Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is promoting baseless claims of widespread election fraud, talked about a pardon with President Trump as recently as last week.
A pardon for Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer, is certain to prompt accusations that Mr. Trump has used his power to obstruct investigations and insulate himself and his allies.
President Trump has discussed with advisers whether to grant pre-emptive pardons to his children, to his son-in-law and to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and talked with Mr. Giuliani about pardoning him as recently as last week, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Trump has told others that he is concerned that a Biden Justice Department might seek retribution against the president by targeting the oldest three of his five children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — as well as Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser.
Donald Trump Jr. had been under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for contacts that the younger Mr. Trump had had with Russians offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, but he was never charged. Mr. Kushner provided false information to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners for his security clearance, but was given one anyway by the president.
The nature of Mr. Trump’s concern about any potential criminal exposure of Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump is unclear, although an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the Trump Organization has expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees by the company, some of which appear to have gone to Ms. Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-pardon.html
A roaring recovery is in sight, but a lot depends on what Congress does next for the winter economy. A roaring recovery is in sight, but a lot depends on what Congress does next for the winter economy.
months ago, the end is in sight.
The development of vaccines that appear to be safe, effective and ready for wide distribution in the months ahead means it’s now possible to envision a post-Covid economy by summer.
There is a distinct possibility that the economy could roar back to full health quickly as soon as public health conditions allow. But for that to happen, the United States will need to make it through what might be a cold, dark winter in which damage could be done to the tissue of the economy that prevents that rapid healing.
With many service businesses having already depleted cash reserves and the government aid they received earlier in the year, another wave of failures looms. And that imperils not only individual shops and restaurants, but also the commercial landlords they pay rent to, and the state and local governments relying on their tax dollars.
The challenge is to keep everything going long enough to prevent irreparable damage to the ecosystem on which a huge share of American economic activity is built — office buildings filled with workers, hotels and airplanes that are full, vibrant street retail, and the public services that maintain it all — when so many individual elements of the ecosystem are under severe strain.
Boka Restaurant Group in Chicago had 2,000 employees working at 20 restaurants before the pandemic, and in the immediate aftermath of shutdowns in March furloughed more than 1,800 of them, said Kevin Boehm, a co-founder of the group.But as the weather warmed and Chicago allowed extensive outdoor dining, the company’s restaurants were able to claw back. By midsummer, sales were down only 35 percent to 40 percent compared with normal. A refundable loan through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program helped meet rent and payroll obligations.
Now, the federal loan is long gone, the weather has turned cold again, and a new wave of Covid-19 infections has put a pall on indoor dining. Sales are down 90 percent from normal levels.
“I’ve spent the last two days sitting in a room with employees who are being furloughed or having a salary reduction,” Mr. Boehm said in mid-November. “This is happening right now. One of our restaurants is one of the highest grossing in America, and last night we did $900 of sales. On a normal night, that restaurant would have done $50,000.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/upshot/economic-boom-possible-covid.html
Federal officials have urged Americans returning from Thanksgiving travel to cut down on unnecessary activity, and cautioned that they should assume they are carrying the virus.
While many in the United States celebrated a muted Thanksgiving over Zoom, millions of people traveled instead, rejecting the advice of public officials.
According to Transportation Safety Administration data, about 800,000 to one million people passed through T.S.A. checkpoints each day in the days before and after the holiday — far lower than the same period last year, but likely far higher than epidemiologists had hoped to see.
A United Airlines spokeswoman, Annabelle Cottee, said the week of Thanksgiving was “the busiest since March” for the carrier.
Americans also took to the roads. AAA predicted significant declines in bus, train and cruise travel, but predicted only a modest drop in car travel.
For several days leading up to Thanksgiving, as case numbers and hospitalizations across the country grew exponentially, political leaders and medical experts warned of the dangers of compounding the virus spread by being with others. In November alone, there have been more than 4.1 million cases and more than 25,500 deaths.
There were 91,635 current hospitalizations as of Nov. 28, according to the Covid Tracking Project, almost twice as many as there were on Nov. 1, and triple the number on Oct. 1.
Aware of the emotional resonance of the holiday, experts tried to thread a narrative from these numbers that would convince people of the danger. Their warnings were direct — sometimes stern, sometimes impassioned pleas.
“Keep the gatherings, the indoor gatherings as small as you possibly can,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on “Good Morning America” last week. By making that sacrifice, he said, “you’re going to prevent people from getting infected.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was also urging people not to travel. “All Americans want to do what they can to protect their loved ones,” Dr. Henry Walke, a Covid-19 incident manager at the C.D.C., said at a news briefing.
And though it would have been unrealistic to expect a public that is restive from months of restrictions to universally abide by such recommendations, the aftermath of those decisions will begin to unfold in the weeks ahead.
Dr. Fauci, during an appearance on the Sunday news program “This Week,” said the best course for Thanksgiving travelers might be “to quarantine yourself for a period of time.”
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that travelers “have to assume that you were exposed and you became infected and you really need to get tested in the next week.” She urged that travelers avoid anyone in their family over 65 or with underlying illnesses.
That guidance comes as the C.D.C. is considering shortening the recommended isolation period for infected people. And while it is too early to know if holiday travel will affect the virus’s spread, new research suggests that people are most infectious about two days before symptoms begin and for five days afterward, meaning this week will likely be crucial in containment.
The U.S. map shows a country where almost every region is a hot spot. States that were once spared, like Montana and Wyoming, have reported record deaths and infections, while states that were pummeled in the first wave are straining anew.
California on Sunday became the first state to report over 100,000 cases in a week, according to a New York Times database.
And in New Jersey, hospitalizations have increased 60 percent in the last two weeks and deaths have increased by 78 percent. Over three days in November, the positivity rate in Newark, the largest city in the state, was 19 percent.
“We begged people to have a somber, respectful, small Thanksgiving,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Fox News Sunday. “And I want to give a shout out to New Jerseyans because I think overwhelmingly that’s what happened, but there’s a lot of fatigue out there.”
Mr. Murphy called the next few months “the fight of our lives,” while also citing the progress of vaccines and noting that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”
And there was something to celebrate on Sunday in New York City, at least for some parents, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would reopen the city’s public elementary schools, abruptly shifting policy after an outcry from critics who questioned why gyms and bars remained open while schools were shut.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/30/world/covid-19-coronavirus
Justice Amy Coney Barrett played a decisive role in the decision, which took the opposite approach of earlier court rulings related to coronavirus restrictions in California and Nevada.
barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.
The court’s ruling was at odds with earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada. In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.
The Supreme Court’s membership has changed since then, with Justice Barrett succeeding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September. The vote in the earlier cases was also 5 to 4, but in the opposite direction, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Justice Ginsburg and the other three members of what was then the court’s four-member liberal wing.
In an unsigned opinion, the majority said Mr. Cuomo’s restrictions violated the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said Mr. Cuomo had treated secular activities more favorably than religious ones.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/supreme-court-coronavirus-religion-new-york.html
For the first time since the coronavirus outbreak hit the United States, the country has added more than one million cases in each of the past two consecutive weeks. Covid deaths, which lag reported cases by weeks, are also at a level not seen since the spring. Some epidemiologists project that the number of deaths in the coming weeks could exceed the spring peak, in spite of improved treatment.
In the past week, the United States added an average of 173,000 new daily cases. If this growth pattern holds, the total number of cases reported for the full month of November is likely to hit 4.5 million. That would be more than double the number of any previous month.
With several days still left in the month, about 3.3 million people in the United States had already tested positive for the coronavirus as of Nov. 23.
North Dakota continues to have the country’s worst outbreak when adjusted for population, a position it has maintained since early September. Almost one in 10 North Dakotans have tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began, a vast majority in the last two months.
But cases there as well as in other parts of the Upper Midwest and Mountain West that drove the initial fall surge have leveled off slightly, while cases are growing on both coasts and in the South and Southwest.
Nearly 2,000 counties across the United States are now recording their worst month in November — nearly five times as many as in October. The maps below show in which month counties saw their biggest caseloads.