask wearing that is the most effective way to cut infections until treatments and vaccines arrive.

On Sunday for instance, the President mixed with supporters who were unmasked and closely huddled together, offering fist bumps and signing “Make America Great Again” hats.

“Deaths are starting to rise again, and vaccines won’t be widely available until next year even in the best-case scenario. Everyone banding together to wear masks, for a limited time, will be the least costly way for society to weather a difficult winter,” Gottlieb wrote.

Pence an ‘essential worker’

Even as news broke of the multiple infections in the vice president’s office, the White House declared he was an “essential worker” — a designation normally reserved for first responders and front-line medical staff — and said he would go on with his campaign program.

Pence, who was wearing a mask, clapped and jogged up to his podium at an event in North Carolina Sunday, the latest attempt by Trump and his team to foster a false impression of normality as the crisis deepens every single day. He never brought up the infections among his inner circle, barely mentioning the virus at the rally.

But the virus is now rising in 35 states and is steady in 15. New infections rose past 80,000 cases on both Friday and Saturday, breaking previous single-day records. US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams cautioned Friday that hospitalizations are up in 75% of the jurisdictions across the country. Deaths will likely also soon start rising.

The utter disconnect between the fast worsening reality and the behavior of Trump and Pence prompted David Gergen, an adviser to presidents of both parties who was speaking on CNN, to condemn what he said was, “a President and a vice president putting their own peoples’ lives at risk to advance their own political good fortunes.”

Meadows’ statement also had troubling echoes for another expert.

“I hear a lot of herd immunity in that statement and that is horrifying,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of Medicine at George Washington University, told CNN on Sunday.

“We can control the pandemic,” said Reiner, citing Washington, DC’s low incidence of the virus after earlier spikes and crediting mask wearing for the improved situation..

“What the chief of staff is saying is surrender. No, no, no, we get everyone to mask up — that is how we get the rates down.”

The responsibilities of leaders

The comments by Meadows caused awkward moments for several Republican senators, in town to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to a final floor vote on Monday.

“We all have control, and we all have responsibility as leaders to set an example that consists of doing the right thing to stop the spread,” the second-ranking Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, told reporters.

“There are certain elements of it that yes, we cannot control. It’s a virus. It’s very aggressive. It wants to infect a lot of people, but there are things about our own behavior that we can control.”

The other South Dakota senator, Mike Rounds, said the government should “definitely not” stop trying to control Covid-19. Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun advised throwing “the kitchen sink at getting the virus under control.”

The new cases of Covid-19 in the White House could not be closer to Pence.

Marc Short, his chief of staff, tested positive on Saturday, the vice president’s office announced in a statement late in the day. Sources told CNN that Marty Obst, a senior adviser to Pence who is not a government employee, and at least three staffers in Pence’s office also tested positive for the virus in recent days. Zach Bauer, a longtime aide and one of the staffers who works closest with Pence, has tested positive for coronavirus, CNN learned Sunday.

The event is due to take place at 9 p.m. ET, outside, a source familiar with the invitation told CNN.

Trump, in the middle of a grueling set of rallies after recovering from the virus, traveled to Erie, where he needs to outperform his strong 2016 showing to cut Biden’s current lead in Pennsylvania, potentially the pivotal 2020 swing state.

“You guys aren’t even open yet. What the hell is going on with your state?” Trump said at the rally, accusing Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf of keeping the commonwealth shut down for no reason. After reducing its case and death numbers from its initial bout with the virus early in the year, Pennsylvania is now seeing its cases of Covid-19 rise again, all across the state.

The Chinese account, the newspaper said, is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management and it paid $188,561 in taxes in the country from 2013 to 2015. Earlier Times disclosures have shown how the President has paid almost no US federal tax on his fortune for years. Trump insists he has paid millions to the Treasury.

Trump creates a scene during ’60 Minutes’ interview

Trump had spent the day performing antics that might appeal to his most loyal voters and provide fodder for conservative media but threaten to further alienate more moderate voters he needs to attract.

The President sat for a CBS “60 Minutes” interview — an age-old staple of campaigns — but sources said he walked out after 45 minutes and refused to complete a segment with Vice President Mike Pence. Soon afterward, Trump tweeted a gotcha photo of correspondent Stahl not wearing a mask in the White House.

A person familiar with the situation told CNN that the image from the tweet shows Stahl with her producers immediately after Trump had ended the interview, before she had gone back to get her personal belongings to put her mask back on. She had a mask on from the time she entered the White House and just before the interview began.

Then, in another sign of frivolity, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany sent out a photo of herself handing Stahl a thick book that she said listed all the President’s achievements on health care. Later, Trump, in a show of presidential whining, tweeted that he might release the interview before Sunday’s air date to prove what a “FAKE and BIASED interview is all about.”

The spectacle of a White House ambushing a TV reporter would be extraordinary in normal times, but it shows a profound lack of seriousness in the middle of a domestic crisis that has killed more than 220,000 Americans and as experts say an alarming rise in Covid infections may be a week away.

Trump demands action from Barr

Earlier, in a phone call to Fox News, the President called on Barr to open a preelection probe into his false claims that the former vice president is guilty of corruption in Ukraine — the country that Trump tried to coerce into interfering in the election to damage Biden in an abuse of power that got him impeached.

“We’ve gotta get the attorney general to act. He’s gotta act. And he’s gotta act fast,” Trump said in the interview. “This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”

The demand was the latest indication of how Trump has no compunction about using the powers of his office — meant to be reserved for the American national interest — to try to damage his political foes in full public view.

He followed up Tuesday by tarnishing the apolitical reputation that Fauci has built in decades of service to six presidents.

“He’s a nice guy. The only thing I say is he’s a little bit, sometimes not a team player. But he is a Democrat and I think that he’s just fine,” Trump said.

Expert sees rapid escalation in Covid cases

Trump’s attacks on Fauci underscore his most intractable problem in his effort to finally settle on an attack that negatively defines Biden and could broaden the President’s appeal wider than the fervent support of his most faithful voters. Trump’s failure to properly manage the pandemic and his constant denial about its impact on American life means he is at a disadvantage on the issue that appears likely to define the election. Experts are now warning of a fast-worsening situation across almost the entire nation just at the moment the President wants to declare victory over the emergency.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, is predicting a swift escalation of infections, which have recently raced back to average around 50,000 a day.

“It’s going to be a difficult fall and winter. I think we’re about two or three weeks behind Europe — so we’re about a week away from starting to enter a period where we’re going to see a rapid acceleration in cases,” Gottlieb told CNBC’s Shepard Smith on Monday.

After several days of criticizing NBC’s Kristen Welker, who will moderate Thursday’s debate in Nashville, Trump is now grumbling about the decision by the presidential debate commission to mute the mics for a portion of the encounter after his boorish interruptions in the first debate.

“These are not good people. This commission — a lot of funny things go on with them,” he said on Fox.

“I think the whole thing is crazy.”

A source close to Biden told CNN that the Democratic nominee is getting ready for Trump to “bully and deflect” onstage and is preparing for him to go after his family as well.

Throughout this campaign cycle, Trump has tried and failed to disqualify Biden from the presidency. The veteran Democrat has proven remarkably resilient, and Tuesday was another case study in why, as it showed all the ways that the President is limiting his own potential appeal.

Biden has a clear path to 270

Another riotous day at the White House unfolded with Trump, who is desperate not to be the first President since George H.W. Bush ousted after a single term, trailing Biden in enough swing states to cost him the election.

In Pennsylvania, Biden averages 52% support to Trump’s 43% in polling conducted between September 20 and October 5. In both Wisconsin and Michigan, the averages show Biden with 51% and Trump with 43%.

Trump’s hopes in Pennsylvania took a further blow with Monday night’s Supreme Court decision that means mail-in ballots — mostly preferred by Democrats — can be counted in the Keystone State for up to three days after Election Day on November 3. He called the decision “ridiculous” and “very strange.”

Across multiple states, voters are not waiting until November 3 to make their choices. Early voting records are tumbling everywhere.

More than 675,000 absentee ballots have been returned in Ohio, nearly double the figure at the same point four years ago.

More than 2 million voters have already cast ballots in North Carolina, a state where Trump tried to raise doubts about the legitimacy of early voting.

More than 27% of registered voters have already cast their ballots in Texas, and New Hampshire has seen nearly double the number of absentee ballots returned in all of 2016.

It is not possible to deduce exactly which candidate may have the advantage in early voting. The eagerness of voters to make their choices does reflect strong support for democracy even in the most extreme circumstances. And it makes one thing clear: The election is beginning to be decided right now, and the capacity of either candidate to change its dynamics is increasingly limited.

Still, Trump is putting his hopes in the kind of late surge that helped him beat Clinton in 2016 and is scheduling a flurry of swing state rallies to try to build momentum, even though the events will put his supporters — and people they will later meet — at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19.