Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Certification: “Georgia announced Friday that it certified the results of the 2020 general election, following a hand recount of nearly 5 million votes that saw the majority of the state’s counties finding no change in their final tallies.”
* Madness: “Michigan’s top Republican lawmakers arrived at the White House Friday afternoon to meet with President Trump amid an urgent effort to keep them from endorsing the president’s baseless allegations of widespread fraud and his attempt to delay their state’s certification of the vote.”
* Vaccine news: “Pfizer submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration Friday for an emergency use authorization for its experimental Covid-19 vaccine.”
* GSA: “Top House Democrats have sent a letter demanding that General Services Administration Chief Emily W. Murphy brief lawmakers on why she has yet to ascertain Joe Biden’s election win — a necessary first step before the president-elect can receive resources for a transition of government.”
* White House: “Rudy Giuliani and other key members of President Trump’s outside legal team won’t be attending today’s meeting with two Michigan lawmakers because they’ve been exposed to the coronavirus, two sources familiar with the internal discussions tell Axios.”
* Two Trump-appointed judges wrote this ruling: “A federal appeals court struck down Friday local ordinances prohibiting licensed therapists from engaging in ‘conversion therapy’ practices that aim to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity—despite widespread consensus among experts that such therapy is harmful—arguing that banning the controversial practice is a violation of the therapists’ First Amendment rights.”
* This isn’t going away: “Two separate New York State fraud investigations into President Trump and his businesses, one criminal and one civil, have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”
* Killing people quickly: “In the final weeks of President Trump’s term, his administration intends to execute three inmates on federal death row, the last scheduled executions by the Justice Department before the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has signaled he will end federal use of capital punishment.”
* Quite a story: “Tyson Foods Inc. said it suspended managers at an Iowa pork plant following allegations that some wagered on the number of workers who would become infected with Covid-19, as the pandemic roiled the meat industry last spring.” * This sounds like a dumb deal: “Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, has privately hinted that President Trump would drop his objection to stripping Confederate leaders’ names from military bases, which is threatening to derail the annual military policy bill, if Democrats agreed to repeal an important legal shield for social media companies.” * ISIS isn’t gone: “Although the Islamic State extremist group is battered and scattered, it cannot be fully defeated until the world finds a way to reconcile and resettle the thousands of people displaced by years of war in Iraq and Syria, the general overseeing American military operations in the Mideast said Thursday.” * Noted without comment: “In an effort to mitigate the sting of defeat, Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera has suggested that a forthcoming vaccine be named after Donald Trump. Such a gesture, he said on Friday, could work to cheer up our septuagenarian baby president as he continues to rely on dangerous conspiracy theories to reject political reality.” Have a safe weekend.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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