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Lest you give Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell credit for having any shred of morality for allowing a COVID-19 relief bill to finally pass after eight months of stonewalling any efforts by the House and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to help, don’t bother. Frustrated in his attempt to give businesses blanket immunity from legal liability for endangering their workers, McConnell found another way to get it done.

The CARES Act passed in March required employers to provide two weeks of paid sick leave to workers who were infected with the coronavirus. McConnell blocked lawmakers from extending that requirement in this package. Those two weeks of paid leave were required for sick employees, for employees who needed to care for a quarantining relative, and there was an additional 10-week paid leave requirement for workers with children whose schools or day cares closed for pandemic-related reason. It’s gone now with McConnell’s assistance, Republican and Democratic congressional aides confirmed to BuzzFeed News. But what did get extended was a tax credit to business, fully subsidizing the cost of paying out sick leave through next March. So businesses, if they feel like it, can extend the leave and be reimbursed. What this means is that people who are sick are going to keep going to work because they have to. They are going to infect their coworkers and their customers, because it’s that or have no income.

The original provision wasn’t perfect, exempting big businesses with more than 500 employees straight out and allowing small business with fewer than 50 employees to apply for exemptions. And two weeks of paid leave in a pandemic is wildly inadequate, far less than any other advanced nation has done—most of the others mandate paid sick leave all the time. Nevertheless, a study by Health Affairs found it worked to slow the spread of COVID-19. It also cost far less than projected, with just $1.3 billion claimed in tax credits compared to the projections that it would cost $105 billion. So doing the right thing by workers was actually helping and businesses weren’t overburdened. There was absolutely no reason for McConnell to do this other than sheer cruelty to working people.

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Donald Trump is once again putting his ego above any concept of loyalty or respect, turning on everyone around him who doesn’t indulge his fantasies that he didn’t lose and doesn’t encourage him to try to make those fantasies reality through a coup.

Monday night, Trump sent Republicans a slide attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for being “the first one off the ship.” McConnell refused to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden’s win for well over a month, until the Electoral College had voted. Trump also gave himself credit for McConnell’s reelection—implication: McConnell owes him the pretense that he won—despite McConnell having won his election by nearly 20 points.

McConnell’s not the only one, though.

“Top officials are trying to stay away from the West Wing right now,” Jonathan Swan reports. Trump is “lashing out, and everyone is in the blast zone.” Mike Pence’s plan to leave the country immediately after he oversees Congress certifying Biden’s win makes a ton of sense in this context—Trump will see Pence following the law as a personal betrayal. And score one for the Lincoln Project on the thing it’s best at—getting into Trump’s head—thanks to its ad feeding Trump’s suspicion of Pence.

It’s not just McConnell and Pence, though. Swan reports that there’s concern that Trump will replace White House counsel Pat Cipollone for the final few weeks, and you know that if Cipollone isn’t enough of a suck-up, the replacement would be a true horror show. White House counsel Sidney Powell, anyone?

How much worse will Trump get in the 29 days until Inauguration Day? Unfortunately, we have no choice but to find out.

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Welp, the Fox News talking heads have screwed up big-time. Newsmax and “OAN” too. Fox News leadership is fine with Lou Dobbs and clan demanding the toppling of this nation’s democracy, and Tucker Carlson is three shows away from burning a cross in his studio, but do something that is going to cost the network a big wad of money and suddenly, in swoop the lawyers.

The Fox News audience might have noticed something peculiar this weekend: A new three-minute segment appearing during multiple hosted shows that slapped down, hard, each host’s previous conspiracy theories revolving around voting machine company Smartmatic. Similarly, conspiracy network Newsmax aired its own supposed “clarification” of previous conspiracy claims about the company.

The message from both networks: All those things we said to work our viewers into a possibly violent froth targeting a private company, the claims about Smartmatic and rival Dominion being in cahoots to overthrow ‘Merica because reasons? Um, please ignore those. We now realize that the companies have a good shot at suing us all into oblivion.

Given that the hosts of each network sow conspiracy theories targeting innocent persons, companies, advocacy groups and you-name-it on a daily basis, you might have been curious as to what led to this one specific semi-retraction of falsehoods smearing one pair of companies. Yeah, no surprises here. It quickly turned out that it was indeed because Smartmatic and Dominion informed those networks that they were preparing to sue them into oblivion, and because it turns out they have an uncommonly solid case for doing so. News networks are shielded by a host of First Amendment protections, but turning two companies into targets for right-wing froth and potential violence based on purely fictional claims intended to boost Dear Leader’s own propaganda efforts is quite likely not protected.

These segments distancing the networks from their own false claims are not likely to buffer the conspiracy producers from an upcoming lawsuit, because there is almost no chance that any of the hosts involved, whether on Fox News or its propaganda-premised competitors, can keep their lying gobs shut from here on in. The Trump premise is that Trump actually won the election but was denied victory by those meddling [insert conspiracy targets here]; you cannot sell that conspiracy without naming a target, and Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and the Newsmax/OAN stable of deplorables do not have the collective brains between them to remember that they are not allowed to slander two particular companies. They’ll return to the conspiracy claims before the week is out.

Fox News will survive no matter what. The Murdoch family is filthy rich, everyone else involved is filthy rich, and they will shake the green room couch cushions until enough cash falls out to make the two companies go away and move on to slander new targets. For Newsmax and OAN, the lawsuit may be more existential. Both companies can claim damages well in excess of both “news” outlets’ total invested cash, and the conservative vultures circling both as potential buyout targets—so as to gain access to the advertiser’s dream: audiences pre-selected for maximum gullibility—are going to be less eager to buy into companies that come with giant legal bills attached.

So by all means, Smartmatic and Dominion, sue the ever-loving crap out of all three. Do it for the money. Do it for America. Do it because squeezing these professional liars for every dime they’re worth will do more to tamp down on fascism’s burping spread than any other possible act. Squish them.

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This is a “classic” from 2014 with some relevance to our current moment. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the minimum wage would be $24 in 2020 had it kept up with productivity growth.

If you are able, please consider joining the Sorensen Subscription Service!

Follow me on Twitter at @JenSorensen

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We begin today’s roundup with Tom Nichols at The Atlantic and his call to refuse to engage with or profile anti-democratic Trump supporters:

[O]rdinary people worn out by the dramas and lies of the past four years have a right to refuse to take Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters seriously. To reject further debate with people whose views are completely incoherent is not only understandable, but sensible. […]

I am talking about the people who are giving Trump their full-throated support to the very end, even as he mulls a military coup; the people who buy weird paintings of Trump crossing the Delaware, or who believe that Trump is an agent of Jesus Christ, or who think that Trump is fighting a blood-drinking ring of pedophiles. These supporters have gone far beyond political loyalty and have succumbed to a kind of mass delusion. It is not possible to engage them. Indeed, to argue with them is to legitimize their beliefs, which itself is unhealthy for our democracy.

I don’t want to treat our fellow citizens with open contempt, or to confront and berate them. Rather, I am arguing for silence. The Trump loyalists who still cling to conspiracy theories and who remain part of a cult of personality should be deprived of the attention they seek, shunned for their antidemocratic lunacy, and then outvoted at the ballot box. […]

[W]hen views are incoherent and beliefs are rooted in fantasies, compromise is impossible. Further engagement is not only unwarranted, but it can also become counterproductive.

Also at The Atlantic, Peter Wehner profiles Donald Trump’s last days in office: 

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Michael Gerson at The Washington Post calls Trump an “authoritarian wannabe” and warns against him ever holding public office again:

It is most important to consider these events not in the context of an unlikely 2020 coup, but in light of the inevitable 2024 election. The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is clearly not committed to democratic self-government. He is willing, even eager, to overturn the constitutional process if it serves his interests. No ethical second thoughts restrain him. Selfishness is not the violation of his standards; it is the fulfillment of his creed. For Trump, self-sacrifice is the true sin.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Debenedetti gives us a view of the Georgia race:

It’s easy enough to see Georgia as the unholy culmination of the Trump years — a battle royale to deliver one final referendum on the 45th president. “It’s not the first post-Trump race,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “It’s the last race of the Trump presidential era.” Strikingly, none of the players in the Georgia races are ready to let Trump go. The Democrats are campaigning, explicitly or implicitly, on a message of repudiation, and yet Trump and his mishandling of the pandemic have far and away been their most useful tools for turnout. The Republican candidates show tentative signs of wanting to separate from their alpha — Loeffler and Perdue have tried to avoid fully embracing Trump’s rigged-election fantasies — but neither has delusions of possessing enough star power on their own to counter the Democrats’ momentum. As for Trump, now that the Electoral College has voted and even McConnell and Vladimir Putin have congratulated Biden, he needs victory in Georgia more than ever — both to demonstrate he still has political vitality and as a first step in flipping the state back to red if (when) he runs again in 2024.

John Nichols writes about the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from the U.S. Capitol:

Three years after neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and their white nationalist allies rioted in Charlottesville, Va., over proposals to remove a statue in that city that honored the general who commanded the Civil War forces of treasonous rebellion that sought to break up the union in defense of slavery, one of the most recognizable monuments to the Confederacy and its generals was removed from the citadel of American governance in Washington, D.C.

On a final note, don’t miss Olivia Nuzzi’s reporting on one of the most surreal moments of 2020 — the Trump campaign’s press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping:

It’s hard to know what counts as a fuckup when you work for Donald Trump. Looked at by the standards of a traditional campaign with a traditional candidate who possesses a minor-to-moderate capacity for traditional human feelings, like shame, what happened at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, or the fact that it happened at all, was a disaster. A press conference is supposed to convince the public of whatever case you’re making through the act of being — or more likely pretending to be —transparent. That is, obviously, not what happened on the blacktop. But looked at in terms of attention generated and relevance sustained, two other goals of a press conference, the thing was a clear success. Plus it was the rare political joke that appealed to everyone.

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Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

30 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Dana Drugmand at DeSmog writes—San Antonio’s City-Owned Energy Utility Is Paying a Quarter Million Dollars a Year to Gas Industry Groups:

Deep in the heart of Texas, by far the nation’s top oil producer, the city of San Antonio is starting to grapple with its reliance on fossil fuels.

But the key player in implementing the Alamo City’s energy transition — the local energy utility CPS Energy — remains committed to carbon-based fuels like coal and natural gas, even while it begins to invest more in renewable alternatives. Climate and clean energy advocates in the community have become fed up with the city-owned utility, which is not only stalling in efforts to phase out its fossil fuel portfolio, but is actively funding two gas industry trade associations to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars each year.

According to records obtained by the watchdog Climate Investigations Center and shared with DeSmog, CPS Energy pays over $50,000 in annual membership fees to the American Public Gas Association (APGA), and over $200,000 annually in membership dues to the American Gas Association (AGA). Both groups lobby for continued dependence on methane gas, such as direct use of gas in buildings for things like heating and cooking, and oppose efforts to slash emissions by electrifying sectors like buildings and transportation. Their members and sponsors include large energy utilities and pipeline and fossil fuel companies like Duke Energy, Enbridge, TransCanada, and BP.

As DeSmog previously reported in this “Unplugged” series, the California city of Palo Alto is also helping to fund the American Public Gas Association via membership dues amounting to over $20,000 annually and which are paid by the city’s municipally owned utility. Some in the community said they see this funding as a conflict with Palo Alto’s ambitious climate goals.

Similarly, several environmental activists from the community in San Antonio told DeSmog that their municipal utility’s funding and support for the methane gas lobby does not seem to square with San Antonio’s goal, prescribed in a new city climate plan, to reduce the city’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

“To have a goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, while at the same time paying money to a gas association whose primary goal is to keep us hooked on fossil fuels, yeah, absolutely that’s a conflict,” said DeeDee Belmares, a San Antonio resident and climate justice organizer with the nonprofit organization Public Citizen.  […]

THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING

• The CIA Is Running Death Squads in Afghanistan, by Jeet Heer. Reports of atrocities supported by the American intelligence agency underscore the need to end America’s longest war.
   
• In Chile, Scientists Scrutinize Lithium Mining, by Ian Morse. In October, Chilean citizens voted to rewrite their constitution, setting the stage for a dramatic reassessment of the nation’s relationship with the environment. The country’s classification of lithium brine could have consequences for ecosystems, communities, and the powerful mining industry.
   
• Arkansas Could Give Amy Coney Barrett Her Big Abortion Moment, Rachel Cohen. The “Unborn Child Protection Act” was filed ahead of Arkansas’ next legislative session meant to more directly challenge Roe v. Wade.

TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES

QUOTATION

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, ‘although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,’ wrote Orwell, tends to be ‘uninterested in what happens in the real world.’ Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism ‘has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.’ A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”
          ~~Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017)

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Republicard: spend like there’s no tomorrow:

Introducing the Republicard. First practiced under the record deficit-spending of the Reagan-Bush administrations, and now re-issued under the fiscal wreckage of George Bush with a trifeca of Republican-rule to again spend like theres no tomorrow. Miles, the creator of the card:

Last week I was hearing about a proposal that had been introduced into Congress to honor Ronald Reagan by putting him on the dime coin. Aside from the fact that FDR, creator of the “March of Dimes”, certainly deserves to stay on that coin (and Nancy Reagan agrees)… it occurred to me that if someone were to honor George W. Bush, given his enormous deficits, the most appropriate place to do so would be… a credit card. So I imagined what it might look like, and came up with the RepubliCard: (This idea simultaneously occurred to political cartoonist Tom Toles who had a cartoon on this theme appear the very next day).

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This may be the last time we ever crunch presidential election results by congressional district for Rhode Island, because the Ocean State is on track to lose a seat when reapportionment data from the 2020 census is released, turning it into an at-large jurisdiction like fellow New England state Vermont.

The 1st, represented by Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, went for Joe Biden 64-35 after backing Hillary Clinton 61-35 in 2016, while the 2nd, occupied by Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin, supported Biden by a smaller 56-43 margin. That, however, was a bigger improvement on Clinton’s 51-44 win four years ago. (Click here for a full-size version of our map of these results.)

Both members of Congress easily won reelection—Cicilline didn’t even face a Republican opponent. However, if they were to face off in a 2022 primary, the vocally progressive Cicilline would likely have the advantage over the more conservative Langevin, who describes himself as “pro-life.” Langevin may therefore prefer a different race, such as the open-seat contest for governor, which might host a more crowded primary that could allow someone with a profile like his to win with just a plurality.

P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll want to bookmark our complete data set with presidential results by congressional district for all 50 states, which we’re updating continuously.

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As we lean into the holiday season, we continue to face the novel coronavirus pandemic as a nation. Because the Trump administration consistently fumbled the pandemic response, not only are people staring down a potentially deadly virus, but high unemployment rates, housing and food insecurity, and isolation from friends, family, and coworkers. In short: This combination of factors can make for a holiday season that’s both mildly depressing and has a lot of pressure riding on it. Because so many of us are feeling stressed, bored, and overwhelmed, we can feel a whole new level of eagerness to make gift exchanges or (pandemic-safe) holiday celebrations extra magical.

But what if you, like so many, are facing unstable or entirely diminished employment and don’t have a budget for holiday gifts? You can still spread some love, cheer, and care to people in your life. Let’s check out some free or pretty low-cost gift options below.

1. Write someone a letter

When was the last time you wrote someone an actual letter? Depending on how comfortable you are with your words, this option might feel a little cringe, but a letter doesn’t have to be pure poetry to make someone smile. (Though you can, of course, include a poem should the desire strike you.) If you go for a real letter, this option also gives you the chance to support the United States Postal Service by buying stamps. You can also include a photo, drawing, song lyrics, or other small and light mementos inside most envelopes. If you don’t want to go the traditional route, you can also always send a thoughtful email. The point? Letting people know that you’re thinking about them. 

2. Make a playlist 

If you really do not want to work on your way with words, going for music is a fun choice. If you still have the equipment, burning CDs is a super fun blast from the last decade. Free or inexpensive apps like Spotify and YouTube also make it easy to create and share playlists with people. 

3. Make a photo album

If you want to make a photo album that’s truly free, you can make and share one virtually. People can then print or frame photos if they’d like on their own. If you do want to spend a small amount, there are many websites that allow you to upload your photos (even directly from social media accounts) and customize captions, cover images, and the like. If you have the right supplies at home, you can also print and frame photos yourself.

4. Make a holiday card by hand

If you’re crafty (or hey, even if you’re not), making your loved ones or neighbors holiday cards by hand is one of the easier and charming options when it comes to low-cost gifts. If you happen to have the stationery supplies at home already, they’re effectively free!

5. Cook or bake their favorite meal

If you’re sheltering in place with a loved one or roommate, you can gift them a home-cooked version of their favorite food. Obviously, depending on what you keep in your kitchen, this idea isn’t truly free as ingredients and cooking utensils do need to come from somewhere. But you can be surprisingly creative with few ingredients, and cooking at home is sometimes less expensive than ordering takeout. Depending on your specific shelter-in-place situation, you may be able to cook or bake in bulk (potentially saving money overall) and do porch drop-offs to loved ones. 

6. Hike or walk in a new or special place 

Getting out into nature is perhaps one of the best ways to spend time while people are practicing social distancing. Depending on where you live, this option unfortunately won’t be safe or doable for everyone, but if you do live in an area where you can get outside safely, it can be a great way to make memories. Walking, hiking, biking, bird-watching.

7. Take over some of their labor 

If you live with someone and want to give them a thoughtful gift, why not perform some of their labor? While this option doesn’t have the most flashy ring to it, taking over domestic tasks for a loved one or roommate might help alleviate stress and overwhelm. For example, offering to walk a roommate’s pet, cook family dinners for the week, or cover child care for a sibling. 

8. Play board games virtually or IRL (can even rent from the library)

Playing board games is a classic group activity, but if you’re spending the holiday season isolated from family or friends, you might expect that you can’t enjoy your favorite games. In fact, many games now have virtual versions where you can play against people (either users you know or strangers) online. If everyone has a copy of the game, you can also organize a game night where you all play “together” over a video call. You can also look into renting games for free from your local library. 

How are you spending the holidays this year? Feel free to share what activities or gifts you have in mind below.

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says stimulus checks will go out as soon as next week, faster than the single round that was provided in spring following the CARES Act. “People are going to see this money the beginning of next week,” he said on CNBC Monday. “Much needed relief—and just in time for the holidays.” Except for the part that it’s after Christmas and barely relief. It’s better than a kick in the teeth, though, which has been pretty much all Republicans have been able to promise thus far.

That’s when they should start rolling out, and here’s what to expect as far as stimulus. This time around, dependent children are also eligible for the full $600, instead of the partial $500 payment children were worth under the CARES Act. Single people who earned up to $75,000 in 2019 will get $600 and married couples earning up to $150,000 in 2019 will get $1,200, half of what the CARES Act provided. The boost on dependent aid helps those struggling the most a little, as does the unemployment insurance boost of $300/week, broadband assistance, rental, and nutrition help. But for people who made more than $75,000/$150,000 in 2019, the payments will phaseout, decreasing until those individuals making $99,000 and couples making $198,000 get nothing. A problem here is that it is based on 2019 income and there will be people who did well last year only to have it all fall apart this year. Which is one reason means testing is bad, no matter what policy you’re talking about unless it’s a progressive income tax structure.

The text of the bill released by House Democrats says the $600 is available to each “child dependent,” and for “qualifying children (within the meaning of section 24(c)” of the tax code.  The qualifying age cuts off at age 17, so it would seem dependent college students, for example, aren’t eligible. “Mixed status” households, a summary from House Democrats says, will get full relief. That means legal immigrants without Green Cards, or resident alien status, will be eligible for the checks.