The US is on course to record its 15 millionth coronavirus case today
- Biden to nominate retired army general Lloyd Austin as defense secretary
- Trump says ‘Rudy’s doing well’ after Giuliani taken to hospital with Covid
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Up on Capitol Hill the House is set to pass the annual defense authorization bill today – and with it laying down a challenge to outgoing president Trump to use his veto. Karoun Demirjian writes:
The legislation is the product of a months-long negotiation between the House and Senate that authorizes everything from new initiatives to counter China to health coverage for members of the National Guard aiding pandemic response efforts.
At first, Trump vehemently objected to the legislation’s mandate for the Pentagon to rename military installations that commemorate Civil War-era Confederates. In recent days, however, the president has taken existential issue with the fact that the bill does not repeal a law shielding technology companies from liability for what third parties post to their websites — an issue unrelated to defense that Trump has sought to make about national security.
California has enacted new stay-at-home guidelines as coronavirus cases in the state have surged, placing 33m pandemic-fatigued residents under some of the harshest restrictions in the US in a last-resort effort to rein in the pandemic.
The measures are the strictest since those enacted in March, when California’s early, aggressive lockdown helped keep the state’s death rate relatively low. Nine months on, however, a worn-out public seems less willing to comply with shelter-in-place and many workers – devastated by the economic toll of the pandemic – are unable to do so.
Related: Fatigued Californians are back in lockdown. Will it work?
