Category: International

President Trump’s refusal to engage in any meaningful national security transition is dangerous, say two former national security officials.

Kori Schake with the American Enterprise Institute served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council and in senior posts at the Pentagon and the State Department. Harvard’s Nicholas Burns served at the State Department and on the National Security Council in every administration from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush.

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The governors of North Dakota, Ohio and Utah all delivered the same message this week: hospital resources normally used for patients with heart attacks, strokes or emergency trauma will soon be overrun by patients with COVID-19.

KCUR’s Alex Smith reports on rural hospitals that are already at capacity, forcing them to transfer patients to city hospitals.

Lydia Mobley, a traveling nurse working in central Michigan, says she sees multiple patients every shift who say they regret not taking the coronavirus more seriously.

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We know President Trump lost the election. What we don’t know is what will happen between now and Inauguration Day if he refuses to accept the results.

In the short term, the Biden transition team cannot access certain government funds, use office space or receive classified intelligence briefings without official recognition of Biden’s victory from a government agency called the General Services Administration. NPR’s Brian Naylor has reported on the delay.

At the Department of Justice, the top prosecutor in charge of election crimes, Richard Pilger, resigned from his position this week. A former DOJ colleague of Pilger’s, Justin Levitt, tells NPR that the department is enabling the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

And Washington Post columnist David Ignatius explains what might be happening at the Department of Defense, where Trump’s election denialism has coincided with a number of high-level firings and a debate over the release of classified information.

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President Trump may be on his way out, but Republicans will have to rely on his voters to hold power in the Senate. If Democrats win two runoff elections in Georgia on January 5, they will win a narrow Senate majority.

Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting explains how Republicans in Georgia are attacking the state’s election process.

Natasha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, explains how Democrats in Georgia turned out voters in the presidential race.

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In 2008, then President-elect Obama and President Bush set up a join task force to help the incoming administration deal with the financial crisis they were about to inherit. Brown University’s Ashish Jha tells NPR a similar effort is needed now to deal with the coronavirus. But so far, there’s no sign of any cooperation from the Trump administration.

President-elect Biden has established his own task force of scientists and physicians to work on his administration’s response to the pandemic. Task force member Dr. Nicole Lurie tells NPR one goal of their effort will be to convince Americans the virus is the enemy — not each other.

The Biden administration will also inherit Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development program. Gus Perna is the Army general in charge. He explains how vaccine distribution might work.

The pandemic won’t be the only public health challenge facing the Biden administration if millions of people lose their health care coverage. That’s what could happen if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, explains Erin Fuse Brown with Georgia State University’s College of Law.

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Disinformation, foreign interference, a global pandemic and an incumbent president who refused to say he’d accept the results — all were concerns headed into the 2020 election.

If those challenges were a test of America’s democratic system, did we pass? Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker and election law expert Michael Kang weigh in, with Joe Biden on the verge of becoming the president-elect.

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Early on election night, when it seemed clear that Joe Biden was underperforming with a specific group of Latino voters in the Miami-Dade County, a narrative began to take hold: the Democratic Party had failed to energize the Latino vote.

But as more results came in from across Florida, they told a different story. Biden would have lost the state even if he had performed better in Miami-Dade, because of President Trump’s popularity with white voters.

NPR’s Leila Fadel reports on Democratic head-scratching about the Latino vote, and Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch podcast talks about the enduring power of the white vote in the American electorate.

Listen to more election coverage from NPR:
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The NPR Politics Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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Early data suggests 160 million people voted this year — which would be the highest turnout rate since 1900. With an unprecedented number of those votes cast by mail, knowing the results of the presidential election on Tuesday was never a guarantee.

We know a little more about the results of congressional elections — and they are not great for Democrats. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis explains.

One thing we do know is that voters in 32 states decided on dozens of ballot measures, from legalizing marijuana to raising the minimum wage. Josh Altic with the website Ballotpedia has been tracking those measures.

Listen to more election coverage from NPR:
Up First on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
The NPR Politics Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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The electoral college is a system unlike any other in American democracy. Why does it exist? Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah explored that question on a recent episode of NPR’s history podcast, Throughline. Find them on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

NPR senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving explains why more Republicans now support the electoral college — and whether that’s likely to change.

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NPR political correspondents Tamara Keith and Asma Khalid reflect on an election season shaped by unprecedented events: a global pandemic, President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — none of which seemed to dramatically change the shape of the race.

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