As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the U.S. in higher than ever numbers, the government of Donald Trump still has no plan to tackle the virus beyond waiting for a vaccine. Today, as President elect Joe Biden forms a coronavirus task force and waits in vain for Trump to concede the election, we’ll share a mini documentary by our partners at Brave New Films on preventable Covid-19 deaths and how they have impacted the surviving communities.  

We Lost Our Sister: A Preventable COVID Tragedy – BRAVE NEW FILMS ACTION FUND

Website: www.bravenewfilms.org. 

A majority of Republican Senators are refusing to accept Joe Biden’s presumptive win of the electoral college and acquiescing to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede. As of Monday evening the only GOP Senators to have acknowledged Biden’s win were Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. In remarks on Tuesday morning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this. However four years ago when Mr. Trump won the electoral college vote in razor thin margins in key states, McConnell wasted no time in saying just days after that election that the results were, “Clearly an indication the American people would like to try something new.” Trump and his allies are claiming the election was rigged and have legally challenged the results. When asked by reporters to provide evidence of the voter fraud that she and others have repeatedly alluded to White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany could not name a single one. On Monday, McEnany’s claims of voter fraud sounded so dubious that even Fox News cut away from her remarks in disgust. 

On Monday Attorney General William Barr handed federal prosecutors the authority to investigate claims of voter fraud, giving political weight to Trump’s outlandish assertions. The move is typical for Barr who has politicized his office for Trump’s benefit. The move was so egregious that Richard Pilger, a man the New York Times described as, “a career prosecutor in the department’s Public Integrity Section who oversaw voting-fraud-related investigations,” has now resigned, presumably in protest. Joining the partisan war, Republican State Attorneys General are also signing on to help Trump after a group of them asked the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a lower court ruling extending the mail-in ballot deadline. Some lawyers at the firms representing the Trump legal challenges are now reportedly uneasy over being part of an obviously politicized effort designed to erode trust in U.S. elections. 

Emily Murphy, a Trump appointee and the head of the General Services Administration, is still refusing to sign a letter formally authorizing the transition of power to Biden. There are national security implications over Murphy’s refusal as Biden and his team have not been privy to presidential daily briefings or classified information. A bi-partisan group of former Homeland Security secretaries signed an open letter saying that Trump’s, “legal claims cannot and must not prevent the transition process from beginning.”

In Georgia where an official winner has still not been declared and where there are two Senate runoff races scheduled for January,

FEATURING BILL FLETCHER JR. – President elect Joe Biden declared victory on Saturday night in front of a massive drive-in rally in Delaware after news outlets finally tallied electoral college votes from Pennsylvania. Biden spoke triumphantly of the mandate that millions of voters handed him and his running mate Kamala Harris but promised to be a President for all Americans, not just Democrats. He also specifically raised several issues that need immediate work.  

Bill Fletcher Jr., is a racial justice, labor & international activist. Executive Editor of GlobalAfricanWorker.com. He is the former president of TransAfrica Forum, a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, and an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com. He is also the author of a number of books including They’re Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths about Unions; Reimagining Labor Unions: Busting Myths, Building Movements; and Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice. 

FEATURING KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH – There are many, many, things on President elect Joe Biden’s plate in the weeks after winning reelection, among them: repairing the U.S.’s relationship to the rest of the world. President Trump has cozied up to dictators and unsurprisingly they are among those world leaders who have not congratulated Biden yet. 

 Will Biden take the U.S. back to the years of Obama’s foreign policy where relations with nations like China, Russia, and North Korea were hostile? Will he be able to repair relations with Iran that had signed a historic nuclear pact? Will he constructively address violence and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen? Will he remain as friendly with Israel’s apartheid state as Trump was or pull back slightly as Obama did?

Read Khury’s latest piece in Foreign Policy in Focus is entitled, “Iran’s Not the Aggressor. The U.S. Is,” HERE. 

Khury Petersen-Smith, Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest piece in Foreign Policy in Focus is entitled, “Iran’s Not the Aggressor. The U.S. Is.”

President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper in an announcement on his Twitter feed on Monday, replacing him with the head of the National Counterterrorism Center Christopher Miller. The President, who has continued to dig in his heels about what he calls a “rigged election,” has so far refused to concede. On Saturday Associated Press and other media outlets called Pennsylvania’s vote for Democratic Nominee Joe Biden, and later that night Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris gave their victory speeches in Delaware.

Although vote counting still continues in several states and the final official turnout is yet-to-be determined, voters broke records in showing up the polls. The youth turnout was particularly high and may have helped Biden win. White Evangelicals also voted in high numbers, mostly turning to Trump who has courted them for years. Trump remains determined to challenge the results of the election although he has lost multiple times in court over the last week. On Saturday he announced a “big press conference” at an unlikely location: the Four Seasons Total Landscaping – a small business in Philadelphia near an adult bookstore and crematorium. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke at the press briefing as media outlets speculated about the bizarre choice of location that was ultimately a fitting symbol of the Trump presidency. Trump plans to continue holding rallies and promoting his efforts to reclaim the election. 

Meanwhile President elect Biden is moving swiftly ahead with a transition to the White House even as some Republicans refuse to accept his win –including top Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Emily Harris, the little-known Trump appointee who heads the General Services Administration in charge of signing over transition authority to Biden, is reportedly refusing to do her job. Still, Biden moved forward to name a 13-member coronavirus task force that will include Dr. Rick Bright, the whistleblower scientist that Trump fired.

FEATURING REP. CHRIS RAAB AND CAROLYN FIDDLER – Vote counting continues in several key states days after election day and as of now in Pennsylvania Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by almost 15,000 votes. In Georgia Biden’s edge is more than 4,000 votes, and in Nevada his already large lead expanded to more than 20,000. Republicans are accusing Pennsylvania authorities of election fraud and claiming that they were not allowed to have observers, even as police foiled a potential plot by armed men who were headed to the convention center where vote counting is taking place. 

Crowds have been gathered in Philadelphia for days since the election with dueling protests by Black Lives Matter activists and others demanding to “Count Every Vote,” alongside Trump supporters demanding that they “Stop the Count.”  

Senator Lindsey Graham has personally donated half a million dollars to the Trump campaign’s legal fund as the President attempts to salvage his reelection by any means necessary.

Chris Rabb, serving in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives representing District 200 and just won reelection. His district covers parts of Philadelphia; and Carolyn Fiddler, one of the nation’s foremost experts in state politics and is communications director at Daily Kos. She writes “This Week in Statehouse Action,” a newsletter that provides updates on state politics to thousands of reporters, political operatives and observers each week. 

FEATURING SARU JAYARAMAN – As the states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, flip from red to blue in the Presidential election, we turn our focus on how working-class communities of color put in the tremendous work to make this possible. The presumptive President elect Joe Biden would likely not have won the margins in swings states that he needed were it not for these crucial constituencies. 

Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Assistant Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley.

FEATURING SARA VAN GELDER – As presumptive President elect Joe Biden starts crafting his first term agenda, choosing key appointments, we’ll turn today to the conversation of what’s next for progressive movements in the nation. On Friday morning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Biden a “great unifier.” 

Sarah Van Gelder, activist, speaker and author of The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000-Mile Journey Through a New America. She is also the co-founder of PeoplesHub and Yes Magazine.

Vote counting in several key states continued late Thursday night into Friday morning leaving the results of the November 3rd Presidential race up in the air for the third day in row. In the middle of the night, votes that had been cast in the Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Atlanta flipped President Donald Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia respectively, giving Joe Biden the edge. Those densely populated cities where communities of color organized massive voter registration efforts had large backlogs of votes to count and turned the tide against Trump as many had predicted. Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced, “With a margin that small, there will be a recount in Georgia. Interest in our election obviously goes far beyond Georgia’s borders. The final tally in Georgia at this point has huge implications for the entire country.” Georgia’s state legislature is dominated by Republicans. In Arizona, where Biden took an early lead, the race appears to be tightening but the Democratic nominee maintains his lead. 

Many blame Republican state lawmakers for this week’s vote counting delays in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania where it was known that densely populated districts that leaned heavily Democratic would vote early and/or by mail. Lawmakers in those states insisted that there could be no counting of votes until election day, thereby setting up nail-biting finishes where President Donald Trump could cast doubts on vote tallies and challenge results in court. Trump has lost challenges in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada. On Thursday late afternoon Trump gave a low-energy press briefing at the White House where he spewed so many lies that most networks simply cut away from carrying it live. He began by saying, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” Later, on Twitter, where the social media platform has flagged many of his posts, Trump said out loud what he has planned for weeks: that the Supreme Court should intervene in the election. The campaign lawyers that are petitioning the court apparently have ties to Trump-appoin...

FEATURING AUNNA DENNIS, HUWAIDA ARRAF AND NICOLAS O’ROURKE –Vote counts continue in key states as the Presidential election results hang in the balance. Today we turn to guest experts from three states who have been closely following events.

Aunna Dennis, Executive Director of Common Cause Georgia; Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian American lawyer and human rights activist, and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. She is also the former Chair of the Free Gaza Movement; and Nicolas O’Rourke, a pastor, former city council candidate, and Pennsylvania Organizing Director of the Working Families Party.