Viral News: Coronavirus deaths in the US crossed the line of 250,000 yesterday. A quarter of a million people. The first known death of the virus in this country was on February 6^th.

  With the spike in cases over the past two weeks, deaths can be expected to rise sharply. Another 1,478 Americans died yesterday and 154,000 more were diagnosed.

  Doing little itself to fight the pandemic, the  Trump administration refuses to cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden to begin dealing with the crisis January 20^th. Biden yesterday spoke by computer to a firefighter and medical workers who told him there are chronic shortages of protective equipment, tests, and contact tracing to fight the pandemic.

  Biden said, “What I’m hoping is we don’t have to have any more suffering to convince the public at large that this requires some very significant action,” 

  With coronavirus testing hitting 3 percent positive, New York City is closing its public schools to in-class education. It’s a blow to the city, which was the first metropolis to reopen schools after the first wave of the virus. 

  Transmission in the schools themselves is actually low, but New York is acting on a plan made months ago. The city has the biggest system in the country with 1,800 schools and 1.1 million students, most of them low income, Black or Latino.

  The virus brings trouble to health, education, business, and politicians. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is under fire for having attended an indoor dinner at the haute cuisine French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley where the guests were not wearing masks. More than 18,000 people have died of the virus in California.

  Newsom admitted it was a “bad mistake,” but no doubt the food was worth it. 

Count On It: The Trump campaign has advanced $3 million to the state of Wisconsin for a recount of the vote in the two predominantly Democratic counties that encompass Milwaukee and Madison.

  Trump trails President-elect Joe Biden by about 20,600 votes in Wisconsin with no hope of overcoming the difference in a recount. A full recount of the state would cost the Trump campaign nearly $8 million.

  Georgia is expected to announce the results of a complete hand recount today, with little expected to change. Biden was leading late yesterday by  12,781.

  Trump and his campaign have yet to make a dent in the election results. The Washington Post reports that has given up trying to win by disqualifying votes and has turned instead to “delaying a final count long enough to cast doubt on Biden’s decisive victory.”

  His lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, asked a federal judge in Pennsylvania to authorize the Republican legislature  to appoint the electors, essentially an effort to steal the election for Trump in Pennsylvania.

  While tweeting unsupported claims of fraud, the President has said nothing publicly for two weeks. Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “I’m sure you’ll hear from him at the right moment.”

  Trump evidently isn’t leaving his White House bunker for Thanksgiving. 

He’s cancelled his annual dinner at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida.  McEnany said on Fox & Friends, “He’s hard at work, and so he’s staying here at the White House, and it will be a lovely Thanksgiving for him and the first lady here in the White House.” 

  The Trumps also have a son, Baron, who might also be at the dinner. Sources say Trump and Baron have previously met.

Boeing, Boeing: Twenty months after two crashes of the Boeing 737 Max killed 346 people, the Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the jet to fly and carry passengers again. 

  The Max is Boeing’s primary product so the company has been crushed by its grounding and the coronavirus stall in air travel. At least 380 Max jets were in service at the time of the grounding. Airlines can put them back up there, but it’s a question whether passengers will feel confident to fly on them. The plane had a glitch in software that forced nose down, causing the two catastrophic accidents.

Children’s Crusade: A federal judge in Washington ruled that the Trump administration cannot use the danger of the coronavirus as a reason to turn away unaccompanied minors seeking asylum at the border.

  Last March the administration suspended current legal protections for migrant children citing a 19^thCentury law passed to fight the spread of communicable diseases.

The Bulletin Board: House Democrats have nominated Speaker Nancy Pelosi for another term, which, she suggests, may be her last. She’s 80. — A police officer in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin who shot and killed an armed teenager last February and  since 2015 has killed two other men, agreed to resign. Most cops go their entire career without ever firing their gun. – Former President Barack Obama’s new memoir sold “more than 887,000 units in all formats and editions in the US and Canada on the first day,” according to  publisher Penguin Random House. They said it’s the largest first-day sales for any book they’ve ever published.

The Toast of England: British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has caused a meltdown by telling her countrymen how to butter toast. She recommends buttering when the toast is hot, waiting a bit, then buttering again and sprinkling the toast with salt. One critic said after seeing the five-minute television segment about toast said, “Thank goodness for that, I’d lost the recipe.”

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