CDC pleads with Americans to avoid Thanksgiving travel

NEW YORK (AP) — With the coronavirus surging out of control, the nation’s top public health agency pleaded with Americans on Thursday not to travel for Thanksgiving and not to spend the holiday with people from outside their household.

The Thanksgiving warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came as the White House coronavirus task force held a briefing for the first time in months and Vice-President Mike Pence concluded it without responding to questions by reporters or urging Americans not to travel.

Other members of the task force — whose media briefings were a daily fixture during the early days of the outbreak — talked about the progress being made in the development of a vaccine.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech will seek emergency government approval for their coronavirus vaccine on Friday. And infection disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci sought to reassure the public that the vaccine is safe while still encouraging Americans to wear masks.

The CDC's Thanksgiving warning was some of the firmest guidance yet from the government on curtailing traditional gatherings to fight the outbreak.

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Heading into holidays, US COVID-19 testing strained again

NEW YORK (AP) — With coronavirus cases surging and families hoping to gather safely for Thanksgiving, long lines to get tested have reappeared across the U.S. — a reminder that the nation’s testing system remains unable to keep pace with the virus.

The delays are happening as the country braces for winter weather, flu season and holiday travel, all of which are expected to amplify a U.S. outbreak that has already swelled past 11.5 million cases and 250,000 deaths.

Laboratories warned that continuing shortages of key supplies are likely to create more bottlenecks and delays, especially as cases rise across the nation and people rush to get tested before reuniting with relatives.

“As those cases increase, demand increases and turnaround times may increase,” said Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “So it’s like a dog chasing its tail.”

Lines spanned multiple city blocks at testing sites across New York City this week, leaving people waiting three or more hours before they could even enter health clinics. In Los Angeles, thousands lined up outside Dodger Stadium for drive-thru testing.

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Trump, allies make frantic steps to overturn Biden victory

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Among other last-ditch tactics: personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania set aside the popular vote there and pressuring county officials in Arizona to delay certifying vote tallies.

Election law experts see it as the last, dying gasps of the Trump campaign and say Biden is certain to walk into the Oval Office come January. But there is great concern that Trump's effort is doing real damage to public faith in the integrity of U.S. elections.

“It’s very concerning that some Republicans apparently can’t fathom the possibility that they legitimately lost this election,” said Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who researches and teaches election law.

“We depend on democratic norms, including that the losers graciously accept defeat," he said. "That seems to be breaking down.”

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Analysis: Trump's bid to spread misinformation and sow doubt

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is trying to turn America's free and fair election into a muddled mess of misinformation, specious legal claims and baseless attacks on the underpinnings of the nation's democracy.

The resulting chaos and confusion that has created isn’t the byproduct of Trump’s strategy following his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The chaos and confusion is the strategy.

Trump's blizzard of attacks on the election are allowing him to sow discontent and doubt among his most loyal supporters, leaving many with the false impression that he is the victim of fraudulent voting. That won’t keep Trump in office — Biden will be sworn in on Jan. 20 — but it could both undermine the new president’s efforts to unify a fractured nation and fuel Trump in his next endeavour, whether that’s another White House run in 2024 or a high-profile media venture.

“This is all about maintaining his ego and visibility,” said Judd Gregg, the former Republican governor and U.S. senator from New Hampshire. “He’s raising a lot of money and he intends to use it.”

The effects of Trump's strategy are already starting to emerge. A Monmouth University poll out Wednesday showed that 77% of Trump supporters said Biden’s victory was due to fraud, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump legal team's batch of false vote claims

Despite a lack of evidence of widespread irregularities or fraud, President Donald Trump’s legal team used a Thursday press conference to go through a laundry list of far-fetched, thoroughly debunked claims on the 2020 election.

Trump attorney Sidney Powell spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez” — the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013. She also said Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden “by a landslide," which he decidedly didn't — Biden was the clear winner.

A look at the claims and reality:

POWELL: “The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”

THE FACTS: No, Dominion does not have any ties to Venezuela, nor does it have a partnership with Smartmatic, according to Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development non-profit.

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EXPLAINER: Why AP called Georgia for Biden

WHY THE AP CALLED GEORGIA FOR BIDEN:

More than two weeks after Election Day, The Associated Press has declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential contest in Georgia, a longtime Republican state that the Democratic president-elect narrowly won by making major inroads in suburban areas that formerly favoured the GOP.

Biden won the presidency on Nov. 7, after capturing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which had swung for President Donald Trump in 2016. But his 0.3 percentage point lead over Trump in Georgia was so narrow that the state could not be called — until now.

It is AP’s practice not to call a race that is — or is likely to become — subject to a recount. While there is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points.

The AP called the race for Biden on Thursday after state election officials there said hand-tallied audit of ballots cast in the presidential race confirmed the former vice-president leads President Donald Trump by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted.

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NY probes Trump consulting payments that reduced his taxes

NEW YORK (AP) — New York's attorney general has sent a subpoena to the Trump Organization for records related to consulting fees paid to Ivanka Trump as part of a broad civil investigation into the president's business dealings, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that a similar subpoena was sent to President Donald Trump's company by the Manhattan district attorney, which is conducting a parallel criminal probe.

The Associated Press could not immediately independently confirm the district attorney's subpoena but the one sent by Attorney General Letitia James was described by an official briefed on the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The records requests followed recent reporting in The Times, based partly on two decades’ worth of Trump’s tax filings, that the president had reduced his company's income tax liability over several years by deducting $26 million in consulting fees as a business expense.

Records strongly suggested, The Times reported, that $747,622 of those fees had been paid to Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, through a company she owned at a time when she was also a Trump Organization executive.

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Biden chides Trump for lack of co-operation on vaccine

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden met Thursday with governors from both parties and criticized President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to block the peaceful transition of power, saying it was hindering the flow of information about programs to develop a vitally important coronavirus vaccine.

“Unfortunately, my administration hasn’t been able to get everything we need,” Biden said during a video conference with the National Governors Association’s leadership team, which consists of five Republicans and four Democrats.

His remarks highlighted the stakes of the Trump administration’s refusal to begin a formal transfer of power to Biden’s team. Besides being a pillar of American democracy, it is especially important this year since Biden will be inheriting responsibility for managing the worst public health crisis in a century. The president-elect also has been denied access to other critical information, including security briefings.

Participating from a theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, with Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, Biden specifically cited Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s partnership with private pharmaceutical companies to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

“We haven’t been able to get into Operation Warp Speed, but we will take what we learned today and build it into our plan,” Biden said in remarks after the meeting, which included Republicans Larry Hogan of Maryland, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Kay Ivey of Alabama, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Gary Herbert of Utah.

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Mnuchin rejects renewal of some Fed emergency loan programs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he will not extend several emergency loan programs set up with the Federal Reserve, an action that could hamper the ability of the incoming Biden administration to gain important economic support from the central bank to deal with the ongoing pandemic.

The decision drew a terse rebuke from the Fed.

The central bank said it “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”

But in a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, Mnuchin said that the Fed’s corporate credit, municipal lending and Main Street Lending programs would not be renewed when they expire on Dec. 31.

Under law, the loan facilities required the support of the Treasury Department, which serves as a backstop for the initial losses the programs might incur.

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J Balvin, Rosalía, Ozuna win Latin Grammys; Karol G performs

NEW YORK (AP) — Thirteen-time nominee J Balvin picked up the first award during the live telecast of the 2020 Latin Grammys, and the Colombian superstar has a chance to make history if he wins the top prize, album of the year, later in the show.

Balvin won best urban music album for his fifth solo release, “Colores." He was nominated twice in the category, also competing with his collaborative album with Bad Bunny, “Oasis."

He wore a mask as he accepted the honour at Thursday's event, airing live on Univision. Because of the pandemic, the Latin Grammys will not have a live audience and did not have a red carpet.

Grammy, Emmy and Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda kicked off the show with a strong message about Latin music. Speaking in Spanish and English, he said Latin music “unites all of us and makes us human.”

“This is our night,” he added.

News from © The Associated Press, 2020