
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis angrily defended the handling of a search warrant at the Tallahassee home of Rebekah Jones, the data scientist who ran the state's coronavirus dashboard until she was fired in May. State police officers entered her home with guns drawn on Monday, and Jones can be heard on body camera footage loudly pleading, “Do not point a gun at my children!” She later likened the officers to agents of the Gestapo, the secret police in Nazi Germany. Jones has alleged in a whistleblower lawsuit that her firing was in retaliation for her refusal to manipulate data to make the state's COVID-19 outbreak last spring appear less severe.

An Uighur man in Australia has been reunited with his wife and child after a three-year campaign to release them from Xinjiang in China. On Thursday, Australian citizen Sadam Abudusalamu was able to reunite with his wife Nadila Wumaier, and three-year-old son Lutfy in Sydney. The family was allowed to leave China following diplomatic negotiations.

Chinese authorities have detained a Chinese national working for the Bloomberg News bureau in Beijing on suspicion of endangering national security, the news agency and China's foreign ministry said on Friday. According to a Bloomberg report, Haze Fan was seen being escorted from her apartment building by plain-clothes security officials on Monday, shortly after she had been in contact with one of her editors. "Chinese citizen Ms. Fan has been detained by the Beijing National Security Bureau according to relevant Chinese law on suspicion of engaging in criminal activities that jeopardize national security," the Chinese foreign ministry said in response to a Reuters query.

Iran on Friday summoned Turkey's ambassador to Tehran over the Turkish president's remarks during a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, which Iran deemed offensive and said support a secession of Azeri ethnic parts of Iran. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Turkish Ambassador Derya Ors was summoned following Recep Tayyip Erdogan's “meddlesome and unacceptable” remarks in Baku on Thursday. The official IRNA news agency said Iran has asked Turkey's government for an immediate explanation.

Some Republican senators are using their unfounded election fraud claims as an excuse to muddy President-elect Joe Biden's transition. Biden has spent the past few weeks since the election filling out his Cabinet, hoping quick confirmations will help him get a quick start on reversing President Trump's policies. But "as long as there's litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Axios.

In the hands of Pierre Yovanovitch, the Paris apartment that iconic designer Jean-Michel Frank once called home gets a spectacular new lease on life Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

India will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the next six to eight months through conventional cold chain systems, the expert leading the initiative said on Friday. The government has lined up cold storage facilities with temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 48°F), said V.K. Paul, who heads the group of experts on vaccine administration for COVID-19 that advises India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Paul said these preparations meet the requirements of what he said were the four emerging candidates in the race for India's vaccine.

Pakistan's foreign minister on Friday called for the United Nations and the European Union to investigate a recent report exposing a 15-year disinformation campaign that Islamabad alleges was designed to serve India's interests and discredit Pakistan. The extensive report was published earlier this week by EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization. The findings detail how 10 defunct but U.N.-accredited NGOs were “revived” in order to influence the EU and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) isn't buying Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton's (R) claim that his lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the presidential election results in four states is due to concerns about the integrity of the vote. It's a "PR stunt rather than a lawsuit," Sasse told The Washington Examiner on Thursday and an attempt to gain "a pardon" from President Trump. The Associated Press reported in November that after several of Paxton's former aides accused him of bribery and other crimes, the FBI launched an investigation into whether Paxton illegally used his office to help friend and campaign donor Nate Paul, a wealthy real estate developer.

Canada approved Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, deeming it safe, effective, and ready for distribution, on Wednesday. Now that Canada's health regulators have deemed Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine safe and effective, all eyes have turned to the next phase: distribution. The first Canadians are just days away from receiving shots of Pfizer and BioNTech 's coronavirus vaccine, Canadian health officials said.

A lone senator from Utah has singlehandedly blocked the bipartisan approval of two new national museums to honor American Latinos and women, arguing that “last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation.” Republican Sen. Mike Lee objected Thursday to the creation of the two proposed Smithsonian museums, stalling two projects that have been in the making for decades and enjoy broad bipartisan support. Senate approval would have sent the legislation approving the Latino museum to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, then Democratic presidential nominee, second left, and Senator Kamala Harris, then Democratic vice presidential nominee, hold hands next to Jill Biden, left, during the Democratic National Convention in Wilmington, Delaware, on Aug. 20, 2020. To understand the dynamics of the incoming White House, it's worth stopping for a minute to consider the fulcrum that is First Lady-in-waiting Jill Biden. Dr. Biden — a Ph.D.-credentialed college professor and perhaps the most indifferent-to-politics person to take on the task since Mamie Eisenhower — had choked back her skepticism about the woman her husband was about to announce as his governing partner.
Nearly 2,000 containers aboard the ship managed by NYK Ship management of Japan were lost or damaged when it was hit by stormy weather in the Pacific Ocean, according the company's statement earlier this week. Dramatic footage shot by a YouTuber and obtained by Reuters showed ONE Apus carrying collapsed containers and docking at Kobe, one of the world's busies port cities. ONE Apus, owned by Chidori Ship Holdings, was travelling from Yantian in China to Long Beach, California, when it hit a violent storm about 1,600 nautical miles (2,960 kilometres) northwest of Hawaii, a statement issued on behalf of the companies said.

Steve Bannon, the former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has hired a lawyer who also represents the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to defend him against criminal fraud charges. Bannon's hiring of Robert Costello came five weeks after his prior lawyer, William Burck, withdrew following Bannon's Nov. 5 online suggestion that the government infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray be beheaded for being disloyal to Trump.

A congressional monitor of federal pandemic aid is raising the possibility of a link between President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a $700 million relief loan to a struggling trucking company. Bharat Ramamurti, a Democratic member of the four-person Congressional Oversight Commission, raised the possible Kushner connection at a hearing Thursday, as panel members from both parties challenged the Treasury Department's decision to award the loan to YRC Worldwide. The taxpayer-funded loan was made on the grounds that the company's operations are critical for maintaining national security.

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Susan Rice to head the White House's Domestic Policy Council. Rice, who was national security advisor to former President Barack Obama, has a longstanding relationship with Biden — as do many of Biden's recent appointments. Biden goes way back with his nominated secretary of state Anthony Blinken, agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, and chief of staff Ron Klain.

On Saturday morning, aggrieved Trump supporters are set to rally outside the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Department of Justice's headquarters. For the second time since those elections concluded, his fans are set to flock to the nation's capital to rally for a cause that the Supreme Court itself—on Friday night—dismissed. Arina Grossu, a Jericho March co-founder and staffer at the conservative Family Research Council, claims she had a vision two days after Election Day that imagined Trump supporters protesting the election results by marching around buildings.

President-elect Joe Biden on Friday introduced a series of key picks for his new government that drew heavily from the Obama administration, saluting their “deep experience” while insisting he could rely on them for “bold new thinking. Appearing with Biden were his choice for director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Susan Rice, who served as President Barack Obama's national security adviser and U.N. ambassador; and Denis McDonough, Obama's White House chief of staff, now nominated as veterans affairs secretary. His choice for agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, served in the same post for Obama for eight years.

Republicans are signaling that they won't support the $908 billion bipartisan coronavirus relief plan. The plan was intended to be a compromise between Democrats and Republicans after months of deadlock over how much should be spent and on what. Democrats have dismissed the White House's alternative proposal in favor of working on the bipartisan one, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that negotiations could continue after Christmas.

One of Florida's largest newspapers on Friday publicly apologized to its readers for endorsing the re-election of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) after the congressman signed on to the Trump-backed Texas lawsuit seeking to overthrow the 2020 election. This week, amid a series of resounding defeats for Team Trump's legal efforts to steal the election from President-elect Joe Biden, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a last-ditch lawsuit with the Supreme Court. The suit seeks to toss out the election results of four states that voted for Biden, claiming those states had unlawfully altered their voting laws.

President-elect Joe Biden is naming Susan Rice as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, giving her broad sway over his administration's approach to immigration, health care and racial inequality and elevating the prominence of the position in the West Wing. The move marks a surprising shift for Rice, a longtime Democratic foreign policy expert who served as President Barack Obama's national security adviser and U.N. ambassador. She worked closely with then-Vice President Biden in those roles and was on his short list to become his running mate during the 2020 campaign.
Democrat Michigan State Rep. Cynthia Johnson was stripped of her committee seats by senior GOP state officials after warning Trump supporters to 'walk lightly': Laura Ingle reports.

In the Southern California oceanside city of Manhattan Beach, one arm of government is urging residents to stay home except for essential needs while another is encouraging them to get out and shop and even providing places where they can sit down to relax, eat takeout and watch the sun set over the Pacific. It's one example of confusing messages from governments as most of California is under a broad shutdown order that includes an overnight curfew to try to stem record-breaking coronavirus cases that threaten to overwhelm the hospital system. While state and county health officials are pleading with residents to stay home and only mingle with those in their household, the order allows all retailers to remain open with 20% capacity and encourages people to get outside to exercise.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over his opposition to stimulus checks on an Instagram livestream on Thursday night. Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly called for a $1,200 direct payment to be included in the relief bill Congress is aiming to pass during the lame-duck session. The freshman congresswoman also argued that Republicans haven't been "in a rush" to pass additional stimulus legislation because Wall Street was already given a massive bailout last spring.

With the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine seemingly days away, President Donald Trump has been stewing over what he perceives to be a lack of credit that he is getting for the breakthrough. The outgoing president recently ranted to several advisers and associates about how vaccine manufacturers were possibly working to deny him the chance to declare victory in the pandemic, according to three people familiar with his private grumblings. One adviser told The Daily Beast that this month, the president asked if the heads of Pfizer, one of the main vaccine manufacturers, were “Democrats.”


“The prospect of a 2024 run is politically significant. It’s also a complete fiction.”
“His flirtation with a 2024 bid ensures he’ll remain the dominant force in the Republican Party.”
“He shouldn’t run for president again. There’s a better job and life for him on the horizon.”
“Trump is in for years of scandals and humiliations…He’ll have to devote much of his energy to trying to stay out of prison.”
“If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children could also potentially pick up the mantle.”