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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Dec 30, 2020 |
| 🎿 Good Wednesday morning. Today's Smart Brevity™ count: 1,088 words ... 4 minutes. ⚡Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), 41 — a father of two who was to be sworn in Sunday — died of COVID in a Louisiana ICU. - A hospital official told The (Monroe, La.) News Star: "He had no underlying conditions ... It was just COVID."
🥊 Situational awareness: The brief window for $2,000 COVID-relief checks slammed shut when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell combined the increase with repeal of tech's Section 230 shield, and a voting-fraud study — apparent deal-killers. - I'm told McConnell didn't want to split Senate Republicans.
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| 1 big thing: Relentless 2020 news cycle, in one chart |
 Data: Google Trends. Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios This is the fourth year Stef Kight has written this feature for Axios, and it's always one of our most popular stories: Axios' fourth annual Google Trends chart helps us step back and see what we've lived through — one unprecedented crisis after another, from the pandemic to a spike in joblessness to multi-city protests to a powder-keg election. - You can see COVID's impact on daily life in a wide variety of Google search trends, including records for "unemployment," "hunger" and "food banks."
Because of the overwhelming volume of search interest in the broad topics of "coronavirus" and "elections," we zeroed in on specifics like masks, Anthony Fauci and absentee ballots. - Our search surges show the shortness of American attention spans, with spikes often lasting only a week.
- Topics that saw multiple weeks of interest included masks, the "Megxit" of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the royal family, QAnon, absentee ballots and Hunter Biden.
Excluding "coronavirus" and "elections," Kobe Bryant's death generated the largest search spike of any single event. - Overall Google interest in "coronavirus" over the year surpassed Bryant by more than 10 times.
- The spike in "election" searches around Nov. 3 was higher than any single spike for coronavirus. But interest in the virus remained high for longer.
🎧 Hear Margaret Talev and me on a special edition of "Axios Today," on 2020's biggest stories. |
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| 2. Biden's "100-day challenge" |
| Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images Workers yesterday disassembled the inaugural-parade reviewing stand in front of the White House, as President-elect Biden prepares for a mostly virtual day. - Biden organizers tell me they don't want crowds because of COVID, and will find other ways to include the American people.
It's an early sign of the big change in COVID tone that's coming on Inauguration Day. Biden, in remarks yesterday in Wilmington, added details about his three-part "100-day challenge": - 💉 Biden "will launch a massive public education campaign to increase vaccine acceptance," as part of "ensuring that 100 million shots have been administered by the end of our first 100 days." Biden said he'll set up vaccination sites, and "send mobile units to hard-to-reach communities."
- 😷 "I'll be asking the American people to wear a mask for the first 100 days ... Our administration will require masks where we can for federal workers, in federal facilities, and on interstate travel like planes and trains. And we've been working directly with county officials, mayors, and governors to implement mask mandates in their towns, cities, and states."
- 🍎 "Another 100-day challenge is opening most of our K-8 schools by the end of our first 100 days" — the end of April.
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| 3. Justice Dept. will police the police |
| A man in Minneapolis recites spoken word poetry on June 1 at a makeshift memorial where George Floyd was taken into custody. Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters The Justice Department "is expected to resume policing the police as President-elect Joe Biden has said he intends to make civil rights a major focus ... at a moment when scrutiny of American policing has never been higher," the WashPost's Robert Klemko reports. - Biden has said he'll "revive the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which in the Obama administration examined police practices through ... 'collaborative reform.'"
⚡ Breaking ... Louisville police have taken steps that could result in the firing of two officers connected to Breonna Taylor's death. Go deeper. - The Justice Department says it won't bring charges against two Cleveland police officers in the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Go deeper.
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| A message from Facebook |
| It's time to update internet regulations |
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| The internet has changed a lot in 25 years. But the last time comprehensive internet regulations were passed was in 1996. We want updated internet regulations to set clear guidelines for addressing today's toughest challenges. Learn More |
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| 4. Pic du jour: America in line |
| Photo: Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images 2020 brought long car lines for COVID testing and, tragically, food banks. - This is a drone's-eye view of a line in Orlando yesterday for the Moderna vaccine, on the first day that Orange County offered it to residents 65+.
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| 5. New overnight: U.K. approves second vaccine |
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| Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a vial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on Nov. 30. Photo: Paul Ellis/Getty Images |
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| The U.K. became the first country to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is easier to store and distribute than Pfizer's shot, the BBC reports. - What to watch: The first doses are due to be administered Monday, amid a surge in the highly infectious variant discovered in England (and found yesterday in Colorado).
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| 6. New overnight: In landmark, Argentina legalizes abortion |
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| Pro-choice demonstrators outside Argentina's Congress donning green — color of the country's women's rights movement. Photo: Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images |
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| Argentina's Senate voted to legalize abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy, defying a vigorous campaign by the Catholic Church in the home of Pope Francis, Reuters reports. - Why it matters: It makes Argentina the largest country in Latin America to legalize abortion, the culmination of five years of protests by a massive grassroots women's movement.
- The conservative La Nación newspaper called it a "historic decision" — comparable to the legalization of divorce, same-sex marriage, and the repeal of laws protecting crimes by the country's military dictatorship.
Argentine President Alberto Fernández, who is Catholic but made a campaign promise to reintroduce the bill, called it a public health victory, citing the 38,000 women who are hospitalized each year due to clandestine abortions. What's next: Pro-choice activists in neighboring countries, including Chile and Brazil, will use the Argentine precedent to push for broader reproductive rights. |
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| 7. 👀 Trump's Jan. 21 problems |
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| A Trump supporter's ride, outside a condo complex in West Palm Beach yesterday. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images |
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| "The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company's real estate transactions," the WashPost reports. - District Attorney Cy Vance "has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president's company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks."
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| 8. Moderate Dems push Biden on China, Russia |
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| The Capitol yesterday. Photo: Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images |
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| The Blue Dog Coalition of moderate House Dems asked President-elect Biden for classified briefings about the Russian hack, and for intel assessments of how China may exploit the pandemic, Axios' Kadia Goba scoops. - "Holding Foreign Adversaries Accountable" is one of the group's five priorities for the new Congress, along with the more predictable COVID relief, job creation, government reform and fiscal responsibility.
Read the letter. |
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| 9. Phrase that pays: Insane stock market |
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| Decorations outside the New York Stock Exchange. Photo: Carlo Allegri/Reuters |
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| Charlie McElligott, a market analyst with Nomura Securities in New York, told the N.Y. Times for a year-ender, "Market Edges Toward Euphoria, Despite Pandemic's Toll" (subscription): The market right now is clearly foaming at the mouth. |
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| 10. 1 smile to go: Pandemic's piano man |
| Photo CBS News "60 Minutes" on Sunday tells how pianist Igor Levit, 33 — up for a Grammy in January for his album, "Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas" — turned his Berlin apartment into a concert hall, using a cheap stand for his iPhone: - "I had this idea to bring one of the most classic ways of music-making, which is the house concert," Levit tells Jon Wertheim. "I invite the people into my living room in the only way possible, which is through social media."
The first concert reached 350,000, "60 Minutes" reports, as Levit played, so simply, for his largest audience ever: It was just me, no hall, no questions about acoustics, no questions about an instrument, no questions about, you know, pre-printed programs, nothing. No boundaries, just myself and the people. Levit played for 52 consecutive nights — and added jazz, soul and rock. - 🎹 See — and hear — a preview.
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| A message from Facebook |
| Internet regulations need an update |
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| It's been 25 years since lawmakers passed comprehensive internet regulations. But a lot has changed since 1996. We want updated regulations to set clear guidelines for protecting people's privacy, enabling safe and easy data portability between platforms and more. Learn More |
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