Outgoing White House Chief of Staff has told West Wing personnel that they are barred from answering questions or participating in transition activities with President-elect Joe Biden’s staff “unless specifically authorized,” the Washington Post reports.

“As you may have seen, the [General Services Administration] Administrator has made an ascertainment to allow for the start of a Presidential transition,” Meadows wrote in an email shared with The Washington Post. “I want to remind all [Executive Office of the President] employees of existing procedures and guidance that we must adhere to throughout this Administration.”

Meadows said he designated specific personnel to serve as the points of contact with the Biden team, and that all contact should be directed to them.  The limitations may result in the incoming Biden Administration having constrained access to information needed during the transition.

“Unless specifically authorized, EOP personnel are not permitted to speak directly with a member of the Biden Transition Team or the Federal Transition Coordinator,” Meadows said in the memo.

“Today the Pennsylvania Department of State certified the results of the November 3 election in Pennsylvania for president and vice president of the United States. As required by federal law, I’ve signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Again, I want to thank the election officials who have administered a fair and free election during an incredibly challenging time in our commonwealth and country’s history. Our election workers have been under constant attack and they have performed admirably and honorably” – Gov. Tom Wolf.

“The New York Times and The Washington Post have very different strategies for building the subscription news company of the future. Sources tell Axios that the Post is nearing 3 million digital subscribers, a 50% year-over-year growth in subscriptions and more than 3x the number of digital-only subscribers it had in 2016. The New York Times now has more than 6 million digital-only subscribers, nearly 3x its number from 2016. Both companies are growing at an impressive pace, especially given the bleak outlook for media amid the pandemic. But the Times’ recent investments in stars — like Ezra Klein, Ben Smith, Kara Swisher, and Jane Coaston — has some media insiders wondering about The Post’s plans” – Axios.

Yahoo News: “Weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election, the world’s political intrigue turned to a Wilmington computer repair shop after the New York Post revealed that its owner gave a copy of a laptop hard drive he believed belonged to Hunter Biden to a lawyer representing Rudy Giuliani. Ten days after the election, a sign on the repair shop’s door said it had closed. A neighbor said the owner had left town. A slew of new information has surfaced in the weeks since, including details about the laptop’s journey from the repair shop to Giuliani’s office.”

“Yet with fears of fake news flooding the nation’s consciousness and Giuliani’s resistance to share the source material, it remains unclear whether the emails purportedly found on the hard drive and which formed the basis of the disputed New York Post story are authentic. The story claimed that President-elect Joe Biden, while vice president in 2015, held a meeting with an executive from Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that employed his son, Hunter Biden. The story also published embarrassing photos of Hunter Biden that the New York Post said were on the hard drive. Hours after the story’s publication, Biden’s presidential campaign categorically stated, ‘No meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.’ Weeks later, the computer repairman, John Paul Mac Isaac, shuttered his Trolley Square shop and a neighbor says he left town.”

Full story at The Guardian.

“According to two sources, Trump’s attacks on Fox News are causing alarm in the Murdoch family. Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch is considering a plan to offer Trump a $100 million package that would include HarperCollins publishing Trump’s post-presidential memoir and Fox News giving Trump a contributor deal or his own show, the sources say. On November 10, the Murdoch-owned New York Post reported Trump could land a $100 million book advance. ‘Rupert is going to make a humongous offer,’ one of the sources said. ‘The thinking is, Let’s buy Trump off so he shuts the fuck up.’ Fox Corp. did not provide a comment. However, a source close to the publishing company denied it would make an offer for Trump’s memoir” – Vanity Fair.

Are you listening Republicans? https://t.co/N5heB6gvwb

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2020

The Bulwark: “Donald Trump entered our political bloodstream propelled by racism and mendacity – the bogus ‘birther’ movement intended to delegitimize America’s first black president. Six years later he is exiting our highest office trailing lies and extra-constitutional maneuvers aimed at maintaining power by disenfranchising black voters. In between he inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive, and disloyal. Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America’s president and his party’s base. Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic – by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future.”

“Trump did not materialize from the ether. He rose from a political party bent on thwarting demographic change by subverting the democratic process; a party whose base was addicted to white identity politics, steeped in religious fundamentalism, and suffused with authoritarian cravings – a party which, infected by Trumpism, now spreads the multiple malignancies metastasized by Trump’s personal and political pathologies. Since the civil rights revolution triggered an influx of resentful Southern whites, the GOP has catered to white grievance and anxiety. Trump’s transformative contribution has been to make racial antagonism overt – a badge of pride that bonds him to his followers in opposition to a pluralist democracy that threatens their imperiled social and political hegemony.”

Poll: 79 Percent of Trump Voters Believe ‘Election Was Stolen‘ https://t.co/PmMBmt05AI via @BreitbartNews They are 100% correct, but we are fighting hard. Our big lawsuit, which spells out in great detail all of the ballot fraud and more, will soon be filled. RIGGED ELECTION!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2020

Politico: “President Donald Trump is the favored Republican candidate for a 2024 run, beating other notable Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, by a double-digit margin, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday. Trump gets 53 percent of support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents for a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary, according to the poll of registered voters. Pence came in second at only 12 percent support. Donald Trump Jr. got the third-highest support at 8 percent, while other Republican figures, including Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, and Nikki Haley each got less than 5 percent support.”

Daily Beast: “Conservative operatives and a super PAC with ties to infamous GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone are calling for Trump supporters to punish Republicans by sitting out Georgia’s crucial Senate runoffs or writing in Trump’s name instead. And though their efforts remains on the party’s fringes, the trajectory of the movement has Republicans fearful that it could cost the GOP control of the Senate. The most aggressive call to boycott or cast protest ballots in the two runoff races has, so far, come from a dormant pro-Trump super PAC with ties to Stone, which unveiled a new initiative to retaliate against the GOP’s supposed turncoats by handing Dems control of the Senate.”

“The group, dubbed the Committee for American Sovereignty, unveiled a new website encouraging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump’s name in both of the upcoming Senate runoff elections, which could determine the party that controls the upper chamber during President-elect Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The PAC argued that doing so will show support for the president in addition to forcing Republicans to address the wild election-fraud conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters and members of his own legal team. ‘If we can do this, we have a real chance at getting these RINO senators to act on the illegitimate and corrupt election presided over by a Democrat party that is invested in the Communist takeover of Our Great Nation,’ the group wrote on its new website, writeintrumpforgeorgiasenate.com. ‘We will not stop fighting for you, the American Patriot, against the evils of Socialism and inferior Religions.'”

What does GSA being allowed to preliminarily work with the Dems have to do with continuing to pursue our various cases on what will go down as the most corrupt election in American political history? We are moving full speed ahead. Will never concede to fake ballots & “Dominion”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2020

Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, the only Black person to be elected mayor of the city, died Monday evening in Manhattan at the age of 93.

Dinkins was a state legislative representative who later became Manhattan Borough President.  In 1989, he was elected Mayor by defeating Rudy Giuliani, taking office in 1990.  Dinkins inherited a city that was experiencing spiralling crime rates, which Dinkins was able to lower over the span of his four year term.

He was defeated in the 1993 election by Giuliani, who continued to enjoy the lowering crime rates Dinkins initiated.

In 1991, just prior to the Gulf War, Dinkins visited Israel as Iraqi Scud missiles fell on the nation.  Dinkins wanted to show unity with Israel.

His wife of 67 years, Joyce Burrows Dinkins, died last month at the age of 89.

On Monday, the US recorded nearly 151,000 new cases and 950 fatalities, putting the nation on track for another week amassing one million cases.

According the COVID Tracking Project, hospitals in the US reached another high, with more than 85,800 people hospitalized with coronavirus.  It was a 3% increase from just the previous day, and a 45% increase over the previous two weeks.

Worldometers showed many more new cases in the US, logging 172,000 for Monday.  California registered the most new cases by far: 17,700.  Ohio has nearly 12,000 and Texas, 11,000.

I can’t imagine Mike Pompeo being this human and having a conversation with a Muppet to help people learn about refugees.

Dr. Scott Atlas responded to a resolution passed by the Stanford Faculty Senate that condemned him for publicly promoting dangerous practices and false information.

The Stanford Faculty Senate, made up of 56 members elected by the faculty of the university, issued a statement last week that condemned Atlas for six specific actions regarding his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that it deemed “promote a view of COVID-19 that contradicts medical science.”

Atlas is not an epidemiologist or a public health expert. He’s a neuroradiologist.  He serves as lame duck president Donald Trump’s advisor on the coronavirus pandemic and he’s supported the debunked concept of “herd immunity” to open the economy.  Atlas worked at the Hoover Institute, a so-called conservative think tank associated with Stanford.

The six specific things Atlas has done to undermine accepted science:  discouraging the use of masks and other protective measures, misrepresenting knowledge and opinion regarding the management of pandemics, endangering citizens and public officials, showing disdain for established medical knowledge and damaging Stanford’s reputation and academic standing.  They also condemned Atlas’s urge to the people of Michigan to “rise up” again Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

ABC News reports that the US Secret Service is asking is members of its protective service details if they want to relocate to Palm Beach, Florida to be attached to the unit assigned to guard soon-to-be-former president Donald J. Trump.

The recruitment comes as security upgrades are being constructed at Mar-a-Lago, the club to which Trump officially relocated last year.  Plans are also being made to accommodate Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

According to the New York Police Department, they’re working with the Secret Service to remove the NYPD’s presence around Trump Tower in Manhattan because that will no longer be Trump’s primary residence.  The NYPD had restricted traffic around the building while Trump was in office.

Molly Jong-Fast: “It’s been three weeks since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. The 2016 election made Donnie Junior, Ivanka, and even simple Eric Republican Party superstars, just because of who their father was. But today, they’re learning nepotism’s hardest lesson in real time, which is that your fortunes are irreparably linked to the success of said father. So when Trump lost his reelection, the biggest losers were actually his three large adult children. Trump may still be a God-like figure in the Republican Party, but just how long that lasts after January 20 is anyone’s guess. For the Trump children’s fortunes, cracks are already starting to show.”

“Ivanka has been masterful at shaping the narrative. Despite her complete and utter uselessness and inability to control her insane and evil father, she has still been lauded continuously as a ‘moderating force’ despite no evidence supporting this assessment whatsoever. Ivanka has been able to shape the narrative about herself by using her favorite ‘a source familiar with Ivanka’s way of thinking’ trope. Since daddy’s been in the bunker trying to get Republicans to change the results of the 2020 election for him, a new genre of Ivanka news story has flowered and bloomed—the ‘will they ever be welcomed back’ piece. As in, to New York society. But unlike some other Ivanka story genres, this is the type of piece the queen of narrative-shaping is clearly not able to shape. CNN ran a piece calling the pair a ‘once-golden power couple’ and ‘a senior Republican’ told CNN, “Wait until they realize no one is taking their calls.’ Then The New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante wrote a piece headlined, ‘Will Manhattan’s Elite Really Spurn Ivanka and Jared (and Their Money?),’ which ultimately made the point that if Ivanka is rich enough she can probably come back to New York City. Whether or not this assessment is true (it probably is), it speaks to the fact that Ivanka is no longer controlling the narrative about herself.”