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Nobody knew exactly how that belief would manifest itself; I certainly never expected to see platoons of insurrectionists scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and sacking the place in broad daylight. Still, shocking as this was, it wasn’t a bit surprising. The attempted coup d'état had been unfolding in slow motion over the previous nine weeks. Anyone who couldn’t see this coming chose not to see it coming. And that goes for much of the Republican Party.

there’s one conclusion of which I’m certain: The “fringe” of our politics no longer exists. Between the democratization of information and the diminished confidence in establishment politicians and institutions ranging from the media to corporate America, particularly on the right, there is no longer any buffer between mainstream thought and the extreme elements of our politics.

The first time I heard someone casually suggest an “imminent civil war,” on a reporting trip in January 2020, I shrugged it off. But then I heard it again. And again. Before long, it was perfectly routine. Everywhere I went, I heard people talk about stocking up on artillery. I heard people talk about hunting down cabals of politically connected pedophiles. I heard people talk about the irreconcilable differences that now divide this country. I heard people talk about the president, their president, being sabotaged by a “deep state” of evil Beltway bureaucrats who want to end their way of life. I heard people talk about a time approaching when they would need to take matters into their own hands.

All of that was before the president alleged the greatest conspiracy in American history.

More than a few told me I was being “hysterical,” at which point things got heated, as I would plead with them to consider the consequences if even a fractional number of the president’s most fervent supporters took his allegations, and his calls to action, at face value. When I submitted that violence was a real possibility, they would snicker. Riots? Looting? That’s what Democrats do!

So convinced were the president’s allies that his rhetoric was harmless that many not only rationalized it, but actually dialed it up. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who once skewered Trump’s dishonesty, promised “earth-shattering” evidence to support his former rival’s claims of a rigged election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that “President Trump won this election,” told of a plot to cheat him and alerted the viewers watching him on Fox News, “We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who famously called Trump “a pathological liar,” himself lied so frequently and so shamelessly it became difficult to keep up. Dozens of other congressional Republicans leveled sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of mass voter fraud, some of them promoting the #stopthesteal campaign online.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich floated the arrest of election workers. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host, urged Republican-controlled legislatures to ignore the results of their state elections and send pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College. Right-wing propaganda outlets like The Federalist and One America News churned out deceptive content framing the election as inherently and obviously corrupt. The RNC hosted disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell for a sanctioned news conference that bordered on clinically insane, parts of which were tweeted by the @GOP account. The president’s lawyers and surrogates screamed about hacked voting machines and international treachery and Biden-logoed vans full of ballots. One conservative group paid a former police captain a quarter-million dollars to investigate voter fraud; he performed an armed hijacking of an air-conditioning repair truck, only to discover there were no fake ballots inside.

As the Electoral College meeting drew closer, hundreds of Republican members of Congress signed on to a publicity-stunt lawsuit aimed at invalidating tens of millions of votes for Biden. When it failed, the legislatures in several states closed public proceedings in response to actionable threats

The president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, urged him to invoke martial law. The Texas Republican Party suggested seceding from the union. The Arizona Republican Party endorsed martyrdom. Eric Metaxas, the pseudo-evangelical leader with a devoted following on the right, followed suit. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told the president during a radio interview. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”

Despite all of these arrows pointing toward disaster — and despite Trump encouraging his followers to descend on Washington come January 6, to agitate against certification of Biden’s victory — not a single Republican I’d spoken with in recent weeks sounded anxious

The notion of real troublemaking simply didn’t compute. Many of these Republicans have kept so blissfully ensconced in the MAGA embrace that they’ve chosen not to see its ugly side.

it has long been canon on the right that leftists — and only leftists — cause mayhem and destruction. Democrats are the party of charred cities and Defund the Police; Republicans are the party of law and order and Back the Blue. As Republicans have reminded us a million times, the Tea Party never held a rally without picking up its trash and leaving the area cleaner than they found it.

And yet, the right has changed dramatically over the past decade. It has radicalized from the ground up, in substance and in style. It has grown noticeably militant.

Trump once told me, “The Tea Party still exists — except now it’s called Make America Great Again.” But that’s not quite accurate. The core of the Tea Party was senior citizens in lawn chairs waving miniature flags and handing out literature; the only people in costumes wore ruffled shirts and tri-corner hats. The core of the MAGA movement is edgier, more aggressive and less friendly; its adherents would rather cosplay the Sons of Anarchy than the Sons of Liberty.

There is one thing that connects these movements: Both were born out of deception

Republican leaders convinced the grassroots of 2009 and 2010 that they could freeze government spending and reform entitlement programs and repeal Obamacare

Trump convinced the grassroots of 2015 and 2016 that he, too, could repeal Obamacare, while also making Mexico pay for a border wall and overhauling the nation’s infrastructure

The key difference is that the Tea Party slowly faded into obscurity as voters realized these promises politicians made were a scam, whereas the MAGA movement has only grown more intensely committed with each new con dangled in front of them.

Make no mistake: Plenty of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol complex on Wednesday really, truly believed that Trump had been cheated out of four more years; that Vice President Mike Pence had unilateral power to revise the election results; that their takeover of the building could change the course of history

the point remains: They were conned into coming to D.C. in the first place, not just by Trump with his compulsive lying, but by the legions of Republicans who refused to counter those lies, believing it couldn’t hurt to humor the president and stoke the fires of his base.

For the past nine weeks, I’ve had a lot of highly unusual conversations with administration officials, Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures.

Based on my reporting, it seemed obvious the president was leading the country down a dangerous and uncharted road. I hoped they could see that. I hoped they would do something — anything.

From party headquarters, the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman flung reckless insinuations left and right as her top staffers peddled a catalogue of factually inaccurate claims. The two Republican senators from Georgia, desperate to keep in Trump’s good graces ahead of their runoff elections, demanded the resignation of the Republican secretary of state for no reason other than the president’s broad assertions of corruption, none of which stood up to multiple recounts and investigations by GOP officials statewide

Local lawmakers in states like Michigan and Wisconsin told Republicans they’d been cheated, citing the suspicious late-night counting of mail ballots, when they were the ones who had refused to allow those ballots to be counted earlier,

It's worth remembering that Pence was offered the vice president's job, in part, because of his appeal to vast numbers of evangelical voters who would be reassured by his presence alongside the profane, thrice-married Trump

Trump's defeat should have signaled that Pence's reward, his own rise as the GOP's leading 2024 presidential candidate, was at hand. Instead he's had to suffer a bit longer as the press reports that the President is angry with him for failing to work harder at overturning the election.

Pence has still taken steps to show his commitment to Trump. Last week, Pence jetted to West Palm Beach, where he promised a crowd of conservative youth that, "We're going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We're going to keep fighting until every illegal is thrown out." He also urged the young voters to "stay in the fight" against election fraud.

Despite claims, many from Republicans, of election fraud, it is exceedingly rare and efforts to prove it exists in any pervasive sense have failed.

Republicans, especially Trump, kept selling the fraud claim, and some people have bought into it. Before the election, the Pew Research Center found that 43% of Republicans and 25% of all those surveyed believed voter fraud to be a real problem when people voted by mail. Post-election, according to a NPR/PBS New Hours/Marist poll, only one quarter of Republicans say they trust the election results.

Although Trump has said he is considering a run in 2024, he has also said he might back away from this idea, according to Politico. This would make Pence a frontrunner for the next Republican ticket. Under these circumstances, now is not the time for him to break the bond.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss, leading to a rampage that left five people dead. The rally was planned on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. On Parler, people posted advice on which streets to take to avoid the police; some posted about carrying guns inside the Capitol.

Parler grew slowly until early 2020, when Twitter began labeling Mr. Trump’s tweets as inaccurate and some of his supporters joined Parler in protest. After November’s election, Parler grew even more quickly as Facebook and Twitter clamped down on false claims that the vote had been rigged. So many users signed up that, at times, they overloaded the company’s systems and forced it to pause new registrations.

The tech companies’ actions last week to limit such toxic content with Mr. Trump and Parler have been applauded by liberals and others.

“I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet,” he said.

But Parler had a significant advantage: money.

In total, people downloaded Parler’s app more than 10 million times last year, with 80 percent in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, the app data firm.

“I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform, considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.”

There is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.”

“It’s devastating,” Mr. Matze told Fox News on Sunday. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day.” He said he was struggling to find another company to host Parler’s website.

A more effective approach, experts say, would have raised unemployment insurance benefits to the jobless by $600 a week, matching the supplement under the stimulus package Congress passed last spring, rather than the $300 weekly subsidy the new legislation provides. Democrats had pushed for larger payments to the jobless and included it in legislation that passed the House, which they control. But the measure met stiff resistance from Republicans, who control the Senate, and was not included in the final compromise bill.

A study released in August by three economists, Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Michael Weber, found that recipients of the $1,200 payments sent out under the CARES Act last spring largely held off on spending the money. Only 15 percent of people said they had spent it, or planned to spend it. Most said they would save the cash or use it to pay down debt..css-fk3g7a{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:1.125rem;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-fk3g7a{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-akgeos{margin-bottom:15px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.75rem;line-height:1rem;color:#787878;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-akgeos{font-size:0.8125rem;line-height:1.125rem;}}.css-110ouu6{margin:10px auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-110ouu6{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-110ouu6{font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.75rem;margin-bottom:5px;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-110ouu6{font-size:1.5rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-121grtr{margin:0 auto 10px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:'Collapse';}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:'';background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-6s5quk{background-color:white;max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-6s5quk{width:100%;margin:40px auto;}}.css-6s5quk:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-6s5quk{padding:0;max-width:600px;margin-right:auto;margin-left:auto;}.css-6s5quk[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-6s5quk[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-6s5quk[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:'See more';}.css-6s5quk[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1crgp49{border:1px solid #e2e2e2;padding:15px;margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1crgp49{padding:20px;}}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1crgp49{border-top:1px solid #121212;border-bottom:none;border-left:none;border-right:none;padding:20px 0 0;}.css-1crgp49 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1crgp49 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1crgp49 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-1crgp49 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-1crgp49 a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The Second StimulusAnswers to Your Questions About the Stimulus BillUpdated Dec 30, 2020The economic relief package will issue payments of $600 and distribute a federal unemployment benefit of $300 for at least 10 weeks. Find more about the measure and what’s in it for you. For details on how to get assistance, check out our Hub for Help.Will I receive another stimulus payment? Individual adults with adjusted gross income on their 2019 tax returns of up to $75,000 a year will receive a $600 payment, and a couple (or someone whose spouse died in 2020) earning up to $150,000 a year will get twice that amount. There is also a $600 payment for each child for families who meet those income requirements. People who file taxes using the head of household status and make up to $112,500 also get $600, plus the additional amount for children. People with incomes just above these levels will receive a partial payment that declines by $5 for every $100 in income.When might my payment arrive? The Treasury Department said on Dec. 29 that it had started making direct deposit payments, and would begin to mail checks the next day. But it will be a while before all eligible people receive their money.Does the agreement affect unemployment insurance? Lawmakers agreed to extend the amount of time that people can collect unemployment benefits and restart an extra federal benefit that is provided on top of the usual state benefit. But instead of $600 a week, it would be $300. That will last through March 14.I am behind on my rent or expect to be soon. Will I receive any relief? The agreement will provide $25 billion to be distributed through state and local governments to help renters who have fallen behind. To receive assistance, households will have to meet several conditions: Household income (for 2020) cannot exceed more than 80 percent of the area median income; at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability; and individuals must qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship — directly or indirectly — because of the pandemic. The agreement said assistance will be prioritized for families with lower incomes and that have been unemployed for three months or more.Of course, some of the money flowing into the economy could soon reach those who need it most. And it will provide a financial cushion even for middle-class families who are secure by most measures but remain on edge from the turbulence of 2020.

“In no way am I rich,” she said. “But I feel like my $600 would make a bigger impact on someone who has been dealing with struggles far worse than I have during this pandemic.”

The president relented only after Republican lawmakers persuaded him to sign the legislation on Sunday. He said that he had been assured Congress would take up his demands for bigger checks, along with removing a legal shield for tech companies and investigating “very substantial voter fraud.” His claims that the election was stolen have been repeatedly contradicted by state election officials and judges across the nation.

Democrats, who have long called for increased direct payments, have sought to use the issue as a political cudgel in the Georgia runoff. Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who are running against Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue, have both called for higher stimulus checks, criticizing the $600 as insufficient and rebuking their opponents for not agitating to put more money in Georgians’ pockets.

“Working Americans have borne the brunt of this pandemic,” Mr. Hawley wrote on Twitter. “They’ve been hammered, through no fault of their own. They deserve $2000 in #covid relief - a fraction of what the banks & big business got. Let’s vote now.”

Despite the lack of action on a bigger check, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in a tweet on Tuesday that the $600 checks could begin arriving in bank accounts as early as Tuesday evening and would continue into next week, while paper checks will start being mailed on Wednesday.

With Georgia voters set to decide control of the US Senate in Tuesday's runoffs, the challenges to the voting rolls in Hancock County, whose residents have long fought for their right to vote, remain under the supervision of a court-appointed examiner. Legal experts say the US Supreme Court pulling teeth from the Voting Rights Act is to blame.

Black households had a median income of $22,056 ($37,083 for White); almost 34% of Black residents lived in poverty (22% for White); and 26% of Black households received food benefits (6% for White).

Ahead of the 2015 Sparta elections, the lawsuit said, BOER Vice Chairwoman Nancy Stephens, who is White, began filing voter challenges as a citizen, then voting on them as a board member. When concerns were raised, a local resident began filing challenges "in a format that closely resembled the format of those filed by the Vice Chair," the lawsuit said.

The challengers "consistently failed to provide credible evidence based upon personal knowledge that the challenged voters were not qualified to vote," the lawsuit said.

The BOER, responding to the lawsuit, "vigorously" and "strenuously" denied illegally targeting Black voters or violating state laws.

He went through the 2014 voting roll and pulled voters he knew were dead or had moved and submitted 14 challenges.

"Sitting after two of the meetings, I thought, 'What would they do if someone challenged some White voters?'" recalled Webb, who is Black.

Thornton can't understand why the BOER would claim he didn't live in the county, or why the board would try to remove him from the rolls. His catfish farm is in unincorporated Mayfield, 20 minutes outside Sparta, and he wasn't eligible to vote in the city elections.

BOER members didn't take Webb's challenges seriously and defended White voters.

The BOER determined before the hearing that four of Webb's challenged voters were dead and removed them from the rolls. Of the remaining challenges, the board nixed one voter from the rolls and moved another to inactive status. Both were Asian American, the lawsuit said.

"What they did was beyond voter suppression. If something is wrong with your voter registration, they should call you and tell you what's wrong. What they were doing is taking you off the rolls, and you wouldn't find out until the election," Webb told CNN. "They were making Black votes disappear."

Since the death of the Georgia civil rights icon US Rep. John Lewis, politicians and activists have called for Congress to honor Lewis by crafting an updated coverage formula, as permitted by the high court, but it hasn't come to pass.

Julie Houk with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who worked on the Hancock County case, disagrees with the Supreme Court's finding "that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions."

The Lawyers' Committee has also challenged restrictive absentee ballot rules and fought voter purges, redistricting decisions and efforts to limit ballot drop boxes -- which tend to burden minorities the most.

In Macon-Bibb County, Georgia, Houk said, elections officials moved a Black voting precinct -- in a community that had rocky relations with law enforcement -- to the sheriff's office, which she called "very problematic" as it threatened to dissuade African Americans from voting.

In 2015, Georgia's then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp cited Shelby in informing counties they were "no longer required to submit polling place changes to the Department of Justice."

The ACLU of Georgia reported in September that of 313,243 voters removed from the state rolls in 2019, almost 200,000 were likely erroneously purged.

Two weeks before the November general election, ProPublica, in collaboration with public broadcasters, reported, "The state's voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million since the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, but polling locations have been cut by almost 10%, with Metro Atlanta hit particularly hard."

This is why preclearance was so important: Discriminating against Black voters would've been rejected

The truth about 2015 "depends on what side you talk to," he said. No candidate could win in the city, now estimated at 89% African American, without securing a swath of the Black vote, said Haywood, who is White and is certain he was elected on his promise of reform, he said.

"We are way past problems with Black and White here," Haywood said. "Now, people are excited things are getting fixed."

Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it had no Black elected officials until John McCown -- an activist more in the mold of Stokely Carmichael than Martin Luther King Jr. -- came to town, luring investment and ushering Black residents to power.

McCown remains revered among many Black residents, despite investigations into his alleged misspending of grant money and other improprieties. They consider his achievements landmarks, including an affordable housing project and job creators like a cinder block factory and Thornton's now-defunct catfish farm. McCown's antebellum home still stands, abandoned and in need of upkeep.

A 1976 plane crash killed McCown, and a federal investigation into his fundraising killed the county's resurrected prosperity, but his legacy survived in the Black leaders succeeding him. "He created a political strategy, and African Americans voted themselves into power," Thornton said. "It has come to a point where (Hancock County) is one of the most impoverished in America. There is a wives' tale -- I don't know if it's true or not -- that some political leaders in Georgia have always said that if we can't vote the people of Hancock County out, we'll starve them out -- and there's been a disproportionate lack of growth to this particular community."

The BOER "strenuously denied" that it was illegally targeting Black voters with its challenges but agreed to enter the consent decree and abide by the standards and procedures the decree lays out. The court also ordered the defendants to pay more than $500,000 in attorneys' fees and other expenses, court documents show.As part of the consent decree, the BOER agreed to "not engage in discriminatory challenges to voters' eligibility," and to adhere to certain procedures in such challenges, according to court documents. It also restored certain voters to its rolls and agreed not to take action on other voters restored to the rolls for at least two federal election cycles.

"It had a chilling effect on voters," she said. "A lot of folks decided voting wasn't worth it."

"It will affect several elections down the road because people will say that I'm not going to be bothered by this ever again. I'm not going to vote," Warren said. "You have virtually destroyed their whole trust in the system altogether."

The county has submitted voters it wants removed, as instructed, and during the November election, the NAACP "seemed to think everything went OK," he said. Spencer's team is "always concerned," he said, and events happening at the state and national level, including Georgia's secretary of state calling to end no-excuse absentee voting and President Donald Trump challenging elections results, only exacerbate his worry.

"I am definitely worried that once the consent decree ends that the BOER will start its same antics again," he said. "They can say, 'Hey, we'll get everybody except Johnny Thornton, and the other people that we go for might not have the legal means or expertise to push back or to fight against the system.'"

Warren, in addition to previously serving as Sparta's registrar, is a Black county resident who began filming BOER meetings in 2015 when he learned of the challenges. He had trouble last year, he said, when applying for a mail-in ballot. A county elections official told him his home wasn't his registered address, he said. He isn't alleging any misbehavior -- he was able to sort it out before the general election -- but such a county notice might have been enough to deter a less-resolute voter from casting her or his ballot. In poor, rural areas like Hancock County, minor hiccups such as a rainy day or a washed-out road can have major effects on voting.

But even if the court were to take up an election-related case, it probably wouldn’t hear arguments until the fall.

We must not ignore the threat of bad actors gaining access to these dangerous pathogens, which are the ultimate terror weapons, due to their potentially massive impact

In Germany, security services interdicted vast amounts of the toxin ricin, which, authorities said, a couple was planning to use in a biological attack in 2018

Instead of looking to weaponize a highly virulent pathogen like anthrax -- the spore-forming bacterium which was infamously mailed out to media outlets and politicians in a bio attack in 2001, killing five people and injuring 17 more -- bad actors are now likely considering the efficacy of a less virulent but highly transmissible pathogen like SARS-CoV-2, which has brought the world to its knees in the last year. This pathogen has shown that transmissibility -- rather than toxicity -- is a major factor when it comes to mass disruption.

When it comes to policies that are already in place, there is the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC), a multilateral treaty that went into effect in 1975, which prohibits the development, production, acquisition and stockpiling of biological agents and toxins and any related delivery systems that have "no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes."

However, it is poorly funded in comparison to other treaties like the Chemical Weapons Convention, and does not have a corresponding body like the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to police it.

The World Health Organization could also implement an early warning system to predict pandemics, showing its progress around the globe.

MCMs are products such as vaccines, biologics and pharmaceutical drugs that can diagnose, protect or treat the effects of a naturally occurring new disease or biological attack. In the future, it may be more cost effective to pay the pharmaceutical industry ahead of time to produce treatments and vaccines rather than wait for a pandemic to develop.

The pandemic has also underscored the importance of manufacturing and stockpiling medical gear including personal protective equipment to avoid logjams in the supply chain and a reliance on other countries like China for these critical supplies. Providing accurate and accessible information to the public is also key; propaganda and disinformation must not be taken lightly.

Going forward, we should treat biosecurity threats with the same urgency in the 21st century as world leaders approached atomic bombs in the 20th century.

A first step would be for the UN Security Council to fund and enforce the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention.

Warnock is the first Georgia Democrat elected to the Senate in 20 years, and his election is the culmination of years of voter registration drives conducted by former state House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams and other activists.

"I am an iteration and an example of the American dream," the senator-elect told CNN's John Berman Wednesday morning on "New Day." He added, "When I think about the arc of our history, what Georgia did last night is its own message in the midst of a moment in which so many people are trying to divide our country, at a time we can least afford to be divided."

fter no Georgia Senate candidate received 50% of the vote in November, the races turned to two runoffs.

rump's ongoing onslaught against the Republican officials in charge of the elections pressured the two GOP senators to make a choice: Join the President in seeking to overturn the democratic outcome or risk losing Trump supporters, some of whom have become disenchanted with the electoral process. Trump recently appeared to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on a private call, urging him to "find" enough votes to reverse the results. Raffensperger refused.

In November, Perdue received over 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, while Loeffler and the other Republican candidates received more votes than Warnock and the other Democratic candidates in the special election (Warnock received most of the vote -- 33% -- overall).

The American people deserve a platform in Congress, permitted under the Constitution, to have election issues presented so that they can be addressed," said Loeffler

Warnock told CNN Wednesday that his opponent "has consistently put what she perceives to be her own short-term political interests over the concerns of ordinary people."

Georgia is a rapidly diversifying state, the Republican candidates came into the Senate runoff elections with an advantage.

Republicans hoped their message that Georgia should be a check on Washington would prove successful, noting that if Warnock and Ossoff win, Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will be in charge.

We've seen tremendous enthusiasm in the early voting numbers, both in person and by mail, and we know that while Democrats will have a lead when polls open ... Republicans are expected to have a strong Election Day," said Seth Bringman

epublicans are worried that Trump's unwillingness to concede jeopardizes the party's hold on the Senate,

"Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler are being whipsawed by the President on one side and by the Democratic money on the other side," he said.

Perdue's closing message in a recent video was littered with attacks, saying that if Republicans lose, undocumented immigrants will vote, Americans' private health insurance will be "taken away," and Democrats will pack the Supreme Court and defund the police.

The Democratic candidates counter that they would "demilitarize" rather than defund the police,

They argued they would do a better job ending the health care crisis over the coronavirus, which has infected more than 20.8 million Americans and killed at least 354,000, in order to reopen the economy.

Warnock told CNN Wednesday that he believes tackling the pandemic by effectively distributing the vaccine and passing $2,000 stimulus checks should be the new Senate's top priority.

After no candidate received 50% of the vote, the runoffs turned even more vicious, as Loeffler portrayed Warnock an anti-police Marxist who would destroy America in the Senate.

"Kelly Loeffler spends tens of millions of dollars to scare you," said Warnock in an ad. "She's trying to make you afraid of me because she's afraid of you. Afraid that you understand how she's used her position in the Senate to enrich herself and others like her. Afraid that you'll realize that we can do better."

Perdue, a 71-year-old former Fortune 500 CEO, has dismissed Ossoff, a 33-year-old media executive, saying the Democrat does not know how to create a job

The Georgia US Senate races have attracted enormous attention due to the stakes for the first years of the Biden administration and the state's shift from red to purple. Dr. Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor, told CNN that the Senate elections could be the first in which urban Georgia casts more votes than rural Georgia.

Loeffler and Perdue decided to join the President in objecting to Congress' certification of the Electoral College's results in a final, deluded display of devotion to Trump supporters.

Political groups spent about $520 million to advertise in the two runoff races, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, averaging more than $8 million per day. Republicans outspent Democrats by tens of millions of dollars.

Biden said electing Ossoff and Warnock would end the gridlock in Washington and allow Congress to provide $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans. Trump urged the state to elect Perdue and Loeffler, and claimed that Biden would not take the White House.

Mr. Trump has inflicted more damage to the rule of law. He has impugned the integrity of judges who have ruled against him. He has demanded loyalty to himself — not the law or the Constitution — from F.B.I. directors, intelligence officials, military commanders and his attorneys general. He has replaced five inspectors general investigating wrongdoing in his administration, withheld his tax returns, pardoned his political allies convicted of felonies, and normalized lying and inflammatory tweets as modes of presidential communication. And recently he issued an executive order undermining the political neutrality and career protections of thousands of senior civil servants.

But the third pillar of our democracy — the one we have most taken for granted — is most at risk: free and fair elections. The danger emanates from a singular combination of events, the worst pandemic in a century and the most undemocratic president in our history.

ith Democrats accounting for a much larger share of mail-in ballots than Republicans, Mr. Trump has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of these votes. If he is leading even narrowly on Tuesday night, he could claim victory based only on the votes so far counted —

The integrity of the election is further challenged by the rising pace of voter suppression. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, throwing out the formula requiring nine states (and other localities) with a history of racist voter suppression to obtain federal permission before changing their voting requirements. Since then, these and other Republican-controlled states have imposed legal and administrative changes that have made voting more difficult for Black Americans, Hispanics, young people and city dwellers — all heavily Democratic constituencies.

The very age of American democracy is part of the problem. The United States was the first country to become a democracy, emerging over a vast, dispersed and diverse set of colonies that feared the prospect of the “tyranny of the majority.”

The American system is a mishmash of state and local authorities. Most are staffed by dedicated professionals, but state legislatures and elected secretaries of state can introduce partisanship, casting doubt on its impartiality. No other advanced democracy falls so short of contemporary democratic standards of fairness, neutrality and rationality in its system of administering national elections.

Newer democracies also take measures to depoliticize the constitutional court. No other democracy gives life tenure to such a powerful position as constitutional court justice. They either face term limits (12 years in Germany and South Africa; eight in Taiwan) or age limits (70 years in Australia, Israel and South Korea; 75 in Canada), or both.

Many of these ideas simply didn’t occur to America’s founders, who were framing a modern democracy for the first time, for a largely rural society with more limited levels of education, communication and life expectancy. The result is that American democracy lacks national checks on executive corruption and national guarantees of electoral integrity that have become routine in other democracies around the world. And nominations to our Supreme Court have become far more politicized than in many peer democracies.

Today, we are far closer to a breakdown than most democracy experts, myself included, would have dared anticipate just a few years ago. Even if we are spared the worst, it is long past time to renew the mechanisms of our democracy, learn from other democracies around the world and again make our republic a shining city on a hill.

Republicans worked to downplay any concerns that health risks will keep some of their voters home, after Democrats heavily promoted mail-in and early in-person balloting to their voters.

Republicans are counting on a huge Election Day turnout among their supporters to offset the big leads in early voting among Democrats in states that are pivotal to the presidential race.

“If you were worried about voting at the polls on Election Day, you’ve probably already voted,” said John March, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Virginia.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said a woman who acknowledged she was positive for coronavirus voted curbside Thursday at a mall where early voting is taking place, the first known infected voter in the county.

Several other voters who were awaiting test results or wanted to avoid the line for health reasons also used it, and county auditors were preparing for a major increase in the rarely-used option Tuesday.

“Heck yes I’m concerned. I’m going to have 500 people working on Tuesday. I don’t want it on my conscience that somebody caught COVID at a polling place and got sick,” he said. “It could happen. It could happen to me.”

“Some of my poll workers are a little bit concerned because they are older individuals,” she said. “Still, I would rather do curbside than have them (voters) go to the polls.”

Hanen’s decision to hear arguments on the brink of Election Day drew attention from voting rights activists. The Texas Supreme Court also rejected a nearly identical challenge last month.

Conservative GOP activists have filed a battery of court challenges over moves to expand voting options during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democrats also need to flip only nine seats to reclaim a majority in the Texas House for the first time in 20 years, and have aggressively targeted several races in Harris County.

Texas is one of just five states that did not allow for widespread mail-in voting this year during the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 18,000 people statewide.

Woodfill’s lawsuit also noted that all but one of the drive-thru centers were set up “in Democrat areas of the county.” More than 40% of Harris County residents are Latino, and about one in five residents are Black.

Counting the drive-thru votes, Woodfill argued, would “call into question the integrity and legality of a federal election.”

The Texas Supreme Court, which is controlled entirely by Republicans, rejected an identical lawsuit last month.

Jared Woodfill, a former chairman of the Harris County GOP, argued that Texas election law makes no explicit allowances for drive-thru voting and that only voters who need assistance are eligible to cast a ballot curbside.

More than 9.7 million people have cast early ballots in Texas, where turnout typically ranks among the lowest in the country. Some elections experts predict that total turnout in Texas could surpass 12 million, and Harris County officials have taken more steps than most to expand voting access.

“We want voters to know these sporadic incidents are being addressed, and we want them to be able to cast their ballot,” Ms. Clarke said.

Law enforcement authorities are increasingly worried, too — not just about what they have already seen, but also about what has been threatened, especially online.

Most of the internet threats have not migrated to the nation’s streets, according to a senior law enforcement official

Turmoil has defined 2020. More than 230,000 Americans have died of Covid-19; the economy has cratered, and racial tension has sparked unrest across the country.

Supporters waved Trump flags, leaned out of their vehicles wearing Make America Great Again hats and honked and cheered.

A separate set of anti-Trump protesters marched in New York City to counter the pro-Trump caravans, leading to some scuffles and arrests.

All of this has created extraordinary uncertainty, with fears driven not only by the potential outcome of the election but by the tensions that might erupt in the days and weeks after Election Day.

“People are upset, and scared, and frustrated,” said Caitlin Foley, a physician in Philadelphia. “I think there will be unrest, regardless of whichever candidate is in the lead.”

The supporters were spotted crossing the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over the Hudson River in the city’s northern suburbs and bringing the busy Garden State Parkway in New Jersey at least partly to a standstill. Officials in New Jersey told a local newspaper that the motorcade stopped near the Cheesequake Service Area — about 30 miles outside New York City — and “backed traffic up for about five miles.”

In an interview on ABC, Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said that Republicans were ready for a legal battle over ballots that have not been counted by Tuesday. He claimed that Democrats expect President Trump to be ahead on election night, “and then they’re going to try to steal it back after the election.”

In Harrisburg, Pa., Annie Bravacos, 17, said she had felt a creeping dread about the election, and since she and her friends were too young to vote, they decided to canvass on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

“It’s easy to just get terrified about that, so just doing this, I guess, is what makes us feel better,” she said. “It’s, you know, we’re actually doing something, even if it’s small.”

“My ballot getting messed with? Yes. Me afraid to go somewhere? No,” said Mr. Carlisle, a 58-year-old building contractor, explaining why he refused to vote by mail or vote early.

More than 93 million ballots have already been cast before Election Day, through in-person early voting or mail-in ballots.

But a federal judge is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on the same issue, creating uncertainty for more than 120,000 votes that already have been cast.

Both candidates are trying to plow their best path to 270 Electoral College votes. Mr. Biden, who is leading or close in many battleground polls, appears from polls to have more paths to victory than Mr. Trump, who needs to keep much of his 2016 territory to win. While Mr. Biden has an edge in some key states, many polls show narrow leads and Mr. Trump within striking distance.

The New York Times and Siena College released polls in four battleground states Sunday that Mr. Trump carried in 2016, showing that Mr. Biden led by 3 to 11 points, depending on the state. Those margins are wider than the Real Clear Politics polling averages.

Four years ago, Mr. Trump won there by just over 44,000 votes out of 6.1 million cast. This year Mr. Biden has made a play for the working-class voters by stressing his Scranton roots and modest upbringing.

Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, is counting on a strong early vote to help him flip states like Florida and Arizona that President Trump carried in 2016. But Republicans are banking on their voters to turn out in bigger numbers on Election Day and deliver battleground wins, as they did in key states in 2016.

Though Democrats have maintained an edge in early turnout in nearly every state that has seen record participation, Republicans have been closing the gap.

As the nation enters one of the most consequential weeks for voting in recent years, with swaths of Americans nervous about whether their ballots will be received and counted and others determined to push through concerns about the virus to vote, officials across the country have been mounting a furious effort to shore up election systems that have been pushed to the brink.

Never before in modern American politics has the electorate faced so many unknowns while so many Americans still pushed forward to cast their ballots through the mail and in person.

“We wish we could care about other things in our lives, but right now, politics matter so much, and people are engaged,” he said. Of course, non-battleground states, or states without a competitive statewide race, are unlikely to generate such intense voter interest, and early turnout can sometimes lag for reasons ranging from different start dates to disruptions from a hurricane.

And while 70 percent of those Democratic voters have returned their ballots, roughly 590,000 ballots sent to registered Democratic voters have not yet been returned, along with 360,000 ballots sent to registered Republicans.

n the first days of early voting, some Georgians endured waits of eight hours or more to cast ballots. Yet while anecdotal reports suggested heavy turnout among Black voters, Andrea Young, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Georgia, said it was too early to tally the percentage of votes by African-Americans because thousands of absentee ballots had not been returned.

In Wisconsin, another battleground state where Mr. Biden has maintained a steady single-digit lead, turnout has approached nearly 80 percent of the 2016 total.

hirty-six percent said Mr. Trump had won the debate, 35 percent thought Mr. Biden had, and 29 percent had no opinion.

This week, the state reported its second-highest number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus in a day, 1,214, since the pandemic began.

who has lagged behind Mr. Trump’s support in the state

The poll of 1,034 likely voters has a margin of error of about four percentage points.

“I just think all of this talk, especially with the pandemic — we all know someone who had it or died from it,” she said, adding of Mr. Trump, “he is still denying it and science even though he knew what could happen and how bad it could get.”

With more than three in five North Carolinians saying they had already voted, the poll demonstrated how much the race might already be set in place.

Mostly, Ms. Williams said, she wants the election to be over. “I’m tired of the spam mail, the lies — I want us to pick a president,” she said. “It just feels like they’re playing with our lives and our health right now with this election, and that’s on both sides.”

That is more than double the number of ballots cast by young voters at a similar point in the 2016 presidential election, mirroring an increase in early voting among all demographics because of coronavirus concerns.

Energized by issues like climate change and the Trump presidency, college students emerged as a crucial voting bloc in the 2018 midterms, when their turnout rate of 40.3 percent, according to the Tufts Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, was more than double the rate four years earlier.

“Every aspect of students’ ability to vote is under attack,” said Maxim Thorne, managing director of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on protecting voting rights for young people. “You have to fight these battles on every front, whether you’re in a state as blue as New York or as red as Georgia.”

“The thing that’s hard is, everybody’s like, ‘No I can’t vote today because I don’t have my ID with me,’ and you have to explain they don’t need that,” said Kate Fellman, executive director of You Can Vote, a nonpartisan group in North Carolina.

When the pandemic shuttered campus last spring, the school developed a digital version of the voter ID, and students can now print them out at campus polling sites.

Voting right now is something I need to get out and do.”

Many registered voters are more entrenched than ever this year; just 5 percent of those surveyed in August by the Pew Research Center said they were likely to change their minds about their preferred presidential candidate.

ote Forward said it corralled 182,509 volunteers and mailed 17.5 million messages to voters in 21 states.

Later races in Ohio and Virginia showed smaller returns, between one to two percentage points, Mr. Forman said. But it proved his theory that something “old-fashioned and authentic” could tip the scales.

That’s particularly true when it comes to voters who have been left out of traditional outreach efforts, said Melissa Michelson, a professor of political science at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif., and the co-author of “Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate Through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns.”

Vote Forward’s success at recruiting volunteers in 2020 may simply reflect Americans’ increasing political engagement, said Jan Leighley, a professor of government at American University. A global health crisis has served as a connecting event much like other national tragedies, and the handling of the pandemic has demonstrated to voters that it matters who sits in the White House.

Democrats currently have a 16-point advantage over Republicans in the pre-Election Day vote.

Voters under 30 make up 11% of all early voters so far -- up four points from this time last cycle. Voters 30-64 are up five points from 43% of turnout at this point four years ago to 48% now. Voters 65 and older make up a smaller share of early voters than at this point four years ago

Trump earned Michigan's 16 electoral votes four years ago with a 0.2% margin of victory. This year, Biden and Democrats are fighting to rebuild the so-called Blue Wall. Before Trump's win, the state hadn't voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988. The state expanded mail voting as an option to all voters in this year's election.

10% of voters so far in the state are under 30 -- at this point four years ago, only 3% were. While voters 65 or older made up 78% of early voters in 2016, they make up 44% of early voters so far this year.

The President sees the state as a possible opportunity to expand the map this year, even though no Republican presidential nominee has won here since 1972.

Young voters make up 12% of early voters in Minnesota, more than twice the 5% share they had at this point in 2016.

Trump won the Badger State by less than one point in 2016, breaking a Democratic presidential streak dating back to 1988.

Wisconsin has seen a large decrease in the share of early votes from people 65 or older, but the state hasn't seen as much of an increase from voters under 30. Seniors went from 48% of the early vote in 2016 to 36% now. Voters under 30 made up only 4% of pre-Election Day voters four years ago but now make up 5%. The largest increase has actually come from voters with unknown ages. Those voters made up 5% of early voters four years ago, but now make up about 12%.

“We’re going to try to avoid predictions,” said NBC News President Noah Oppenheim. “We’re going to try to avoid clinging to any kind of narrative story line.”

The Associated Press, whose election calls are used by a range of news organizations, is gathering data on voting with NORC at the University of Chicago using a methodology developed with Fox News.

He said the network is preparing for an election that could go well beyond Election Day. CNN has anchors, producers and digital journalists scheduled in shifts to cover the election round-the-clock for several days, if necessary.