First Thing: Trump says ‘we’re doing incredibly’ as Biden faces reality

Good morning. Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that 100m coronavirus vaccine shots will be administered during his first 100 days in the White House. Speaking in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday, Biden unveiled his new health team of scientists and doctors and a comprehensive plan to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. As the US passed 15m recorded cases of coronavirus, Biden told Americans that “out of our collective pain we are going to find a collective purpose”.

In a parallel universe, Trump hosted a vaccine summit yesterday in which he made no mention of the 286,011 Americans who have lost their lives and boasted that “in many respects we’re still doing incredibly”. When asked why Biden’s transition team hadn’t been included in the summit, Trump said he hoped “the next administration will be the Trump administration because you can’t steal hundreds of thousands of votes”.

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‘100m shots in 100 days’: Biden urges Americans to wear masks as he makes vaccine pledge – video

The Trump administration also scrambled to try to justify a decision not to purchase an extra 100m doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. Instead, they touted an executive order to prioritise vaccine shipments to US, but this fell somewhat flat when the official in charge of the government’s vaccine development program was asked how the order would work and replied: “Frankly, I don’t know.”

• California has recorded a 70% increase in ICU admissions in just two weeks, as millions of Californians readjust to life under the nation’s strictest lockdown. Hospital staff have been brought in from outside of the state to cope with healthcare worker shortages.

The supreme court rejected a Republican bid to reverse the election

The supreme court rejected an attempt by Republicans to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania yesterday, which had argued that the expansion of mail-in voting was illegal. Several courts, including Pennsylvannia’s supreme court, had already rejected the request. It was the first piece of 2020 election litigation to reach the supreme court.

But Texas isn’t giving up yet. In an effort to support Trump’s quest to cling on to his presidency, the state announced yesterday that it had filed a lawsuit against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the supreme court, alleging that the changes they made to election procedures owing to the pandemic were illegal.

Rudy Giuliani is expecting to leave hospital today

Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said he was feeling better and expecting to leave hospital today after being admitted with coronavirus. The former New York City mayor, 76, said he had begun to feel unusually tired on Friday, but said that by his diagnosis on Sunday he was experiencing only “mild symptoms” of a small cough and no fever. The attorney has been spearheading Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result.

• Coronavirus has been used to curtail civil liberties around the world, a new report has found. The study said 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed to be “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed” – a 4% increase on last year.

• Almost 160 people were arrested at an underground house party over the weekend, which took place in an empty residential home without the knowledge of the owners. The organisers of the event had also held parties in empty homes in two other cities.

Biden presses on with cabinet picks

Biden has reportedly chosen Marcia Fudge, the Ohio congresswoman and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, as housing and urban development secretary, and Tom Vilsack to reprise his role as agriculture secretary, which he held under Barack Obama. As reports began to circulate, Fudge said on Capitol Hill that it would be “an honor and a privilege” to be asked to join Biden’s cabinet, but stopped short of confirming the news.

As Biden’s cabinet takes shape, the next question is what impact it will have. With roughly 60% of wealth in the US estimated to be inherited, and 140 million Americans living in poverty, Mary O’Hara asks what Biden will do to level the playing field.

Many people are simply so relieved that Biden and Harris won that they talk about “getting back to normal” after the chaos. That’s an understandable reaction given all that’s transpired. However, getting back to normal isn’t an option. Nor should it be the goal.

In other news …

• Greenhouse gases are turning the Arctic into “an entirely different climate” as it heats up at a rate around double that of the global average. Sea ice has dropped considerably, raising sea levels; the last fully intact ice shelf in Canada collapsed after losing more than 40% of its area in just two days.

• Chinese authorities are putting Muslim minorities in interment camps simply for “being young” or speaking to a sibling abroad, a rare leak of a prisoner list has shown. The leak illustrates how authorities in Xinjiang region use “predictive policing” that tracks individuals’ personal networks, their online activity and daily life.

• One of the US’s largest cybersecurity companies says it has been hacked by foreign governments. FireEye said hackers with “world-class capabilities” broke into its network and stole tools it uses to test the defenses of its thousands of customers.

Stat of the day: 90% of people in poor nations could miss out on a Covid vaccine

Nine of 10 people across 70 low-income countries are likely to miss out on the coronavirus vaccine next year because the west has bought up the majority of doses, campaigners have said. The People’s Vaccine Alliance said richer countries would leave poorer ones at the mercy of the vaccine, with 14% of the world’s population securing 53% of the most promising vaccine candidates.

Don’t miss this: how pandemic unemployment hit young people the hardest

Between spring 2019 and spring 2020, unemployment among Americans aged between 16 and 24 increased from 8.4% to 24.4%, a significantly rate than that for people aged 25 and older. Michael Sainato speaks to young Americans facing joblessness as a result of the pandemic about the toll it has taken on them.

Last thing: lights, camera, climate action?

Europe is allocating its wildlife conservation funds according to the “charisma” of the animals, a report says. Vertebrates are getting almost 500 times more funding for each species than invertebrates, with brown bears, wolves, bitterns and Eurasian lynxes the dazzling stars of conservation funding. Animals such as spiders and crustaceans, which score less for looks but are of crucial importance to ecosystems, are at greater risk of extinction because of it.

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