Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Vaccine news: “Pfizer’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine is poised to become the first to be authorized for emergency use in the U.S. A group of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration is expected to recommend that the agency authorize the Pfizer vaccine for use by the end of Thursday, after a daylong meeting to discuss its safety and effectiveness.”
* State AGs: “President Donald Trump is meeting with state attorneys general at the White House on Thursday, a day after filing a motion to join a Supreme Court challenge launched by Texas that seeks to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s election win in four battleground states.”
* Middle East, Part I: “Morocco has become the fourth predominantly Muslim country to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal.”
* Middle East, Part II: “”The U.S. will also recognize Morocco’s claim over the disputed Western Sahara region, Trump wrote in a separate tweet.”
* The 71-year-old Republican had been speaker for a week: “New Hampshire Speaker of the House Richard ‘Dick’ Hinch died of COVID-19, an autopsy found. New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jennie V. Duval made the determination after Hinch’s death on Wednesday, which his office had called ‘this unexpected tragedy.’”
* A heartbreaking read: “The coronavirus recession has been a relentless churn of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. The government stimulus that kept millions of Americans from falling into poverty earlier in the pandemic is long gone, and new aid is still a dot on the horizon after months of congressional inaction. Hunger is chronic, at levels not seen in decades. The result is a growing subset of Americans who are stealing food to survive.”
* Michigan: “Almost 30 staffers and members of Michigan’s House of Representatives have contracted the coronavirus this year, the speaker’s office said Wednesday — a week after Rudy Giuliani testified maskless in the chamber and three days after it was announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19.”
* The staffer in question, Charles Spry, currently works for Kelly Loeffler: “A Republican Senate staffer sent the FBI a dossier about a critic of a GOP donor in 2017, after which agents paid a visit to the critic, NBC News has confirmed. Two FBI agents visited the critic at his home in late 2017, the bureau confirmed. The critic said they told him to stop threatening the donor on social media.” * Climate crisis: “The world as a whole is dangerously behind schedule in slowing catastrophic climate change, and its richest people will have to make big changes in their everyday lives in order to shift course, a major United Nations report warned Wednesday. But nearly five years after a landmark international climate agreement in Paris, there are signs of a sea change, including from some of the biggest polluters in the world.” * A difficult report about Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.): “Speaking on background, and with respect for her accomplished career, they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said and getting upset when she can’t keep up.” * Good idea: “Because the coronavirus can linger on surfaces for multiple days, a team deployed by the General Services Administration will go over every part of the White House’s East and West Wings touched by human hands in the hours after Trump departs and Biden moves in, a spokesperson from the agency confirmed to Politico. That includes plans to ‘thoroughly clean and disinfect’ all furniture, doorknobs, handrails and light switches, before Biden and his team move in. Additionally, a private contractor will provide ‘disinfectant misting services’ to clear the air of lingering droplets.” See you tomorrow.
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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