It looks like the final 2020 debate match-up between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden didn't draw quite as big of a TV audience as the first one.

Preliminary numbers from Nielsen on Friday showed that Thursday's debate between Trump and Biden averaged 55.2 million viewers across six networks, CNN and The New York Times report. This, CNN notes, was down roughly 11 percent from the 62 million viewers who tuned in on those networks to the first debate last month.

Nielsen will provide updated figures later on Friday taking into account viewers on other channels. When those final figures from Nielsen were added for the first debate, the total came out to about 73 million viewers, which made it the third highest-rated general election debate Nielsen has recorded, the Times notes.

The second debate between Trump and Biden was widely seen as more of a success than the first one, which was derailed by frequent interruptions from Trump. Thursday's debate was originally meant to be the third for the 2020 election, but a second was scrapped after Trump refused to particulate over plans to hold it virtually. Brendan Morrow

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been a frequent target of President Trump and his allies over the last few weeks. He's been accused — without evidence — of overseeing an electoral process that allowed for a significant amount of voter fraud, which his critics claim led to President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the traditionally red state. Raffensperger hasn't shied away from firing back, but in his latest comments Monday he appeared to thread the needle when it comes to Trump himself.

Raffensperger said unspecified "dishonest actors" are "exploiting the emotions of Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half truths, and misinformation," and he painted the president as a victim, as well.

It's understandable why Raffensperger may be seeking to avoid direct conflict with Trump, but not everyone is buying the way he framed the president's role in the situation. Tim O'Donnell

The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments Monday in President Trump's attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from counting in the 2020 census. The decision could affect congressional representation and federal funding, and it's far from the only way Trump's immigration policies could resonate for decades to come.

From implementing his Muslim ban in the early days of his presidency to recent changes to the U.S. citizenship test, much of Trump's term has centered around restricting both legal and illegal immigration. President-elect Joe Biden's election win hasn't slowed that pursuit. In Trump's last few weeks in office, he has reportedly pivoted to targeting birthright citizenship again. Trump's team has also used the pandemic to restrict the hiring of foreign workers and rapidly deport migrants and children who cross the southern border, and is rushing to add to his border wall. And if the Supreme Court — stacked with six conservatives — decides in Trump's favor, he could succeed in curbing representation and funding in left-leaning cities.

Biden has pledged to reverse all of Trump's restrictive immigration policies, some in the first days of his presidency. But thanks to "the genius of Stephen Miller," the architect of Trump's harsh immigration policies, that may be impossible, a source familiar with the Biden transition tells CNN. The past four years of slashing immigration have weakened the nation's immigration infrastructure; For example, Trump's historic low refugee caps have weaned staff to the point that it could be impossible to quickly increase refugee admissions, as Biden has proposed. Read more about Trump's lasting immigration legacy at CNN. Kathryn Krawczyk

Merriam-Webster has selected the word of the year for 2020, and it's the obvious choice.

The company on Monday picked "pandemic" as its 2020 word of the year, saying the term received a massive 115,806 percent spike in searches in March compared to a year earlier, The Associated Press reports. That spike came on the day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, Merriam-Webster said, though smaller spikes had occurred earlier in the year.

"Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it's fitting that in this exceptional — and exceptionally difficult — year, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our word of the year will be," Merriam-Webster said.

Among the numerous runners up were terms related to the COVID-19 pandemic like "coronavirus," "quarantine," and "asymptomatic." But another runner up was "defund," which Merriam-Webster said saw a more than 6,000 percent increase in lookups in 2020 amid calls to "defund the police."

The word "mamba" also saw a spike in searchers following the death of Kobe Bryant, who was nicknamed "Black Mamba," and "malarkey," a word used frequently by President-elect Joe Biden, saw an uptick in searches in 2020 as well. The other runners up were "kraken," "antebellum," "schadenfreude," "irregardless," and "icon."

Meanwhile, Dictionary.com also picked "pandemic" as its word of the year, with senior research editor John Kelly telling The Associated Press, "It seems maybe a little bit obvious, and that's fair to say, but think about life before the pandemic. Things like pandemic fashion would have made no sense. The pandemic as an event created a new language for a new normal." Brendan Morrow

In Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine trial, all but 11 of the 196 participants who contracted the virus were in the placebo group, good for a 94 percent efficacy rate. But perhaps even more crucially, none of the people who received the vaccine developed a severe infection, the company said. There were 30 severe cases in the trial — including one death — but they all occurred in the placebo group.

Experts have previously highlighted the importance of separating out worst the cases. Back in September, Drs. Peter Doshi and Eric Topol, in an op-ed for The New York Times, expressed concern that companies developing vaccines, including Moderna and Pfizer, which are on track to receive emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, wouldn't specify the severity of the infections in their trial. But Moderna did just that Monday (Pfizer has also provided data on the matter), and the news is encouraging. Tim O'Donnell

Back in March and April, when the novel coronavirus was still new and mask-wearing and social distancing foreign, the U.S. rolled out a bunch of ads explaining best COVID-19 practices for keep yourself and others safe. Some of them, like Paul Rudd's PSA for New York and Lego's Batman and Star Wars ads were amusing and informative. Others haven't aged so well.

The U.S. is now setting new records for COVID-19, including topping 200,000 new infections on Friday alone, and top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Sunday about a possible "surge upon a surge" in the weeks after Thanksgiving. A vaccine is coming, he added, and "if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this."

The U.S. isn't going through this alone, of course, and some foreign governments, companies, and artists have tried different ways of communicating the severity of the virus and the need to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As COVID fatigue crashes into the holidays, here are six creative ways other countries have tried to keep up the fight.

1. Germany created an instant classic in November that lightly tugged at the patriotic impulse while highlighting both the stakes and the relatively low cost of serving the greater good.

2. Turkey's Süleyman Hacıcaferoğlu took some animated matchsticks created in the spring by Spanish artists Juan Declan and Valentina Izaguirre, threw on the Mission: Impossible theme song, and created an arresting visual representation of how the virus spreads — and stops.

3. South Africa drew on the ick factor to encourage mask wearing.

4. Vietnam's health department produced an animated ad with a "Jealous Coronavirus" song that is so catchy, it became a bona fide hit in the country.

5. Singapore created its own pop hit, "Singapore Be Steady," with actor Gurmit Singh in character as Phua Chu Kang.

6. In Croatia, Karlovacko beer got its social distancing message across in a language that is probably universal: the disapproving look of a potential parent-in-law. Watch below. Peter Weber

Moderna has announced plans to seek emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine after data showed it to be 94.1 percent effective.

The company said it will apply for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. This announcement comes after Moderna earlier this month revealed that preliminary phase-three trial data showed its vaccine candidate was almost 95 percent effective.

On Monday, Moderna said an analysis of 196 cases "confirms the high efficacy observed at the first interim analysis," and additionally, data also showed the vaccine was 100 percent effective at preventing severe COVID-19 cases.

Moderna is the second company to seek emergency authorization for a vaccine against COVID-19. Pfizer previously announced it would also be submitting a request for FDA emergency authorization for its vaccine candidate, which data showed was about 95 percent effective.

When COVID-19 vaccines begin to roll out, those at the highest risk are expected to receive them first. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told The New York Times that should the company's vaccine receive emergency approval, the first doses could potentially be given by Dec. 21, and the company expects to produce 20 million doses in the United States by the end of the year. Brendan Morrow