Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

39 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

At Vice, Valerie Kipnis and Joe Hill write—The Next Pandemic Could Come From an American Factory Farm:

In the dead of night, four animal rights activists prepare to break into an industrial-scale pig farm in central California.

Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide heads to Washington. You can find our complete data set here, which we’re updating continuously as the precinct-level election returns we need for our calculations become available.

Joe Biden carried Washington 58-39, which was an improvement over Hillary Clinton’s 54-38 showing four years ago, due at least in part to fewer voters choosing third-party options.

Rep. Michael Waltz received the Orlando Sentinel’s endorsement in the 2020 general election for Congress. On Thursday, Waltz joined onto the traitorous Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the results in four states because they didn’t break for Donald Trump. On Friday, the paper’s Editorial Board formally apologized to their readers.

We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy.

Unemployment claims just hit their highest level in months, Republicans are still refusing to negotiate a stimulus package that does half what the country needs, and people who have been unemployed for months are increasingly desperate. Only the government can truly help unemployed people, but the National Employment Law Project’s Michele Evermore has three pieces of advice for unemployed workers in the coming weeks. It’s not cheerful news, but it’s worth knowing.

Writing these blurbs for the 14 rescued stories was like reliving the week’s tension over our political turmoil, plus Trump’s wacky-yet-not-amusing alternate election reality, and other conspiracy theories. Two wildlife refuge stories with gorgeous photos offered me an escape from our national drama, a peaceful time to restore my energy, and motivated me to guide others to the nature havens of Daily Kos.