A three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Monday that Texas doesn't have to inform voters that their mail-in ballots were rejected due to signature problems until after the Nov. 3 election, and need not give them a chance to correct or "cure" their ballots. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled Sept. 8 that the current signature-verification system in Texas "plainly violates certain voters' constitutional rights" and must be either abandoned or replaced.

The 5th Circuit appellate court stayed Garcia's ruling Sept. 11, and it won't rule on the merits of the case until after the election. Under current law, Texas must inform voters that their ballot was rejected within 10 days after the election. "The state election code does not establish any standards for signature review, which is conducted by local election officials who seldom have training in signature verification," The Texas Tribune reports. Counties can choose to inform voters before the election and give them a chance to cure their ballot.

Texas already limits mail-in voting to people with disabilities, seniors 65 and older, and voters outside of the country or in jail during an election. "Texas' strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state's voting procedures place on the right to vote," Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Regan appointee, wrote for the three-judge panel. The conjuring judges were appointed by Reagan and President Trump.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), up for re-election this year, claimed voting is easy in Texas, pointing to the large numbers of Texans casting their ballots early this election. But a new study out of Northern Illinois University ranked Texas at the very bottom of its "cost-of-voting index."

"Obviously, it's not impossible to vote in Texas," but "the state has erected obstacles throughout the voting system, and when you compare the comfort and convenience of voting in Texas with other states, Texas ends up at the bottom of the list," Ross Ramsay writes at The Texas Tribune. Probably not coincidentally, he adds, "Texas has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country." The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with Texas in several recent cases, rejecting efforts to make voting easier, the Austin American-Statesman notes. Peter Weber

Essential workers — including people who work in meat-packing plants, waste management operations, and the transportation sectors, as well as police officers, firefighters, and teachers — are expected to have earlier access to coronavirus vaccines than any group save for health care workers, Stat News reports. That means those workers would move ahead of people 65 and older and those with high-risk medical conditions.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the group of experts tasked with making recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine use, has not yet had a formal vote on the matter, but members expressed support for the proposal, per Stat.

The intention is reportedly to ensure people of color, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and make up a high percentage of essential workers, are at the front of the priority line, should they choose to get vaccinated.

"These essential workers are out there putting themselves at risk to allow the rest of us to socially distance," said Beth Bell, a global health expert from the University of Washington who is on ACIP and chairs its Covid-19 work group. "And they come from disadvantaged situations, they come from disadvantaged communities." Read more at Stat News. Tim O'Donnell

Taylor Swift is headed to Disney+ for the holidays.

Disney+ announced on Tuesday that an "intimate concert" of Swift's hit album Folklore will debut on the streaming service on Wednesday. The film will feature footage of the studio sessions for the pop star's surprise album, which dropped in July to critical acclaim.

"Folklore was an album that was made completely in isolation, which means that Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and I never saw each other while were collaborating and creating the album," Swift explained on Good Morning America. "But we got together at Long Pond Studios, and for the very first time got to create this music together, play through it, talk through it, we were joined by Justin Vernon. And it was filmed by Disney+."

A trailer released by Disney+ shows Swift speaking about creating the album and singing her songs "Cardigan" and "August." Following its surprise release over the summer, Folklore went on to sell a million copies in the United States, the year's first album to do so. Now, similar to the way Disney+ debuted the original cast recording of Hamilton just in time for the Fourth of July earlier this year, the Folklore concert film will hit Disney+ just in time for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Brendan Morrow

Apple's head of global security has been indicted after allegedly offering law enforcement officials iPads as bribes in exchange for concealed firearms licenses.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney's office on Monday said a grand jury has charged Apple Chief Security Officer Thomas Moyer with bribery. Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen were also charged. Sung allegedly "held up the issuance of [concealed firearms] licenses, refusing to release them until the applicants gave something of value," while being "aided by Captain Jensen in one instance."

In Moyer's case, four concealed firearms licenses had been "withheld from Apple employees," and he allegedly promised Apple would donate 200 iPads "worth close to $70,000" to the Sheriff's Office in exchange for the licenses. This plan was "scuttled at the eleventh hour" after Moyer and Sung found out about a search warrant for the license records, the District Attorney's office said. A local business owner was also charged for allegedly offering tickets to a hockey game in exchange for a concealed firearms license.

"Undersheriff Sung and Captain Jensen treated CCW licenses as commodities and found willing buyers," Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. "Bribe seekers should be reported to the District Attorney's Office, not rewarded with compliance."

Moyer's attorney told The Washington Post he "did nothing wrong," saying his arrangement to donate iPads to an education center for the sheriff's office wasn't connected with the permit requests. The attorney added, "We have no doubt he will be acquitted at trial." An Apple spokesperson also said in a statement, "We expect all of our employees to conduct themselves with integrity. After learning of the allegations, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing." Brendan Morrow

President-elect Joe Biden will start introducing his Cabinet picks Tuesday, and the consensus in Washington was perhaps best described by Brendan Buck, a former top aide to Republican House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner:

Most of the names Biden announced Monday — Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security secretary, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. ambassador, and Ron Klein as White House chief of staff — are career professionals little known outside Washington policy and politics circles, but well regarded within them. "By design, they seem meant to project a dutiful competence," The Washington Post reports.

Biden has also chosen some boldface names: John Kerry as international climate envoy and former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen as treasury secretary. What ties them all together is the prospect of a Biden administration "filled with people who have deep experience in government and in the agencies they will be running," Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer write at Politico.

You can expect fewer impulsive tweets and more of "a linear, plodding, purposeful, and standard policy process" run "by political professionals who aren't likely to try to burn down the White House over petty disagreements and jockeying to get in the good graces of the president," Sherman and Palmer add. "In other words, if the Trump White House was like downing a vat of Tabasco sauce over the past four years, the Biden White House will be like sipping unflavored almond milk."

The selection process hasn't been entirely without drama, but "the relatively uncontroversial nature of these picks has been by design," Politico's Ryan Lizza reports. "Internally, Biden officials have been instructed to emphasize to reporters how normal the picks are, how 'these are tested leaders.' It's seen as a success if the Biden staff and Cabinet announcements don't make much news." Peter Weber

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Monday it's "in the final development phase" of a mobile "digital passport" app that would tell airlines if international travelers had been vaccinated against COVID-19. The app would help "get people traveling again safely," IATA's Nick Careen said in a statement, by "giving governments confidence that systematic COVID-19 testing can work as a replacement for quarantine requirements."

Australia's Qantas announced Monday that it's on board with requiring a "vaccination passport" for international travelers, starting next year. "We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travelers, that we will ask people to have the vaccination before they get on the aircraft," Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told Australia's Network 9. Korean Air and Air New Zealand also backed the idea but said any changes would have to be coordinated with their respective governments.

In the past few weeks, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Oxford University-AstraZeneca have announced that large trials showed their respective COVID-19 vaccines to be safe and hightly effective at preventing the disease. This encouraging news "has given airlines and nations hope they may soon be able to revive suspended flight routes and dust off lucrative tourism plans," The Associated Press reports. "But countries in Asia and the Pacific, in particular, are determined not to let their hard-won gains against the virus evaporate."

The IATA and International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways, have been working on a digital pass they hope to roll out in the first quarter of 2021. This app would use blockchain technology and wouldn't store user data, IATA said. Korean Air is among those in the airline industry looking at trying out CommonPass, an app endorsed by the World Economic Forum and created with the Commons Project Foundation, and International SOS's AOKpass is currently being used on flights between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan. Peter Weber

"The president's slow-moving coup is not going that well," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. "This afternoon, the Michigan election board certified Joe Biden's win in that state, then tonight we just learned moments ago that the General Services Administration informed President-elect Joe Biden the administration is ready to begin the formal transition process." That makes it official, he said. "Our next commander in chief will be President Biden. Which means somewhere, right now, Rudy Giuliani is filing a last-ditch legal claim that our current president's name has always been Joe Biden."

"With so many people humiliated by the absolute incompetence of his legal team, the president did what had to be done and fired someone named Sidney Powell," Colbert said. "If you don't know who she is, congratulations, now you don't have to know. But I'm going to tell you anyway." And he did.

Powell "got kicked off Trump's legal team for being too crazy," Jimmy Fallon marveled at The Tonight show. "That's like getting kicked off of Real Housewives for being too crazy. Seriously, you know how nuts you have to be when Rudy Giuliani's head starts leaking and you're the one who gets fired?"

"Here's how big of an embarrassment she was to the Trump team," James Corden elaborated at The Late Late Show: "The guy who held a press conference next to a sex shop, and last week had hair dye running down his face, and who wears loafers that look like clown shoes — that guy, still on the team. But I saw this coming, I did. Any good conspiracy theorist will tell you if you rearrange the letters in Sidney Powell, you get Needy Pillows, which is obviously nod to the MyPillow CEO, who invented coronavirus to destabilize the neck-support industry. I gotta be honest, I spent a lot of time on the internet this weekend."

"Trump is concerned that his legal team is made up of fools that are making him look bad," Jimmy Kimmel laughed at Kimmel Live. "They said the same thing about you." Meanwhile, "we still haven't seen the president concede — we've barely even seen the president," thanks largely to golf, he shrugged. "I've never seen a guy try so hard to keep a job he doesn't even do." Watch another one of Kimmel's "great ideas" to get Trump to leave office below. Peter Weber