California imposes night curfew as LA careens toward new lockdown measures
LA Times's STAFF: "California announced Thursday it will impose a mandatory overnight stay-at-home order for much of the state as COVID-19 surged to unprecedented levels and hard-hit Los Angeles County careened toward even more severe lockdown measures.
While the coronavirus is surging across the state, the situation in Los Angeles County was quickly reaching crisis levels, with nearly 5,000 new coronavirus cases Thursday, the most it has seen in any one day since the pandemic began.
Morever, California set another record for most coronavirus cases in a single day Thursday. An independent county-by-county tally conducted by The Times found that 13,422 new coronavirus cases were reported Thursday, the second time in a week the single-day record has been broken."
Pfizer to apply today for emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine
AP: "Pfizer said it would ask U.S. regulators Friday to allow emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine, starting the clock on a process that could bring limited first shots as early as next month and, potentially, an end to the pandemic — but not until after a long, hard winter.
The action comes days after Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, announced that their vaccine appears 95% effective at preventing mild to severe COVID-19 in a large, ongoing study.
The companies said that protection plus a good safety record means that the vaccine should qualify for emergency-use authorization, something the Food and Drug Administration can grant before final trials are fully complete. In addition to Friday’s FDA submission, they have already started “rolling” applications in Europe and Britain and intend to submit similar information soon."
Distributing vaccine will be biggest health operation in LA history. Can the bureaucracy pull it off?
LA Times's JACLYN COSGROVE: "The scientists have designed the vaccine. Now, government bureaucrats must figure out how to quickly and fairly distribute the life-saving COVID-19 medication.
For Los Angeles County, this effort has already included acquiring 16 ultra-cold storage freezers to be installed across the region. They can store tens of thousands of doses at temperatures as low as minus 86 degrees Celsius.
But the bigger question involves where the vaccine will go from there. It’s shaping up to be the largest and most complex public health effort in the county’s history, and concerns are growing that officials are falling behind. The county has already struggled with another essential element of the pandemic response: providing widescale coronavirus testing."
California Congressman Tom McClintock praises Newsom's French Laundry visit
McClatchy DC: "Gov. Gavin Newsom got an unlikely defender Thursday: conservative Rep. Tom McClintock, who said Newsom’s “night of partying should be a wake-up call to every American.”
The California Republican, who since the pandemic began in March has been blasting away at what he considers an overly intrusive government, found comfort in Newsom’s visit to Napa County’s French Laundry restaurant.
”Let us not criticize Governor Newsom. Perhaps he has just offered us all deliverance from his own folly. ... The governor SHOULD make his own decisions about running his own life. I only ask that he and his ilk would stop telling the rest of us how to run ours,” McClintock said in a House floor speech."
(AUDIT) State agency exposes the jobless to identity theft and fraud
Sac Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN: "The state’s Employment Development Department has “continued to place Californians at risk of identity theft,” despite warnings last year that its policy of including Social Security numbers in mailings is dangerous, the state auditor found Thursday.
State Auditor Elaine Howle 20 months ago told the agency that manages the state’s unemployment insurance program that including Social Security numbers on certain mailings places people at risk. On Thursday, Howle painted a portrait of an agency that has made little if any progress in stemming the problem, and is engaging in practices that could be leading to fraud.
“EDD’s failure to change its business practices in a timely manner has unnecessarily put claimants at increased risk of identity theft,” the audit said."
READ MORE about EDD: Stop sending mail with people's SSNs -- The Chronicle's KATHLEEN PENDER
Teachers call for stronger reopening safety measures amid COVID-19 surge
Sac Bee's SAWSAN MORRAR: "The leaders of nearly every teachers union in Sacramento County are calling for public schools to remain closed while COVID-19 infection rates are surging and are demanding more transparency from health and school officials about positive virus tests in districts.
In a letter to Sacramento County Public Health official Dr. Peter Beilenson and Sacramento County schools chief Dave Gordon, the leaders of 11 of the 13 Sacramento County teachers unions said California “cannot physically open schools for in-person instruction until it is safe.” Union leaders said they were concerned officials allowed Folsom Cordova Unified and St. HOPE Public Schools to reopen as the county entered the purple tier, the state’s most restrictive for reopenings.
“Safe school reopening requires your leadership to coordinate and operationalize compliance checks to ensure that safety measures are actually implemented including: regular and accessible testing-for-prevention dedicated to schools; rapid case notification and contact tracing; isolation support and medical care for our most vulnerable students and families; and data transparency of cases, outbreaks, and quarantines in schools,” read the letter."
California struggles to expand electric-car market
The Chronicle's DUSTIN GARDINER: "Maya Katz-Ali said she never thought she would be able to afford an electric car. She thought it was something unattainable, something for the elite.
And in many ways, Katz-Ali is the opposite of a typical electric-car buyer in California: She’s 26, a woman and a person of color, and she doesn’t earn a six-figure salary. The Oakland native expected to drive her 1992 Volvo until it died.
That all changed last month, when Katz-Ali traded in her car for a new Honda Clarity plug-in electric hybrid with a fraction of the Volvo’s emissions. She bought it with the help of a state subsidy program."
Anti-mask protesters flash Nazi salutes at Solano board meeting
The Chronicle's MICHAEL WILLIAMS: "A small group of anti-mask protesters extended their arms in a Nazi salute and yelled “sieg heil” before a Solano County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, angry that they were required to follow virus-prevention guidelines.
Supervisor Skip Thomson said the members of the group were the same four or five people who go to the meetings every week to “regularly oppose anything that Gov. Newom puts in place the week before, and to criticize the board for requiring masks and social distancing at meetings.”
For those requirements, members of the group compared the council to the Third Reich — which was responsible for creating the Holocaust that killed at least 11 million people. Thomson said Tuesday was not the first time the protesters had done so."
California should close 5 prisons to save money after inmate mass-release
Sac Bee's WES VENTEICHER: "California should close five state prisons to capture savings from a shrinking inmate population, the Legislative Analyst’s Office recommended Thursday.
Combined with the planned closures of youth prisons, closing five adult institutions would save the state $1.5 billion per year by 2025, according to the report.
The recommendation, based on inmate population figures, follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement earlier this year that he plans to close two state prisons. The first will be Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, which the corrections department plans to close in September."
Prison guards charged in inmate's death and alleged cover-up scheme
Sac Bee's SAM STANTON: "Two former prison guards have been charged in connection with the 2016 death of an inmate at California State Prison, Sacramento, and alleged efforts to cover up how he died.
Arturo Pacheco, 38, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury with two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and two counts of falsifying records in a federal investigation.
Ashley Marie Aurich, 31, was charged separately with one count of falsifying records in a federal investigation."
Biden, on track to be oldest president in history, turns 78 today
AP: "President-elect Joe Biden turns 78 on Friday and is on track to be sworn in as the oldest president in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.
He’ll take the reins of a politically fractured nation facing the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment and a reckoning on racial injustice.
As he wrestles with those issues, Biden will also be attempting to accomplish another feat: demonstrate to Americans that age is but a number and that he’s up to the job."
Transition tensions escalate as Trump steps up desperate effort to hold on to power
LA Times's CHRIS MEGERIAN/JANET HOOK/ELI STOKOLS: "President Trump is escalating his attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, pushing for judges and for Republican state lawmakers and local officials in several battleground states to ignore voters’ verdicts there and award him the electoral votes he needs for a second term.
He is all but certain to fail, experts and even some Republican officials say. States are in the process of certifying the results while Trump’s legal team so far has failed to advance his baseless case in state and federal courts. The effort nonetheless represents an extraordinary assault on American democracy, spearheaded by the president himself and with at least the tacit approval of his party.
A few Republicans in Congress have acknowledged that Biden won, and five Republican governors met with the president-elect Thursday. But party leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) — have not spoken out against Trump’s refusal to concede or, at a minimum, urged him to allow Biden to receive national security briefings and federal resources typically provided to allow a smooth transition — this one amid a deadly pandemic and an economic crisis."
NY probes Trump consulting payments that reduced his taxes
AP's MICHAEL R SISAK/DAVID B CARUSO: "New York's attorney general has sent a subpoena to the Trump Organization for records related to consulting fees paid to Ivanka Trump as part of a broad civil investigation into the president's business dealings, a law enforcement official said Thursday.
The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that a similar subpoena was sent to President Donald Trump's company by the Manhattan district attorney, which is conducting a parallel criminal probe.
The Associated Press could not immediately independently confirm the district attorney's subpoena but the one sent by Attorney General Letitia James was described by an official briefed on the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity."
