The News Roundup — Domestic (The 1A) 2020-11-27

Despite President Trump’s administration making it exceedingly difficult for President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to do its work in full, the office of the president-elect has wasted no time in announcing some of its cabinet-level appointees. Of particular note is Biden’s choice for a new position: special presidential envoy on climate. Former State Secretary John Kerry will become the first-ever member of the national security council whose role focuses primarily on fighting climate change. 

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZenica all say their versions of a COVID-19 vaccine are outperforming their expectations. Each of their vaccines work to induce a response in the immune system to a protein in the virus.

Millions of Americans are expected to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday despite experts warning against it. Coronavirus numbers in the United States are at an all-time high and many health analysts and stakeholders are worried about an exponential increase in transmission rates.

And a new Washington Post analysis revealed increased levels of hunger among Americans:

More Americans are going hungry now than at any point during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, according to a Post analysis of new federal data — a problem created by an economic downturn that has tightened its grip on millions of Americans and compounded by government relief programs that expired or will terminate at the end of the year. Experts say it is likely that there’s more hunger in the United States today than at any point since 1998, when the Census Bureau began collecting comparable data about households’ ability to get enough food.

One in 8 Americans reported they sometimes or often didn’t have enough food to eat in the past week, hitting nearly 26 million American adults, an increase several times greater than the most comparable pre-pandemic figure, according to Census Bureau survey data collected in late October and early November. That number climbed to more than 1 in 6 adults in households with children.

“It’s been driven by the virus and the unpredictable government response,” said Jeremy K. Everett, executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty in Waco, Tex.

Interview: 

https://the1a.org/segments/news-roundup-biden-trump-vaccine-flynn/