Weekly Review

Attorney General William Barr conceded that the Justice Department had found no credible evidence of voter fraud, while a Washington Post survey found that only 27 congressional Republicans were willing to admit that Trump lost the election, and two insisted that he had won.^{1 2} At a hearing at the Michigan House of Representatives, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, urged state lawmakers to subvert certified election results and was heard to break wind on at least two occasions.^{3 4} One of Giuliani’s witnesses, Melissa Carone, an IT contractor who until recently was on probation for sending sex tapes of herself to her fiancé’s ex-wife and then accusing her of having stolen them, and whose claims a Wayne County judge recently found to be “not credible,” alleged that up to a hundred thousand fraudulent votes had been cast in the state, while another witness, Hima Kolanagireddy, argued that voter ID laws were essential because “all Chinese people look alike.”^{5 6 7} The Trump Administration was reportedly considering a number of midnight regulations, including orders designed to further restrict access to food stamps; loosen conservation standards for washers, dryers, and showerheads; permit federally funded homeless shelters to house transgender individuals according to the sex they were assigned at birth; and prevent companies from being held accountable for accidentally killing birds.⁸

New Los Angeles COVID-19 restrictions prohibited nonessential walking but not the playing of golf or pickleball, and the Ohio High School Athletic Association announced that it would permit wrestling, but ban handshakes before and after matches.^{9 10} Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, California, apologized for attending a Thanksgiving dinner that included members of five different households, in violation of state rules; Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, apologized for advising Austin residents to “stay home if you can” in a video message filmed in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; and Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma and the first governor known to have contracted COVID-19, declined to comment after he was photographed wearing a mask improperly on a plane shortly after announcing a “day of prayer and fasting” for victims of COVID-19.^{11 12 13 14} At least 41 attendees of the Naughty N’awlins swingers convention contracted COVID-19, and Belgian police raided an approximately 20-person, all-male “bareback” orgy in Brussels that was held in violation of lockdown rules, arresting, among others, József Szájer, a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament known for promoting anti-LGBT policies, and who once bragged of having drafted the Hungarian constitution, which defines marriage as strictly between a man and a woman, on his iPad.^{15 16 17 18} Scientists expressed concern that COVID-19 could cause long-term erectile dysfunction. Pet names for 2020 were found to include Rona, Corona, Covi, and Covid.^{19 20}

Russian police announced that they had apprehended the Volga Maniac.²¹ Over one thousand English people vowed to attend an “egg-throwing contest” on the day a statue honoring Margaret Thatcher is set to be unveiled in her hometown of Grantham.²² Adolf Hitler Uunona was elected to a councillorship in Namibia with 84.88 percent of the vote.²³ “It was not until I was growing up that I realized that this man wanted to subjugate the whole world,” he said of his namesake. “I have nothing to do with any of these things.” A book about the right-wing politician Matteo Salvini titled Why Salvini Deserves Trust, Respect, and Admiration, which consists of 110 blank pages, climbed to the top of Italian bestseller lists.²⁴ South Korea revised its Military Service Act to enable K-Pop stars to defer their mandatory service, a privilege previously afforded only to athletes and award-winning classical musicians, after the K-Pop band BTS reached number one on the U.S. pop charts with “Dynamite.”^{25 26} The U.S. director of national intelligence warned that China is creating genetically modified soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities”; the Chinese government announced plans to expand a weather-modification program to provide artificial rainfall to a region the size of India; and the Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered moon rocks and planted a Chinese flag on the lunar surface.^{27 28 29} Haim Eshed, the former head of security for Israel’s space security, claimed that the U.S. government had signed a treaty with a “galactic federation” of aliens in a subterranean Martian base.³⁰ “The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here,” Eshed told an Israeli newspaper. “Humanity is not ready yet.”