Roast in hell, you ghoul.

Officials stressed that the situations were few and far between, but the attempts are taking away care from those who need it.

More people than ever are hospitalized with COVID-19. Health-care workers can’t go on like this.

In September, Joe Biden — who traces his roots to County Mayo as well as County Louth, right on the border that still splits Ireland in two — made an intervention into the politics of his ancestral homeland. “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” he tweeted, referring to the pact that ended three decades of violence on the island. “Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border.” The baroque, seemingly endless negotiations to rip Britain out the European Union have often threatened to reintroduce new barriers between Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) and the Republic of Ireland (an E.U. member), and Boris Johnson’s government had just announced plans to violate a withdrawal agreement it had made with the European Union just last year. In response, the next U.S. president was directly threatening something the U.K. sorely needs — good relations with Washington — when they actually leave. British conservatives reacted with anger, and some even seemed to suggest that Biden is too Irish to be a good ally. Tory MP Scott Benton tweeted, “Joe Biden is no friend of Britain. His Irish republican sympathies and ignorant comments … are another reminder why he’d be an awful President and undermine our special relationship with the U.S.” In Ireland, small-r republicans want a united Ireland that is fully independent from the Crown, while unionists favor remaining a part of the U.K. Just before the U.S. presidential election, Sammy Wilson, member of parliament for the Democratic Unionist Party from Northern Ireland, posted that “Joe Biden is a parrot for Irish Nationalism and their falsehoods re the Belfast Agreement,” using the other term for the Good Friday Agreement (sectarian divisions run so deep that the two groups often use different words to refer to the same thing, as is the case with Derry/Londonderry, the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland). Wilson ended the tweet with “#MAGA,” in case his position was in doubt. President Trump has been a steadfast supporter of Brexit and blasé about the complicated negotiations impacting Ireland.

The outbreak might be connected to the president's campaign travel before Election Day, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Voters in populous Georgia and South Carolina counties elected sheriffs who ran on ending contracts with ICE. Republicans lost sheriff’s elections last week in populous Southern counties that have been close ICE allies. This is likely to bring an end to prominent ICE contracts in Georgia’s Cobb and Gwinnett counties and in Charleston County, South Carolina.  These results are major wins for immigrants’ rights advocates who have long worked to change policies in these jurisdictions, which are home to more than 2 million residents combined. “We celebrate the ouster of the sheriffs who were responsible for the targeting of community members, working in collusion with ICE,” Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director of Project South, told The Appeal: Political Report. “These incredible victories are the culmination of more than a decade of fighting back by immigrants’ rights organizers against the devastating 287(g) program which led to untold numbers of families being torn apart.” 

House progressives grew their ranks, but you wouldn’t know it from how the rest of Democrats talk about them.

Researchers from the Princeton Environmental Institute find the continued spread of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.

Pro: The government has backed this controversial thruster. Con: It *does* violate physics.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, the guy who trafficked arms to Iran in the 1980s and used the proceeds to support the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua (while also facilitating the Contras’ trafficking of cocaine into the United States): No response.

Ed Miller and Mary Nguyen are Silicon Valley software developers by day, but moonlight at solving an unusually fuzzy problem. A few years ago the pair became mesmerized, like many of us, by an Alaskan webcam broadcasting brown bears from Katmai National Park. They also happened to be seeking a project to hone their machine learning expertise. “We thought, machine learning is really great at identifying people, what could it do for bears?” Mr. Miller said. Could artificial intelligence used for face recognition be harnessed to discern one bear face from another?

On Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The Federalist Society, a well-funded network of conservative attorneys, has come under unusual scrutiny after Donald Trump elevated scores of its members to the federal judiciary. Its leaders insist that it is a mere debate club, a nonpartisan forum for the exchange of legal ideas. But Alito abandoned any pretense of impartiality in his speech, a grievance-laden tirade against Democrats, the progressive movement, and the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Alito’s targets included COVID-related restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, Plan B, the contraceptive mandate, LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, and five sitting Democratic senators. Ironically, Alito began his prerecorded address by condemning an effort by the U.S. Judicial Conference to forbid federal judges from being members of the Federalist Society. He then praised, by name, the four judges who spearheaded a successful effort to defeat the ban—or, as Alito put it, who “stood up to an attempt to hobble the debate that the Federalist Society fosters.” Alito warned that law school students who are members of the Federalist Society tell him they “face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.”

There is no grand strategy. President Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next.

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said that he has armed men on standby outside of Washington, D.C., to supposedly prevent the 2020 presidential election from being stolen from President Donald Trump. Echoing elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program, Rhodes said the only way to prevent his men from engaging in a “bloody fight” would be Trump declassifying information to supposedly expose pedophiles in the “deep state” and allow the president to stay in power. Rhodes also indicated his militia will be involved in a rally to support Trump planned for this weekend in the nation's capital. Rhodes’ Oath Keepers militia, which comprises “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.” But, as Rhodes recent public comments have made clear, the organization’s purpose has shifted from opposing the government to instead act as a pro-Trump vigilante group that is willing to violently support Trump’s unjust attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. 

Facebook FB.O Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting on Thursday that former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had not violated enough of the company's policies to justify his suspension when he urged the beheading of two senior U.S. officials, according to a recording heard by Reuters. Zuckerberg acknowledged criticism of Facebook by President-elect Joe Biden but said the company shared some of the Biden team’s same concerns about social media. He urged employees not to jump to conclusions about how the new administration might approach regulation of social media companies. Bannon suggested in a video posted on Nov. 5 that FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, saying they had been disloyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week lost his re-election bid to Biden. “I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone,” Bannon said in the video. Facebook removed the video but left up Bannon's page, which has about 175,000 followers. Twitter TWTR.N banned Bannon last week over the same content. “We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely,” Zuckerberg said. “While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line.”

A federal government agency under the Department of Homeland Security says this election was the “most secure in American history.” In a statement from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, part of DHS, the agency and state elections officials there is no evidence any voting system was compromised. “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the statement says. “When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

In 2016, President Donald Trump’s supporters — hardly known as MAGA nation at that point — jeered at the backlash to his election, mocking the pink-hatted anti-Trumpers who’d dubbed themselves “The Resistance” and marched on Washington. On Saturday, it’s their turn to resist. The disparate tribes of MAGA Nation — Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Infowars fanatics, Groypers, Proud Boys, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and the people who would simply call themselves die-hard MAGA — have declared that they are simply going to show up in Washington en masse over the weekend to rally together, with the marquee event on Saturday. The groups have assigned the gathering different names: the Million MAGA March, the March for Trump, Stop the Steal DC. But they’re all set to take place Saturday in the nation’s capital, around noon, with most set to congregate near Freedom Plaza, just east of the White House, though some groups have also suggested the Supreme Court building down the National Mall. It’s unclear how many people may show up, and past promises of massive rallies have sometimes fizzled out. Notably, organizers have not filed for permits, according to a spokesperson for the D.C. Metropolitan Police. But disinformation and extremist researchers have estimated anywhere from several hundred to several thousand may show up.

A law firm representing the Trump campaign in its challenges to the Pennsylvania election results gave notice that it’s withdrawing from one of the cases. Lawyers with Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP submitted a filing late Thursday stating they were withdrawing as counsel in a federal suit seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its vote. No reason was given. In a statement issued Friday, the firm confirmed the filing but did not say why it was exiting the case. “We’ve committed to the court to fulfill our obligations as required to ensure transition to substitute counsel and so as not to cause material adverse effect on the client’s interest,” Porter Wright said. “We will have no further comment.” Porter Wright is one of two law firms targeted by the Lincoln Project -- a group of Republicans who oppose President Donald J. Trump -- for their work on lawsuits challenging the election results. The campaign included encouraging people to email the lawyers on the cases.

Brussels has put itself on a collision course with the Polish and Hungarian governments after proposing to criminalise hate speech against LGBTQ+ people under EU law and secure recognition of same-sex partnerships across the bloc’s borders. Věra Jourová, a European commissioner, said the measures followed new “worrying trends”, with the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights reporting that 43% of LGBT people had declared feeling discriminated against in 2019, compared with 37% in 2012. The proposals were announced as part of the commission’s first ever strategy to secure equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer people. Jourová cited attacks on Pride marches and the move by more than 100 Polish municipalities to declare themselves as “LGBT-free zones” as further evidence of increased discrimination. A so-called “LGBT ideology” was recently described as “more destructive than communist indoctrination” by Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda. Jourová said the commission was also following events in Hungary, where a constitutional amendment was proposed this week by Viktor Orbán’s rightwing government to ensure that only heterosexual married couples can adopt children.

“Chart throb” Steve Kornacki has been making headlines for his impressive election coverage and his Big Board skills, and now even his fashion choices are getting attention. Kornacki wore the same outfit every day of his election coverage: A button-down, a striped tie, and khakis — and the simple ensemble eventually became iconic enough for fans to emulate. Ever since New York Magazine’s The Strategist revealed that Kornacki gets his “Khornakis” at the GAP, the retailer’s khaki sales have almost doubled. Following Kornacki’s coverage, GAP saw a “dramatic increase in online traffic and within a day” and “around 90% unit sale increase online,” according to the Today Show.