President Donald Trump has managed to use his remaining time in office to act as a political wrecking ball while the country is still being ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump, who had been spouting false claims of voter fraud for months, launched several failed lawsuits in an attempt to challenge the election results in key swing states, and also contacted state legislatures to try to persuade them to intervene on his behalf

While the President has been unsuccessful in his efforts to overturn the election, he may have succeeded in sowing distrust among many in our democracy, fanning the flames of the toxic political atmosphere and likely making governing that much more difficult for President-elect Joe Biden.

One-term President Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden by over seven million votes, is reportedly pressuring Pence to take steps to overturn the will of the people.

Fortunately, the US Constitution offers Pence no way to stop the process as he presides over the joint session of the House and Senate next week, a process that Biden presided over four years ago when Trump's victory was certified).

Nevertheless, Pence could aid Republicans as they deliver speeches that will delay the outcome and add to the sense, among Trump loyalists, that he was cheated out of re-election. In doing so, Pence could stake his claim to the Trump legacy -- a populist base composed of millions -- and get a boost for his own political futur

The field of biosecurity -- aimed at keeping nations safe from natural or human-made pathogens -- has long been eclipsed by cybersecurity and counterterrorism

Covid-19, which is often compared to the flu pandemic of 1918, has been called a once-in-a-generation event. But the outbreak of MERS and SARS in recent years shows just how frequent emerging diseases can occur.

A significant increase in biological containment facilities over the last 30 years also poses a grave risk. There are now more than 50 facilities around the world that are categorized as "Level 4" labs, which contain the deadliest pathogens and require the highest level of safety, and thousands more are designated "Level 3" facilities that contain infectious agents or toxins that may cause potentially lethal infection. While it is highly unlikely that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, the pandemic has raised the specter of a possible leak or act of bioterrorism. Containment facilities are an Achilles heel in biosecurity, and these labs, along with those who work there, should be subject to greater international scrutiny.

In one of its final foreign policy acts before leaving office, the Trump administration is considering designating Yemen's Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization.

The move is part of President Donald Trump's and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's campaign to impose more sanctions on Iran and its allies in the Middle East—and to create new hurdles that would make it difficult for the incoming Joe Biden administration to resume negotiations with Tehran.

this designation could prolong Yemen's brutal civil war and drive millions of Yemenis into starvation

As Covid-19 swept across the world, protecting those on the front lines became front of mind. Governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other partners mobilized masks and gowns from every corner of the world even as the cost of those items skyrocketed.

Many doctors and nurses don't have the means to wash their hands when treating patients, and disease and death are the result.

New figures show that an estimated 1.8 billion people use or work in clinics or hospitals without basic water services, meaning no access to running water, as detailed in a recent WHO report. Worldwide, nearly 1 in 4 health facilities lacks basic water services, 1 in 3 lacks adequate means to wash hands where patients are treated, 1 in 10 has no sanitation services, and 1 in 3 do not segregate waste safely. In the world's 46 least developed countries, half of all health facilities have no clean water on site.

Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was nearly killed with a rare nerve agent before he recovered from a coma and went on to trick one of his apparent assassins into confessing to the details of the plot on tape.

Russia, under strongman Vladimir Putin's watch, has become a rogue regime apparently responsible, despite its loud denials, for a growing list of egregious crimes.

assassinations of political targets at home and abroad -- some with banned chemical weapons -- to Russia's ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine and a hacking campaign of unprecedented scope against the United States, and it's clear that Putin has become bolder and more dangerous than ever.

According to Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, one in ten people around the world may have been infected with the novel coronavirus.

A Gates Foundation report reveals this deadly disease to have devastated the global economy and set back the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals by an estimated 20 years.

Without collaboration, the rollout of vaccines will be uneven and risks exacerbating inequalities and global tensions

a Chinese court had sentenced journalist Zhang Zhan, 37, to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." This follows the government indictment, which accused her of "publishing large amounts of fake information."

Zhang's real crime: to report factually on the ground at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, at its then epicenter, Wuhan, in video dispatches that challenged the government's official narrative. And then to stubbornly defy the Chinese government by insisting on her innocence.

Arrested in May, Zhang went on a hunger strike during her detention, according to Amnesty International. In response, prison authorities have restrained her and forced nutrients into her.

But many Black Americans have expressed reluctance to take the vaccine, a wariness some attribute to the enduring legacy of the egregious Tuskegee syphilis study.

Both expose the depth of structural discrimination in the United States. Both remind us to listen and hear patients when they express distrust or reluctance about medical treatment.

It recruited Black men in Macon County, Alabama, who had already contracted syphilis. The men were told they would be treated for syphilis, but the actual purpose of the study was to learn whether untreated syphilis progressed differently in Black people compared with White people.

At 8 a.m. on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence will roll up his sleeve to receive the coronavirus vaccine, a televised symbol of reassurance for vaccine skeptics worried about its dangers.

Public health officials said they were pleased that the vice president was going to be vaccinated in public, along with Surgeon General Jerome Adams, despite the president’s own lack of interest in sending a similar public health message.

coronavirus is regularly killing around 3,000 Americans a day

The Supreme Court, which has placed strict limits on lawsuits brought in federal court based on human rights abuses abroad, seemed poised on Tuesday to reject a suit accusing two American corporations of complicity in child slavery on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.

The case was brought by six citizens of Mali who said they were trafficked into child slavery as children

A 2004 Supreme Court decision, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, left the door open to some claims under the law, as long as they involved violations of international norms with “definite content and acceptance among civilized nations.”

To some degree, all this rhetorical excess makes it difficult to take what the president says seriously when he says serious things. Moreover, it becomes difficult to be taken seriously when reporting things that really do happen and really are unprecedented or truly record setting.

For starters, someone in all likelihood will win the presidency with a record number of votes, more votes than anyone has ever received before.

This year's popular vote is likely to be huge. With a growing population and early participation prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, the total now projects to be in excess of 150 million. So even a plurality would be over 70 million, enough to eclipse the current record of 69.5 million votes for Barack Obama in 2008.

That year, young voters turned out in historic numbers and were part of the coalition that helped to elect a Democratic House of Representatives. And with days until Election Day, signs have emerged that young voters are poised for another cycle of record turnout, particularly as young people are more likely than their older counterparts to vote in person and later in the election season.

A poll released Monday by Harvard University's Institute of Politics surveyed 18- to 29-year-olds and found that 63% said they would "definitely" vote in the election, which is the highest proportion of respondents in the 20 years that the poll of young voters has been conducted

More than 6 million voters under 30 have already cast early ballots, according to the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, compared with roughly 2 million early votes at the same time in 2016.

The president’s blinkered view has created something of an alternate universe, one not governed by polling averages or independent analysis but by declarative statements that, at times, feel as if they are coming out of nowhere.

This month, Mr. Trump proclaimed on Twitter that he was “winning BIG in all of the polls that matter.”

It has been a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s public commentary since the first time he ran for president that he treats polling as rigged against him if it isn’t favorable for him.

More than 6-in-10 rate economic conditions negatively and only about 2-in-10 think coronavirus is under control in the U.S., according to the latest Fox News national survey of likely voters. 

When asked what should be the federal government’s top priority, voters are 25 points more likely to rank limiting the spread of coronavirus over restarting the economy (61-36 percent).

Biden’s current advantage on coronavirus is double the 8-point edge he held last month. At the same time, Trump’s edge on the economy declined by 4 points. 

Trump's best path to stop Biden is for there to be a larger than average polling error in Arizona and especially Pennsylvania.

The electoral math is pretty simple. Biden needs to find 38 electoral votes on top of the 232 in the contests that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. He's likely to win the one from Nebraska's 2nd Congressional Distric

A CNN/SSRS poll on Saturday put Biden up 12 points in Michigan among likely voters, while Biden led in Wisconsin by 8 points in a CNN/SSRS poll and 11 points in a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday.

"It's unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President's Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President (Donald) Trump's actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics," White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement to CNN on Saturday evening.

Fauci told the Post that the Democratic nominee's campaign "is taking it seriously from a public health perspective." While Trump, Fauci said, is "looking at it from a different perspective." He said that perspective was "the economy and reopening the country," according to the Post.

Fauci, a leading member of the government's coronavirus response, said the United States needed to make an "abrupt change" in public health practices and behaviors, according to the Post. He said the country could surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day and predicted rising deaths in the coming weeks

The Texas Supreme Court denied a petition Sunday by a group of Republicans seeking to invalidate nearly 127,000 drive-thru votes in Harris County, while a similar case awaits a decision in federal court just two days before Election Day.

The petition was filed last week and argued that drive-thru voting violated federal law

"We know that the law is on our side," he told CNN moments after the Supreme Court issued its ruling. "We know that we should be protecting these votes, making sure that all of our residents here can have their voice heard, can have their say in our democracy."

President Trump began the fall campaign rooting for, and trying to orchestrate, a last-minute surprise that would vault him ahead of Joseph R. Biden Jr.A coronavirus vaccine. A dramatic economic rebound. A blockbuster Justice Department investigation.

That has left Mr. Trump running on a record of an out-of-control pandemic, an economy staggered by disease, and questions about his own style and conduct that have made him a polarizing figure.

None of it appears to have made a difference. If anything, the come-and-go nature of what seemed like earth-moving moments underlined the central and fundamentally stable dynamics of the race. Opinions about Mr. Trump are largely set.

Americans are bubbling over with tension and dread. They have endured a long, combative campaign in the midst of a pandemic and a complicated voting process with an uncertain outcome.

Skirmishes over yard signs, flags and other expressions of candidate loyalty emerge with regularity every election season, but this year seems more intense.

In Volusia County, Fla., a neighbor punched another in the face because he believed that his own Trump sign was blocked by his neighbor’s Biden sign, the authorities said.