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Of all people, I expect more from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman to lead the city and the first LGBTQ person to do so as well. She, however, is being accused of actively trying to cover up the horrific injustice that left Anjanette Young, a Black social worker, naked with police body-cameras rolling in her own home, the wrong home in a horribly botched city raid on Feb. 21, 2019. “I was terrified. I tell people that I was scared into compliance,” Young told MSNBC’s Joy Reid. I was afraid to move because in that moment, I thought if I did anything out of the ordinary that they would shoot me.” Yet the initial response from the city’s legal team in the incident was to attempt to hide the video of Young, who had been adamant that she wanted it released, CBS Chicago reported. The body-camera footage was released recently after about a year’s time elapsed and a Freedom of Information Act request was filed.

Lightfoot similarly tried to keep City Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez from discussing the incident during a web-based city council meeting Wednesday. “I have my five minutes,” Sigcho-Lopez can be seen telling the mayor as she repeatedly cut him off. “We have three matters that are up before the council,” Lightfoot told him. “Those are the three matters um that are before the council. If you want to talk about a separate issue, there will be a time and a place for that, but you are out of order sir.”

Sigcho-Lopez called the video of Young “unacceptable” in a conversation about ethics at the meeting. “I think it’s urgent,” he said, challenging the mayor to have a public safety and health committee hearing on the issue. He asked why the health department was trying to sue Young because she was trying to make the incident public.

“You do not know the facts,” Lightfoot responded, “but that doesn’t stop you from making wildly inaccurate comments. We will be addressing this issue in total after the city council meeting, but I would appreciate if you and others who have an interest in this, as everyone should because the images portrayed on that video were upsetting. No question whatsoever.

“But what I would ask you is to actually get the facts, sir.”

Lightfoot ultimately did keep her promise to discuss the matter in greater depth. She apologized for the video during a press conference Wednesday and said she was “blindsided” by the incident, only being made aware of it Tuesday. “I was completely and totally appalled as a human being, as a Black woman, and as a parent,” she said. Yes I am mayor, but absent that reality, I could have easily been Ms. Young.”

Obviously not buying Lightfoot’s claim, activist Ja’Mal Green told WTTW the mayor has already broken her campaign vow to “bring in the light.” “Here we are still in the dark,” he said. “It is time for change. It is time for transparency. It is time for the mayor to be held accountable for what the administration did.”

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said in a tweet about the incident: “43 times. Anjanette Young told police 43 times that they raided the wrong house. No one believed her. This could have been you. It could have been me. She was traumatized, dehumanized, and humiliated. And this is unacceptable. #ProtectBlackWomen”

Bernice King, activist and daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, tweeted about the incident along with several other activists on Twitter this week. “Such callousness and disregard for human worth and dignity require more than reform. This shouldn’t have happened to #AnjanetteYoung. Unconscionable. @chicagosmayor,” the activist said.

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The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was supposed to keep small businesses from laying off workers during the coronavirus pandemic. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) It hasn’t always worked out that way. Trump and Kushner businesses got loans, as did predatory payday lenders, but many of the businesses that needed the loans most were left out. 

UNITE HERE, the union representing hospitality workers, has set its sights on a major hotel chain that got tens of millions of dollars in PPP loans but laid off the workers at many of its hotels. In a letter to the Small Business Administration (SBA), the union calls on the SBA to “closely scrutinize” the hotels and the lending banks.

Omni hotel affiliates got a whopping $76 million across 32 PPP loans, according to UNITE HERE. But in the cases for which the union has “direct knowledge,” five hotels got nearly $15 million in loans. Despite that, “Three of them—Omni Providence, Omni San Francisco and Omni William Penn—are temporarily closed, and none of our members have been rehired or paid by the hotel. The Omni New Haven and Omni Parker House only recently reopened without all of their facilities, and the hotels have failed to recall more than 80% of our members who work at the hotels.”

This is not what the PPP was supposed to do, and it’s directly harmful to the workers. “The failure of these hotels to rehire their employees has financially harmed our members and created great uncertainty for them and their families. So far, we have not received commitments from Omni to use the loans to fully rehire the workers we represent.”

The union also sent letters to the managers of the hotels in question, noting that they appear not to be in compliance with the PPP’s terms and calling on them to rehire workers, along with letters to the banks responsible for most of the loans, calling on them to take a very close look at whether the hotels qualify for forgiveness.

“It is time for the SBA to step up and ensure that money intended to help American workers actually benefits them,” said UNITE HERE Executive Vice President Carlos Aramayo. “It is unfathomable that massive corporations like Omni have access to millions of tax-payer backed loans, while hundreds of their workers remain without a paycheck heading into the holidays.”

Rep. Katie Porter previously called for an investigation into hotel layoffs in and around her California congressional district after those hotels received PPP loans.

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As cases of the novel coronavirus increase nationwide, concerns of the virus spreading are not the only issue local and health officials both face. A number of officials on the local level in both political and health spaces have become the target of violent threats for supporting COVID-19 measures and efforts to stop the spread. According to Daily Kos, as a result, a number of public officials, who are already underpaid and overworked, have expressed thoughts of retiring or leaving the field.

In Kansas, a Republican mayor announced her resignation Tuesday after receiving multiple threats for publicly supporting a mask mandate. Mayor Joyce Warshaw of Dodge City announced her resignation on social media following emails, voicemails, and other anonymous violent messages towards her and her family that began last month after the city commission voted for masks to be required both indoors and outdoors where social distancing can not be observed. According to The Washington Post, the anonymous messages claimed she was not only restricting civil liberties but should go to jail over her vote.

“I do not feel safe in this position anymore,” Warshaw wrote in a resignation letter Tuesday to the city manager, “and am hopeful in removing myself this anger, accusations and abuse will not fall on anyone else and will calm down.” Warshaw expressed that she felt as though she had no choice but to resign amid the increasing violence towards public officials. Over the last year, various public officials have been forced to relinquish their positions due to floods of nasty messages and in some cases, armed protesters outside their home. “There’s a multitude of things coming down the pipe, causing people to be disgruntled with life,” she said. “People just want to blame somebody, and I feel like it was easy to blame me.”

Under the Trump administration, public officials have become targets as Donald Trump encourages his supporters to protest, even with violence, towards officials who vote on issues in ways they do not agree with. Daily Kos reported a large number of threats by Trump supporters that took place this week alone against public servants trying to fulfill their duties. Additionally, hate crimes have seen a rapid increase since the start of Trump’s presidential term. To date, more than 50 cases of violence have directly cited Trump as the influence and reason for the crime.

While the messages began last month, they increased in aggression and frequency after a feature published in USA Today Friday. Threats ranging from expressing that Warshaw should “get murdered” to “we’re coming for you” prompted Warshaw to make the difficult decision to resign after serving nearly eight years in government.

“They were loud, and they were aggressive, and they frightened me and my family,” Warshaw told The Washington Post. “There’s a strong part of me that wants to say they are only words. But people are angry right now, and I don’t know that for sure.”

Police are investigating some of the threats and despite them, Warshaw told The Associated Press that she does not regret voting in favor of the mask mandate and still loves the city the same. “This is harder for me than people realize,” Warshaw said. “I really love this city with all my heart. I still believe in this city, and I believe in their ability to not harm one another.” Since the start of the pandemic, Ford County, where Dodge City is located, has recorded more than 4,900 cases of COVID-19, according to the state health department.

As of this report, at least 197,903 cases of COVID-19 and 2,253 deaths have been reported in Kansas, according to data compiled by The New York Times. 

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New applications for unemployment benefits rose again for the week ending Dec. 12—885,000 for state programs and 455,000 for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program for a total of 1.34 million, up 5% over the previous week. Unless Congress acts, the PUA and other federal programs that provide extended unemployment benefits beyond what states allow will expire the day after Christmas. That would mean 12 million Americans would suddenly join the estimated 4.5 million who have already exhausted their benefits.

It appears that, nine months after Congress passed the first stimulus legislation with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, lawmakers finally seem on the verge of passing a second bill for $900 billion that will extend benefits until March, include an extra $300 a week for those receiving unemployment checks, and provide additional rental assistance. Currently it’s estimated that Americans owe $24 billion in back rent. A nationwide eviction moratorium expires Dec. 31 without further federal action. 

Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute writes:

This bill would reportedly provide a 10-week extension of both PEUC [Pandemic Emergency Unemployed Compensation] and PUA, and reinstate FPUC [Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation]. The 10-week extension is wholly insufficient—it ensures millions will exhaust benefits before the end of February, as the virus surges and job openings remain scarce. Further, FPUC would be reinstated at only $300 per week, not $600. Though far better than nothing, the $300 is less than what is needed.

One reason it’s unfortunate FPUC was reduced to $300 is that UI is great stimulus. Reinstating the full $600 would create or save 3.3 million jobs; the $300 will create or save just half that. There are now 26.1 million workers who are unemployed or otherwise out of work because of the virus, or who have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic. And job growth has slowed dramatically. 

Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, told The Wall Street Journal, “The next few months will be pretty rough for the labor market as you do see businesses having to contend with this latest wave of Covid cases. You are seeing those government restrictions coming into play again.” Some 26.1 million Americans are out of work or have had their hours or compensation cut.

The recent rise in claims is no surprise given the surge in the spread of the coronavirus, which on Wednesday killed the most Americans it has on single day since the pandemic began and has sparked new government stay-at-home mandates and restrictions on which businesses can be  open. Though the initial recovery from the steep economic plunge in March and April was swifter than analysts had expected, with unemployment rates never reaching the 25% level that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell suggested in May might occur, the immediate damage has been extensive. As in the aftermath of the Great Recession, many people will face long-lasting repercussions associated with extended job loss, delayed education, exhausted savings, and evictions. Some people will never recover financially.

One major impact since the pandemic began is that, as of November, 3.9 million fewer Americans were in the workforce compared with a year earlier. That number is no doubt skewed by the fact the government counts as having left the workforce any jobless person who didn’t look for work in the past four weeks. Given the nature of the pandemic, that definition is even more wrongheaded than during “normal” times.

The economic fallout from the virus has struck women especially hard. With many schools closed, the nation’s child care, already in a critical state, became extremely problematic because of the virus. Mark Miller at The New York Times reports that the Pandemic Recession has disproportionately hurt women so much that it is being called a “shecession,” with the biggest hit taken by Latina, Black, and Asian American women, according to a YWCA USA study. 

Policy experts have long acknowledged a gender gap in retirement security. Women tend to earn less than men, and they are more likely to take time off from work to care for children or elderly parents. Even brief career interruptions diminish wage growth, retirement savings and Social Security benefits, which are determined by wage history. Women also tend to outlive men, needing to stretch resources over more years. In particular, they face higher health care expenses in retirement.

In November, the national unemployment rate dipped to 6.7 percent from 6.9 percent, the Labor Department reported last week. But the pace of job growth has stalled, and millions have dropped out of the labor market altogether, especially women. One recent study found a disproportionate decline in employment for women of prime working age, 25 to 55, compared with men — and especially so for mothers.

Many problems arise from this situation, and a key one is the impact on women’s retirement finances. Even brief interruptions in paychecks can cut deep into retirement. For instance, a calculator created by the Center for American Progress shows what can happen. Take the hypothetical case of a 35-year-old woman earning $80,000 a year who drops out of the workforce for five years. If she retires at 67, her retirement benefits will be $197,000 less than if she had not stepped out for those five years.

If Congress does pass the stimulus package that’s being negotiated by party leaders, it won’t come near to fixing the economic wreckage of 2020. That will be a task for the incoming Biden-Harris administration, which will be hampered by the Democrats’ narrow majority in the House and, at best, a 50-50 split in the Senate. Passing legislation implementing a green recovery, with all its millions of jobs and effects on the climate crisis, is the obvious path as vaccinations convey immunity to the population. But GOP resistance to any programs that give workers a boost, much less seriously addressing a problem that half of Republican senators think is a hoax, will make getting such legislation to the president’s desk a very hard slog.

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Remember a million moons ago when Donald Trump first came into office under a cloud of national security suspicions? There were the connections to Russia, the Russia stuff, Vladimir Putin, then there was the MAGA chant of “lock her up,” a call for Hilary Clinton’s security issues surrounding emails and Benghazi. But somewhere around 500,000 moons ago, there was The New York Times story about Russia and China listening in on Donald Trump’s phone calls because of his refusal to use secured government phones.

The narcissist usually opts to use his own personal mobile phones. Trump lack of sophistication in these matters is something we can all imagine permeates every aspect of his life. It’s a mixture of having a mediocre mind that is also smothered in narcissistic hubris. On Oct. 22, a man from the Netherlands named Victor Gevers reportedly hacked into Donald Trump’s Twitter account. How did he get past the president of one of the most powerful countries Earth has ever known? He guessed the password, silly! You get three guesses before you go below the fold.

If you guessed “maga2020!”, congratulations! You could have had access to one of the most powerful people with the world’s biggest microphone. The White House denied the report that he was hacked. Twitter said that they saw no evidence of a hack. Dutch prosecutors however, say about the 44-year-old Gevers to the world on Wednesday: “We believe the hacker has actually penetrated Trump’s Twitter account, but has met the criteria that have been developed in case law to go free as an ethical hacker.” 

The prosecutorial staff said they conducted an investigation into Gevers’ claims and found them to be congruent with work compiled by their law enforcement cyber unit. According to Dutch prosecutors, they have passed on the findings of their research to American authorities. According to Gevers, his attempts to guess the password also revealed another, probably even more depressing hole in security: a seeming lack of basic two-step verification. “I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information.”

Gevers also told a newspaper that this was the second time he’s hacked the president’s Twitter account by guessing the orange racist’s password. According to Gevers, he and another person guessed “yourefired” back in 2016 and gained access to Trump’s account. This could not be verified, but it’s pretty believable.

Remember: Donald Trump was and will always be a national security nightmare.

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One of the recurrent myths that far-right street brawlers such as the Proud Boys like to tell each other, in bullhorn speeches and social media posts, is that what differentiates them from “rioters” like antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) is that they don’t engage in arson and property damage: “That’s not who we are!” is a common refrain heard at right-wing events, including the recent pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” protests.

But it is, in fact, who they are, and worse. The Proud Boys who invaded Washington, D.C., last Saturday to protest Joe Biden’s election made that more than clear when they began attacking and vandalizing African American churches with Black Lives Matter signs and banners, tearing them down and burning them in the streets. Metro D.C. police are now investigating the acts as hate crimes.

“Last night demonstrators who were part of the MAGA gatherings tore down our Black Lives Matter sign and literally burned it in the street,” wrote Dr. Ianther M. Mills, the pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, in a public statement. “The sign burning was captured on Twitter. It pained me to see our name, Asbury, in flames. For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings.”

The attacks occurred at the culmination of a night full of assaults and confrontations with both counter-protesters and police by the participants in the earlier “March for Trump” organized by “Stop the Steal” groups, but populated by Proud Boys, “Three Percent” militiamen, and other far-right groups who dominated the violence that followed in the streets that evening.

The first vandalization occurred at Asbury, one of the city’s oldest African American churches. A group of Proud Boys tore down the church’s large Black Lives Matter banner and carried it into the streets, parading it as a trophy.

Eventually, a cluster of them set the banner aflame in the street, dousing it with liquid fuel. The men chanted, “Fuck antifa!” and the white nationalist dogwhistle, “Uhuru!”

Later, another group of Proud Boys were seen on video vandalizing the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, another historic African American church that had erected several BLM signs. The men tore down the signs and destroyed them.

Two other churches, Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church and Luther Place Memorial Church, reportedly also suffered damage during the demonstration, according to Metro D.C. police. Officials told reporters all four incidents were being investigated as hate crimes, but declined to say whether any arrests had been made in the cases.

As Cassie Miller of the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, several of the Proud Boys wore shirts that were variations on standard Proud Boys garb that indicated further affiliations with violent white supremacist and fascist movements. Notably, several of the men seen burning the BLM banner wore shirts with the acronym “RWDS,” which stands for “Right Wing Death Squad,” a meme first popularized by white nationalists on internet platforms such as Reddit.

One Proud Boy was spotted by journalist Chad Loder sporting an RWDS shirt that primarily featured a fascist symbol on the chest, along with the letters “6MWE”—for “6 Million Wasn’t Enough,” a reference to the estimated numbers of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The same man wore a death-skull “Siege” mask favored by the followers of neo-Nazi figure James Mason.

Such masks and others—notably branded Proud Boys and American flag kerchief masks—have become common sights at far-right events in recent years, manifesting how readily the groups pushing the politics of intimidation will abandon their own myths. In the earliest phases of the ongoing confrontations between far-right street brawlers and antifascists in 2017, it was common to hear the Proud Boys and their white nationalist cohorts jeer at masked antifascists, calling them “cowards” for hiding their faces.

It was a hypocritical taunt since there already were a number of masked far-right rioters engaging in that violence even then. Now the masks are not only commonplace but virtually de rigeur among the far-right protest crowds.

Similarly, one of the street brawlers’ favorite talking points, both to media and among themselves, is the belief that they don’t instigate violence or engage in property damage and burning. Instead, they argue, as Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson regularly claims, that their opponents are the violent ones: “They’ve caused riots, they’ve confronted the police, they’ve physically assaulted people, they’ve damaged property, they’ve set fire, they’ve done all those things and, yet, conservatives just don’t tend to roll that way,” he told one reporter.

The reality is that far-right street-brawling groups have always rolled that way. Moreover, regardless of what crimes can be laid at the doorstep of antifascist and anti-police brutality protesters, hate crimes are not among them.

Moreover, the context of these particular hate crimes is important. As Cassie Miller explains:

Black churches have historically been one of the key organizing spaces in the Black freedom struggle and have therefore long been subject to racist attacks. They represent Black autonomy—something viewed as especially threatening in the midst of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Churches were bombed and set on fire throughout the era, including in 1963 when Klansmen bombed the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed four young girls.

Rev. Mills observed that what made the attacks on the churches especially disturbing is the response from law enforcement on the scene, and by leading politicians afterwards:

Sadly, we must point out that if this was a marauding group of men of color going through our city, and destroying property, they would have been followed and arrested. We are especially alarmed that this violence is not being denounced at the highest levels of our nation and instead the leaders of this movement are being invited to the White House.

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On Thursday, a panel of outside experts participated in a day-long review of the data on the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Though this was a somewhat different set of experts (with considerable overlap) from those who reviewed the Pfizer vaccine last week, many of the same questions came up over the course of the day. Unlike the Pfizer vaccine, Moderna only asked for an emergency use authorization (EUA) in patients over 18, so a good deal of the concern that occurred near the end of the Pfizer vote that focused on younger patients was avoided.

At the end of the day, the panel eventually voted in favor of approving the vaccine by a vote of 20 to 0 … though not before a technical glitch led to a false start after the experts were temporarily asked to vote on the Pfizer vaccine that is already in distribution. A single expert voted to abstain. With this vote, the Moderna vaccine will move to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for final approval. It is very likely to follow the same steps that Pfizer did last week. That means that this weekend a second vaccine rollout could begin, and by Monday the first U.S. patients could be receiving the Moderna vaccine.

As in the previous review, the day included a presentation from the FDA and a separate presentation from Moderna, both of which were followed by question and answer sessions. The biggest concern generated by this discussion was not directly about the safety or efficacy of Moderna’s vaccine, but over the issue of how Moderna intends to handle volunteers in their trial in the future. Where Pfizer intended to reveal whether or not a volunteer had received vaccine or placebo only on request, and only at a time when the volunteer might gain access to the vaccine, Moderna appears to be much more aggressive in their “unblinding.” In essence, Moderna intends to promptly reveal the status to all the volunteers so that those who got placebo can seek vaccine as soon as possible. The concern from the panel is that this limits the ability of the study going forward to look for long-term issues since there will no longer be a “control group.”

Another discussion that came up this week that was largely avoided during the Pfizer debate was focused on concern that the FDA was issuing emergency use authorizations too frequently on vaccines in the future, and that the question should not be worded so broadly in allowing the vaccine to be administered to anyone over 18 rather than explicitly making it available only to groups that were at high risk. Some of the participants worried that by using EUAs with this broad authority, the FDA had little incentive to come back for a lengthy review process required for full approval. It was primarily for this reason that one expert abstained.

The reviewing group found the Moderna study to be “well organized” and “very thorough.” They also appreciated the way in which Moderna tested patients for COVID-19 at intervals throughout the study rather than simply waiting for symptoms to appear. This change was enough to net the vaccine the vote of one expert who voted against the Pfizer vaccine a week earlier. Others felt safer in coming on board because the question of whether the vaccine was safe for patients under 18 was avoided.

Like the Pfizer vaccine, Moderna is using mRNA contained in lipids. These two vaccines represent a wholly new approach to vaccine development. Should they prove safe and effective over an extended period, this technology could come to dominate the field. Moderna’s vaccine was developed within 48 hours from the point when their team first obtained the genetic template for the virus. 

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The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that President-elect Joe Biden could save the U.S. roughly $2.6 billion if he stops construction of impeached president Donald Trump’s racist and expensive border fencing immediately after taking office. The initial savings is an estimated $3.3 billion, but officials said they believe the incoming administration will have to pay roughly $700 million to terminate agreements with private contractors building the monstrosity.

What’s been long clear is that Trump’s wall has been a disastrous, expensive monument to hatred—and a monument that we, not Mexico, have had to pay for. What’s also clear in light of this report is that terminating those federal contracts and ending construction on Day One of a Biden administration isn’t just the right thing to do, but could also save the nation billions that could possibly could be used for real emergencies facing the nation.

As The Post notes, only about a third of the $15 billion the Trump administration has been using to build the thing “was provided by Congress through the standard appropriations process.” The rest, swindled from other areas of the government. But really, swindled from us. Even as litigation over this money grab is now heading to the Supreme Court, he’s still inexplicably claiming that Mexico will pay for it, more than five years after he first uttered the lie as a presidential candidate.

Back here in reality, the president-elect has previously pledged that “[t]here will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” and has wide latitude to immediately end this thing, despite the fretting from some media about stopping construction dead in its tracks. I mean, that’s what we want!  And the fact that the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner is openly railing against that plan is a good indication that’s the right thing to do. 

“Let’s consider the cost directly to American taxpayers when we walk away, which will probably be billions of dollars that have already been invested and assigned to a contract,” Mark Morgan said according to The Post, claiming it would be “waste of taxpayer money.”

Mark, the “waste of taxpayer money” has been this entire project. And not just a wasteful project, but a corrupt one. Aside from the money-swindling, The New York Times recently reported that two whistleblowers alleged that contractors constructing the monstrosity smuggled in armed Mexican guards to watch worksites building the racist wall Trump’s using in his quest to keep Mexicans out, going so far as to create a dirt road to help expedite the unlawful crossings. “The employees also accused the companies of submitting fraudulent invoices for border wall costs and ‘hiding’ the full profits of the project,” the report said.  

“The ironies of the border,” reporter Dianne Solis tweeted. “Armed Mexicans smuggled in to guard wall.” Nor has Mark addressed his own “waste of taxpayer money” in the form of using his government position to campaign for Trump’s losing presidential campaign, something now under investigation by the chief of Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act unit.

The Trump administration is reportedly spending its final weeks rushing construction before Biden takes office, destroying precious land even when it’s clear it doesn’t have enough time to put up any fencing in that specific area. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Laiken Jordahl, who has used social media to document this disaster (as seen in the tweet above), has called it “destruction for destruction’s sake.” Stop construction, end the contracts, and tear the motherfucker down.

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For the past several weeks, more and more information has been leaking out about how thoroughly Russian hackers have infiltrated government systems. With Donald Trump pretending not to believe in the malevolence of Russian actions in 2016 and constantly waving off reports that Russia was still heavily engaged in testing inadequate defenses, it’s no surprise that Russia has been essentially everywhere. That includes critical areas of both Homeland Security and the State Department. These were not attempted hacks: These were successful hacks that allowed Russian agents to leverage network-managed software to gain widespread access to some of what were suppose to be the most secure—and most essential—systems.

The limits of the espionage effort have still not been determined, but they definitely can get worse than Russian agents looking in on agencies that both plan for national security and coordinate foreign policy. They can get worse in the sense that Russian hackers also found their way into the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons.

As Politico reports, information officers at the Department of Energy identified “suspicious activity” in not just the Nuclear Security Administration, but at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Sandia National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, and the Office of Secure Transportation. That would seem to indicate Russia had been peeking in on everything from how U.S. weapon systems are designed and how they are built, to where they are stored. U.S. specialists are now examining network traffic, trying to determine just what Russia has learned, and whether any access remains. 

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On Jan. 6, unless he fakes his own kidnapping or takes other drastic action, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over Congress as it accepts the Electoral College victory of Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States. He then will immediately flee the country.

No, really! We’re not making this up! As reported by Politico, Mike Pence is looking to preside over the acceptance of the Electoral College results, then leave town the very same day to go on a tour of the Middle East and Europe. It would mark Pence’s first foreign trip in a year, and is being timed to coincidentally overlap with the days in which Donald Trump is expected to froth and rage more than Donald Trump has ever frothed and raged before. Go figure. It also comes during a spike in the COVID-19 pandemic, which Mike Pence is in charge of combatting, that is causing thousands of American deaths per day. This would be a true problem if Mike Pence actually had real pandemic duties; fortunately, he does not.

In a somewhat satisfying bit of exposition, Politico gives both the cover reason for Pence’s sudden interest in going to let’s say, um, Israel and Poland, and the closer-to-earth political considerations for Pence’s self-orchestrated temporary defenestration. In premise, Mike Pence will be leaving to promote the Trump-Kushner plan for peace in the Middle East, which now consists of agreeing to sell advanced U.S. weapons to Arab nations in exchange for their diplomatic recognition of Israel. (Since his early candidacy, Trump has focused on the use of the presidency to boost weapon sales, and that is indeed where we quickly ended up.)

In practice, this is fooling nobody: Politico calls the trip the continuation of a “tactic” Pence has been using to distance himself, post-election, from the worst of Trump’s fascist declarations of fraudulent voting and election victory. As he has from the beginning of the 2016 campaign, Pence himself has been methodically playing both sides of that fence, both amplifying Trump’s asinine claims to Republican audiences and dodging anyone in the press who seeks to question him about it. Also, notes Politico, a last-minute taxpayer-funded trip to Israel is a way for Pence to again boost his credentials with evangelicals.

That’s also a given, since boosting his evangelical credentials and polishing Trump’s shoes have been Mike Pence’s only noteworthy concerns during his entire stay in office. Mike Pence dreams of having a future political career, after Donald Trump leaves. Donald Trump is thwarting that yet again with suggestions that he will never, ever leave, but instead run for president-slash-antichrist yet again in four years, so that’s a bit of a sting to Pence’s own ambitions, and it really could not happen to a shallower and more glibly amoral guy.

Anyhoo, it appears this will actually be happening. Pence will preside over the final nail in Trump’s reelection coffin, then run immediately to an airport and flee to Europe and the Middle East while the heat dies down. He may or may not pretend that his phone is out of battery during his entire trip, in order to dodge Trump’s furious phone calls. He will assuredly not be popping into the White House between his congressional appearance and his flight.

A week or so later, Pence expects the heat to die down and that both Trump and his frothing, violence-promoting fascist diehards will have gotten the worst of their fury out of their systems and gone back to watching television, so he will sneak back to quietly pretend to be a garden vegetable for his remaining few weeks of office.

This is all likely prelude to a spring- or summer-issued book by Mike Pence in which he explains that Donald Trump is still wonderful and is basically the second coming of Jesus, but that Mike Pence is even better so please keep him in mind for your future Republican Party needs. It will be only a ripple in an ocean of similarly premised Republican pleas for redemption, will have a great number of Bible quotes that Mike Pence has never, ever attempted to put into practice except as campaign materials, and will be absolutely insufferable.