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More than any single event in recent memory, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the gaping chasms of inequality in American society. From the very outset it was accepted wisdom that “essential workers,” i.e., those forced to risk their lives in unsafe workplaces throughout the country, would include not only medical personnel such as doctors, nurses, and hospital orderlies; not only police, firefighters and first responders; not only operators of public transportation and critical government services such as postal workers; but also the folks who worked behind cash registers at the Lowe’s, the 7-11, and those whose jobs involved the processing, delivery, preparation and  transportation of food items and consumer goods that kept the moribund economy from congealing into a second Great Depression.

The “essential” nature of these workers was loudly touted by companies from Amazon to WalMart to Domino’s pizza, who extolled the selfless bravery of their employees in warm and touching TV ads, ads that served as a new type of PR for those same companies with sordid past track records about treatment of workers. Meanwhile, the highly compensated officers and executives of these companies bore the brunt of the pandemic not by interacting daily with a stressed and potentially infected public, but from their snug and expansive estates and second homes where they continued to bark orders and issue their edicts remotely. 

And this was also the case with the so-called “professional class,” as six-figure income lawyers and corporate managers developed new ways to work from home, reallocating firm IT services and equipment while the lower-tiered employees such as clerks and secretaries were mostly told to return to the office, if they were to keep their jobs at all. Probably the most telling example of the disparities in treatment afforded between high managerial and service-level, clerical employees is the current, never-ending circus continuing to unfold in our Congress this weekend, in which financial and rent assistance to ordinary middle and lower income Americans is being held hostage to liability protections insisted upon by the corporate “owner” class in the persona of Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.

In short, this was never going to be an “equal opportunity” pandemic. Its inherent unfairness has been even more apparent in the medical treatment received by the wealthy as opposed to ordinary Americans, personified by no less than Donald Trump and his White house cronies who, being infected with the COVID-19 virus through their own carelessness and recklessness, nonetheless have instantly received the quickest, most cutting edge care available. Nor are they alone—as described by Mark Sumner here, the gross disparity between medical treatment available to this countries’ richest citizens and its less fortunate (but so “essential”) workers, mostly those people of color who couldn’t work from home due to the very nature of their jobs, often with substandard health insurance, if any, was bound to surface before too long.

And now that multiple vaccines are looming, we are seeing the same sense of natural entitlement among the top 1% playing out, as reports emerge daily of attempts by these same people to bribe their way to the front of the line for vaccination, the better to allow themselves to carry on with their lives as soon as possible, with an eye to traveling and frolicking amongst their islands (both metaphorical and real ones) while the rest of Americans prepare to stand in line for months.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

They’re offering tens of thousands of dollars in cash, making their personal assistants pester doctors every day, and asking whether a five-figure donation to a hospital would help them jump the line.

The COVID-19 vaccine is here — and so are the wealthy people who want it first.

“We get hundreds of calls every single day,” said Dr. Ehsan Ali, who runs Beverly Hills Concierge Doctor. His clients, who include Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, pay between $2,000 and $10,000 a year for personalized care. “This is the first time where I have not been able to get something for my patients.”

A few years ago, in what came as a bit of a surprise to my woefully provincial sensibilities, I first heard the term “concierge medicine.” It refers to health care offered—at substantial cost—by an elite network of physicians and other medical providers designed to allow wealthier Americans (who may not wish to dirty their hands with the type of medical care provided to the vast majority of us) access to the best medical treatment money can buy. As described by Hayley Fowler, writing for the Miami Herald:

Many wealthy Americans pay for concierge medical services — a “kind of high-quality, primary care most Americans can’t afford,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Some of those services have already procured the expensive freezers needed to store the vaccine and put their patients on wait lists as soon as it becomes available for widespread distribution.

Doctors in boutique practices say they’ll adhere to public health guidelines in determining who gets priority. But being on a waiting list at a practice that has special freezers and other high-quality resources means you’re already near the front of the line once the supply opens up.

Doctors in these “boutiques” confirm this. One co-founder of a “concierge” medical service “with clinics in New York, the Hamptons and Beverly Hills”  told the LA Times that his group started soliciting these expensive deep-cold freezers as soon as it was apparent the vaccine would be on the market.

While the Trump administration has not yet been caught offering the vaccine for private distribution, these physicians groups feel it is just a matter of time before such allocations are made, in part due to the demanding and entitled nature of their patrons. The LA Times specifically refers to instances of these “concierge” patients offering huge payments to these groups for the privilege of jumping to the first in line. In one case a person asked if he could accelerate his receipt of the vaccine by making a $25,000 “donation” to a hospital. And, as CNN reports, other physicians with “A-list” clients have been fielding hundreds of calls, all conveying the message, of course, that their money should give them priority:

Dr. David Nazarian, of My Concierge MD in Beverly Hills, said a number of his A-list clients are contacting him, saying that money is no object if it helps them get the vaccine early. “They wanted it yesterday,” said Nazarian. “We will play by the rules but are doing everything we can to secure and distribute the vaccine when its available to us.”

State officials quoted through these articles are adamant that they will do everything they can to prevent such “line jumping” and they are obviously sincere in that intent. The LA Times article cites no instances yet of physicians succumbing to these types of pressures, but that is likely because the vaccine rollout has just begun, and also because physicians fear the public  consequences if they are found out providing the vaccine to those people whose only qualification to receive it is that they are not familiar with taking “no” for an answer.

Another concern described by the Times is the potential for wealthier people to arrange to have their symptoms “fudged” so that a minor history of asthma, for example, could be highlighted or stressed by their doctor for the purpose of receiving the vaccine on a priority basis. And there are always those people closely connected with pharmaceutical executives who believe they ought to warrant special treatment due to the nature of those relationships. Beyond this, as reported by Stat News here, once a vaccine is developed that does not require such stringent storage, there is virtually no doubt that a “black market” will develop for it, with access provided to the highest bidder.

As bluntly emphasized by Timothy Egan this week, writing for the New York Times, this pandemic is hardly close to reaching its conclusion. The next three months are going to be a living hell, with American deaths by March now expected to reach or exceed 500,000.  We already know that the Trump administration will pay scant if any attention to the way this vaccine is allotted once it finally gets its act together on distribution. It is the individual states that will ultimately determine the priority of how the vaccine is dispensed, at least officially.

Which brings us back to those so-called “essential workers.” If they were as essential as they were roundly described in all of those solemn advertisements, one would expect that, after health care workers (which seems obvious) they would be the first to receive the vaccine, right?

As reported by Stat News, not necessarily:

“Essential workers” are expected to receive early access to the vaccine, and the definition of this category is open to interpretation by state health departments, creating a means for influential industries to lobby for priority. “The devil’s going to be in the details of how the state runs their program,” Lang said he tells his patients.

Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the federal panel recommending how to distribute the vaccines, want to prioritize essential workers to help ensure people of color, who are often the hardest hit by the virus, get early access. But the predominantly white workers in the financial services industry are also considered essential, according to guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was referenced by ACIP, as well as executive orders from several states including New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California. Public-facing bank tellers face contagion risks in their work, but aren’t the only financial services employees included.

“It was left a little bit nebulous but basically covered people who oil the movement of money, so exchanges, trading floors, trading operations, and people who keep money moving at the retail [banking] level,” said Lang.

Again, it seems that the people who have the money will be prioritized to receive the vaccine, as well as—not coincidentally– the people whose job it is to move money for those same people.

A more telling verdict on our society’s priorities could hardly be imagined.

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In 2016, I was working at a small pediatric clinic during the holiday season. There, the paycheck before Christmas was always the one where a bonus was added. That year, the powers that be decided there would be no bonus, blaming unforeseen business costs. The staff was not warned beforehand, leaving people to look at their bank accounts on Dec. 15 and wonder what they’d done wrong. When the medical assistants, nurses, and office workers realized there would be no bonus, the Christmas spirit that had been circulating through the clinic was suddenly gone. People were angry that senior management couldn’t at least be open and honest about the situation in advance, and people were worried; many of my coworkers’ financial situations, like that of many Americans, could only be described as “paycheck to paycheck.”

There were also people who needed the bonus just to cover their Christmas spending. At least one nurse sought a loan in order to secure the gifts she still wanted to buy for her children. Sadly, that nurse, and the financial hardship she took on during the holidays, are not uncommon. There are Americans out there right now being lured to predatory lenders offering “Christmas loans” with 400% interest rates—people digging themselves deeper into debt just so they can spend this time of year fitting a cultural image. I’ve been a child who watched other children receive gifts and participate in family events, while Santa Claus seemed to skip my home. But it is another circle of hell entirely to face the enormous pressure of being a parent who loves their children but, for one reason or another, can’t provide the material things we associate—and daresay, expect—to receive at Christmastime.

This sort of consumerism is bad enough in any given year, but becomes even more stressful at a time when millions have been laid off, much-needed government aid is endlessly debated, and a deadly pandemic decimates our society. However, despite all of that, the spending show still goes on. The risk of COVID-19 wasn’t enough to dispel crowds clamoring for Louis Vuitton accessories and PlayStation 5 consoles over Thanksgiving weekend.

The odd union of religion, consumerism, and an implied societal duty to buy at Christmastime is just too strong, even in an uncertain time of social distancing, lockdowns, and desperation.

Christmas in the U.S. effectively wraps together religion, patriotism, and materialism—while rationalizing it all as being in furtherance of American values and being good for the soul. Amanda Mull recently wrote an interesting piece for The Atlantic, titled “Christmas Must Go On,” which pondered whether the pandemic might force people, and society as a whole, to reassess whether this annual custom actually makes sense. Mull argues that celebrating Christmas—not in a religious way, but as a consumer—affirms a person as a part of their community. Therefore, instead of the pandemic causing people to pull back from these behaviors, most will likely move to embrace them even more, out of a desire for normalcy.

In America, the economic, the religious, and the patriotic can’t be easily separated. Dell deChant, a religion professor at the University of South Florida and the author of The Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture, calls Christmas “a huge ritual celebration honoring the economy and feeding the economy.” God, country, and cash are particularly tightly entwined during a year when America’s leaders can’t stop telling us that keeping the economy humming is our sacred duty … Granted, certain aspects of Christmas won’t be the same in 2020. Many of us won’t be able to travel great distances to visit our families, and older relatives might not be able to see much of anyone at all. (Three) hundred thousand people and counting are gone, and millions of others have lost the income that funds bounteous celebrations. Still, deChant believes that the drive to create as much of the old Christmas feeling as possible will likely be strong.

“Christmas is a great normalizing experience—it’s powerful in terms of our personal and cultural identity,” he says. “If we’re not able to consume, then, to a certain extent, we’re marginalized—within the culture, as well as in our own minds.” For many Americans who don’t celebrate Christmas, sitting out the foofaraw while the whole country conducts Christmas consumption is an annual dose of alienation. For people who normally participate but suddenly find themselves unable to do so, the sense of detachment might even be more piercing for its novelty. Buying not just gifts, but decorations, sweets, and the trappings of a Christmas feast are deeply entrenched customs, and many Americans will want to hang on to those rituals in a world where so much else has been disrupted. For some, keeping Christmas, as a transformed Scrooge put it, will feel profoundly comforting. For others, the wish to do Christmas right will be tinged with defiance. Think we can’t buy gifts galore and decorate like busy little elves straight through a disaster? Think again.

Our deep-seated feelings about Christmas might make these arguments seem like a rant Ebenezer Scrooge would embrace while screaming “Bah! Humbug!” But as Jacob Marley and the ghosts lurk in the background, perhaps we can explore this topic in a familiar way.

Christmas Past

Christmas, as a holiday, has existed in some form since the middle of the fourth century. The origins of the Dec. 25 date have long been the source of competing theories. According to Saint Augustine, late December corresponds to the winter solstice on the Roman calendar; he argued it symbolically represented a celebration on the shortest day with the most darkness, with the light growing more and more each day after, representative of Christ being the light of the world. Other theories posit the early Christian church coopted the winter solstice and festivals meant to honor the Roman deities Saturn and Sol Invictus. Saturnalia included modern Christmas elements, such as gift giving, candle lighting, and decorated trees.

Fast forward 1,400 years and the holiday is now controversial. In part because of its quasi-pagan origins, Puritans and Protestants objected to the celebration of Christmas, which was then associated with drunkenness and debauchery. In 17th-century America, celebrating Christmas was illegal, and could result in a fine of five shillings. Acts of British Parliament in the 1640s effectively banned Christmas; what are now traditional aspects of the holiday were deemed the behavior of heathens; and defiantly singing Christmas songs was considered “a political act.”

The modern iteration of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian movement which emerged in the 1830s and 1840s and embraced old rituals and past religious traditions, alongside the popularization of ideas found in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Dickens’ novella captured popular sentiment in England seeking to restore the holiday, while reinforcing certain ideas about poverty and human indifference to suffering. In doing so, A Christmas Carol is a direct rebuke of the popular social theories put forward by economist Robert Malthus, who linked poverty and hunger to population. Malthus, like Thanos after him, believed poverty was a byproduct of “surplus population”; undesirables eating up food and competing for jobs should be treated with a heavy hand to discourage proliferation. Using Malthus’s theories as justification, the British government of the time condoned brutal conditions within workhouses in order to punish people for being poor. Leadership also rationalized lack of government support to the poor, since it was preferable that the impoverished starve and decrease the surplus population. Dickens put Malthus’s own words into Ebeneezer Scrooge’s mouth in order to shame those who embraced him.

The phrase “Merry Christmas” has existed since at least the early 16th century, but A Christmas Carol made it popular, while also accentuating certain customs and traditions. Most of the trappings of a modern Christmas—carolers, Christmas trees, gift giving, toys for children, Christmas cards, and even paid time off—can be found in the story. Moreover, A Christmas Carol decouples Christmas, to a degree, from Christianity, making the day about far more than a deity’s birth.

As Dickens’ story spread in Victorian England, Clement Clarke Moore’s poem—about a fat man in a red suit who has a sweatshop at the North Pole and likes to hand out toys—was becoming extremely popular in the United States. The poem, which was a reworking of the legend of Saint Nicholas, helped create the modern conception for Santa Claus. But Santa Claus served another purpose. Attaching Christmas and the Santa Claus narrative to the innocence of youth, the buying of toys, and images of content families at home helped move celebrations of Christmas from the poor in pubs and revelling on the street, similar to Halloween and New Year’s Day, to a middle-class setting, enjoyed by a wealthier elite. The holiday also worked as a strategy to allay elites’ concerns about young people in urban environments and potential social unrest by championing an aspirational day spent at home. When coupled with  Dickens’s message of giving and goodwill, as well as the emerging commercialism of the 20th century, the entire scene became a very efficient foundation for marketing products and opening wallets.

Christmas Present

Today, we require people to abandon the one value that’s supposed to be at the heart of Christmas—or at least the Hallmark version of it. In order to afford all the trimmings of Christmas, many people must separate themselves from their families for more and more hours of work.

The commercialization of Christmas inexorably linked the holiday to quarterly economic growth and year-over-year sales figures. Over $1 trillion in sales are generated during the Christmas holiday, and 70% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) comes from consumer spending. This drives businesses to expand the contours of the Christmas shopping season to greater and greater lengths, at the expense of their workers’ peace of mind and safety. Even before the pandemic, the retail sector had become a horror show; declining sales, as online shopping surged, pushed brick-and-mortar businesses to change the meaning of “Black Friday” to include Thanksgiving Thursday, forcing workers to skip out on dinner with their families if they want to keep their jobs.  

While a certain politician was touting “the greatest economy in the history of our country,” and even before masks and limited capacities inside stores became a thing, the retail sector was in a deep decline. Approximately 10,000 brick-and-mortar stores closed in 2019 alone, with brands such as Sears, Kmart, JCPenney, Payless, and Family Dollar making up part of an economic “apocalypse” that continued in 2020, as the pandemic and lockdowns took their toll. Twenty-nine additional retailers have declared bankruptcy this year.  

But during a pandemic where the CDC is telling families to avoid large gatherings, are retail workers in Macy’s really so “essential” that they need be in a crowded store in order to sell bedsheets and Coach purses? In an attempt to compensate for expected pandemic-related losses, the holiday sale season was expanded to take up nearly one-quarter of the calendar in order to lure buyers. So far, it’s working—somewhat.

The most recent Black Friday saw thinner crowds at retail locations, but significant growth in online sales—which saw a 15% uptick from last year. Analyses indicated the average shopper spent $312 during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend period, a 14% decline from 2019. For the holiday as a whole, Americans are projected to spend around $1,000 total on gifts and Christmas-related expenses, $123 of that on a spouse or significant other. Among American shoppers, 22% of the public believes Christmas bills will leave them at least $500 in debt, and 45% feel pressured to overspend.

It’s interesting to consider how spending and marketing and debt intersect with a holiday which is supposedly about generosity and giving. If Dickens’ lesson for Scrooge was about the wealth of spirit that comes from giving to those less fortunate, how is that reflected in all of these transactions? According to a 2014 report, about one-third of all charitable giving happens in the final three months of the year; 18% occurs in December alone. Do people need to know their year-end financial situation before they give to charity? Could it be people are trying to increase their tax refund? Might some only think of others and find it in their hearts to open their wallets at a certain point of the calendar? Might generosity only kick in when Santa Claus, Jesus, and a stroking of egos are involved? That is debatable, but some research indicates charitable giving during the Christmas holiday is tied to the “warm glow” of the season.

Because when one really thinks about it, what difference is there between a family in ancient Greece sacrificing cattle they worked all year to sustain at a temple in order to gain spiritual favor, and people in the here and now spending what money they’ve earned all year at a mall (or on Amazon Prime) in order to catch the Christmas spirit and enjoy a happy new year?

Christmas Yet to Come

Are there alternatives to more spending and bigger and more lavish events, during (and after) a pandemic? On the event front this year, many will only see their families over FaceTime and Zoom if they abandon their travel plans as recommended. Some children are giving their Christmas lists to Santa on virtual calls instead of at malls, while drive-through light shows allow those with cars to safely enjoy the sparkles of the season.  

But for those tired of seeing what money they actually put in the bank disappear come December, are there options post-COVID-19? Some advocate for making Christmas celebrations more personal, more productive for one’s family and community, and less about consumerism. Back in 2018, Joe Pinsker had a piece in The Atlantic which profiled families who eschewed the usual Christmas shopping routine. These innovative traditions seem even more relevant today.

Heather Hund and her family will gather in West Texas on December 25 and solidify a new Christmas tradition, in which each relative is randomly assigned to give a gift to another family member and to a house pet. “The rules are basically a regift for the human and then $10 for the pet,” Hund told me. “And my 18-month-old son got put in [the latter] category too, so it’s small humans and small animals.”

Hund and her family downscaled their gift-giving six years ago after considering how much work Christmas shopping was. “I just remember coming home and being super stressed and last-minute trying to run out to the mall or looking online and seeing what I could get shipped in like three days,” said Hund, who’s 35 and works in tech in San Francisco. Now, with the extra time she and her family have, they paint pottery together, cook, go on runs, and play cards. Plus, they get meaningful presents through the regifting agreement, such as the Led Zeppelin record Hund received from her dad, purchased when he was in high school. The new gifting protocol has been a joy. “The first year I thought I would be sad about it,” she said, “and I really wasn’t.”

David Tucker, a 33-year-old engineer at a software company who lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, told me that he and his wife stopped giving gifts three years ago. “It was a mixture of a lot of things,” he said, “but we both started to share a disdain for the holidays” and the marketing involved, especially after a couple financially tight years. They found themselves surrounded by stuff, and not needing any more of it. So they started donating their annual gift budget to charity, which means that their holiday shopping now takes just a few minutes. Tucker said that this mentality has shaped his habits during the rest of the year—he and his wife now volunteer more at their local food bank. “Why should it stop there?,” he remembered thinking about his holiday donations.

Is this sort of thinking likely to spread throughout the culture and take hold over time? Probably not. My guess would be the pull of that “warm glow” may be too strong for most to resist. Complaining about Christmas spending and commercialism is also sort of like Mr. Pink ranting about tipping in restaurants in Reservoir Dogs. He may have a point about inconsistency, and the entire social custom being illogical, but he also sounds selfish. Holiday spending, like tipping, is so ingrained in the culture that not doing it elicits weird stares, and isolates one within their social circle—think of that feeling when someone gets you a gift and you don’t have one for them, or vice versa, or how you feel when splitting a bill with someone who refuses to contribute to a proper tip. It goes against an established norm.

If someone’s child is excited to see Santa, sees other kids celebrating, and has their heart set on a PlayStation 5 or iPhone, do we really believe most parents would deny their kids the joy of a gift-filled Christmas morning? This ideal has brought us to the point where people leave the Thanksgiving table to wait in the cold for a discount. This materialism, and the happiness it fuels, represent both the best and worst aspects of the Christmas holiday; they are a reflection of the world we have built.

Regardless of whether someone’s boss is a dick(ens) for withholding an end-of-year bonus, there’s something to be said about a system where people work like dogs all year, some at multiple jobs, and yet every December, find keeping Christmas to be a struggle. As we start 2021, with hope of a new beginning after COVID-19 and the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump, the economic issues that shape Christmas shopping and the larger economy will persist, because the inequalities of the system persist. No one should work 80 hours per week at multiple jobs just to make ends meet, much less take out a payday loan just to buy presents at Christmas. But here we are with our very own Republican Ebenezer Scrooges, worried that poor people might get too much help.

A desire to express the love in our hearts is no excuse to take on the chains of debt, yet somewhere along the way we’ve decided that’s a normal part of a Merry Christmas. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. We all have the power to change the shape of our Christmases yet to come.

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The Old Line State backed Joe Biden 66-33 after supporting Hillary Clinton 61-34 four years before, and Biden carried seven of Maryland’s eight congressional districts by double digits just as Clinton did. Donald Trump, meanwhile, had no trouble taking the conservative 1st District. (Click here for a larger version of our map.)

Biden was able to exceed 60% of the vote in every seat he won. The closest district both in 2020 and 2016 was Democratic Rep. David Trone’s 6th District, which includes part of western Maryland and Montgomery County, though it was hardly tight: This suburban seat went for Biden 61-38, compared to 55-40 Clinton.

The 6th did feature an unexpectedly competitive race during the 2014 GOP wave when then-Democratic Rep. John Delaney turned Republican Dan Bongino (who went on to run for Congress in Florida before becoming a far-right social media influencer) by a single point. It seems that experience convinced Delaney he represented a “Red District,” as he tweeted during his extremely ill-fated presidential bid, but Team Blue hasn’t had any trouble holding it in the three elections since.

The lone Republican district, Rep. Andy Harris’ 1st, includes the Eastern Shore and Baltimore exurbs. Trump won 59-39, a dropoff from his 62-33 victory, but still by no means close. Harris himself had narrowly lost the previous version of this seat in 2008 to Democrat Frank Kratovil, but he came back and unseated Kratovil 54-42 in the 2010 GOP wave. Democratic mapmakers opted to make this seat more conservative in order to strengthen the party’s candidates in the rest of the state (even though they could have easily made it much bluer had they had the courage), and Harris has had no trouble over the ensuing decade.

Maryland was one of the few states where Democrats had control of the redistricting process last time, and the status quo is likely to persist. While Republican Gov. Larry Hogan can veto any maps he doesn’t like, Democrats have more than enough members in both chambers to override him.

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

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Gov. Ron DeSantis really tried to redefine his own failure to order enough doses of a much-anticipated coronavirus vaccine as an error on the part of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Tuesday. Of course, few people are buying it, but he tried. When posed with the prospect of Florida getting less than the needed 452,000 vaccine doses the state was anticipating, DeSantis tried to explain the problem away as a Pfizer “production issue.” Pfizer, however, said in a statement the Tampa Bay Times obtained that the pharmaceutical giant is having no such issue.

“Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed,” the company said in the statement. “This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to the locations specified by them. We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”

For this example of DeSantis’ departure from reality and more, South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s editorial board blasted the governor, President Donald Trump’s mentee, as “Florida’s mis-communicator in chief.”

 “DeSantis has been off-pitch since the coronavirus first hit our shores — denying community spread, spinning happy talk about scarce protective gear, and shielding data about nursing home infections, hospital bed capacity and the lack of contact tracing,” the editorial board wrote. “But in the weeks before and since the 2020 presidential election, he’s gotten worse.”

The newspaper cited as evidence the governor’s claim that reports of Florida’s 1.19 million COVID-19 infections and 20,473 deaths have been manipulated to seem worse than they are. He’s deemed “anti-masker” Kyle Lamb and conservative blogger Jennifer Cabrera more reliable sources on the virus, and DeSantis is dodging South Florida mayors seeking mask mandates like an anti-masker dodges common sense.

“Never have we heard DeSantis admit a mistake,” the editorial board wrote. Rarely have we heard him express empathy for those who’ve been infected, placed on a ventilator or died. He talks in terms of numbers, not people — people with real names like Christine and Earl, Doris and Stuart, Adrian and Shannon, Thom and Jose, and tomorrow, perhaps your name, too.”

RELATED: Ron DeSantis gave Trump a last-minute boost by covering up Florida COVID-19 deaths before election

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As cases of the novel coronavirus increase nationwide, the newly released Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has given hope to some individuals that the virus can be stopped. Shipments of the vaccine arrived in all 50 states and Puerto Rico on Monday with healthcare workers and nursing home residents the first to receive a dose. While this is not the end of the pandemic, the vaccine gives hope that the nation will slowly recover from the damage that has been done and things might actually go back to “normal” soon.

But that doesn’t mean you should throw away your masks and other safety precautions just yet. Although a vaccine is available in the U.S., it’s not yet available to everyone nor is it the sole solution to defeating this pandemic. At the rate at which COVID-19 is spreading, it will still take months for the vaccine to be given to a significant number of people in order to curb the pandemic. Continuing to wear masks and following other safety precautions is essential in helping the vaccine work to its best ability. While Americans nationwide anxiously await the moment we no longer need to wear masks, Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, assures us that we may be able to throw them away within the next year. So rest assured and keep your mask on, the end of the COVID-19 era may be near.

“I don’t believe we’re going to be able to throw the masks away and forget about physical separation in congregate settings for a while, probably likely until we get into the late fall and early next winter, but I think we can do it,” Fauci said while appearing by video conference at a Center for Strategic and International Studies virtual health event on Dec. 14. 

“[It’s] not going to be like turning a light switch on and off. It’s not going to be overnight,” Fauci continued. “It’s going to be gradual, and I think we will know when we see the level of infection in the country at a dramatically lower level than it is right now that we can start gradually tiptoeing towards normality.”

This isn’t the first time Fauci has emphasized that the country will be wearing masks despite vaccinations being available. Last week he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that a vaccine being available will not influence state mandates on mask-wearing. “Until you have a virus that is so low in society, we as a nation need to continue to wear the mask, to keep the physical distance, to avoid crowds,” Fauci said. “We’re not through with this just because we’re starting a vaccine program—even though you as an individual might have gotten vaccinated, it is not over by any means. We still have a long way to go.”

As the number of COVID-19 cases increases nationwide and the death toll rises with more than 300,000 deaths as a result of coronavirus, Fauci reminds Americans that the pandemic is still an issue and that we must all continue “to implement the public health measures to prevent the surges we’re seeing throughout the country,” NPR reported.

According to NBC News, Fauci predicts the “ordinary” American, or all Americans despite risk level, may be able to have access to the vaccine as early as the end of March or early April, however safety precautions still must be followed. He added that by late spring or early summer of 2021 he hopes the U.S. will attain “that umbrella of herd immunity.”

“By the time we get to the fall, we can start approaching some degree of relief where the level of infection will be so low in society we can start essentially approaching some form of normality,” Fauci said.

He said extraordinary public health measures—such as mask usage, event cancellations, and enhanced hygiene protocols—are likely to continue “several months into the second half and beyond of 2021.”

“Only when you get the level of infection in society so low that it’s no longer a public health threat can you then think about the possibility of then pulling back on public health measures,” Fauci said.

Other health officials have reiterated Fauci’s concerns noting that immunity to the virus will take a number of months. According to Business Insider, similar to the flu shot that does not guarantee a lack of infection the vaccine does not guarantee immunity. “The moment you get a vaccine doesn’t mean you’re going to put your mask in the trash,” Maria Elena Bottazzi, a vaccine developer at Baylor College of Medicine told Business Insider.

While the success rate of Pfizer’s vaccine and the fact that it is being shared in the U.S. should be celebrated it does not mean individuals should stop safety precautions and resume their “normal lives.” A vaccine being available is not equivalent to the end of a deadly virus. Health officials have recommended people should continue to wear masks and avoid large gatherings until the pandemic is actually over. While we have come a long way in fighting COVID-19, we are not at the end yet. Keep that mask: you need it for not only your safety but the safety of others.

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Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union this Sunday morning, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg spoke with host Jake Tapper about what it means to him to potentially be the first openly gay Cabinet secretary approved by the Senate, and first millennial Cabinet member, as well as his priorities for the Department of Transportation, and of course, his thoughts on a reportedly bizarre Oval Office meeting involving both Sidney Powell and her client Michael Flynn. 

On his potential role as Transportation Secretary, Buttigieg says he understands that part of his “responsibility” and “opportunity” involves making it a “little bit easier for the next person to come along.” What exactly does he mean? Let’s check out the interview below.

“You’re going to be the first openly gay person to serve in a Senate-confirmed Cabinet secretary position,” Tucker stated. “You’ll also be the first millennial Cabinet member. Do these milestones mean something to you personally?”

We all know Buttigieg is no stranger to eloquent, moving remarks. And his answer to this question is no different.

“I can remember being a teenager,” Buttigieg stated. “I remember being in Indiana in the ‘90s, watching on the news, as an appointee of President Clinton’s, James Hormel was put forward to be an ambassador. Couldn’t get a hearing in the Senate, was attacked relentlessly because he was gay. I wasn’t even out to myself at the time, but I noticed that story.

And, you know, over the weekend, having mentioned historia, I tracked down the former ambassador and called him. He did get to the serve in the end, though only by recess appointment. And he said that he made sure, he asked, to be put forward for something that would have to go to the Senate, knowing full well what would happen. Because he knew that would chip away at that barrier for the next person to come along. So, I was mindful as that announcement came out that I was standing on the shoulders of people who came before me.

And I understand that part of my responsibility, and my opportunity, is to make it a little bit easier for the next person to come along. And I hope there are young people who may have wondered if they belonged, maybe been given reasons to wonder if they belong in their own families and communities, understanding the message that is sent by the President-Elect when he creates a place of belonging at a place like the Cabinet table in the White House.”

Here is that clip.

And when it comes to specifics on transportation, Buttigieg talks about what he would focus on as Transportation Secretary, in addition to an enormous, hopefully bipartisan infrastructure package Biden has said is a major priority. Buttigieg says, “Americans shouldn’t settle for less when it comes to the infrastructure resources that we really count on.” He describes his perspective as part of a “mayor’s-eye view” and that in a community like South Bend, “daily life is shaped by transportation,” as well as the economy. 

So, as Buttigieg told Tapper, he’s thinking about transportation in terms of jobs, economy, and, thankfully, climate. “I’m thinking about climate,” he stated. “There is no way we’re going to do what we must do as a country unless we move the transportation sector forward.”

Buttigieg, also thankfully, brought up race and transportation, an enormous but under-discussed aspect of infrastructure development and climate in general. “It’s disproportionately Black and brown neighborhoods that were divided by highway projects plowing through them, because they didn’t have the, sometimes, the political capital to resist, or, sometimes nothing at all. Coming to the most low-income, or minoritized, neighborhoods. We’ve got a chance to get that right.”

He also discussed worker safety, which is, of course, especially pertinent given our ongoing pandemic crisis.

Tapper brought up that Trump recently held an Oval Office meeting where his allies reportedly discussed potentially invoking martial law in states that Biden won. (On Twitter, Trump asserted this was “fake news.”) 

“Obviously, it’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous,” Buttigieg said to Tapper, adding that this is ultimately a “country of laws.” Buttigieg confirmed that Biden will become President Biden on inauguration day.

As a veteran, Buttigieg said he felt reassured that professionals in public and uniformed service will follow the law, though he felt that the Secretary of the Army—of course— shouldn’t have had to come out and clarify that there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of the election. 

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Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide hits Arizona, which gave its electoral votes to Democrats for only the second time in more than 70 years. You can find our complete data set here, which we’re updating continuously as the precinct-level election returns we need for our calculations become available.

Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Arizona by a close 49.4-49.1 four years after the state backed Trump 49-45, a result that made Biden the first Democrat to take its electoral votes since Bill Clinton in 1996. Before that, the last Democrat to carry the state was Harry Truman in 1948.

Biden managed to win five of the Grand Canyon State’s congressional districts, which was one more than Clinton, while the remaining four went for Trump again; all the Biden seats are represented by Democrats, while the Trump seats remained in Republican hands. Biden also improved on Clinton’s margin of victory everywhere except the 3rd and 7th Districts, which are the most Democratic seats in the state. You can find a larger version of our map here.

We’ll start with a look at the 1st District, which is the only district that went from Trump in 2016 to Biden this year. This sprawling constituency in the northeastern part of the state had supported Mitt Romney 50-48 before going for Trump by an even narrower 48-47, but Biden took it 50-48 this time. Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, who had previously served in the legislature as a moderate Republican, won a third term 52-48 against Republican Tiffany Shedd in a race that attracted millions in spending from outside groups on both sides.

Biden also made big gains in two seats that were competitive just a few years ago but have quickly veered away from the GOP. The 2nd District in the eastern Tucson area had backed Romney 50-48 before going for Clinton 50-44. The seat continued to move left this time by supporting Biden 55-44, and Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick prevailed by a similar 55-45 margin.

The shift over the past decade was even more dramatic in Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton’s 9th District, which is home to central Phoenix and eastern suburbs. The seat supported Obama 51-47 in 2012 before going for Clinton by a wide 55-38 margin. Biden took it by an even larger 61-37, which makes this his biggest improvement over Clinton’s margin in any of the state’s nine districts.

Biden performed best in the 3rd and 7th Districts, but as we noted above, his margin of victory was smaller than Clinton’s four years ago even though he took a larger percentage of the vote (and more raw votes). Rep. Raul Grijalva’s 3rd District, which stretches from the Yuma area west to Tucson, moved from 62-33 Clinton to 63-36 Biden.

Rep. Ruben Gallego’s Phoenix-based 7th District went from 72-23 Clinton to 74-25 Biden, which represented a 0.17% drift to the right. Both seats are heavily Latino, a demographic that in many places moved toward Trump, though the shifts were considerably smaller here than they were in several comparable seats in neighboring California.  

We’ll turn now to the four Trump seats. National Democrats made a strong effort to unseat scandal-ridden Republican Rep. David Schweikert in the 6th District, a once safely red seat in Scottsdale and North Phoenix that had moved from 60-39 Romney to 52-42 Trump. Trump’s margin of victory this time shrunk to 51-47, but that was enough to carry Schweikert to a 52-48 victory over Democrat Hiral Tipirneni.

Trump decisively carried the remaining three districts, but Biden made gains in each. Trump’s margin of victory in Rep. Andy Biggs’ 5th District in the Phoenix suburbs of Mesa and Gilbert shrunk from 58-37 to 56-42, his second-largest decline in the state after the 9th. The shift was only a little smaller in another suburban Phoenix seat, Rep. Debbie Lesko’s 8th District, where Trump’s margin sank from 58-37 to 57-41.

Rep. Paul Gosar’s giant 4th District in the north-central part of the state, meanwhile, was again Trump’s best seat in the state by far, though Biden still trended up a bit here: While Trump won 68-28 here in 2016, he carried the seat 68-31 this time.

Arizona’s congressional and legislative maps are drawn by a bipartisan commission, but Republicans have done everything they can to eliminate it. In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the body’s constitutionality by just a 5-4 margin, and since then, the court has moved to the right. If the commission is struck down, the Republican-controlled state government would control the mapmaking process.

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Of 68 cases of alleged police brutality tracked this year by the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica, officers were only disciplined in nine of them and charged in five. Disciplinary action was “unknown” in 13 cases even though video clips of all 68 incidents were included in the journalism organization’s database. ProPublica’s investigation follows the arrest of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. In that brutal arrest, Floyd, a Black man, died when a white Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. A summer of protests for justice and equality followed, which police predictably responded to with even more violence.

“Most departments refused to share details about their investigations, but we’ve continued following the cases over time,” ProPublica tweeted Sunday. “We have new updates to report in Seattle & Colorado Springs:”

The Colorado Springs case involved multiple police officers hitting a man identified as Justin Salmons while officers restrained him on June 1. Investigators ultimately decided to exonerate all officers, giving only two of the five involved “verbal counseling.”  Video and investigation files ProPublica obtained revealed officer Robert Comstock fired pepper balls at Salmons; Officer Christopher Laabs pushed him to the ground; and Detective Andrew Rutter struck his leg. 

Other authorities involved included Officer Robert Thymian and Sgt. Keith Wrede, who was shown in a Facebook live stream advocating to “KILL THEM ALL” one month after the incident. Wrede was suspended for 40 hours and lost $2,044 in pay as a result of that video, which was posted using a pseudonym, ProPublica reported. Wrede “expressed a high level of regret for ever making comments of that nature,” and he told investigators interviewing him that he had been listening to Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All” before the video.

In the June incident, ProPublica reported:

“In response to a public records request from ProPublica, the department released more than 120 pages of officer narrative surrounding Salmons’ arrest. According to the narratives, civilian Justin Salmons cussed at officers, refused to leave an intersection and ‘made rude gestures towards officers involving his crotch and hands,’ and did not comply with an order to get on the ground before the arrest caught on video. The officer who stuck Salmons’ leg said he ‘aimed at his common peroneal nerve to gain compliance.’”

Salmons told ProPublica police started shooting pepper balls at him after he went to check on someone officers had been chasing and it made him “supremely angry.”

“Police are supposed to protect you,” he told the journalism organization.

Police officers across the country, however, have been the subject of thousands of complaints regarding accusations they mistook their role to protect and serve as a right to terrorize. In one case not included in the ProPublica database, viral video shows Seattle protesters pouring milk over the head of a 7-year-old boy who had been pepper-sprayed during a daytime anti-police brutality protest on May 30. Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability, which viewed multiple videos from officers’ body cameras, determined a sergeant pepper-sprayed the child while targeting a woman grabbing a police baton, and trying to push a police line backward. The accountability office determined the use of force was “lawful and proper,” in a case report updated December 4. It said in the report:

“The picture of the Child standing in the middle of the street, crying, with milk running down his face is anunforgettable image from these demonstrations. It shows an innocent child who was a victim regardless of thecircumstances. That the Child suffered this trauma is something that OPA is extremely sorry for and that no decisionin an administrative investigation can ever remedy. Notably, NE#1 expressed similar regret at his OPA interview.This is one of the hardest cases that I, as the OPA Director, have had to consider during my nearly three years inoffice. Certainly, there has never been a case that received as many complaints. On one hand, the Child suffered aclear wrong when he was affected with the pepper spray utilized by NE#1. On the other hand, NE#1 usedappropriate force to prevent Subject #1 from breaching the line and could not have known that Subject #1 wasgoing to duck and that the Father was going to bring himself and the Child directly behind her, putting them in theimmediate vicinity of the disturbance. This is not said to blame the Father, as OPA does not believe that any parentwould knowingly place their child in harm’s way. These are simply incontrovertible facts.”

In another case, ProPublica brought attention to Seattle officers shown restraining and beating a protester on May 29. The city’s Office of Public Accountability (OPA) recommended one of the officers be disciplined for hitting a protester “with six to eight punches over six seconds” but considered another involved officer’s actions “reasonable, necessary, and proportional under the circumstances.” The difference between the two came down to a question of whether the officer’s actions were both consistent with policy and proportional under the circumstances, according to a closed case summary the OPA posted online. “Here, when evaluating the totality of the evidence, striking the Subject six to eight times simply did not mee these standards and in OPA’s estimation, was excessive,” the agency said.

RELATED: 7-year-old maced at George Floyd protest and Seattle police arrest man who filmed

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Pandemic deaths in the United States have now topped 300,000, so you can guess where the Trump administration’s attention is focused in its waning days. That’s right, showerheads. The administration has just finalized Donald Trump’s perhaps greatest infrastructure achievement, rolling back water efficiency standards to allow rich people to waste more water than you do.

Specifically, the new rule keeps in place Congress’ mandated 2.5 gallon-per-minute maximum water usage for showerheads—it being required by Congress, after all—but modifies the rules so that “fixtures” with multiple showerheads can have each head dispensing that maximum amount, side-by-side-by-side, rather than having to limit itself to 2.5 gpm in total. Put four showerheads on the same bathroom “fixture” in past years, and the fixture would still be required to use only 2.5 gpm when fully open. No longer.

As you can tell, this is a rule that will apply almost exclusively to people with Much Better Showers Than You. The current trend in fancy is to fill a shower with six or eight heads, all from different directions, so that the showerer does not have to rotate their lazy ass even slightly in order to be fully immersed in water. If you have any bathroom not custom-constructed to your specifications, you probably don’t have this. It’s largely a luxury feature, though you can recreate the experience rather easily with a bucketful of pipe fittings or, if that’s still too much work, a yard sprinkler and a hose. To each their own.

The best part about this new rule, however, is not the Trumpite Energy Department skirting prior congressional mandates through creative tweaks of language, it is the sheer, raw, soggy pettiness of the move. It comes from Donald Trump, personally. Donald Trump had the powers of the presidency handed to him, and he was apathetic at best about pandemic deaths, saw national security primarily as a tool for self-enrichment, and showed such complete disinterest in each underling’s policy moves that he was at near-total loss to explain any of them during public appearances.

But this? This, Donald Trump insisted on. Given the supreme powers of the United States presidency, Donald Trump used them to apply pressure on regulators over all matters of housely excretions. He had strong opinions on the flushing power of toilets. He returned time and time again to anecdotal housewife complaints about washing machines and clothes dryers. He complained bitterly to public audiences about The Showerheads These Days.

A hotelier and off-and-on casino kingpin, the man was obsessively interested in using his new powers to create bathroom fixtures more to his own personal liking. He had to flush toilets twenty times after using them, he groused. Rather than seeing a doctor about that, he declared that America must instead develop new toilets capable of handling his wealthy byproducts.

And by God he actually followed through. He had his underlings follow up on those things. He demanded it. His disinterest in the plight of U.S.-allied Syrian Kurds, his unwillingness to even acknowledge foreign bounties on U.S. troops, the government-wide enforcement of his own personal belief that a worldwide pandemic was being acknowledged and responded to primarily as partisan measure intended to make him look bad—the man could not be coaxed into learning about any issue or any crisis that his staff could not provide in picturebook form.

But given the power to bend all of U.S. government to his will, he set about to nickel-and-dime the Secret Service into renting carts at his private clubs, nudged supplicants to purchase club memberships or book events in his Washington, D.C. hotel, and launched a rally-based crusade to demand that things that spray water at him spray more water at him, and things that flush water away from him flush more water away from him.

Nobody was asking. There were a few conservative diehards, perhaps, the sort that declared new lightbulb efficiency standards to be treason and who adopted as ideology the notion that making any acknowledgement of the dangers of humanity’s planet-deforming footprints would somehow lead to communism, and they were happy to let Trump borrow a cup of spittle for that particular cause, but the Toilet Crusade and Battle of the Bulging Showerheads both were Trump inventions.

Other national leaders have brought their extensive knowledge of our nation’s legal systems, regulatory structures, economic premises, or mere raw charisma to bear on the nation’s problems. Trump knows color swatches and plumbing. His innovation on border security was to demand the border fence be painted black, so that it would get hotter. His innovation on energy and resource extraction was to demand that his bathroom fixtures be Made Great Again.

C’mon now. You can’t say that isn’t a fine capper to the worst presidency in American history. Even know, we are left wondering how many times Biden will have to flush before Trump spirals out of the White House; the man is committed to the bit.

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Daily Kos Elections’ project to calculate the results of the 2020 presidential election for all 435 congressional districts makes its next stop in New Mexico, which was the site of one hotly contested House race this year and could soon host a special election in a different district. As always, we’re providing detailed county-by-county breakdowns, and we also have an extra-large map of the results you can explore.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s no surprise that southern New Mexico’s conservative 2nd District returned to form in 2020 and ousted freshman Democratic Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, given Donald Trump’s strong 55-43 margin of victory. On the margins, that actually represented a small increase from his 50-40 win four years earlier, though the 2016 numbers were skewed somewhat by former Gov. Gary Johnson, who took a sizable 9% running on the Libertarian ticket.

Torres Small won a huge upset in the 2018 blue wave when she defeated Republican Yvette Herrell 51-49 after GOP Rep. Steve Pearce departed for an unsuccessful run for governor. But Herrell came back for a rematch and prevailed, though her 54-46 win was narrower than Trump’s 12-point spread.

The state’s two other districts, both reliably blue, easily went for both Joe Biden and their respective Democratic House candidates, but there was an interesting flip-flop: For the first time in a presidential race since New Mexico added a third congressional seat following the 1980 census, the 1st District gave a higher share of its vote to the Democrat than the 3rd. While the district lines have shifted somewhat over time, they’ve been largely stable for the last 30 years, with the 1st anchored by Albuquerque and the 3rd spreading out from Santa Fe.

This year, the 1st went for Biden 60-37 while the 3rd supported him 58-40; four years ago, the 1st gave Clinton 51.6% of the vote while the 3rd gave her 51.8%. The strong result in the 1st was powered by Biden’s 61-37 win in Bernalillo County, the second-best showing by a Democrat of all time, trailing only FDR’s massive 1936 romp. The difference, of course, was not dramatic, and Clinton actually carried the 1st by a slightly larger margin (52-35 with rounding, vs. 52-37 in the 3rd).

But it’s nevertheless welcome news for Washington, D.C. Democrats, who’ve expressed some apprehension about Biden tapping 1st District Rep. Deb Haaland to become the first Native person to head up the Department of the Interior, a move he’s reportedly about to announce. While Republicans could be competitive in a special election here, a seat Biden won by 23 points is probably at the outer limits for them.

The key reason New Mexico’s districts haven’t changed much since the 1990s is that state government was divided between Democrats and Republicans in recent redistricting cycles, leading a judge to impose new maps each time that made as few changes as possible while ensuring population equality. That could change next year, however, as Democrats will have full control of redistricting for the first time since 1991.

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.