# data[].attributes.body
-Voting in-person helps increase the voting turnout
-It is more convenient to vote in person
Absentee voting is easier for people such as elderly's, retired military because they get to vote early
-One con about absentee voting is you have to keep up with some of the deadlines, which in some cases can be hard for people

# data[].attributes.body
The Criminal Justice law needs to be revised because changes need to be made in order to end harsh penalties such as the death penalty, racial profiling, etc.

# data[].attributes.body
-One moral that I live by is letting people have free rights to worship, love, and say whatever is important to them. I strongly believe in having freedom because it brings a more diverse and different aspect to society.
-If people believed in all the same things, everything would just be the same everyday, there would be no change, which can get boring

# data[].attributes.headline
The Debate over Joe Biden Canceling Student Debt 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Debate over Joe Biden Canceling Student Debt 

# data[].attributes.body
-This article talks about how Joe Biden plans to use federal action to get rid of some or even all student debt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Until fairly recently, student debt cancellation was considered to be a fringe idea that, while popular among the Occupy Wall Street crowd and on the left, was a mainstream nonstarter. That's begun to change.

The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn have pushed the issue even further to the forefront. The CARES Act and then President Donald Trump put a pause on federal student loan payments during the pandemic that expires at the end of January. But with the coronavirus crisis worse than ever, there is a growing chorus of activists, politicians, and voters calling for student debt cancellation as a form of economic stimulus. That chorus is pushing Democrats and, namely, President-elect Joe Biden to go big on student debt, using federal action to wipe out some or even all of what borrowers owe.

"What's attractive about student debt cancellation in this moment is that in addition to righting a policy wrong - which is the decision to make the cost of college an individual burden when I would say it's a public good - is that it can help stimulate the economy at a moment when we need economic stimulus. And it has significant racial equity implications as well," said Suzanne Kahn, director of education, jobs, and power at the Roosevelt Institute and an advocate for complete federal student debt cancellation. It's also something Biden could try to do independently of Congress, which is attractive since stimulus talks have stalled out.

Biden's campaign backed legislation forgiving the first $10,000 in federal student loan debt, but some Democrats and progressives are pushing for him to cancel more student debt through executive action - and not just $10,000, but $50,000 or even all of it.

Beyond direct cancellation, there's a lot Biden can do to make preexisting student debt programs work better and help more people.

"There is a tremendous opportunity through executive action for President-elect Biden to improve the lives of millions of Americans," said Seth Frotman, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center and former student debt ombudsman at the CFPB.

The conversation around student debt in the United States stretches far beyond questions of education, law, and economics. It also entails thorny discussions around racial justice, politics, and fairness. Advocates argue that debt cancellation will carry a range of benefits - stimulating the economy, promoting racial justice, and righting the wrong of pushing millions of Americans into life-hindering debt.

But as the Biden administration plans its first steps, a debate is raging about whether loan forgiveness is really the best way to get the economy moving and get relief to people who need it. Some critics warn it could be a politically costly push that doesn't solve the underlying problems with higher education in the US.

Why this, why now

Broad-based student debt cancellation isn't a newidea, but it being discussed in establishment political circles is.

45 million Americans now owe a total of about $1.6 trillion in student loans, and one in 10 loans are in delinquency or default. The Federal Reserve estimates the typical monthly payment to be between $200 and $299. Research suggests people are delaying buying homes, having kids, and changing jobs in part because of student loan debt, which means it could become a drag on the overall economy. The burden is especially heavy on Black borrowers, who generally carry more debt and struggle more to pay it off.

"This is not some niche problem," said Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission that oversees the CARES Act funds and former adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "Student loan debt affects a lot of people - it's basically a fifth of all adults."

Student debt was a major theme during Occupy Wall Street, a widespread protest movement that emerged in reaction to the global financial crisis in 2011. In the years following Occupy, activists continued to focus on the issue and push it into the conversation: In 2012, they organized 1T Day to mark student debt surpassing $1 trillion, and they subsequently launched Strike Debt and fundraisers to help cancel student debt. Student debt strikes began to pop up across the country, where borrowers stopped paying their loans in protest of the situation, and organizers helped propel regulations to protect student borrowers against misleading and predatory practices.

As student debt, which is difficult to get discharged in bankruptcy, has become an increasingly prevalent issue, so have proposals regarding how to address it. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders ran on canceling all student debt, and Elizabeth Warren proposed canceling debts of up to $50,000.

Many Democrats and progressives are calling for Biden to cancel some or all debt through executive action, namely, a "settlement and compromise" provision that they argue would allow for debt to be canceled through executive authority.

"The law is pretty clear that the secretary of education has the authority to compromise - that's the term - which means effectively cancel any individual debt of up to $1 million," said Ramamurti, who helped devise the plan Warren ran on.

Now Warren and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are urging the incoming administration to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt.

But as the idea has grown more popular, so has theresistance. On the right, detractors say it's a pointless government give-out. In the middle, they warn it's not a good way to stimulate the economy. And on the left, there are concerns it's a regressive policy that will help people who don't need it. Some critics have panned the idea as a "Brahmin bailout" that would help out the upper class (those who went to college) and do little, if anything, for everyone else, and some people have warned that such a bailout could prove a messaging disaster for Democrats.

"No matter how it's designed, student-debt forgiveness is very poorly targeted," Bloomberg's editorial board warned in November. "Even if relief could be better focused on the poor, severe drawbacks remain. For one, the vast majority of Americans who don't have student debt would rightly feel left out. Many never had the opportunity to get a higher education; others put off financial goals (such as saving for retirement) to pay it down. Also, it would do little to improve the immediate cash flow of the many debtors who - because they're in default or in income-based repayment plans - are making small or no monthly payments."

A poll conducted by Vox and Data for Progress found that a majority of likely voters support forgiving student loan debt up to $50,000, especially if it is tied to national or community service or comes with a $125,000 income threshold. Only about one in four likely voters, however, support forgiving all student debt. And the idea is much more popular among those with debt than those without it.

Other polls have also found that canceling some student debt is a moderately popular idea, though not the most popular idea in the world. And it is pretty well liked among members of the Democratic base - Black voters and middle-class professionals - who helped hand Biden the election.

If Democrats do go ahead with student debt forgiveness via executive actions, they could pair it with something that would benefit non-college-educated people, such as requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage. That would benefit millions of workers.

How much can Biden do on student debt?

The Trump administration has extended the federal loan payment pause through January 31, and Biden could continue to extend it. Still, leaving people in limbo month-to-month is not ideal.

There are other steps Biden could take short of full debt cancellation, including improving programs to relieve debt for students defrauded by predatory schools or who signed up for programs that let them repay loans based on their income, loan forgiveness for people who go into public service, and debt relief for student veterans and students with disabilities, among others.

But the big conversation has shifted to whether Biden should set students free from their debt - and if so, how much.

The burden of student debt in America isn'tequally shared. In 2019, households with graduate degrees owed 56 percent of education debt, even though only 14 percent of adults over the age of 25 have graduate degrees, and the 3 percent of households with doctorates or professional degrees held 20 percent of all debt. Meanwhile, many of those struggling most with student debt are those who never finished their degrees.

Biden has backed legislation that would cancel $10,000 in debt, but unless Democrats take control of the Senate and make a big effort to push that through, that's not likely to become law.

In terms of what advocates want Biden himself to do, the more conservative number rests around the $10,000 range, which is the number the president-elect had initially thrown his weight behind legislatively. Capping forgiveness at $10,000 could eliminate debt for more than 15 million borrowers and reduce by half the debt of 9 million more.

Adam Looney, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and executive director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute at the University of Utah, noted in a Washington Post op-ed that it would specifically help "borrowers with smaller balances, who, paradoxically, tend to struggle most, accounting for 60 percent of all defaults."

Borrowers who owe the least are often the ones who struggle most to pay their loans, in part because many of them are people who dropped out of school and aren't getting the benefit of a college degree in their careers.

From the $10,000, the scale goes up. Schumer and Warren are pushing Biden to forgive $50,000. At the most ambitious end of the spectrum, some activists, organizers, and politicians want to cancel all federal student loan debt for everyone.

Ramamurti told me he sees it as "purely a matter of political will," and once the mechanisms are in place, there's room for adjustment on forgiveness amounts and thresholds.

"The nice thing about this policy is you can tweak it, depending on what your goals are," he said.

When reached for comment, the Biden transition team pointed to his campaign education plan and noted his support for the $10,000 forgiveness legislation. It did not respond when asked whether he was considering the Schumer-Warren proposal.

The economic argument for canceling student debt

At the heart of the argument for canceling student debt, especially in the midst of the pandemic, is that it would be good for millions of people and, therefore, the economy. How good is where the disagreement resides - and because mass student debt forgiveness isn't something we've seen in the past, the data on what could happen is relatively limited.

One 2019 working paper from Harvard Business School looked at what happened when students in default had their discharged because of a lawsuit. They found that borrowers reduced their overall indebtedness by a quarter and were also less likely to default on other accounts. That's good for them and for the entities they owe money to.

"We actually find that these individuals tend to lower their total liabilities over time by repaying, for instance, credit card debt, so their overall financial health improves," said Marco Di Maggio, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard and one of the paper's authors.

People also demonstrated more mobility - they moved states, changed jobs, and took more risks that often translated to higher incomes.

45 million Americans now owe a total of about $1.6 trillion in student loans

Di Maggio's research focused on people who were in default and weren't making payments at all. But if it were broader federal debt forgiveness that includes borrowers who are paying, he thinks the impact could be much greater.

"If you give the same type of forgiveness to people that are not in that situation, one effect that we don't capture is that your monthly payment is going down," he said. The $300 people were putting toward loan payments every month could then be spent elsewhere.

Some critics have argued that student loan forgiveness could be quite regressive, especially at higher amounts, because it would mean canceling debts for high-earning households. And there is disagreement among economists about just how effective stimulus forgiveness would be. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for fiscal responsibility, estimates that student loan forgiveness would have relatively small near-term multiplier effects, meaning the impact on the economy would be limited (and that's assuming it's tax-free - more on that later).

"We found that it's all really poorly targeted stimulus," said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at CRFB. "It would boost the economy, but by our estimates, for every $1 of loan forgiveness ... it would boost the economy by somewhere between 8 and 23 cents, which is a very poor multiplier."

Other analysts disagree. Di Maggio estimates the multiplier to be at least $1 on every $1 - meaning that spending on forgiveness would directly boost the economy. A 2018 study from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College projected that debt cancellation could boost GDP by tens of billions of dollars a year and reduce unemployment.

Biden's appetite for loan forgiveness might even depend on how willing Congress is to do other stimulus.

"I would expect that student loan cancellation by executive action is more likely the extent to which the Republicans are blocking progress on a stimulus package through Congress," said Bob Shireman, the director of higher education excellence and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. "It is definitely not one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy, but if it is one of the things available to the administration, then it might be something they do."

But economic stimulus is not the only argument for wiping out debt.

The justice argument for canceling student debt

Black borrowers are disproportionately burdened with debt. From 2000 to 2018, the median student debt for young white borrowers with a bachelor's degree about doubled from $12,000 to $23,000. For Black borrowers, it quadrupled, from $7,000 to $30,000, even though white families tend to have more cumulative debt than Black families overall.

A study from Brandeis University found that 20 years after starting college, a typical Black borrower still owes 95 percent of their debt, while the typical white student has paid off 94 percent of their debt. Across socioeconomic levels, Black borrowers wind up worse off than their white counterparts.

"Black students borrow more often, they borrow more, and they have a harder time repaying their peers," said Tiffany Jones, senior director of higher education policy at the Education Trust. "That's true all the way up the income ladder."

Forgiveness is a racial justice policy. A recent Roosevelt Institute working paper found that while white borrowers stand to gain the most in absolute dollars from cancellation, "the relative gains for Black borrowers are much larger and the greater proportion of Black borrowers means that Black wealth overall would experience much more growth as a result." They did not, however, find that it would meaningfully address the racial wealth gap.

Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification, and Political Economy at the New School, said the wealth gap isn't entirely the point.

"If you're really trying to close the racial wealth gap, the main component, from an accounting standpoint, is assets, not debt," he said. "Debt is problematic because it's almost like sharecropping - that's hyperbole - but it puts people in a debt trap where they are not permitted pathways for social mobility because they are constrained by a financier and the efforts of their labor go to pay off the interest on finance."

"Any debt relief is better than what's happening right now"

Advocates say the racial justice argument applies at the top and bottom of the income spectrum, for Black borrowers who are well-off and those who are not, and that narrow targeting isn't necessary. "Folks are feeling like providing relief to a group that are high earners is probably not the right thing to do, forgetting and erasing that among high earners there are Black and brown people who would be impacted," Jones said.

But student loan forgiveness could also be a restorative justice issue in that it would help right past wrongs. Higher education has long been held up as the gateway to a livable wage, and students have been encouraged to go into debt to go to school, build their résumés, and advance.

Now millions of young Americans are living through their second recession at the outset of their careers, and they're saddled with debt they were told was a good idea. Forgiveness could be "stimulus to a generation that's been particularly scarred," Hamilton said.

Frederick Wherry, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and director of the Dignity and Debt Network, emphasized that if student debt is canceled, "it's also a good idea to cancel it in a way that's not denigrating for the debtors" - making it easy to access instead of making people feel bad about jumping through hoops to reap the benefit.

"For those who are already drowning and you are saying you want to do a stimulus, do a stimulus," Wherry said. "No one says anything when rich people get a tax break."

One looming question: Taxes

One major policy and political issue that hangs over the forgiveness discussion is taxes. Debt cancellation isgenerally counted as taxable income. So if someone has $50,000 in student loans forgiven, that would mean $50,000 would be counted as gross income for the year it was forgiven on top of other income.

Under today's tax rates, that would be taxed likely somewhere between 22 and 37 percent. In other words, major student debt cancellation could come with an enormous tax bill for borrowers.

Those who have studied the issue say there are workarounds. John Brooks, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who has studied student debt taxes, told me that there are a number of legal arguments that would allow the secretary of education, the treasury department, and the IRS to make forgiveness tax-free. Forgiveness could get a "general welfare" exclusion, or qualify as disaster relief, or get a scholarship exclusion, among other options.

"Student debt is just really, really weird, and it just doesn't fit into the categories and the ways we think about other kinds of debt," he said. "It's a form of government funding for higher education, and it's designed to provide as many people possible with a way to get over some degree of affordability problems that's limiting their ability to enroll in higher education."

Jessica Thompson, associate vice president at the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), said the case that there's a preexisting legal way around taxes on cancellation is "definitely more in question" than forgiveness proponents would like, though there's an argument to be made. "You can make your case, but in the end, you've got to meet every single hurdle that could be thrown at you," she said. "Treasury and the IRS tend to be conservative and careful about how they interpret their authority to act."

It's worth emphasizing that the tax issue isn't limited to the current executive action forgiveness question - the assumption for people repaying loans through programs that eventually forgive any remaining balance is that they'll owe taxes, too. So this problem is going to show up whether there's mass cancellation or not.

The moment to cancel debt might be now. It also doesn't solve the bigger problem.

The conversation the United States is having right now around student debt cancellation isn't a new one - it's the result of years of activism, organizing, and thinking among people who think it's a good, just, and right idea.

But this is also indicative of the moment: Millions of Americans are hurting and in desperate need of help amid the Covid-19 pandemic, especially as much of the federal stimulus already provided has run out or is about to. Debt forgiveness may be an outlet for the Biden administration to be creative and nimble in addressing the crisis.

"Any debt relief is better than what's happening right now," Jones said.

But wiping out debt is only part of the equation when it comes to the cost of higher education in the United States. Even if you cancel all existing debt, you have students in school or about to go to school who are going to wind up stuck in the same loop.

"Every breath that you hear someone talking about debt cancellation, we need to be talking about the urgency of people who are in school right now and people who should be in school right now," Thompson said.

That translates to issues such as making college more affordable, keeping students away from predatory institutions, and fostering degrees and training that are worth the money. The issue on those fronts is that Biden can't do much on his own.

"We need a Congress that's willing to have that conversation," the Century Foundation's Shireman said. "We cannot address the broader affordability questions, the broader affordability problem, without Congress and the administration working together."

Is widespread student debt cancellation the optimal path toward stimulus? Reasonable minds can disagree, but probably not. But if there's ever a time to try it, the moment could be now.
Will you help keep Vox free for all?
There is tremendous power in understanding. Vox answers your most important questions and gives you clear information to help make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. A financial contribution to Vox will help us continue providing free explanatory journalism to the millions who are relying on us. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
45 million Americans have student debt. Should Joe Biden forgive it?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Until fairly recently, student debt cancellation was considered to be a fringe idea that, while popular among the Occupy Wall Street crowd and on the left, was a mainstream nonstarter. That's begun to change. The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn have pushed the issue even further to the forefront.

# data[].attributes.body
There should be a law that allows students in the lower-class worldwide to obtain the same education as people in the higher class.

# data[].attributes.headline
Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo ( Nov, 5 2020)

# data[].attributes.subject
Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo ( Nov, 5 2020)

# data[].attributes.body
-This case is important because it deals with religion, and especially during times right now, people can't even go out and even acknowledge their beliefs with others.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
US Supreme Court cases from the 2020-2021 term.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When and Democratic presidential nominee square off during the first presidential debate tonight, it will mark the beginning of the final push in the 2020 election. In some ways, it will be a return to a level of normalcy in an election year that has been anything but normal.

The debate moderators, beginning with , will have an incredibly important job this cycle, and in an election in which enthusiasm and interest are at near record highs.

The main reason that the 2020 debates could be the most consequential general election debates of any in recent decades is because of the extreme "prevent defense" being played by the Biden campaign. Biden has barely taken questions from the press or sat for interviews with the media. His running mate, Sen. (D-Calif.), has yet to take a single question from the media in a press conference. In the three days after the death of Supreme Court Justice , Biden called an immediate "lid" in two of the three days - meaning there was no campaign activity at all. In fact, the Biden campaign has done that 36 percent of the days in September.

When Biden has spoken to the press, he's often been evasive on specifics - instead getting meta about what it would mean to answer the specific questions being asked of him.

Beginning with Fox's Chris Wallace on Tuesday, and continuing with C-SPAN's Steve Scully and NBC's Kristen Welker, the debate moderators have a responsibility to get precise answers from the Democratic nominee. Rather than focus on hypotheticals about what Biden would have done differently than Trump during the pandemic, the media members tasked with the important job of debate moderator should push Biden on how he'd govern if elected. It's not enough to say he'd do more to combat climate change than the current administration. Would he adopt the Green New Deal? What about "defunding the police"? Or "Medicare for All"? The moderators need to press Biden on where general election Biden stands now compared to where primary election Biden stood earlier this year.

With Trump, the moderators can also distinguish themselves by pressing him to provide real, concrete answers to the public. As an incumbent, Trump will face questions about his record over the past four years. But instead of drifting toward less concrete questions about the "mood in the country," the moderators should focus on specifics. What foreign policy successes have been achieved, and what costs have come from mistakes made abroad? How has the pandemic response evolved, and what would he have done differently? Most importantly, what policies can we expect if he's reelected?

The moderators would be smart to avoid questions about the candidates' competency or mental acuity. Debates are not an opportunity to test cognitive function - there's no "person woman man camera TV" quizzing going on. Instead, voters will get a sense for the candidates' competency by how they handle the challenging questions being asked of them, and how they respond to one another.

These debates may have a greater effect on the campaign than did the 2016 presidential debates. NBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki recently noted that "won" the debates by a wider margin in snap polls after the debate than any previous candidate before her since polling began. The result? The national polls barely moved, and in the end, Clinton's debate "victories" turned out to mean nothing.

That won't happen this time. Because he has largely avoided the spotlight, every appearance Biden does make takes on added resonance. Every slip up is more damaging. Likewise, every success is more impactful. It's been a gamble to starve the media of oxygen, and by extension, the voters, and one on which Trump has the opportunity to capitalize.

The very broad topics list put out by the Commission on Presidential Debates has not revealed much about what's to come tonight. It's incumbent on the moderators to ask challenging, precise questions of both candidates - and to set the stage for the most meaningful presidential debates we've seen in decades.
Steve Krakauer is the founder and editor of Fourth Watch, a media watchdog newsletter. He has been a senior digital producer for CNN, a vice president of The Blaze, and worked previously for Mediaite and TVNewser.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the 2020 presidential debates will matter more than any in recent memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When and Democratic presidential nominee square off during the first presidential debate tonight, it will mark the beginning of the final push in the 2020 election. In some ways, it will be a return to a level of normalcy in an election year that has been anything but normal.

# data[].attributes.body
-A justice on the Supreme Court would ensure that it never reflects only one party
-Justices of any age can be nominated which could allow someone older with more experience to have an opportunity
-Having a justice on the Supreme Court would bring the courts opinions closer to the people

# data[].attributes.headline
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)

# data[].attributes.subject
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)

# data[].attributes.body
- This case is important because it is a prime example of how school districts that are in lower income areas are given less revenue and money unlike school's that might be in higher class areas.
-

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The US Supreme Court was formed in 1789. It's gone from five seats to 10, and is now fixed at nine.

It makes fewer than 100 decisions every year, but its choices have had a huge impact on the country.

Some decisions have empowered women, helped protect the environment, or guaranteed a person's right to expression. Others have strengthened racist laws, enabled forced sterilization, and allowed unequal schooling.

Here is a guide to 45 of the Supreme Court's most impactful decisions.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The US Supreme Court, the court of last resort, has undeniably changed the country.

It makes fewer than 100 decisions every year that have sweeping effects on American life.

Some have changed race relations for the better, empowered women, given the press freedom to operate, guaranteed a person's right to expression, or reiterated that the president is not above the law.

Not every decision has aged well. Other decisions have enforced slavery or create uneven schooling in the US.

Here are 45 of the most important cases the Supreme Court has ever decided.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
45 landmark Supreme Court cases that changed American life as we knew it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The US Supreme Court was formed in 1789. It's gone from five seats to 10, and is now fixed at nine. It makes fewer than 100 decisions every year, but its choices have had a huge impact on the country. Some decisions have empowered women, helped protect the environment, or guaranteed a person's right to expression.

# data[].attributes.headline
States targeted in Texas Election fraud 

# data[].attributes.subject
States targeted in Texas Election fraud 

# data[].attributes.body
-This article talks about how several states have urged the U.S Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit filed by Texas, which is related to Trump trying to get Biden's recent election victory overturned

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday urged the US supreme court to reject a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Donald Trump seeking to undo Joe Biden's victory, saying the case has no factual or legal grounds and makes "bogus" claims.

"What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this court and other courts," Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's Democratic attorney general, wrote in a filing to the nine justices.

Texas filed the longshot suit against the four election battleground states on Tuesday directly with the supreme court. It asked that the voting results in those states be thrown out because of their changes in voting procedures that allowed expanded mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday afternoon, more than 100 Republican members of the House filed an amicus brief with the court in support of the Texas lawsuit.

Trump's campaign and his allies already have been spurned in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results. Legal experts have said the Texas lawsuit has little chance of succeeding and have questioned whether Texas has the legal standing to challenge election procedures in other states.

Biden, a Democrat, defeated Trump in the four states in the 3 November election. The Republican president won them in the 2016 election.

Local, state and national election officials declared November's election the most secure in American history but the Trump campaign continues to push to overturn the result, baselessly claiming widespread fraud across the country.

The Texas lawsuit, Shapiro wrote on Thursday, was adding to a "cacophony of bogus false claims" about the election.

Dana Nessel, Michigan's Democratic attorney general, listed the many cases filed in that state that Trump and his backers have lost.

"The challenge here is an unprecedented one, without factual foundation or a valid legal basis," Nessel wrote in Michigan's filing.

Chris Carr, Georgia's Republican attorney general, said Texas could not show it had been harmed by the election results in other states.

"The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable," Carr wrote in Georgia's filing.

Josh Kaul, Wisconsin's Democratic attorney general, noted that Trump already had obtained recounts in the two most heavily Democratic counties in the state, showing no problems with the results.

"There has been no indication of any fraud, or anything else that would call into question the reliability of the election results," Kaul wrote in Wisconsin's filing.

Trump filed a motion with the court on Wednesday asking the justices to let him intervene and become a plaintiff in the suit filed by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and an ally of the president.

Trump met on Thursday with Paxton and other state attorneys general who support the suit.

Twenty states joined the District of Columbia in filing a brief lodged by Democratic officials on Thursday backing the four states targeted by Texas.

Seventeen other states on Wednesday filed a brief urging the justices to hear the case in filings by Republican officials. Arizona filed its own brief signaling an interest in the case without explicitly taking sides.

Then the more than 100 Republican House members, led by Mike Johnson of Louisiana, also filed a friend of the court brief backing Trump.

"The Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States," Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday, repeating his unfounded allegations that the election was rigged against him.

The Texas lawsuit does not make specific fraud allegations. Instead, Texas said changes to voting procedures removed protections against fraud and were unlawful when the reforms were made by officials in the four states or courts without the approval of the states' legislatures.

Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of aiming to reduce public confidence in US election integrity and undermine democracy by trying to subvert the will of the voters.

One Republican state attorney general, Dave Yost of Ohio, filed a separate brief on Thursday disagreeing with the Texas proposal that votes be tossed out, saying that it "would undermine a foundational premise of our federalist system: the idea that the States are sovereigns, free to govern themselves".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
States targeted in Texas election fraud lawsuit condemn 'cacophony of bogus claims'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday urged the US supreme court to reject a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Donald Trump seeking to undo Joe Biden's victory, saying the case has no factual or legal grounds and makes "bogus" claims. "What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this court and other courts," Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's Democratic attorney general, wrote in a filing to the nine justices.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President-elect Joe Biden's winning tally is approaching a record 80 million votes as Democratic bastions continue to count ballots and the 2020 election cracks turnout records.

Biden has already set a record for the highest number of votes for a winning presidential candidate, and President Donald Trump has also notched a high-water mark of the most votes for a losing candidate.

With more than 155 million votes counted and California and New York still counting, turnout stands at 65 percent of all eligible voters, the highest since 1908, according to data from The Associated Press and the US Elections Project.

The rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead - nearly 6 million votes - come as Trump has escalated his false insistence that he actually won the election, and his campaign and supporters intensify their uphill legal fight to stop or delay results from being certified, potentially nullify the votes of Americans.

"It's just a lot of noise going on, because Donald Trump is a bull who carries his own china shop with him," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. "Once the noise recedes, it's going to be clear that Biden won a very convincing victory."

Biden currently has an Electoral College lead of 290-232. But that does not include electors from Georgia, where Biden leads Trump by 0.3 percentage points as officials conduct a hand tally. The AP has not called the race, but if Biden's lead holds he will win the Electoral College on 306-232 vote - the identical margin Trump won in 2016. Back then Trump described it as a "landslide."

Trump sealed that victory with 77,000 votes across three battleground states, while Biden's margin would be slightly narrower - about 45,000 votes across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

That slimmer win, however, is still decisive by election law standards, notes Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of Irvine and an expert on voting.

While Biden's margins in states like Arizona and Wisconsin seem small - between 12,000 and 20,000 votes - those races aren't nearly narrow enough to be considered likely to flip through a recount or lawsuits. Recounts typically shift total votes by only a few hundred votes. In 2000, the Florida recount and legal battle for the White House was prompted by a 537-vote margin.

"If you're talking about it being close enough to be within what those of us in the field call the margin of litigation, this is not within the margin of litigation," Hasen said.

Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University, has compared Biden's still-growing popular vote and Electoral College margins to those of every winner of a presidential election since 1960. His finding: Biden's win was right in the middle - tighter than landslides like Barack Obama's 2008 win or Ronald Reagan's 1984 wipeout reelection, but broader than Trump's 2016 victory or either of George W. Bush's two wins.

The closest analogy was Obama's reelection, which he won by virtually the same margin as Biden has now.

"Did anyone think 2012 was a narrow victory? No," Naftali said.

Despite that, Trump and his allies are continuing to try to stop certification of the election, in a longshot attempt to deny states the ability to seat electors supporting Biden. These efforts are very unlikely to succeed, but they reached a new pitch this week when two Republican members of the board of canvassers in Michigan's largest county Tuesday night managed to block certification of the votes there. They allowed certification to proceed after an outcry, but it was a sign of how deeply Trump's baseless claims of mass fraud have permeated.

In fact, argued Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks vote counts for the US Elections Project, the relatively narrow Biden wins in battleground states tell a different story than the one the president is pushing.

Democrats have worried that the gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College tallies is growing as Democratic voters cluster on the coasts and outside of battleground states. That dynamic could make it difficult for Democrats to win congressional races, creating a lasting disadvantage when it comes to advancing policies.

"If there's anything in the data here, it reveals how the system is stacked against the Democrats, not stacked against Trump," McDonald said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
US Election 2020 | Joe Biden Approaches 80 Million Votes In Historic Victory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
President-elect Joe Biden's winning tally is approaching a record 80 million votes as Democratic bastions continue to count ballots and the 2020 election cracks turnout records. Biden has already set a record for the highest number of votes for a winning presidential candidate, and President Donald Trump has also notched a high-water mark of the most votes for a losing candidate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Guardian 3 hrs ago Oliver Laughland in Valdosta, Georgia and Martin Pengelly in New York

Donald Trump's attacks on Republican officials in Georgia and insistence his defeat by Joe Biden must be overturned are disgusting, the Republican lieutenant governor of the southern state said on Sunday.

Related: Just 27 of 249 Republicans in Congress willing to say Trump lost, survey finds

"It's not American," Geoff Duncan told CNN's State of the Union. "It's not what democracy is all about. But it's reality right now."

The president staged a rally in Valdosta, Georgia on Saturday night. He began his speech, which lasted more than 90 minutes, by falsely claiming he won the state, which in fact he lost by around 12,000 votes in a result certified by Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger more than two weeks ago.

"They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it," Trump falsely insisted. "And they're going to try and rig this [Senate] election too."

Two Georgia Republicans face 5 January runoffs which will decide control of the Senate. On Sunday evening, Kelly Loeffler will debate Rev Raphael Warnock, her Democratic challenger. Amid controversy over stock trades made by both Republicans during the Covid-19 pandemic, David Perdue has declined to debate his challenger, Jon Ossoff.

In Valdosta, the president invited Perdue and Loeffler on to the stage. Neither reiterated his baseless claims about election fraud, Perdue coming closest by saying: "We're going to fight and win those seats and make sure you get a fair and square deal in Georgia."

As Perdue spoke, the crowd chanted: "Fight for Trump!"

Some suggest Trump's assault on the presidential election could depress Republican turnout.

"I think the the rally last night was kind of a two-part message," Duncan told CNN. "The first part was very encouraging to listen to the president champion the conservative strategies of Senators Loeffler and Perdue, and the importance of them being re-elected.

"The second message was concerning to me. I worry that ... fanning the flames around misinformation puts us in a negative position with regards to the 5 January runoff. The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process. They're only hurting it."

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Duncan: "At a certain point, does this disgust you?"

"Oh, absolutely it disgusts me," Duncan said.

In Valdosta, Trump read from a prepared list of nonsensical evidence he said highlighted his victory. This included arguing that by winning Ohio and Florida he had in fact won the entire election, and also that winning an uncontested Republican primary was proof he beat Biden in November.

Trump lost the electoral college 306-232 and trails in the popular vote by more than 7m. His campaign has launched legal challenges in various states. The majority have been rejected or dropped. The campaign filed a new lawsuit in Georgia on Friday.

Trump vented fury at Republican governor Brian Kemp, a one-time ally who he called from the White House on Saturday to demand the Georgia result be overturned.

"Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing," Trump told supporters, adding: "For whatever reason your secretary of state and your governor are afraid of Stacey Abrams."

Abrams, a staunch voting rights advocate who Kemp beat for governor in 2018, helped drive turnout and secure the state for Biden, the first Democrat to win it since 1992.

On Sunday, Duncan was asked if Kemp would do as Trump asks, and call a special session of the state general assembly to appoint its own electors for Trump, a demand one critic called "shockingly undemocratic".

"I absolutely believe that to be the case that the governor is not going to call us into a special session," Duncan said.

In an angry intervention earlier this week, Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling said of Trump's attacks on Kemp, Raffensperger and other Republicans: "Someone's gonna get hurt, someone's gonna get shot. Someone's gonna get killed. And it's not right. It has all gone too far."

Duncan said "we've all all of us ... got increased security around us and our families [but] we're going to continue to do our jobs. Governor Kemp, Brad Raffensperger and myself, all three voted and campaigned for the president, but unfortunately he didn't win the state of Georgia."

Duncan sidestepped a question about the wisdom of holding a rally where many attendees did not wear masks, as coronavirus cases surge. But he did call Biden's request that Americans to wear masks for 100 days "absolutely a great step in the right direction".

On Saturday, the Washington Post found only 27 of 249 congressional Republicans were willing to acknowledge Biden's victory. Duncan did so.

Related: I beg your pardon? Does Trump really plan to absolve himself and his family?

"On 20 January Joe Biden's going to be sworn in as the 46th president and the constitution is still in place," Duncan said. "This is still America ... as the lieutenant governor and as a Georgian I'm proud that we're able to look up after three recounts and be able to see that this election was fair."

Raffensperger told ABC's This Week: "We don't see anything that would overturn the will of the people here in Georgia."

It was "sad, but true", he added, that Trump had lost.

"I wish he would have won. I'm a conservative Republican and I'm disappointed but those are the results."

In Valdosta, Trump did seem at points to recognise the end is near. With reference to policy on Iran and China, he described "what we would have done in the next four years". He also said that if he thought he had lost the election, he would be "a very gracious loser".

"I'd go to Florida," he said. "I'd take it easy."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump's attacks on election integrity 'disgust me', says senior Georgia Republican

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Donald Trump's attacks on Republican officials in Georgia and insistence his defeat by Joe Biden must be overturned are disgusting, the Republican lieutenant governor of the southern state said on Sunday. "It's not American," Geoff Duncan told CNN's State of the Union. "It's not what democracy is all about.

# data[].attributes.headline
Coronavirus Can Travel Farther and Faster in Restaurants 

# data[].attributes.subject
Coronavirus Can Travel Farther and Faster in Restaurants 

# data[].attributes.body
-This article talks about how recent study in Korea shows that the coronavirus can travel more than six feet, after people in two diners in Korea were exposed to COVID-19 from fifteen feet away

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A server talks with patrons at Maxwell's Burgers & Shakes on Dec. 9, in Frederick, Md. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

Earlier this year, two diners at a South Korean restaurant were infected with novel coronavirus in a matter of minutes from a third patron who sat at least 15 feet away from them. The third patron was asymptomatic at the time. After dissecting that scene from June, South Korean researchers released a study last month in the Journal of Korean Medical Science that suggests the virus, under certain airflow conditions, travels farther than six feet and can infect others in as little as five minutes.

The study appears to be more bad news for restaurants, which have already been identified in research as a primary source for the spread of the virus. The Korean researchers recommend that public health authorities update safety guidelines based on their study, arguing that six feet of space between tables is not enough to protect diners from being infected.

D.C. restaurant workers plead for Congress to provide relief for their decimated industry

At present, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that diners wear a mask when "less than 6 feet apart from other people or indoors." The agency also recommends diners wear a "mask as much as possible when not eating" and maintain "a social distance of 6 feet or more in any entryway, hallway or waiting area." For the first time, the CDC recently recommended " universal mask use" outside people's homes.

But as infection rates and hospitalizations spike across the country, local and state jurisdictions have already begun to clamp down on restaurants, including New York City, which will prohibit indoor dining starting Monday in a metropolis where nearly nine out of 10 eateries already could not pay their full rent this summer. The South Korean study would seem to give public health officials more ammunition to shut down indoor dining until the pandemic passes.

Droplet "transmission can occur at a distance greater than 2 [meters] if there is direct air flow from an infected person in an indoor setting," the authors write. "Therefore, updated guidelines for quarantine and environmental management of covid-19 are needed until approval of an effective treatment drug or vaccine."

CDC recommends people wear masks indoors when not at home

While some have praised the scientific rigor of the research, others have cautioned that you can draw only limited conclusions from a report that's more of a small, three-person natural experiment than a larger scientific inquiry on the conditions of air flow inside restaurants and how they can spread the virus.

"The problem that you tend to have is one of missing information," says Richard Martinello, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine and a specialist in adult and pediatric infectious diseases.

"They may know well what happened within that restaurant," Martinello adds, "but they don't know what happened on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. They don't know what happened back in the kitchen at the restaurant. There are so many other aspects," including the fact that one in five people infected with covid will experience no symptoms, but may still spread the virus.

Diners weigh the ethics, risks and responsibilities of eating inside restaurants

Yet the South Korean researchers did have mountains of data at their disposal, more than their counterparts in the United States could probably ever get their hands on. South Korea was quick to use technology - including cellphone location data, credit card records and closed-circuit television feeds - to try to prevent the spread of the virus. As a result, the South Korean government has built an extraordinary database on coronavirus cases, the kind that would raise legal, privacy and ethical concerns in America.

"We probably could not do this study in the United States," says Donald Milton, professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Milton was among the experts who argued early in the pandemic that the coronavirus was spread through smaller aerosol particles, not just larger person-to-person droplets.

Using the available data, including the sequencing of the viral genome isolated from infected diners, the Korean authors were able to pinpoint the location where they think diner A (a high school student who had not traveled outside her hometown of Jeonju, South Korea) was originally infected on June 12. It was at a first-floor restaurant in Jeonju, where there had not been a coronavirus infection in the two months preceding this case, according to a recent Los Angeles Times story. The restaurant has no windows or ventilation system, but has two ceiling air conditioners that circulated air in the direction of the two diners (A and C) who were then infected from diner B (a door-to-door saleswoman visiting from another town, according to the L.A. Times).

The high school student and her companion entered the restaurant at 4 p.m. and finished their meals before the saleswoman and her friend entered the establishment at 5:15 p.m. The two groups were seated about 21 feet apart in the restaurant, or more than three times the recommended spacing between tables in the United States. The student left the restaurant five minutes after the saleswoman entered. The student and the saleswoman had no interactions inside the restaurant, the study notes.

Diner C entered the restaurant at 5:22 with two companions. They were seated nearly 16 feet from the infected saleswoman. The two groups of diners overlapped for 21 minutes before the saleswoman and her guest left. The authors suggest the high school student and diner C were infected - and not their companions - because they directly faced the air flow circulated from the saleswoman's table. Other customers outside the air flow from the saleswoman's table also escaped without contracting the virus, even though they had spent more time in the restaurant with the infected diner.

Outdoor dining has helped restaurants avoid disaster. But winter is coming.

Understanding the role that air flow plays in transporting droplets and aerosols large enough to infect others is important, scientists say. But such research also reinforces the randomness of infection as well as the limitations of the current protections that people use to keep themselves safe.

"There's a degree of chance here because you don't necessarily know where you're going to be seated, and you don't know what the air flow in the restaurant is. So you're taking a chance when you go in," says Martinello, the Yale associate professor.

Martinello said there was important information missing from the study, including whether the AC units had filters to clean the recirculated air inside the restaurant. What's more, he added, the researchers didn't publish the genome sequences that they had analyzed, which was a red flag. This particular novel coronavirus has 30,000 base pairs, which Martinello described as a "fair amount of genetic material."

"They say they're the same," Marintello says about the genome sequences, which supports the idea that the saleswoman likely infected the others. "But were they exactly the same? What was that degree of relatedness? And how did they define that they were the same? They don't get into that, which I wish they did. That may be a reason why they ended up in this journal rather than something with a higher profile."

Despite the flaws, Marintello and other scientists are generally on board with the study's findings. They point out that the findings are similar to earlier research, including a study into a covid-19 outbreak at an air-conditioned restaurant in Guangzhou, China, even though the tables were much closer together in the Chinese case.

The study confirms, says Milton, that infected people "can shed virus into the air, and it can travel long distances, and the more air movement you got, the more you might have" the kind of scenario laid out in the South Korean restaurant study.

With more the 20 years of experience in his field, Milton doesn't think it'll be another 100 years before the United States experiences a pandemic similar to the one we're living through now. As such, he would like to see governments and entrepreneurs invest in technology to make buildings and public spaces safer in the future. He says restaurants could install units now that would protect their customers: Upper-room ultra-violet germicidal systems, together with fans that push air to the top of indoor spaces, could be installed for anywhere between $1,500 to $2,000 per room, Milton says.

If the restaurant in South Korea had had ceiling fans above every table and upper room UV, Milton adds, the spread of the virus "could never have happened."

Updated December 11, 2020

Coronavirus: What you need to read

The Washington Post is providing some coronavirus coverage free, including:
The latest: Live updates on coronavirus
Coronavirus maps: Cases and deaths in the U.S. | Cases and deaths worldwide

What you need to know: What you need to know about the vaccines | Covid-19 symptoms guide | Coronavirus etiquette | Your life at home | Personal finance guide | Make your own fabric mask | Vaccine tracker | Follow all of our coronavirus coverage and sign up for our free newsletter.

How to help: Your community | Seniors | Restaurants | Keep at-risk people in mind

Have you tested positive for covid-19? Share your experience.
Show More Show Less
Today's Headlines

The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coronavirus can travel farther and faster inside restaurants than previously thought, South Korean study suggests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Earlier this year, two diners at a South Korean restaurant were infected with novel coronavirus in a matter of minutes from a third patron who sat at least 15 feet away from them. The third patron was asymptomatic at the time.

# data[].attributes.body
-One issue that I feel needs the most attention is the lack of punishment towards police brutality.
-Police brutality has cause people of color to feel not wanted or even scared because they are judged and seen as dangerous or suspicious.
- The government needs to enlists stricter penalties towards police officers because too many are being able to walk free after committing terrible acts

# data[].attributes.body
-The article talks about California's COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan, and explaining who will go first to get the vaccine once the FDA gives their approval

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Here's how officials in California plan to handle the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations.

TOP STORIES
California's Vaccine Plan
As COVID-19 deaths in California and the U.S. hit record highs, some experts say the beginning of the end of the pandemic is within sight thanks to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

U.S. approval is expected this week, and possibly as soon as today, for the first candidate, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Britain and Canada have already approved it.

That means California could soon begin its historic and complex rollout of millions of immunizations. Though the exact timing is unclear, the state's first shipment of vaccines will include 327,000 doses - supplying 327,000 people with their first dose - and is expected to reach hospitals between Saturday and Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

The vaccine requires two shots administered 21 days apart to reach the 95% effectiveness established in clinical trials. By the end of the year, California expects to have given the first dose of the vaccine to 2.16 million people who are in the group that's first in line - healthcare workers as well as residents of long-term care facilities. Follow-up doses will come in further shipments.

A second vaccine, created by the pharmaceutical company Moderna in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, could be approved by the FDA within a week of the Pfizer vaccine.
More Top Coronavirus Headlines
- Can you be infected with the coronavirus after five minutes from 20 feet away? Yes, a new study of indoor viral spread finds. The research raises concerns that six feet may not be a safe enough distance - and underscores how South Korea's meticulous and often invasive contact tracing has helped researchers closely track how the virus moves through populations.

- Some Americans continue to be unsure about lining up for a vaccine, but Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn isn't one of them: "I have 100% confidence."

- Arguments over mask requirements and other restrictions have turned ugly in recent days as the deadly coronavirus surge across the U.S. engulfs small and medium-size cities that once seemed at a safe remove from the outbreak.

- Following outcry from parents and some legislators, California has reversed course on closing playgrounds to contain a surge in coronavirus cases.
Break Up Facebook?
It's not often the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states including California, as well as Guam and the District of Columbia, can agree on something. But in groundbreaking antitrust lawsuits, they accuse Facebook of engaging in monopolistic practices to snuff out rivals and stifle competition.

Federal regulators are seeking to break the company, which includes Instagram and WhatsApp, into pieces. A separate multistate lawsuit accuses the Menlo Park, Calif.-based tech giant of anti-competitive conduct and of abusing its position as the market leader to mine consumer data and rake in advertising dollars.

"Years after the FTC cleared our acquisitions, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact that precedent would have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day," Facebook said in a statement.

The breadth of the bipartisan coalition bringing forward the suits suggests this fight will continue past President Trump's last day in office and well into President-elect Joe Biden's administration.
Cheating Death
A legion of mostly older Americans is being targeted for audacious, widespread fraud in the end-of-life industry that's meant to provide comforting care in their final days, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Many are unwitting recruits by unscrupulous providers who bill Medicare for hospice services and equipment for "terminally ill" patients who aren't dying.

Intense competition for new patients - who generate $154 to $1,432 a day each in Medicare payments - has spawned a cottage industry of illegal practices, including kickbacks to crooked doctors and recruiters who zero in on prospective patients at retirement homes and other venues, The Times found.

Nowhere has that growth been more explosive, and its harmful side effects more evident, than in Los Angeles County.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Before the Los Angeles River got its bed of concrete, it was the place to be for prospectors in Southern California.

They found not only gold but also iron, silver, copper, brass and lead. Writer Don Ashbaugh covered the rush in the Dec. 12, 1938, edition of the Los Angeles Times.

He described "a couple of score of hard-working men down there with shovels, screens and sluice boxes making themselves a comfortable living." Some prospectors said they turned to panning for precious metals when their acting careers didn't go as planned.

(Los Angeles Times Archive / UCLA)

CALIFORNIA

- The owner was a willing seller, and Los Angeles County an eager buyer. But plans to buy a motel and turn it into housing for homeless people hit a snag when the county learned management was locking out residents who had lived there for months or even years, forcing some into homelessness.

- As legal cannabis businesses struggle to compete with the illicit market, a state panel that advises regulators has recommended loosening some restrictions to give licensed pot shops a better shot.

- Six days before its application deadline,the Cal State systemsays all 23 campuses will reopen next fall after more than a year of virtual instruction. The early announcement is aimed at helping students plan and decide whether to apply.

- A 29-year-old political activist who was shot in the face with a police projectile at a protest this year is suing the LAPD to stop its use of such weapons to quell demonstrations.

Support our journalism

NATION-WORLD

- The House of Representatives passed a one-week spending bill designed to avert a government shutdown and buy time for more talks on a stalled COVID-19 relief package.

- The Justice Department's investigation scrutinizing Hunter Biden's taxes has been examining some of his Chinese business dealings, among other financial transactions, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.

- With spending in Georgia's twin Senate runoffs rocketing toward record levels, Republicans appear to be gaining a significant advantage on the state's airwaves as heavy spending by outside groups finances a flood of mostly negative ads.

- Joe Biden made two key domestic policy picks, selecting Ohio Rep. Marcia L. Fudge as his Housing and Urban Development secretary and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in his administration, according to five people familiar with the decisions.

- Thousands of protesters converged on Armenia's parliament building to push for the prime minister to resign over his handling of the fighting with Azerbaijan.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

- From homegrown jazz to raw hip-hop recorded from prison, these 10 albums from this year highlight L.A.'s creative spirit in a hardscrabble time for musicians.

- The Spanish flu of 1918 helped spur the creation of the Hollywood studio system. Now, Hollywood is experiencing another massive disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

- "The Crown" star Josh O'Connor thinks the British culture minister's proposal that the Netflix series get a "fiction" disclaimer is "a bit of a low blow," he told The Times on our new podcast "The Envelope." (Get our Envelope newsletter for the latest on awards season, plus highlights from each new episode.)

- The minimalist composer and musician Harold Budd, whom collaborator Brian Eno once described as being "a great abstract painter trapped in the body of a musician," has died of complications from COVID-19. He was 84.

BUSINESS

- The Trump administration plans to hold the first oil lease sale in California in eight years, part of a last-minute rush to auction off as much federal land as possible before Biden is sworn in.

- UCLA economists have issued an optimistic forecast, predicting the U.S. economy will experience "a gloomy COVID winter and an exuberant vaccine spring," followed by a roaring '20s.

SPORTS

- Has quarterback Jared Goff grown since losing in the Super Bowl in 2019? The Rams could find out in a rematch with the Patriots tonight.

- The Lancaster JetHawks are no more. The lone minor league baseball team in L.A. County is one of dozens of affiliate teams eliminated by Major League Baseball.

Free online games

OPINION

- Trump has succeeded magnificently at building a personality cult of the kind that generations of authoritarian leaders have used to maintain their popularity, writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present."

- Goodbye to Betsy DeVos, who survived by accomplishing almost nothing as secretary of Education, The Times' editorial board writes.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

- Trump's efforts to overturn the election continue: In a late-night call, he warned Georgia Atty. Gen. Chris Carr not to rally other GOP officials against a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out the state's election results, according to several people with direct knowledge of the conversation. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

- Sen. Dianne Feinstein's missteps raise a painful age question. (The New Yorker)

ONLY IN L.A.

You probably don't know Kathleen Gosnell Seiler, but if you're a longtime reader of The Times, you know her work. As a copy editor, she rarely had her name in print. But for 23 years, she used her blue pen to perfect the newspaper's signature stories, including those that won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news coverage of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. As she worked on the Pulitzer entry, her daughter, Jessie, made a fort under her mother's desk at The Times' headquarters. Gosnell died last week at age 75. She'll always be remembered for her work in making the 1995 Times style and usage guide more equitable, her moxie in standing up to big egos, and her devotion as a mother.
Comments or ideas? Email us at headlines@latimes.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Today's Headlines: California's vaccine plan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Here's how officials in California plan to handle the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations. California's Vaccine Plan As COVID-19 deaths in California and the U.S. hit record highs, some experts say the beginning of the end of the pandemic is within sight thanks to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barrett confirmed as Supreme Court justice in partisan vote

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WASHINGTON (AP) - Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court late Monday by a deeply divided Senate, Republicans overpowering Democrats to install President Donald Trump's nominee days before the election and secure a likely conservative court majority for years to come...

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about the first Presidential Debate and why it is deemed "the worst Presidential Debate."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Chaos." "Painful." "Dispiriting." "The worst presidential debate in American history." "The lowest point in American political culture in my lifetime."

You get the idea. These are responses, from Donald Trump supporters and Donald Trump opponents, to the first 2020 presidential debate Tuesday night. I detect a note of shell shock and sickened recoil from the partisans of both candidates, greater than I've ever noticed before.

Some of us can remember when debates were decorous, when candidates spoke respectfully of each other and sometimes granted each other's good faith. A more contentious tone and dismissive attitude toward opponents appeared in the first baby boomer debate, between then-Vice President Dan Quayle and his successor former Vice President Al Gore in 1992 (both younger men than Donald Trump or Joe Biden).

A similarly contentious VP debate came in 2012, when then-Vice President Joe Biden pummeled challenger Paul Ryan with constant interruptions, raucous ridicule and scornful laughter. Which wasn't greeted, as I recall, with the lamentations we see now from much of the press.

On Tuesday, Trump subjected Biden to similar treatment, and Biden responded with contempt and colloquial jibes. When Trump pressed him to answer moderator Chris Wallace's reasonable question of whether he'd pack the Supreme Court with additional justices, Biden replied, "Would you shut up, man?"

In CBS' snap poll, 48% said Joe Biden won the debate, and 41% said Donald Trump did. That's almost identical to the 49% to 43% lead Biden holds in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. So perhaps the debate made no difference. Or perhaps both candidates' supporters were equally likely to watch and say their man won.

Both candidates seem to have carried out, in rough-and-ready style, their or their campaign managers' strategies.

The obvious Biden strategy was to stay cool, make no mistakes and show no sign of cognitive impairment -- as he has occasionally showed on the campaign trail. This is in line with a campaign schedule that, even granting the need to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic, is the opposite of strenuous. The idea is that he's ahead and shouldn't risk blowing his lead.

The Biden campaign has called an early-morning "lid" -- an announcement it will make no news -- on at least 11 days in September. Early lids were common in Ronald Reagan's August vacations to his ranch in the mountains above Santa Barbara. They're less common -- though occasionally required for debate prep -- in the September before the election.

Biden has been blatant about not taking a stand on Supreme Court packing: He won't take one because it might be an issue, something voters might consider, to his detriment, before the election. Let them wait till later. Similarly, he says he doesn't favor the Green New Deal and then says, astonishingly, that it would pay for itself. He's been for and against fracking. He blames Trump for the recession while suggesting he's for longer lockdowns.

He's not the first non-incumbent candidate to straddle issues or misstate facts. And Biden supporters are so sure that Trump always lies that they wouldn't put up their umbrellas if he said it was raining.

The obvious Trump strategy is to employ Biden's 2012 tactics against Ryan: constant interruptions and loud ridicule in the hope of rattling the older candidate and eliciting an incoherent response or a lapse in concentration. But Biden doesn't seem to have cracked. As National Review editor Rich Lowry tweeted, "I agree with everyone who says the debate is hard to grade on any traditional scale, but the key takeaway is that Trump set out to make Biden crack and it didn't happen."

Perhaps there was another goal to this strategy. Pollster Frank Luntz, conducting perhaps his millionth focus group, reported that some participants found the debate so unpleasant that "it actually made them less likely to vote for any candidate." That could work to Trump's advantage. His support, always under 50%, stays solid above 40%.

His 2016 victory was possible because neither major party nominee got the votes of 6% of the electorate -- the highest percentage since 1980 and 1968. So it's to Trump's advantage to turn soft Biden supporters into third-party voters or non-voters entirely. A contentious, chaotic, painful debate may be one way to do that.

Ultimately, the most powerful argument is that they're not the other guy. Trump's repeated failures to make his own case intelligibly and Biden's unembarrassed refusals to take stands on key issues: Chaotic. Painful. Dispiriting.
Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Chaos." "Painful." "Dispiriting." "The worst presidential debate in American history." "The lowest point in American political culture in my lifetime." You get the idea. These are responses, from Donald Trump supporters and Donald Trump opponents, to the first 2020 presidential debate Tuesday night.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.