Business leaders call game Are we done with this yet? Because really, it’s enough now. “Business leaders call game — demand @realDonaldTrump acknowledge defeat and cooperate with an orderly transition for the good of the country, discuss withholding donations from Republicans in Georgia runoff.”  Jim Rutenberg links to the report by Kate Kelly and Danny Hakim of The New York Times that more than 100 chief executives, citing damage to the country, plan to send a letter to the administration today asking it to immediately acknowledge Biden as the winner and begin the transition.
“This is how it works in America now,” tweets Beth Healy. “The business community steps in when politicians won’t. (Belatedly this time)” Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, didn’t sign the letter, but according to scoop from Hans Nichols and Jonathan Swan of Axios, Blackstone CEO and top Trump ally Stephen Schwarzman says Trump lost. And as they point out, comments by Schwarzman are “more meaningful in Trumpworld than any of the messages so far from corporate America.”  Kyle Griffin’s take: “It’s over. That’s what Blackstone chairman, CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman — one of Trump’s most loyal allies — and other top Republicans are signaling to the defeated president. It's all theatrics now. Even if Trump doesn’t move on fast, you can.”
And so, David Frum notes, “A lesson of the Trump years is that any future successful overthrow of US democracy has to get buy-in from plutocrats. Paranoid weirdos alone just lack the oomph to do the job.” GOPathetic Carl Bernstein has also had enough and decided to name names on CNN’s “New Day” with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman last night.  On Twitter, Bernstein shared, “The 21 GOP Senators who have privately expressed their disdain for Trump are: Portman, Alexander, Sasse, Blunt, Collins, Murkowski, Cornyn, Thune, Romney, Braun, Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Rubio, Grassley, Burr, Toomey, McSally, Moran, Roberts, Shelby,” adding, “With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system.”
Meanwhile, Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti of The New York Times point out that, as they try to somehow reverse Joe Biden’s victory, President Trump and his allies have targeted heavily Black cities, painting them as corrupt and trying to throw out huge numbers of votes. In their piece, Republicans Rewrite an Old Playbook on Disenfranchising Black Americans, they note that it’s not just Trump: “He has had help from supporters and allies throughout the country, as well as from the Republican National Committee and its state branches.” Tweets Peter Cunningham, “Sorry, but the only honest word to describe a coordinated effort to disenfranchise Black voters in Atlanta, Philly, Detroit and Milwaukee is ‘racism’ and everyone who enables it is guilty.”  Seriously, though, Why Won’t Emily Murphy Just Do Her Job? At The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum responds to one of Murphy’s “friends” who told CNN that she’s distressed and doing “her honest duty”: “Well, no. She is not doing her honest duty. She is behaving badly, dishonestly, unfairly. She is violating the Constitution of the United States of America by refusing to recognize that the election is over, that Trump’s lawsuits and legal games are frivolous, and that the transition has begun.”
Show’s over Where is Trump during all of this? (Golfing, probably.) As Josh Dawsey writes at The Washington Post, A noisy president goes (relatively) quiet in wake of election defeat. Compare and contrast: He averaged about 48 minutes on camera every day in 2020. He has spent about 50 minutes on camera total since Nov. 3.  But he’s still making noise in other, predictably terrible ways. Leigh Ann Caldwell, Courtney Kube and Carol Lee of NBC News report that Trump plans to veto a defense bill over renaming bases honoring Confederate leaders, and as Radley Balko says, “Refusing to fund the military unless it continues to honor the Confederacy is really the perfect exit.”
The new administration Despite all of the above, the transition is indeed underway, and first up: “Time to rescue the State Department,” tweets Tara Kangarlou. Last night, Lara Jakes, Michael Crowley and David Sanger of The New York Times reported that the president-elect has chosen Antony Blinken, a defender of global alliances and Biden’s closest foreign policy adviser, as Secretary of State. Biden is also expected to name Jake Sullivan, another close aide of his, as national security adviser, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year Foreign Service veteran, as his ambassador to the U.N. All well and good, but Jamie McCarty, for one, is “Disappointed that Biden is not following the great tradition of appointing cable news pundits to top cabinet positions.” The Oxford jab Moving on, we’re kicking off another week with good news on the vaccine front. The latest: The University of Oxford, in collaboration with AstraZeneca plc, announced interim trial data from its Phase III trials that show its candidate vaccine is effective at preventing COVID-19 and offers a high level of protection. Specifically, as James Gallagher reports at BBC News, the Oxford University vaccine shows 70% protection. Even more promising, researchers say the figure may be as high as 90% by tweaking the dose. It’s not the 95% of Pfizer and Moderna, but, Gallagher reports, “the Oxford jab is far cheaper, and is easier to store and get to every corner of the world than the other two.” Be sure to read that full explainer by Gallagher for more on how the vaccine will work and how it compares to the others. Lots of good news, but now comes the hardest part: Getting a coronavirus vaccine from loading dock to upper arm. Lena Sun and Frances Sellers of The Washington Post take a look at the complicated logistics of actually delivering the shots to tens of millions of Americans. Tweets Carol Eisenberg, “NEW: What it's going to take to get covid-19 vaccines to people in the U.S. Ultracold freezers. Innovative places for vaccination clinics (car washes!). Confidence in vaccines.” Covid’s costs In the meantime, things...aren’t good. Alex Wigglesworth, Matt Hamilton and Jenn Harris of the Los Angeles Times report that L.A. County has suspended outdoor dining at restaurants as coronavirus surges. The new rule, which will remain in place for at least three weeks, takes effect at 10 p.m. Wednesday and restricts restaurants — along with breweries, wineries and bars — to takeout and delivery only for the first time since May. Shelby Grad quotes from the piece, “‘It will be horrible for my staff. They can’t get unemployment. They work paycheck to paycheck. What are we going to do?’ > Voices of pain as LA restaurants learn outdoor dining suspended as COVID-19 surges.” And Paul Berger has what Leslie Brody describes as a “Haunting story” at The Wall Street Journal: The bodies of more than 600 people who died in New York City during the Covid-19 surge in the spring are still in storage in freezer trucks on the Brooklyn waterfront. Kat Stromquist highlights just one tragic detail from that piece: “In several cases during the pandemic, Ms. Naka said, investigators realized next of kin weren’t answering the phone because they too had died.” Post-Trump media detox  Back to the transition for a moment, Ben Smith writes about the president-elect and the press in his latest New York Times column, Get Me Meacham! Biden Brings Back the Media’s Good Old Days. He argues that Biden promises to do for old-line newspaper columnists what Donald Trump did for cable. As he puts it, “What a time to be George Will!” Klaus Brinkbäumer describes it as “About tomorrow. (Or yesterday?) @JoeBiden and the media.”
And about that headline, Jason Horowitz notices, “Somehow, @benyt got an Observer headline into @nytimes (Next up, ‘The D.A. is an A.K’).” Connor Ennis highlights, “‘Mr. Meacham, who declined my request for a full interview, asked, in a letter written with a fountain pen and delivered to my home by a boy on a horse. (No, it was an email, but you get the idea.)’ Genuine LOL @benyt.” Lots of lulz but also, an “Intriguing piece by @benyt Post-Trump media detox is going to be interesting,” tweets Roger Cohen. A strange mix of often-unsavory elements Speaking of lulz, Drew Harwell alerts us to a “Lil scooplet in here: That recent semi-viral ‘verified’ Parler post, in which 8kun’s longtime admin @CodeMonkeyZ appeared to unmask Q? It was a hoax by @Kirtaner, who said Parler’s security is a joke and he ‘did it for the lulz.’” Harwell and Rachel Lerman have a new piece at The Washington Post on Parler, Conservatives grumbling about censorship say they’re flocking to Parler. They told us so on Twitter. Basically, the pro-Trump Internet can’t stop talking about how they’re leaving the big social media outlets, even though very few of them have actually done it.  For those who’ve made the jump, though, what can they find? “Parler attracted millions of users by promising no fact-checking or ‘editorial bullies trying to tell you what to think.’ But that hands-off approach has led to a strange mix of often-unsavory elements: Porn, racist garbage, conspiracy theories, Ted Cruz,” tweets Harwell. Quite the putrid stew.
A healthy literary landscape  Hopefully you’re staying close to home on Thanksgiving, and that means you might want to consider curling up with one (or more) of the 10 best books of 2020, according to the Washington Post Editors and Reviewers. That’s part of their larger feature on the best books of the year, which they explain is a celebration of the books that helped us maintain our wits during trying times.
Of course, many newspapers no longer have much in the way of robust book coverage. But there are other options... Michael Luo says, “LOVE this. @cncep on @chapter16, a @propublica for book reviews.” He’s referring to Casey N. Cep’s story in the New Yorker on The Tennessee Solution to Disappearing Book Reviews: Chapter 16, which was founded by Humanities Tennessee in 2009 in response to the loss of book coverage in newspapers around the state. Tweets Margaret Renkl, “The American literary landscape would be healthier if every state had a nonprofit arts publication like @HumanitiesTN’s @chapter16. I’m incredibly grateful to @cncep for making that case so brilliantly in today’s @NewYorker.” Global round-up “Well this is something: Netanyahu and the head of the Mossad flew to Neom last night to meet MBS, Israeli media are reporting. Is something cooking?” Ben Hubbard links to his story with David Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman at The New York Times, Netanyahu Held Secret Meeting with Saudi Crown Prince, Israeli Media Reports. As Charles Johnson says, “Weird.” Also at the Times, Paul Mozur and Don Clark reveal, China’s Surveillance State Sucks Up Data. U.S. Tech Is Key to Sorting It. Chips made by Intel and Nvidia power a supercomputing center that tracks people in Xinjiang — one of the most invasive parts of China’s surveillance state — raising questions about the tech industry’s responsibility. And one more: Norimitsu Onishi links to “Our article in the NYT: How the French government’s crackdown on Islamism ensnared children and teenagers for allegedly inappropriate comments. In one school, four Muslim 10 year-olds spent 10 hours in police custody on suspicion of ‘defending terrorism.’” That’s his story with Constant Méheut of The New York Times, France’s Dragnet for Extremists Sweeps Up Some Schoolchildren, Too. | 
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