There is nothing especially difficult to understand about the phone call that President Donald Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger this weekend, which is not the same thing as saying that any of it is exactly clear. The simple stuff is simple in the way that all the most purely Trump behavior is, and characteristically exactly the oafish power play it appears to be. Trump just doesn’t believe that he lost Georgia to Joe Biden in November’s presidential election, and in the absence of any evidence to that effect beyond his own very powerful sense that this isn’t something Trump would do, he reached for one of the most powerful tools available to any master dealsmith, which was to demand that someone he understood to be a subordinate just fucking fix it for him. In the recording of that hour-long phone call that the Washington Post released over the weekend, Trump does this sometimes in tones of peevish impatience and at other times in an oily simper, but mostly he just does it over and over again, even after it has become clear to him that it is not working. The cumulative effect is basically that of watching a fat old housecat try to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

When Dylan’s grocery delivery arrived a few days before New Years, it came with some bad news. The delivery driver who brought his groceries from Vons mentioned that drivers across the state are getting fired by Vons, Pavilions, and other California stores owned by Albertsons Companies at the end of January. Stores will instead turn to a third-party delivery service using independent contractors. “I was disturbed and disappointed that Vons would eliminate these jobs. I felt like they were the only remaining company that treated delivery drivers ethically but no longer,” said Dylan.

Mods are charging members rent. The current rules of the place include "Do not covet your neighbour’s lawn" and "Ensure that there are functional connections between land and water". One of the sidebars details "Compulsory Subscriptions" to other, unrelated subreddits, like r/PersonalFinance and r/Catholic. The new flairs - tags that go on a post to indicate its content - are themed around the seven deadly sins. There's a sticker that just says "I'm a Pepper".

"He'd formed this belief they were unsafe," prosecutors said Monday. They also disclosed colleagues of the now-fired pharmacist Steven Brandenburg reported he had twice taken a gun to work.

Squatters reportedly belonging to one family claim site of 5,000 year-old ruins was given to them in the 1970s

Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America’s most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively. The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many of the Boston-based firm’s 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects, the people said. The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America – high and rising costs for employee health care  – sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined might of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system.

As soon as it's your turn, you'll have op-amps and 1n4148 diodes injected straight into your bloodstream, apparently

The new public space in midtown Manhattan is supposed to atone for tearing down the original Penn Station. It does nothing of the sort. There are three types of photos of the original Penn Station in midtown Manhattan, the one that got knocked down in the mid-1960s. The first type are photos of it being built. The second are those of it being used throughout the first half of the 20th century. Finally, there are the photos of it being destroyed in the 1960s. As it happens, these periods roughly coincide with three definitive eras of New York City lore. The early 1900s is when modern New York became itself, the early-to-mid 1900s were arguably its peak, and the post 1960s saw its rapid decline. In this sense, the photos of Penn Station are a handy starting point to understanding the city's 20th Century story. It is a story that doesn't end as much as it sloppily devolves. In 2019, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman likened the historic preservation movement—born from the Penn Station rubble—to collective pessimism. The destruction of the old Penn Station "flipped the optimistic narrative" of the city, Kimmelman argued. People began to assume that anything good that was lost would no longer be replaced with something better. Instead, they felt a growing sense that what came next would be worse. The main goal was no longer to build back better, but to cling to what we have. And so it is in a sense fitting that the Moynihan Train Hall, the city's first real attempt to replace a portion of what was lost some 55 years ago, opened on January 1, 2021, the day after one of the most dire, harrowing years New York has ever faced. If buildings can be narrative-shifters, this is quite the timing.

The top House Republican has quietly blessed an effort by conservative lawmakers to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's victory when a joint session of Congress meets later this week, even as other top congressional Republicans are raising alarms that the push could cause lasting damage to a pillar of democracy.

U.S. officials want the WikiLeaks founder to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. But a judge in London ruled that he was at extreme risk of suicide.

A New York Times op-ed written by two employees, Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, announced the formation of the Alphabet Workers Union.

Audio from a recent phone call suggests the president tried to get Georgia’s secretary of State to overturn the election results.

Mother Jones is facing backlash after including Tara Reade, who accused Biden of sexual assault, in a list of the 'top 10 lunatics of 2020.'

“Things aren’t perfect in Mexico,” Figureo said in Spanish. But at least there’s access to healthcare, and some unemployment benefits for those who need it, he added. “In comparison to what it was in the US, the situation for us in Mexico right now is much better.”

The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office is charting a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections among staff and jail inmates, led by a new Main Jail outbreak involving nearly 30 inmates, at the same time photos have surfaced of a party attended by correctional deputies where people were unmasked, close together, and sharing drinks. The sheriff’s office said it was not aware of the off-duty party — which took place earlier this month — until this news organization asked about it this week, and that it was reviewing the event.

The long-serving Democratic House leader begins another term as the Capitol waits to see what kind of political dynamic will prevail in a new Congress and with a new administration.

"Oh! OK," said Jeanine Pirro when Navarro lied to her on Fox News.

Black civic leaders in Oregon heard the alarm bells early in the pandemic.Data and anecdotes around the country suggested that the coronavirus was disproportionately killing Black people. Locally, Black business owners had begun fretting about their livelihoods, as stay-at-home orders and various other measures were put into place. Many did not have valuable houses they could tap for capital, and requests for government assistance had gone nowhere.After convening several virtual meetings, the civic leaders proposed a bold and novel solution that state lawmakers approved in July. The state would earmark $62 million of its $1.4 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money to provide grants to Black residents, business owners and community organizations enduring pandemic-related hardships.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times"It was finally being honest: This is who needs this support right now," said Lew Frederick, a state senator who is Black.But now millions of dollars...

The US vice-president appears to endorse a last-ditch effort to refuse to certify Joe Biden's victory.

Human rights groups accuse Israel of dodging obligations to millions in occupied territories who may wait months for vaccination Israel is celebrating an impressive, record-setting vaccination drive, having given initial jabs of coronavirus shots to more than a 10th of the population. But Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza can only watch and wait. As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example of the divide. Israel transports batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine deep inside the West Bank. But they are only distributed to Jewish settlers, and not the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living around them who may have to wait for weeks or months.