Notations On The Grid (Mid-Week Edition): Out & About in America

 

The opening thought from Andy Slavitt said it all as we headline an image of Laguna Beach with this below courtesy the Washington Post: 

Keeping up with politics is easy now.

By Amber Phillips  Email Since we last talked, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have acknowledged that Joe Biden will be the next president — in that order. Republican strategists I’ve talked to, including those close to McConnell, have wondered when and how he’d find an exit ramp to indulging Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. The electoral college voting for Biden for president was it. “The decision by the electoral college yesterday was determinative,” McConnell said Tuesday afternoon, by way of explaining why he, finally, five weeks later, acknowledged that Biden won the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledges Joe Biden's win on Dec. 15. (Rod Lamkey/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) We have not yet seen a wave of other Republican lawmakers acknowledging Biden’s win too — though there have been some. And Trump certainly hasn’t conceded; far from it, he continues to tweet his baseless fraud claims. ADVERTISEMENT   But at the very least, McConnell forged a path for other Republican lawmakers to follow, one that leads directly away from Trump, as The Fix’s Aaron Blake writes. McConnell is the lawmaker in the Senate that Biden really cares about acknowledging his election victory, since the two will be working together a lot next year — especially if Republicans keep control of the Senate majority by winning two Georgia runoffs. Shortly after all this, McConnell took his first concrete step to stop Trump’s challenges by urging senators in a private call not to join House lawmakers in challenging the results when Congress counts them in January, reports The Post’s Seung Min Kim. (More on how that challenge works and will fail, especially without any senators on board.) Biden keeps giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt Biden arrives Dec. 14 to give a victory speech after the electoral college voted him the next president. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post) Republicans like McConnell were just caught in a tricky political situation, Biden has said recently. They’ll come around when Trump is gone. He’s even gone so far as to say he understands why Republicans have ignored his win. And on Tuesday, he and McConnell spoke — possibly for the first time since Biden won — and it was Biden who called McConnell, he explained, “to thank him for the congratulations.” ADVERTISEMENT   Don’t get me wrong — Biden has definitely had some sharp words for Trump and his allies who have actively tried to undermine the election, like the ones who signed onto a baseless lawsuit last week that the Supreme Court quickly dispensed with. But as I write here, Biden has been extending a remarkably gracious olive branch to Republicans, Republicans he knows he needs to work with next year. So far, he’s one of the only major players on both sides of the aisle willing to do so. What you need to know about Pete Buttigieg joining Biden’s Cabinet Who he is again: Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who ran for president last year. He positioned himself as one of Biden’s main rivals for the centrist wing. Buttigieg did pretty well in the primaries — in largely White states. He struggled with voters of color and eventually dropped out, just in time to endorse Biden in a critical moment that ended up being the catalyst for Biden’s win. Biden and Buttigieg campaign together in March 2020. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) How you pronounce his name again: Boot-edge-edge is what his campaign liked to say. What Biden’s nominating him for: Transportation secretary. No, Buttigieg doesn’t have explicit experience in transportation. Or even experience in the federal government. The size of the department he’ll run is like a small city, which is the last big thing he did, report The Post’s Michael Laris, Ian Duncan and Seung Min Kim. But it’s also a catalyst for Buttigieg to get that experience, they say, especially if he can help Biden get deals with Congress on rebuilding the nation’s aging roads and bridges, and on climate change and vehicle emissions. Biden’s pandemic inauguration is taking shape It will be on the steps of the Capitol just like any other inauguration. But they’re going to ask that people don’t come and form a crowd, reports The Post’s Matt Viser. There will be a parade, but it will be a hybrid in-person-virtual event. Still in doubt: Whether Trump will attend, or invite Biden for a traditional tea beforehand. Biden will arrive in office amid a pandemic. It will be his biggest challenge — but also an opportunity. By Amy Goldstein ●  Read more »   Potential family conflicts arise for Joe Biden and aides as his administration drafts new ethics rules By Michael Scherer ●  Read more »   William P. Barr to depart as attorney general, Trump announces By Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett ●  Read more »   New poll is a warning sign for the GOP in Georgia Analysis ●  By Aaron Blake ●  Read more »   Ken Paxton has had Trump’s back. But the Texas attorney general’s latest gambit has failed. By Arelis R. Hernández and Maria Sacchetti ●  Read more »   What are you curious about in politics? Read more »

Notations From the Grid (Special Edition): On #Pandemic Watch

 

December 15, 2020

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, add a digital pandemic on top of the the worst public health catastrophe in 102 years.

Cybersecurity investigators are scrambling to assess the damage caused by a widespread breach of U.S. federal agencies and private companies. A list of affected organizations includes the Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, and State Departments, plus the National Institutes of Health, and parts of the Pentagon, according to the latest news reports.

Yet the blast radius likely extends much farther. In addition to the government, top national labs, and hundreds of universities, many big businesses may have been targeted by the 9-month-long cyberespionage operation. SolarWinds, the little-known software company based in Austin, Texas, that’s at the center of the compromise, estimates that more than half the customers of its pervasive Orion network management products could have been affected: around 18,000 customers.

That’s according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing SolarWinds put out on Monday, now buried under a flurry of share sales disclosures. (You can view its since-stricken customer list, captured by the Internet Archive, to get an idea of the possible breadth of the cyberattack.)

SolarWinds was patient zero. The company’s systems were hacked, and its IT tools were subverted to deliver Trojan horses all over the map. The situation, a so-called software supply chain attack, recalls the NotPetya malware attack of 2017, when Russian agents unleashed a global cyberattack by subverting the software update mechanism of a popular accounting tool developed by a Ukrainian tech company. (You can read preliminary analyses of the SolarWinds hack by digital forensics firm FireEye and Microsoft.)

Though it’s still early and investigations are ongoing, cybersecurity researchers suspect nation state hackers are to blame, due to the sophistication of the hacking campaign. In particular, they’re pointing fingers at the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service and a successor to the KGB. As usual, the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., denied the allegations.

The Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, tasked with coordinating defenses across government and industry, is attempting to get a grip on the situation, issuing alerts and advising people to update their software or unplug systems that use Orion tooling. But the agency is also reeling from recent turnover after President Trump removed its founding director, Chris Krebs, who refused to play along with Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. (To nip misinformation in the bud: Dominion Voting Systems, a central target of Trump’s conspiracy theorizing, says it has never used SolarWinds’ Orion products.)

When President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January (now that his victory is electoral college-official), he is going to inherit not just the COVID-19 scourge, but this unholy mess too.

Robert Hackett

Notations from the Grid (Special Edition): Witness to History .....