First Thing: Barr resigns after daring to disagree with Trump

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The US attorney general and Trump ally, William Barr, has resigned, weeks after he contradicted the president over claims of voter fraud. Barr revealed that the justice department had not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and speculation that he might leave the White House began almost immediately afterwards. Barr is the latest senior official to leave the White House after challenging president’s alternate reality; the top US cybersecurity expert, Christopher Krebs, was “terminated” last month for vouching for the reliability of the 2020 election.

Barr has long been accused of undermining the independence of the judiciary and sacrificing a commitment to the rule of law to do the president’s bidding, particularly over the investigation into Russian interference in the election. But in the end, Barr could not pass the ultimate Trump loyalty test – shredding the US constitution, writes Washington DC bureau chief David Smith.

• Billionaire Republicans on Wall Street have been donating large sums to try to protect David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s Senate seats in Georgia’s January senate runoff races. The contest will determine which party has control of the Senate.

The US records 300,000 deaths as the vaccine rollout begins

The US passed the grim milestone of 300,000 lives lost to coronavirus on Monday, the highest death toll in the world by far. In California over the weekend, intensive care units filled to record highs, with capacity at just 7.4% on Monday. San Joaquin Valley reported that ICU capacity dropped to zero on Saturday for the first time, while San Benito county also ran out of beds.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel; Monday also marked the first coronavirus vaccinations in the US, three days after the treatment was approved by the FDA. Frontline healthcare workers and elderly nursing home residents have been given priority for the medicine. Dr Yves Duroseau, the first doctor to receive the vaccine, said he was “just feeling very hopeful”.

Almost 1,500 healthcare workers appear to have died from the pandemic in the US, and make up a disproportionate share of the sick, amid unprecedented care requirements and PPE shortages. Danielle Renwick shares a few of their stories.

• Economic recovery slowed in November, with the US adding 245,000 jobs compared with 683,000 in October. Twelve million Americans will lose unemployment benefit at the end of the month. This article shows the pandemic in numbers and includes statistics on everything from the racial disparities in the victims to the impact on food supply.

• How coronavirus changed science for ever: the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, looks at the impact of the pandemic on scientific development and discoveries, including the wave of global collaboration and the rapid creation of a vaccine.

The electoral college officially confirmed a Biden win

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‘Democracy prevailed,’ says Biden after US electoral college confirms his win – video

Members of the electoral college have formally elected Joe Biden as the next president of the United States, with a final tally of 306 to 232 electoral votes. The act all but kills off Trump’s hopes to overturn the election, leading the usually mundane constitutional affair to gain an unusual level of public interest. In the run-up to the vote there has been an increase in threats and promises of protests outside the statehouse where the electors met, leading to heightened security.

Speaking after the confirmation, Biden hailed the moment as a victory for democracy. “We, the people, voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal,” he said.

• While Democrats swept the presidential election, they lost out in state legislative races, failing to flip any of the chambers they targeted. These lesser-known contests are significant in portioning control of redistricting, which could give Republicans a long-term advantage. Alvin Chang and Sam Levine ask why they lost so badly, and what this means for the future.

• Activist Judith Heumann has praised Biden’s commitment to involving disabled people in his administration. Heumann, who became the first person in a wheelchair to teach in the city’s schools and went on to advise presidents Clinton and Obama, talks about Trump and Biden, her childhood, and her victories as an activist.

In other news…

• Pornhub has removed the majority of its videos after an investigation into child abuse, with the amount of content on the popular adult site dropping from 13m videos to just 4m. The website removed the videos after an investigation found a large number featured underage and sex-trafficked people.

• Prince Andrew has not denied he stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion and his spokesperson has refused to comment on a report that makes this claim, despite it directly contradicting Andrew’s previous account of his actions.

• Scientists are preparing an urgent mission to the world’s biggest iceberg, which is on course to collide with the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The iceberg is larger than Luxembourg.

Stat of the day: just 14% of black Americans trust the coronavirus vaccine will be safe

While Dr Anthony Fauci praised the work of Kizzmekia Corbett, an African American scientist at the forefront of the development of a coronavirus vaccine, research in part from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has found that just 14% of black Americans trust that a vaccine will be safe and 18% trust it will be effective. The study found that many concerns about the vaccine were based on the US’s racist history of medical research, including the 1932- 72 Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which more than 100 black men are estimated to have died.

Don’t miss this: how Covid may cause a mental health crisis among Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers

An estimated 400,000 migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong have been unable to take time off to travel to their families or meet in public spaces as they normally do on Sundays. Most of the workforce are women from the Philippines and Indonesia, who arrive on special visas requiring them to live in the homes of their employers, primarily Chinese or expatriate families. But experts fear the pandemic, which is keeping them confined to these homes, could be triggering a mental health crisis.

Last Thing: jetski love affair ends in jail

A man has been jailed for breaching coronavirus rules after he rode a jetski hundreds of kilometres from Scotland to an island off the UK’s coast to see his girlfriend. Dale McLaughlan, who had never ridden a jetski before, made the four and a half hour journey to the Isle of Man before walking a further 25km to see her. He was jailed for travelling to the island, which has a ban on entering without special permission.

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