Other things. Thats tonight, Stephen Colbert. Also a little later on this hour, i will tell you how you can come to an online event with me about bag man, about the new book if you are at all interested in that. I will have details on that a little later on. Im supposed to have told you about that like every night for the past four nights, and i have forgotten every single one of those four nights. But i am committed to tell you tonight. Thats why im putting this little reminder here so i at least feel extra guilty if i forget later on. All right. But we are following a number of developing stories tonight both in the world of legal and political news but also when it comes to the pandemic. And lets start there first and foremost. Just within the past hour, the covid tracking project has posted the latest numbers for our country for today, and today for the first time ever, the United States has had more than 3,000 americans die in one day from the coronavirus. In the last 24 hours, 3,054 americans are known to have died from this disease. Thats the largest number weve had ever. This puts the death toll just today on par with some of the greatest tragedies in our nations history, events remembered for decades, generations, for more than a century. The terrorist attacks of 9 11 killed 2,977 people. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, an immense conflagration that burned whole swaths of that city to the ground, brought that city to its knees, that killed 3,000 people. I grew up in the San Francisco bay area. I can tell you that the 1906 earthquake is very much alive still today. It changed that part of the country forever. It has never been forgotten. We lost more americans just today, just today than we did in that catastrophe in 1906. This week we of course marked the anniversary of the 1941 attack on pearl harbor, december 7th, 1941. 2,400 americans killed in that surprise ambush attack by japan. 2,400 dead on that date that still lives in infamy. 2,400 americans killed. More than 3,000 americans killed today, which is just wednesday now. And what will tomorrow bring . Last night we talked about the first patients in the uk being administered the Coronavirus Vaccine manufactured by pfizer. Today canada approved that same vaccine. Prime minister Justin Trudeau saying canada will start vaccinating people in urban areas in each of the ten canadian provinces starting the beginning of next week. Even still with that quick start, he says vaccinating a majority of the canadian population is something they think will take until september of next year. Again, september of next year before they think theyll have most canadians vaccinated. Now, for context, the population of canada is under 40 Million People. Weve got nearly 330 Million People in this country. When do we expect to have the majority of our people vaccinated . Well, it should start at least fairly soon. Tomorrow something called the vaccines and related biological Products Advisory Committee is going to meet, and theyre going to meet publicly. Theyre going to meet to give their recommendation to the fda on the approval of the Pfizer Vaccine here in the u. S. Now, this Advisory Committee is an outside group of independent experts that advisesed fda on matters like this, and its good that weve got that structure. In my opinion, knowing what i know about these things, and i know a little bit about this part of the regulatory world. This is a good thing that theres an independent Advisory Board. Without going into too much detail about it, you will recall that the fda itself has come under all the same, you know, bizarre, snake oil pressure that the cdc and all the other Government Agencies did from the quacks at the Trump White House over the course of this epidemic. It is good that the fda calls on outside experts to help them make hard decisions about vaccine safety. I mean you will recall that under the trump administration, we got fda approval and then fda unapproval of hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for covid after President Trump saw segments about it on knfox news prime ti. They had to quickly unapprove it when it became obvious through the Scientific Method that it wasnt actually helping. Its good the fda is not making this decision on its own given the way they have been pressured by the Trump White House just like the cdc has. For vaccine safety, this will be a panel of outside experts, a panel of 23 independent outside experts who are formed as an Advisory Group specifically to advise the fda on whether or not to give their approval for vaccines. That is a good system. That is a sound structure. And when that group meets tomorrow to hear the evidence and take questions and have their discussion and make their recommendations, the signs are good that theyre going to say yes, that this vaccine should be approved. The head of the committee is a researcher at the university of ni, and he said, quote, i would predict the likelihood approval is high. Well all get to see it fran transparently ourselves. That meeting is tomorrow morning, and it does mean we will likely have a vaccine against coronavirus approved in the United States as of the time i am talking to you tomorrow night. But even still, we will still likely have something on the order of 3,000 more americans dead tomorrow if tomorrow is anything like today. Even in the best case scenario, it will be months and months and ask months before enough americans are vaccinated to put a dent in the epidemic. I mean it does give us something to aim for, right . We can now say to ourselves and to each other, its not forever. You just need to do everything you can to get you and your family through to the vaccine, right . Stay safe and stay uninfected for long enough to get you through to the vaccine. The sacrifices that we are making, economic, social, mental health, and every other way, they are very, very difficult sacrifices, but they wont be forever. Stay safe. Keep you and your family uninfected and alive long enough to get through to the vaccine. It is good to know what the closed bracket is on these parentheses, right . It is good to have even a glimpse, even an expectation of how this might someday end when we finally get there. But its going to be a long time till were there, and meanwhile right now, we are in the bottomlands. 3,000 americans dead in one day today. 1 in 22 americans have tested positive for coronavirus. Over 100,000 americans hospitalized with coronavirus tonight and intensive care units capitol hilled capitol hilled to capacity in communities all across the country. We have an expert joining us tonight, this hour, to talk about the way some communities in the United States are now diagnosing not just individual people that have the virus via individual testing. Some communities are now using a direct and fairly simple way to diagnose the overall level of Coronavirus Infection in the whole community all at once. So were going to talk tonight with that expert about what to do when a diagnostic tool like that, which shows you the level of infection in a whole community, what that community should do if that tool all of a sudden reveals a scary superhigh new spike in infections. That is what happened this past week in one major u. S. City. They have a diagnostic tool that tells them how much coronavirus there is in the whole city all at once. It went off the charts within this past week. How is that city responding knowing that even though all of those people whose infections are represented in that data may not know theyre positive, the city now knows thats whats coming. What do you do when you know the train is coming at you that fast . So were talking about that tonight. As i mentioned, theres also legal and Political Drama tonight basically on all fronts. The son of president elect joe biden, hunter biden, announced today that his, quote, tax affairs are being investigated by the u. S. Attorney, by the top federal prosecutor in the state of delaware. Hunter biden, you will recall, was the subject of a vociferous Smear Campaign by the president and his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, some of which played a role in the president s impeachment. That Smear Campaign against biden late in the campaign was joined by elected republicans in both the house and the senate. None of that Smear Campaign raised against hunter biden by republicans at all levels none of that Smear Campaign was about Hunter Bidens tax affairs, but thats what he says he is being investigated for now. Cnn is reporting tonight that this investigation was live before the president ial election, that it essentially went dormant in the immediate leadup to the election because of that u. S. Justice Department Policy that says investigations related to candidates and their campaigns shouldnt be carried out in such a way that they might influence federal election in the immediate runup to those elections. But now that the elections over, it appears that whatever hunter biden may be under scrutiny for, financially or in his phrase, his tax affairs, whatever that was, it went dormant around the time of the election according to cnns reporting. But it appears to have started back up. On the other end of the legal spectrum, 48 states and territories and the federal government filed coordinated lawsuits today that have the aim basically of breaking up facebook as an illegal monopoly. Facebook has conducted itself in the Public Domain in such a way that it has alienated and enraged basically everyone all across the political spectrum except for the trolls and fraudsters and botnet operators that have turned facebook into a monetized disinformation and extremism gold mine. They love it. Everybody else is concerned. That said, even without a friend in the world, facebook is a globeenveloping, monopolistic behemoth with all the money in the world. So well see if this antitrust effort against them registers anything more than a flea bite for that giant concern. I mean it is rare for anything to bring together 48 states and the federal government, particularly this iteration of our federal government. But if anything can do it, its problemly the predatory, glut news, civil war auto generating, truth erasing toxicity that is facebook at 1 hacker way. While were on the subject of charming healthy and lovely things, this came back in the news today unexpectedly. In august of this year, right after thencandidate joe biden picked california senator Kamala Harris to be his Vice President ial running mate, you might remember this. The once great magazine news week inexplekly published an apparently not satirical column, essay basically, that claimed that senator harris was ineligible to be Vice President because secretly she wasnt a real u. S. Citizen. What . Nice going, news week. The arkment immediately then spewed out of the mouth of the president of the United States after news wooek published that, the president immediately started parroting the line as if it had been conveyed to him in the most credible terms. He told reporters, quote, i heard today that she doesnt meet the requirements to be Vice President. Oh, he heard this today when he was browsing through newsweek. Oh, i see. Where he heard that from is this article written by this guy, john eastman, who wrote this up is down, black is white, you know, constitution doesnt exist column, which newsweek published, which claimed that senator harris was secretly foreign and therefore not only could she not be Vice President , eastman claimed that she should be stripped of her seat in the United States senate too. This guy eastman is a legal eagle who goes on rightwing talk radio like the hugh hewitt show and stuff. A and in his wisdom, hes decided to wage this campaign that says being born in the United States doesnt make you a u. S. Citizen. His whole public shtick is if your parents were immigrants, youre not really american. Again, this is totally contrary to centuries of lived experiences much what it is to be america. Its also totally contrary to what the plain language is in the constitution. But it sounds awesome if youre trying to disqualify candidates for Public Office that you dont like for other reasons, right . This reasoning would of course mean that maybe barack obama was secretly foreign too, and so he wasnt really a legitimate president at all. Where did we hear that from, right . The foremost proponent of that theory during the Obama Presidency is the current president of the United States, donald trump. But eastman advanced this theory for Kamala Harris too because her parents were immigrant even though she was born in oakland, california. Now, it should be noted about this guy, and it isnt often enough noted about this guy that mr. Eastman, the gentleman who advanced this cockamamie theory about senator Kamala Harris in 2010, which then ran immediately to the white house, and the president started pitching it too. Eastman himself ran for attorney general in california in the year 2010. He never became attorney general of california. He lost in 2010 in the primary to the guy who ended up losing in the general election to Kamala Harris, who was the attorney general of the state of california. So there may be some sore loserism going on here, but, you know, im sure that didnt have any impact on his thinking whatsoever. Anyway, the way this worked out is that even President Trump eventually dropped this ridiculous line. Kamala harris was born in oakland, california. Shes a u. S. Citizen. Shes not going to get stripped of her senate seat, and shes eligible to be Vice President of the United States. President trump floated this, maybe thought he might be able to pursue this along the same lines as he pursued it against president obama. It didnt float well. He stopped trying to use that against her fairly quickly and never mentioned it again. The other way this worked out is that newsweek had to apologize for having run this nonsense. They initially tried to defend it but then eventually they had to just say they were sorry. And the whole thing died away. Kamala harris was elected Vice President of the United States. She will be sworn in soon as Vice President of the United States. The quack legal radio commentator guy who tried to get this idea into the bloodstream that senator harris is secretly not a citizen, he melted back into obscurity. Well never hear from that guy again until today. Guess where that guy turned up today. Hes the Trump Campaigns new lawyer. Hes the lawyer who filed the brief today seeking to have the Trump Campaign intervene, seeking to have donald trump intervene in the Supreme Court lawsuit that we covered here last night. This is the Supreme Court lawsuit brought by the Texas Attorney general, which seeks on behalf of the people of texas to flip the Election Results in a whole bunch of other states, to throw out the Election Results in just enough swing states that voted for joe biden that donald trump should be declared the winner instead of biden. The Kamala Harris birther guy, who Newsweek Magazine had to apologize for, he is now the lawyer representing donald trump seeking to join this lawsuit in the United StatesSupreme Court. President trump is now telling his supporters that this lawsuit is the big one. This is the one thats going to get him the presidency. This is the one thats going to overturn the election. This is the case brought by the attorney general of the state of texas, who really might be doing this because he reportedly, himself, is under fbi investigation for abusing his office in texas. This whole lawsuit may very well be ken paxtons effort to try to get trumps attention so he can get himself a pardon because he believes hes under fbi investigation. But this lawsuit is patently, patently insane. This is texas suing pennsylvania, georgia, wisconsin, and michigan over how those other states conducted their elections. Now, why does texas have anything to say about that . Excellent question. Nevertheless, texas wants the Supreme Court to throw out the Election Results from all those states and delay the Electoral College vote next week indefinitely. Throw out all the Electoral College votes from tho