The Daily 202: Biden is giving most-coveted jobs to those he knows well. That may help Doug Jones get Justice.

On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden put Fudge at HUD. If confirmed, the congresswoman from Cleveland will replace Ben Carson, who is also Black, as secretary of housing and urban development. 

For USDA, the president-elect picked his good friend Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who is White and held the same job during all eight years of the Obama administration.

The transition team put out word that Fudge was getting the housing job during an hour-and-45-minute virtual meeting that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris held with the leaders of seven civil rights groups. They had been grumbling in recent days that not enough African Americans are getting high-profile jobs, even though this constituency played a pivotal role in delivering the Democratic nomination. The news that Biden will nominate retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to be the first Black secretary of defense broke on the eve of this scheduled Zoom call.

During the conversation, NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Biden directly that he did not want Vilsack to get Agriculture, sources familiar with the exchange tell my colleague Annie Linskey. Some Black leaders still have hard feelings because of his 2010 firing of Shirley Sherrod, an African American who was Georgia state director of rural development for the department, after Breitbart posted misleading excerpts from a speech that she gave to make them appear racist. The full recording made clear her remarks had been taken out of context and she was offered another federal job.

Within an hour of their session wrapping up, though, the Biden team announced he will nominate Vilsack to lead the Agriculture Department. This was savvy political jujitsu. These staggered rollouts appeared carefully choreographed to blunt criticism. 

Attorney general is the highest-profile Cabinet slot left to fill. There is a widespread belief among people close to the selection process that picking Austin and Fudge gives Biden more breathing room to pick a White man for attorney general. Multiple outlets, including NBC and CNN, report that Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) is the leading contender to take over the Justice Department. 

Jones has known Biden for more than 40 years. As a law student, he introduced the then-Delaware senator when he came to Alabama for a speech. He worked with Biden when he was a young staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. When Biden first ran for president in 1988, Jones co-chaired his Alabama campaign. Two decades later, he raised money for Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign. After losing reelection last month, Jones will be out a job come January.

The events of the last 36 hours have underscored a deeper truth about Biden’s approach to staffing his administration: He prioritizes personal relationships and rapport above almost all else. In the most-coveted jobs, Biden has placed an even greater premium on proven loyalty.

DOJ is one of the four top-tier Cabinet posts. The other most-coveted departments are State, Treasury and Defense. Biden’s pick to be the nation’s chief diplomat is Tony Blinken, who was his staff director when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and national security adviser when he first became vice president. His choice for Treasury is former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, whom he first met when she was a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Michèle Flournoy had long been considered the frontrunner to lead the Pentagon. But people close to Biden say Biden never fully gelled or clicked with her when he was vice president. That is the biggest reason he passed her over.

Biden has gotten along well with Austin for years. The president-elect’s beloved son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, served on Austin’s staff in 2008 and 2009. And they stayed in touch after Beau returned home as Delaware’s attorney general.

“Austin developed a personal relationship with Beau while they were both deployed,” our Pentagon correspondent Dan Lamothe reports. “The two Catholics attended Mass together and sat next to each other almost every Sunday on deployment. … [Joe] Biden and Austin have talked for years, including on Biden’s trips to Iraq as vice president.”

Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain was Biden’s first chief of staff when he became vice president in 2009. But Klain first worked for the president-elect in the 1980s as chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden served as chairman.

Biden has been friends with John Kerry since the mid-1980s. Kerry, who served in the Senate with him and then as secretary of state, will be his climate change envoy with a seat on the principal’s committee of the National Security Council. Kerry campaigned around Iowa for Biden earlier this year alongside Vilsack.

Fittingly enough, Jones won the special election in 2017 to replace Jeff Sessions after he resigned to become President Trump’s first attorney general. He did so with overwhelming support from the African American community. Like Sessions, Jones is a former U.S. attorney in Alabama. Under Clinton in the 1990s, Jones successfully prosecuted members of the Ku Klux Klan who were responsible for the notorious Birmingham church bombing in 1963.

When Biden campaigned for Jones three years ago, he joked: “I promised Doug I’d campaign for him or against him, whichever will help the most.”

The Associated Press reports that Biden’s two finalists for attorney general are Jones and Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit, best known as President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who never got a hearing. “Democrats are particularly concerned about the prospect of Biden nominating former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, fearing she could face a difficult confirmation in the Senate because of her role in issues related to the Russia investigation,” the AP reports.

All seven of the Black leaders who met virtually with Biden on Tuesday held a press call afterward to give a readout of their discussion. Al Sharpton said he told Biden that his preference is for a Black attorney general but that he could accept a White candidate “with a proven civil rights background.” This sounded like an implicit endorsement of Jones. “I said the least we could have is someone that has a proven civil rights background,” Sharpton said, “that’s going to handle this heightened racist bigoted atmosphere.”

Jones also earned the abiding admiration of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate by staying loyal even when it made political sense to break ranks. He voted to convict Trump after the impeachment trial. He also opposed Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett’s nominations to the Supreme Court, knowing that these votes could cost him his seat. 

Jones is 66. Garland is 68. Yates is 60.

The 78-year-old Biden will be the oldest man to ever assume the presidency. While he has described himself as a transitional figure, he has yet to elevate anyone to a Cabinet-level post who might reasonably be considered part of the next generation of Democratic leadership. In fact, most of the president-elect’s picks are older than the mandatory retirement age at many large corporations. Austin is 67. Fudge and U.N. ambassador nominee Linda Thomas-Greenfield are 68. Vilsack is 69. Yellen is 74. Kerry is 76.

One of Biden’s younger nominees for a Cabinet post, Xavier Becerra, is still 62. Notably, the California attorney general has probably the thinnest personal connection to the president-elect. That was apparent on Tuesday afternoon when Biden twice mispronounced his name while introducing him during an event in Wilmington, Del.

Becerra “and Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s pick for homeland security secretary, were among several prominent Los Angeles figures who reached out to the White House about the sentence of Carlos Vignali Jr., whose father was a wealthy entrepreneur and major Democratic donor in California,” Roz Helderman and Tom Hamburger report. “Then-President Bill Clinton commuted Vignali’s sentence on his last day in office in 2001 — one of 176 last-minute acts of clemency he granted that were the subject of investigations for years. The episode drew criticism that the process favored the politically and financially connected — an issue resonant once again after Trump’s recent pardon of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his contemplation of similar acts for other friends and allies. The Vignali commutation drew intense scrutiny because a group of well-connected California Democrats who were friendly with Vignali’s father, Horacio — including Becerra, then a U.S. congressman, and Mayorkas, then the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles — communicated with White House officials about the matter before Clinton acted. Vignali’s father also paid $200,000 to Hugh Rodham, the brother of then-first lady Hillary Clinton, to help secure Vignali’s release. … 

“Prosecutors and the judge involved in Vignali’s case have said they were deeply troubled by what they saw as political influence employed to help a convicted drug dealer. In an interview Tuesday, the Minnesota federal judge who sentenced Vignali said he remains distressed — even two decades later — by Bill Clinton’s grant of clemency. … Margaret Love, who ran the Justice Department’s pardon office under President George H.W. Bush and in the first five years of the Clinton presidency, said that Vignali’s commutation exemplified ‘the complete breakdown of the pardon process,’ when the Clinton administration made decisions without the traditional participation of the pardon office. Love said in an interview that it was understandable for Becerra to inquire about a constituent as a member of Congress but that Mayorkas’s involvement was ‘harder to understand,’ noting that his office had no role in the case. … [Becerra] has said he did nothing wrong in making contact with the White House … Mayorkas issued a statement shortly after the commutation apologizing for his phone call to the White House, which he called a ‘mistake.’”

In related news: A federal judge reluctantly dismissed Flynn’s prosecution Tuesday after Trump’s pardon but emphasized that the act of clemency does not mean the former national security adviser is innocent of lying to FBI agents about his contacts with the Russian government. “In formally ending Flynn’s three-year legal saga, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he probably would have denied the Justice Department’s controversial effort this year to drop the case, which Democrats and many legal experts said appeared to be an attempt by Attorney General William P. Barr to bend the rule of law to help a Trump ally,” Spencer Hsu and Ann Marimow report. “The 43-page ruling delivered the court’s final say in the politically charged case … On Twitter, Trump and Flynn exchanged congratulations and shared grievances.”

“Austin, who retired in 2016 as a four-star general after leading U.S. Central Command, has not been out of uniform for the seven years required by law to serve as Pentagon chief,” Karoun Demirjian reports. “In 2017, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that ‘waiving the law should happen no more than once in a generation’ and promised that he would ‘not support a waiver for future nominees.’ But on Tuesday, he told reporters that a waiver for Austin ‘has to be evaluated’ and would depend on ‘his aptitude and qualities.’”

• “I opposed the waiver on [Jim] Mattis, but I have to tell you I was so impressed with his performance that I would consider a waiver for Austin,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 in Democratic leadership.
• House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said he’s “concerned about again appointing a recently retired General to be Secretary of Defense” and that Austin “should meet with members … so they can ask questions about civilian control of the military, and to be assured that General Austin is committed to this important principle.”
• At least one of the Democrats who voted against the Mattis waiver said he will stay consistent when his own party is in power: “It, I think, has to be applied — unfortunately — in this instance,” Sen. Dick Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters.

“Biden says he prefers the approach that he himself took during the eight years he was vice president under Barack Obama,” Karen Tumulty reports. “He began with no defined portfolio, although the two of them agreed that he would be the first and last person the president talked to before making any major decision. Beyond that, Obama also turned to Biden as a sort of fireman to handle urgent challenges. … An early indicator of Harris’s influence will be whether she takes a leadership role on … dealing with the covid-19 pandemic.”

• Former homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson told Reuters he won’t join the Biden administration. When asked why, Johnson simply referred to “the news over the last 24 hours.” He had been considered for the defense and justice departments.
• Biden is considering Pete Buttigieg for ambassador to China. (Axios)
• Biden’s finalists for SEC chair are Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Gary Gensler, the former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief. (Tory Newmyer) 
• Michael Pack, the Steve Bannon acolyte running the U.S. Agency for Global Media and overseeing Voice of America, refuses to cooperate with Biden’s transition team. (Paul Farhi)
• The Senate confirmed Nathan Simington as a new GOP member on the Federal Communications Commission, which threatens to saddle the nation’s telecom regulator with political deadlock during the Biden administration. (Tony Romm)
• Terry McAuliffe wants his old job back. The former Virginia governor just announced that he will seek a second term. He enters the crowded Democratic primary as the odds-on favorite. (Laura Vozzella)

“The court’s brief order denying a requested injunction provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of last month’s presidential election to reach the court, and it appears that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s latest nominee, took part in the case,” Robert Barnes and Elise Viebeck report. “The Pennsylvania petition was considered a long shot — it asked the court to take the rare step of wading into a dispute over state law decided by a state supreme court. But the justices’ curt dismissal does not bode well for other requests that involve overturning election results. …

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Tuesday filed a brash and sweeping complaint that asked the court to overturn Biden’s wins in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) called it a ‘publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading.’ … The Supreme Court told the four states to respond by Thursday afternoon. … Legal experts called the suit highly unusual and said it raises several questions, including whether Texas has standing to bring a retroactive complaint over how other states enforce their election statutes. The Constitution says it is up to individual states to set the terms for elections. The complaint filed by Paxton was a grab-bag of allegations about voting in the four states that have been largely rejected by individual courts.”

“It’s completely unacceptable, and it’s not going to work, and the president should give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told the Philadelphia Inquirer after we reported that Trump asked the speaker of the state House to do just that.

“In the House, a backbench Republican moved to rebuke GOP colleagues who might suggest Trump ‘concede prematurely.’ In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) again declined to recognize Biden as president-elect. And during a meeting on inauguration preparations, GOP officials voted against recognizing that Biden and [Harris] would, in fact, be the people being inaugurated on Jan. 20,” Mike DeBonis reports. “House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who put the question to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, called the gesture ‘astounding’ in a statement Tuesday. … Spokesmen for McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) declined to comment on their no votes.” A Post survey last week found that only 27 lawmakers, 15 of them in the House, acknowledged Biden’s victory.

• Twenty-seven House Republicans signed a letter urging Trump to direct Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate supposed election “irregularities.” The letter is organized by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Tex.). (John Wagner)
• The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously rejected an appeal from Trump’s campaign to overturn the state’s election results. (Timothy Bella)
• Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, sued the Trump campaign and one of its attorneys, Joseph diGenova, for defamation, asserting that they conspired to falsely claim that the election was stolen, attack dissenting Republicans and fraudulently reap political donations. (Spencer Hsu and Dan Morse)
• More than 1,500 lawyers condemned efforts by the Trump campaign’s legal team to reverse the election results in an open letter urging the American Bar Association to investigate the conduct of the team, including Rudy Giuliani. The signatories include a bipartisan coalition of former ABA presidents, state bar presidents, retired federal judges, retired state Supreme Court justices and attorneys in private practice. It was coordinated by the nonpartisan group Lawyers Defending American Democracy. (Kim Bellware and Wagner)
• A New York state judge ordered ballots retallied in one of the closest House races in history as he expressed frustration with lawyers for both incumbent Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D) and his Republican opponent, former congresswoman Claudia Tenney. The decision is good news for Brindisi, who currently trails by 12 votes under the most recent districtwide count. (DeBonis)

This milestone comes just five days after we reached 14 million. Our country reported 219,282 new cases and 2,594 more deaths on Tuesday, per The Post’s tracker.

• Funeral directors say they’re better prepared for the coming wave of covid deaths than they were in the spring, but they remain just as unsettled by the disease’s effect on the way people mourn. Families often opt for private burial or cremation now and postpone more elaborate memorial services for later. (Fredrick Kunkle)

Biden outlined a three-point plan to combat the pandemic in his first 100 days. The president-elect pledged to sign an executive order on the day he is sworn in to require Americans to wear masks on buses and trains crossing state lines, as well as in federal buildings. “Biden also pledged to distribute ‘at least 100 million covid vaccine shots’ during that time, singling out educators, who he said should get shots ‘as soon as possible’ after they are given first to health workers and people who live and work in long-term-care facilities,” Amy Goldstein reports. “He did not specify whether he meant 100 million doses or vaccinating that many people; the two vaccines nearing approval both require two doses. … He called on Congress to devote the funding needed to make it safe for students and teachers to return to classrooms.” 

As Biden unveiled his public health team in Delaware, Trump held a vaccine summit at the White House. The nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Tony Fauci, was a no-show at Trump’s event. Instead, he sent pre-taped videos to both Biden’s and Trump’s events, David Nakamura reports. “Executives from Pfizer and Moderna, the companies seeking federal government approval for their coronavirus vaccines this month, turned down White House invitations to participate … Trump has, without evidence, accused the companies of withholding news of success in vaccine trials until after the election in an effort to undermine his reelection chances.” 

After Trump’s team turned down the chance to secure more Pfizer vaccines this summer, other countries jumped at the chance. “The European Union and Japan have both staked claim to an even larger portion of Pfizer doses than the United States has, and Americans will have to wait as those countries receive shares of their initial orders while supplies remain limited,” Emily Rauhala reports. “But as a wealthy country with a large number of orders in place and good cold storage infrastructure, the United States is still near the top of the global vaccine pecking order, while some poor countries could have to wait until 2024 to offer vaccines to their entire populations.”

Israel received its first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines this morning. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in front of the just-landed DHL plane, pledged to be the first to get inoculated — as soon as the drug is approved by American regulators. Up to 4 million doses are expected there by the end of the month. (Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin)

• Maryland will administer its first Pfizer vaccines on Monday to health-care workers and in nursing homes. (Ovetta Wiggins and Julie Zauzmer)
• The Pentagon plans to prioritize medical personnel, and then top leaders, in the vaccine rollout. (CNN)

The United Arab Emirates endorsed the vaccine after reviewing the Chinese firm Sinopharm’s assessment that its shot was 86 percent effective against the coronavirus, Eva Dou and Paul Schemm report. “The announcement comes as a relief for China, which has already approved widespread emergency use of the vaccine. A number of other countries, including Morocco, have pinned their hopes on Sinopharm. Sinopharm’s efficacy rate puts the company’s vaccine behind Moderna’s 94.5 percent and Pfizer-BioNTech’s 95 percent, but ahead of AstraZeneca’s 70 percent. But data from the Phase 3 trial has not yet been released, with UAE officials only giving a few headline numbers. … China has come under criticism for rolling out the vaccines so widely before clinical trials were complete.”

The Trump campaign lawyer has told associates she tested positive, stirring fears among West Wing staffers that she may have infected them after attending a staff Christmas party last Friday night, Axios reports. “People brought their families,” said one senior White House official who attended the party. Ellis showed up to the party as a guest of trade adviser Peter Navarro and was not seen wearing a mask.

Meanwhile in Michigan, the woman who attracted national attention after testifying at Giuliani’s side about alleged voter fraud says she is not self-quarantining and has not been tested for the virus after Giuliani’s positive test and hospitalization. “In a phone interview from her home in the Detroit suburbs, [Mellissa] Carone told The Post that she was living her life normally and had no plans to change that,” Dalton Bennett and Neena Satija report. ”She said she was unaware of the health advisory and was not worried about contracting the virus. ‘I would take it seriously if it came from Trump, because Trump cares about American lives,’ Carone said, adding that if television networks friendly to Trump such as One America News or Newsmax ‘told me to go get tested, I would do it.’”

• Minutes into a public health district’s virtual meeting to vote on a local mask mandate in Idaho, Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo tearfully excused herself after getting a phone call that anti-mask protesters had surrounded her home. “My 12-year-old son is home by himself right now and there are protesters banging outside the door,” she said. “I’m going to go home and make sure he’s okay.” The visibly upset mother disconnected from the video call, leaving her colleagues stunned. They soon learned that protesters had also massed outside the Central District Health office and another board member’s residence. (Katie Shepherd)
• A Florida GOP official resigned from a state judicial panel in protest after police raided the home of Rebekah Jones, a data scientist ousted from the state health department. Ron Filipkowski, who served on a nominating commission for the state’s 12th Circuit, said he wanted to draw attention to the way Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has handled “public access to truthful data.” (Teo Armus)
• Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) is limiting gatherings in the state but still inviting legislators to holiday parties. The governor plans at least three parties at his mansion in the coming days, despite widespread bans on large get-togethers in the Magnolia State. (Jaclyn Peiser)
• More than a third of Americans are living in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, according to federal data. (NYT)
• With infections and hospitalizations on the rise, intensive care units in at least three counties in California’s San Joaquin Valley are entirely full. “It is the worst we have seen, and it’s continuing to worsen,” Ahmad Kamal, a gastroenterologist at Stanford Medical School, told the Los Angeles Times.
• A California judge issued a sharp rebuke to L.A. County’s ban on outdoor dining, saying the rule amounted to an abuse of emergency powers that “is not grounded in science, evidence, or logic.” The ruling will have no immediate effect because a temporary stay-at-home order from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) supersedes local restrictions. Nonetheless, it marks a major win for the hospitality industry. (Armus)
• A Canadian woman has been sick with the virus for nearly nine months. Ashley Antonio, 35, has been in and out of the hospital since March, diagnosed with arthritis and a condition that causes her heartbeat to dramatically increase when she stands up. Doctors say both are long-term effects of the virus and they don’t know if they’ll go away. (Andrea Salcedo)
• For the first time in 103 years, it appears Ohio State University and Michigan will not play each other in football. Michigan announced it could not field a team on Saturday — moments after OSU Coach Ryan Day, isolated amid his own bout with the virus, said he remained hopeful the game would go on. (Chuck Culpepper)
• American Airlines will offer at-home testing kits to customers traveling to any U.S. city with travel restrictions. Beginning Wednesday, customers can order test kits enabling them to collect their own samples and send them to a lab. The kits will cost $129 and provide results within 48 hours after the sample is received. (Lori Aratani)
• A Royal Caribbean cruise from Singapore turned back early after a passenger tested positive for the virus. (Hannah Sampson)
• Four lions at Barcelona’s zoo tested positive for the virus, along with two human handlers. This is only the second known case in which large felines have contracted covid. (Reuters)

“The Trump administration on Tuesday proposed an economic relief package that would offer far skimpier federal unemployment benefits than what has been proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, adding an element of uncertainty into the fragile stimulus negotiations,” Jeff Stein and DeBonis report. “Instead, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has proposed that lawmakers approve another stimulus check worth $600 per person and $600 per child … The new White House proposal was a nonstarter for Democrats and a sharp rejection of the bipartisan efforts that have brought the two parties closer to a compromise on a legislative package … 

“Under the bipartisan framework released last week by a group of moderate lawmakers, Congress would approve about $180 billion in new federal unemployment benefits for tens of millions of jobless Americans. That would be enough to fund federal supplementary unemployment benefits at $300 per week while extending various unemployment programs that are set to expire at the end of the year. … By contrast, Mnuchin has submitted a plan to provide about $40 billion in new funding for federal unemployment benefits. … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) strongly criticized the proposal.” 

Senate negotiators are trying to reach a deal on whether companies can be sued over outbreaks. Many Democrats have refused to agree to such language, saying it would imperil workers, but both sides are attempting to reach a compromise on the “liability shield.” Mnuchin said the White House will demand “robust liability protections for businesses, schools, and universities.” (Eli Rosenberg, Stein and DeBonis)

“The Trump administration finalized a rule Wednesday that makes it harder to enact public health protections by changing the way the Environmental Protection Agency calculates the costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution,” Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis report. “The new cost-benefit analysis, which applies to all future Clean Air Act rules, instructs the agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, including avoided illnesses and deaths. In other words, if reducing emissions from power plants also saves tens of thousands of lives each year by cutting soot, those ‘co-benefits’ should be not be counted. The EPA’s proposal has faced withering criticism from environmental advocates, who suggested it will not withstand legal challenges. The incoming administration is also likely to overturn the rule, although this would take time because there are legal procedures that must be followed to eliminate an existing regulation.”

“The House on Tuesday passed a bipartisan, $741 billion defense authorization bill by a sizable veto-proof majority, throwing down the first of two expected gauntlets before Trump, who has escalated his threat to scuttle the legislation,” Karoun Demirjian reports. “The 335-to-78 vote represents a much bigger margin of victory for the bill than the House mustered for an earlier version of the legislation this summer. It is also a sharp rebuke to Trump’s exhortations to Republicans to vote against the measure: Fewer than half of the GOP lawmakers who opposed the initial defense bill over the summer voted against the bipartisan compromise Tuesday. … Should senators approve the bill by a similarly decisive margin, leaders are hopeful that the president will reconsider his veto threat.” 

• More than 40 attorneys general and the Justice Department are preparing to file antitrust lawsuits today against Facebook, alleging that the social media network engaged in unlawful, anticompetitive tactics to buy or kill off its rivals. (Tony Romm)
• For months, a 21-year-old Trump supporter impersonated Trump family members on Twitter, spreading conspiracy theories and asking for money. He ultimately drew the president’s attention by pretending to be his sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau. Using the identities of five of the president’s relatives and some political figures, Josh Hall has managed to amass more than 160,000 Twitter followers. He also has promoted fundraisers for a political group he called “Gay Voices for Trump,” which he said doesn’t exist. (NYT)

“The reckoning at Fort Hood came after the disappearance and killing of Spec. Vanessa Guillén, who was killed by a fellow soldier on the installation in April. Her death, which drew attention from lawmakers, activists and celebrities, ‘shocked our conscience and brought attention to deeper problems,’ Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said at a news conference,” Alex Horton reports. “An independent civilian review board, whose findings were released Tuesday, found widespread problems and a ‘toxic culture’ at the Army’s second-largest installation, which houses about 36,000 soldiers. Two decades of constant deployments, the report concluded, drew attention away from soldiers’ welfare, allowing profound social problems to metastasize. But it was Guillén’s slaying that ‘revealed a series of missteps and multiple failures in our system and within our leadership,’ McCarthy said. … Before her killing, Guillén voiced similar concerns to her family about sexual harassment, the Guillén family has said. … After interviewing more than 500 female soldiers for the report, the panel cited 93 credible accounts of sexual assault, but only 59 incidents were reported, the authors said.”

• “The same Russian spies who penetrated the White House and State Department several years ago and have attempted to steal coronavirus vaccine research have carried off another brazen hack, this time breaking into the servers of one of the world’s premier cybersecurity firms, FireEye,” Ellen Nakashima and Joe Marks report. “The firm went public with the incident to ensure that its 9,600-plus customers around the world and the cybersecurity industry were aware and could take steps to ensure that they won’t be breached with the stolen tools. The tools are used by FireEye ‘Red Teams’ to test a company’s cyber defenses.”
• The world’s rich need to cut their carbon footprint by a factor of 30 to slow climate change, according to new findings published by the United Nations Environment Program. (Dennis, Chris Mooney and Sarah Kaplan)
• The sun is waking up with “solar storms” that could affect the Earth. Solar physicists are expecting an uptick in stormy “space weather,” which could generate northern lights or aurora as far south as Oregon to Pennsylvania. (Matthew Cappucci)

After House Democrats said goodbye to their members who lost reelection, the Republican leader trolled them:

A GOP congressman’s tooth fell out of its socket while he was speaking:

And the New Yorker came up with a perfect Advent calendar: 

Stephen Colbert said the place that seems to need the vaccine the most is the White House:

And Jimmy Fallon created “2020: The Musical”: