"As the new Congress was sworn in Sunday, the Republican Party splintered badly as at least 12 senators planned to join about 140 House members to contest Joe Biden's election win," Politico reports. "The tensions are so high that individual GOP senators are now directly battling" in "open warfare against each other." While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is asking his caucus to accept President Trump's loss, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is reportedly giving his GOP colleagues the green light to object to the Electoral College results on Wednesday.
McCarthy's predecessor, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), urged Republicans to knock it off in a rare public statement Sunday. "Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden's victory strike at the foundation of our republic," Ryan said. "It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act," and "the fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy." Trump has "had ample opportunity to challenge election results, and those efforts failed from lack of evidence," he added. "Joe Biden's victory is entirely legitimate."
Also on Sunday evening, all 10 living former defense secretaries signed an op-ed in The Washington Post affirming Biden's victory and warning that the military should not be dragged into Trump's effort to contest his loss. The signatories include James Mattis and Mark Esper, who served under Trump, as well as conservative stalwarts like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Cheney, who was also vice president for eight years, came up with the idea for the joint statement, said William Perry, former President Bill Clinton's defense secretary.
"American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy," the defense secretaries said. "Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the Electoral College votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived."
Chuck Hagel, a Republican who served as defense secretary under President Barack Obama, told the Post he considered whether warning about military intervention was an overreaction, but decided it was better to nip the idea, raised by some close Trump allies, in the bud. Peter Weber
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, some small-scale studies found high rates of myocarditis, or heart inflammation, among college athletes who had previously tested positive for COVID-19. That prompted some universities to do cardiac testing on all athletes who were infected throughout the year, but a new study released Saturday suggests such "blanket testing" is unnecessary, ESPN reports.
Among the 3,018 athletes examined in the study, only 21 exhibited signs of possible, probable, or definite myocarditis, and those who did have heart issues were more likely to have had moderate COVID-19 and/or cardiopulmonary symptoms during the infections.
Dr. Jonathan Drezner, the director of the University of Washington Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology and a co-principal investigator of the study, said the results indicate athletes who had mild or no COVID-19 symptoms probably don't need to be screened for myocarditis. "I would simply be comfortable doing a good review of symptoms," he told ESPN, adding that their health should still be monitored "when they get back to play." Read more at ESPN. Tim O'Donnell
Congress has gone nearly 80 days without a member announcing a positive coronavirus test, having crossed the 75-day threshold on Wednesday, The Washington Post reports.
There were a fair number of cases in the Capitol in the fall and early winter when the U.S. as a whole was experiencing a significant surge, but Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) was the last lawmaker to reveal he had contracted the virus on Jan. 29. That's the longest stretch without a publicly confirmed infection in the House or Senate since the pandemic began, the Post notes.
While it's too early to jump to conclusions and declare that Congress has reached herd immunity, the decline has coincided with COVID-19 vaccines becoming widely available to lawmakers in recent months, which suggests the shots are doing their job, as some targeted studies have found to be the case in other workplace environments, like hospitals. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell
NASA on Friday tapped SpaceX to help bring humans back to the moon later this decade as part of its Artemis Program.
The agency announced Friday that it will award Elon Musk's company a $2.89 billion contract for the development of its Starship vehicle, an uncrewed flight test to the moon, and, finally, a crewed mission that will land on the lunar surface. SpaceX beat out Dynetics and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin for the opportunity, thanks in large part to its affordability. SpaceX's bid cost about half of Dynetics' and a quarter of Blue Origin's, Ars Technica reports. So while Starship has plenty of innovative features that made it an enticing candidate, "budget appears to have been the biggest factor" since NASA has struggled to secure funding from Congress for the lunar landing.
Ars Technica suggests NASA likely isn't done, however, explaining that "a sole-source award to SpaceX for the Human Landing System will certainly not be particularly popular in Congress, where traditional space companies such as Lockheed Martin and newer entrants like Blue Origin have more established lobbying power." In other words, the move "sends a clear message from NASA and the White House" — which has endorsed the Artemis Program and its goals — "to budget writers in the House and Senate." Read more at Ars Technica. Tim O'Donnell
For the first time in 60 years, Cuba will soon be without a Castro in a formal, day-to-day leadership position.
Raúl Castro, the younger brother of the late Fidel Castro, confirmed Friday that he's stepping down from his role as the leader of the country's Communist Party, with President Miguel Diaz-Canel expected to take on double duties, as the Castro brothers did before him. The younger Castro, who is 90, is poised to remain an influential figure on the island, but he likely won't interfere with daily governance, The New York Times notes. That means a new era is on the horizon, as Cuba faces challenges from both the coronavirus and a struggling economy.
The next generation of leadership could allow for more free-market activity, a path that's not completely new for Cuba; Raúl, who is considered more pragmatic than his brother, began the process of implementing some reforms following Fidel's death in 2011, but it's been a slow grind. There's no guarantee a new regime will change that — Richard Feinberg, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, told Al Jazeera that he thinks it's the "worst possible moment" for reforms because the government has "no money."
That said, urgency may rule the day in a post-Castro world. Arturo Lopez-Levy, the author of Raul Castro and the New Cuba: A Close-Up View of Change and an assistant professor at Holy Names University, told Al Jazeera that, unlike the brothers, their successors will have to "rely on performance — not on historical legacy — to exercise power and as a source of legitimacy." Read more at The New York Times and Al Jazeera. Tim O'Donnell
The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 3 million on Saturday, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University reveals.
As The Associated Press notes, the true number is believed to be higher based on suspicions that some governments have downplayed their countries' cases and fatalities, as well as the likelihood that many infections were missed early in the pandemic.
Daily deaths are on the rise again worldwide, AP writes, with the average currently sitting at 12,000. Cases are also on the upswing; World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that weekly infections have "nearly doubled over the past two months."
India and Brazil are two of the more prominent hot spots. The former has reported a record number of cases for three straight days, including more than 234,000 on Saturday. In Brazil, meanwhile, a more contagious variant is spreading throughout the country, and about 3,000 deaths are being recorded each day. That accounts for one-quarter of the world's fatalities in recent weeks, The Associated Press reports.
The increases come amid a global vaccine drive, albeit a patchy one. Some countries, including the United States, have ramped up their efforts (still, cases are stubbornly high in the U.S.), but immunization rates remain low elsewhere. Read more at The Associated Press and BBC. Tim O'Donnell