| Another coronavirus outbreak has hit the White House; the world's largest wetland is devastated by wildfires. Join the Vox Book Club: This month we're reading Susan Choi's Trust Exercise. Sign up here for updates on virtual events and new books. Tonight's Sentences was written by Benjamin Rosenberg. | | | | | | | The White House is dealing with another coronavirus outbreak | | | | | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images | | - After President Donald Trump and several of his top officials tested positive for Covid-19 in early October, it appears the White House now has another coronavirus cluster on its hands. The source could be an election night event in the East Room with hundreds of unmasked guests. [Vox / Katelyn Burns]
- White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was the first high-profile staffer to test positive in the Trump administration's second outbreak. He tested positive on November 4 after attending the White House event the night before. [Bloomberg / Jennifer Jacobs, Tyler Pager, and Mario Parker]
- Meadows's announcement comes after he mocked then-Democratic nominee and now President-elect Joe Biden for wearing masks, and he had previously refused to take questions from media members while wearing one. [NBC News / Rebecca Shabad]
- Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who was at the election night event, tested positive as well. Carson came down with the virus on Monday morning, and experienced symptoms ranging from a fever to muscle cramps to trouble breathing. [Washington Post / Ben Terris, Tracy Jan, and Seung Min Kim]
- Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski became the latest to test positive on Thursday. While Lewandowski was at the White House event on November 3, he told CNN believes he caught the virus while traveling in Philadelphia. [CNN / Jim Acosta, Kaitlan Collins, and Maegan Vazquez]
- Trump's political director Brian Jack, adviser David Bossie, and Republican National Committee chief of staff Richard Walters have all tested positive in the last week. They join Meadows, Carson, Lewandowski, and at least eight others in the White House's new outbreak. [NYT / Amy Schoenfeld Walker and Matthew Conlen]
- Several lower-level officials have been affected as well. Nick Trainer, a campaign aide; Cassidy Hutchinson, Meadows's top aide; and Charlton Boyd, an assistant to senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, have all tested positive. [The Cut / Claire Lampen]
- The outbreak has also affected the Secret Service. Trump held several rallies a day in the final stretch before Election Day and had Secret Service Agents with him everywhere he went. Now more than 130 of those agents are in quarantine or isolation. [Washington Post / Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey]
- This is not the first outbreak among the Secret Service. Trump's first rally during the pandemic — in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June — led several dozen Secret Service agents to self-quarantine due to potential exposure. [CNN / Jim Acosta and Paul LeBlanc]
- The second White House cluster comes as the US as a whole deals with record numbers of new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations. Nearly every day this week has brought a new single-day case record, and deaths are on the rise again as well. [Vox / German Lopez]
| | | The planet's largest tropical wetland is on fire | | - This year has seen some of the most catastrophic wildfires in world history, from Australia to the Amazon rainforest to the western United States. But the world's largest tropical wetland, covering parts of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, has been on fire for several months. [CNN / Ivana Kottasová, Henrik Pettersson, and Krystina Shveda]
- The Pantanal wetlands, home to many endangered species, burned at a faster rate in October than any previous month since such records began being kept in 1998. The blazes have scorched an area larger than all of Belgium. [Bloomberg / Simone Preissler Iglesias]
- Conditions in the region were ripe for fires this year. The Pantanal is the world's largest floodplain, and in April, at the end of the rainy season, the area normally floods more than two feet off the ground. This year, likely due in large part to climate change, the floods never came. [Reuters]
- Roughly a quarter of the wetland has burned in 2020, with devastating effects for an area that stores huge amounts of carbon, which helps stabilize the climate. The area is also home to a huge variety of rare animal life, from jaguars to otters to large parrots. [NYT / Catrin Einhorn, Maria Magdalena Arréllaga, Blacki Migliozzi, and Scott Reinhard]
| | | | | | | In spite of Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud, state and federal election officials declared that this was the most secure election in US history. | | | [AP / Eric Tucker and Frank Bajak] -
Nearly a week after Joe Biden won the US election, China became one of the first non-democracies to offer congratulations to the president-elect and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, not President Xi Jinping, offered the congratulations. [Vox / Alex Ward] -
The Trump campaign won a case in a Pennsylvania court Thursday that will disqualify a small number of mail-in ballots — but those ballots had not yet been counted, and Biden is still the winner in Pennsylvania. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / Mick Stinelli] -
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, baselessly and falsely dismissed the election results on Friday, saying, "we are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term." [Politico / Nick Niedźwiadek] -
A dog in Richmond, Virginia, has gone viral for the exuberant way he greets his owner every evening. [Richmond Times-Dispatch / Tamica Jean-Charles] | | | | | "The Pantanal is very important for the planet, it has unique wild areas that are fundamental to life on Earth. It is vital that it [receives] as much attention as the Amazon." | | | | | | | | | | |
The Next Four Years is a new eight-part series from The Weeds, Vox's original policy and politics talk show. Host Matt Yglesias talks to policymakers and experts about the likely consequences of the 2020 election as well as what to expect from the Biden administration. Subscribe now. [Spotify / Matthew Yglesias] | | | | | | | | |  | This email was sent to edwardlorilla1986.paxforex@blogger.com. Manage your email preferences, or unsubscribe to stop receiving all emails from Vox. If you value Vox's unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036.
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