The LuLac Edition #4,466, December 30th, 2020

 

7.     

TOP 10 NATIONAL STORIES

1  1. COVID VIRUS The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). More than 19,500,000 confirmed cases have been reported since January 2020, resulting in more than 337,000 deaths, the most of any country and the fourteenth-highest on a per capita basis. COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the US in 2020, behind only heart disease and cancer. Other killings of black men and women gunned down by police soawned a reinvigoration of the Black Lives movement.

.  2.     GEORGE FLOYD KILLING AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS            On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. During the arrest Derek Chauvin, a white police officer with the Minneapolis Police Department, knelt on Floyd's neck for about nine and a half minutes[a] after he was handcuffed and lying face down. Two police officers, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, assisted Chauvin in restraining Floyd, while another officer, Tou Thao, prevented bystanders from interfering with the arrest and intervening as events unfolded.

3.      PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.[a] The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and incumbent U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence.[Trump became the first U.S. president since George H. W. Bush in 1992 and the eleventh incumbent in the country's history to lose a bid for a second term, and Biden won the largest share of the popular vote against an incumbent since 1932. The election saw the highest voter turnout since 1900, with each of the two main tickets receiving more than 74 million votes, surpassing Barack Obama's record of 69.5 million votes from 2008. Biden received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election.

 4.      AFTERMATH OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION after Election Day, Trump and numerous Republicans attempted to subvert the election and overturn the results, falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and trying to influence the vote counting process in swing states. Attorney General William Barr and officials in each of the 50 states found no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the election. Federal agencies overseeing election security said it was the most secure in American history. The Trump campaign and its allies, including Republican members of Congress, still continued to engage in numerous attempts to overturn the results of the election by filing dozens of legal challenges in several states, most of which were dropped or dismissed by various courts, spreading conspiracy theories falsely alleging fraud, pressuring Republican state electors and legislators, and refusing to cooperate with the presidential transition in what was described by some as an attempted coup. On multiple occasions, Trump refused to concede and falsely declared himself the winner.

    5. THE BIDEN CAMPAIGN RESURRECTION Joe Biden was left for dead after the first few primaries. He lost in Iowa and had a terrible defeat in New Hampshire. His campaign was out of money. But North Carolina saved his candidacy. {Primarily black women voters came to his rescue.) He then went on, with very little money to win a string of primaries putting him over the top by early spring. Democratic voters decided the best candidate to blunt Trump’s inexperience and inability to learn was someone seasoned and sensible.  Other events overshadowed this astounding political accomplishment but we are noting it here.

6.      THE DEATH OF RUTH BADER GINSBURG AND ITS AFTERMATH   Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer on September 18, 2020, at the age of 87. Her death received immediate and significant public attention; a vigil at the Supreme Court plaza in Washington, D.C., was held that same evening. Memorials and vigils were held in several U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco. Ginsburg became the first woman to lie in repose at the Supreme Court Building, between September 23 and 24, a longer-than-usual period. On September 25, she lay in state at the Capitol, becoming the first woman and first Jewish person to do so. A private interment service was held at Arlington National Cemetery on September 29.President Trump's decision to quickly proceed with the nomination of a replacement for Ginsburg on the Supreme Court appeared to bring back together and energize the anti-abortion Evangelicals and conservatives, some of whom had begun to drift away from Trump. As a White House official told The Washington Post shortly after Ginsburg's death: "This is an animating issue for the entire right. It unifies everybody from Mitt Romney to the most hardcore MAGA Trump person out there at a time when Trump needed that. President Trump indicated that he specifically wanted Ginsburg's replacement on the Supreme Court to be confirmed by the November 3 election date because he expected the court to resolve the disputes about the election outcome.On September 26, Trump officially announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

      7.  THE IMPEACHMENT OF DONALD TRUMP The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is acquitted by the Senate on both Article I (48 yea 52 nay) and Article II (47 yea 53 nay) of Impeachment.

.    8.   THE MARKET 2020 stock market crash: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since 2008, triggered by fears of the spreading COVID-19

    9.  VACCINE:  The first successful phase III trial of a COVID-19 vaccine is announced by drug companies Pfizer and  BioNTech, which is 90% effective according to interim results

10.  STIMULUS BILL: Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Monday will try to push through expanded $2,000 pandemic relief payments for Americans after President Donald Trump backed down from a fight with lawmakers that could have shut down the federal government. In a sudden reversal late on Sunday, Trump signed into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, restoring unemployment benefits to millions of Americans and providing funds to keep government agencies running.

(AP, wikipedia, LuLac)