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'The Office' star Angela Kinsey tests positive for COVID

Actress Angela Kinsey of "The Office" has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to an announcement she posted to Instagram Wednesday.

The 49-year-old shared her diagnosis with fans in an Instagram story, saying, "I knew the odds were against me since I was living with 4 Covid positive people. I really tried to quarantine and not get it."

Kinsey's husband, Joshua Snyder, two stepsons and daughter all have tested positive for the virus in recent weeks, People reports.

A photo of the test result Kinsey shared to her story shows that she received her positive result on Tuesday. She went to get retested after starting to feel ill, she explained.

Currently she's experiencing symptoms including loss of taste and smell and exhaustion, but claims she never had a fever.



https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/532162-the-office-star-angela-kinsey-tests-positive-for-covid

Georgia voters flood polls ahead of crucial Senate contests

More than 2.5 million voters have cast ballots during the early voting period for Georgia’s high-stakes runoffs for two U.S. Senate seats, shattering records as both Democrats and Republicans mount unprecedented efforts to get their supporters to the polls.

The twin contests between Sen. David Perdue (R) and investigative journalist Jon Ossoff (D) and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) and the Rev. Raphael Warnock (D) will determine which party controls the Senate, and they’ve drawn hundreds of millions in campaign contributions and outside spending.

Underscoring just how narrowly divided the state is, the vast majority of that money has been spent trying to mobilize voters, rather than persuading the undecided.

“It’s a base turnout election. Both of these candidates in both of these races have enough votes to win. It’s about which candidate can turn out their base on Jan. 5,” said Chip Lake, a veteran Republican strategist who worked for Loeffler’s opponent, Rep. Doug Collins (R), in the November general election.

The Republican campaigns and their outside allies have deployed about 1,000 staffers to knock on doors and turn out votes. Democrats declined to detail their field teams, but in one measure of just how large the effort is, Ossoff’s campaign employed a 30-person unit solely dedicated to registering new voters.



https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/532129-georgia-voters-flood-polls-ahead-of-crucial-senate-contests

Biden's pick for Labor Secretary down to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, California labor chief Julie Su.

Joe Biden‘s transition team faces an increasingly difficult decision in its hunt for labor secretary, as it weighs what’s come down to a contest between Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and California Labor Secretary Julie Su.

The president-elect is under mounting pressure from Asian-American and Pacific Islander leaders to give Su the top spot, instead of Walsh. The transition has tried to broker a compromise by floating Su as deputy labor secretary, but she’s expressed reservations about taking the deputy post, which complicates a final decision on one of the last Cabinet slots Biden must fill.

The transition in recent days has tried to arrange that package of Walsh—a former union leader and close Biden friend—as U.S. labor secretary and Su as second-in-command at the U.S. Labor Department, three sources familiar with the discussions said. The team contacted Su about serving as deputy labor secretary this past weekend, but a source familiar with the discussion said the California official wasn’t told who Biden has in mind for secretary and was unsure whether she’d take the No. 2 spot.

Walsh, who’s preparing to run for his third term as mayor next year, has been told it’s down to him or Su for labor secretary, another source briefed on the matter told Bloomberg Law. Another previous contender for the post, former Obama White House adviser Patrick Gaspard, who is Black, appears to no longer be in top contention, several sources said.



https://news.bloomberglaw.com/safety/biden-labor-chief-choice-stalls-on-boston-mayor-californias-su

Nearly every inmate at Alaska's biggest prison has contracted COVID-19

New data from the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) shows that almost every inmate held at the state's largest prison has contracted the coronavirus since the pandemic hit the facility in November, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Out of 1,236 total inmates at Goose Creek Correctional Center (GCCC), 1,115 have tested positive for COVID-19, corrections spokeswoman Sarah Gallagher told the newspaper on Tuesday.

"To date, 1,271 tests have been recorded at GCCC, though this figure may be slightly increased due to the fact that DOC has performed both antigen and PCR tests, which may have resulted in an offender’s positive test being counted twice," Gallagher told the Daily News. "We believe roughly 1,115 offenders have tested positive at Goose Creek to date.

As of Monday, only 112 of those were active cases, Gallagher reportedly added.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that more than 40 percent of all Alaska inmates have contracted COVID-19. Of the 1,966 total cases, 1,774 of those were a result of internal spread. Only 192 cases were traced to outsiders.



https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/532148-nearly-every-inmate-at-alaskas-biggest-prison-has-contracted-covid-19

Ohio inmate who survived execution attempt died of possible COVID-19 complications

Ohio prison officials said death row inmate Romell Broom, who survived an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2009, died on Monday of possible COVID-19 complications at age 64.

Sarah French, a spokesperson for the state prisons system, told The Columbus Dispatch that Broom had been placed on the “COVID probable list” maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The list includes inmates who are suspected to have died of the coronavirus, pending death certificates.

Broom became the second inmate nationally to survive an attempted execution during in 2009.

Then 53 years old, the condemned inmate cried in pain during the unsuccessful attempt to put him to death via lethal injection, according to the outlet. The execution was called off after two hours because technicians could not find a suitable vein.

Bloom’s attorneys argued that he should not be subjected to a second execution attempt and filed arguments with the Supreme Court, The Dispatch noted.



https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/532102-ohio-inmate-who-survived-execution-attempt-died-of-possible-covid-19

Youth voter turnout in Georgia runoffs shows signs of sustained enthusiasm post-November

George Lefkowicz was just 14 when President Trump was elected, and still too young to vote the day Trump was voted out of office. But the Atlanta resident, who turned 18 just days after the Nov.?3 election, won’t miss his next chance to have a say in the country’s future.
Lefkowicz has already cast his ballot in a pair of Jan.?5 Senate runoffs in his state, voting for the two Democratic challengers over the Republican incumbents. The closely watched contests will determine which party controls the Senate next year.

“I’ve always been super interested in voting,” said Lefkowicz, a high school senior. “But this one’s super important because it will decide the future of American politics for the next two years, and if you want to get anything done, you have to work through the Senate.”

More than 281,000 voters under 30 have already cast their ballots in the runoffs, rivaling the historic early turnout of young voters in Georgia at this point in the November election. It is an unusual level of enthusiasm for an age group that typically has low rates of voting — particularly in runoff elections, which historically draw much less attention than presidential races.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-runoff-youth-vote/2020/12/30/8104720c-4605-11eb-b0e4-0f182923a025_story.html

Sen. David Perdue became wealthy outsourcing work to Asia.

When Republican David Perdue ran for the Senate six years ago, he spoke proudly of his years as a corporate executive in Asia. He made no apologies for having said that he “spent most of my career” relying on the outsourcing of jobs. He fended off attacks that he had enriched himself as companies he led relied on offshore production, and he won the Georgia seat.

But as Perdue seeks reelection, in a contest that will determine which party controls the Senate, he has sought to shift the focus away from such work as he allies himself with President Trump, who has blasted corporate executives who move jobs overseas.

The disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric about returning manufacturing jobs from China and the experience of Perdue was evident at an October rally in Macon with Trump. Perdue did not mention specifics about his career, telling the crowd, “I’m just a dumb business guy from right over that hill.”

That was followed by Trump promising to make the United States “the manufacturing superpower of the world. And we will end our reliance on China once and for all.” Trump made no reference to the fact that Perdue, whom he called a “very successful man,” made much of his fortune by heading Asian operations for a number of companies that relied on Chinese manufacturing of products sold in the United States.

In fact, Perdue was a top executive at some of the country’s best-known consumer brands, spending years in Hong Kong and Singapore, which he used as bases to travel across Asia to take advantage of the region’s lower-cost workforces. He was senior vice president of Asia operations for Sara Lee, a conglomerate that owned clothing lines and wanted to expand production in China, and global vice president and later president of Reebok, which made most of its footwear overseas, including in China.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perdue-outsourcing-trump/2020/12/30/29242e28-4084-11eb-a402-fba110db3b42_story.html

Biden, Harris going back to Georgia before Senate runoffs

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia in the final days before the state’s two Senate runoff elections on Tuesday, in a last-ditch bid to boost the Democratic candidates who could flip control of the chamber.

Harris will visit Savannah, Ga., on Sunday, and Biden will appear in Atlanta on Monday — the eve of the election — to campaign for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, according to a Wednesday news release from the president-elect’s transition team.

Ossoff, an investigative journalist and former congressional candidate, is facing off against first-term Republican Sen. David Perdue on Jan. 5, after neither candidate earned more than 50 percent of the vote in the November election.

Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, is challenging appointed Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the race to finish out the final two years of former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. Warnock and Loeffler were the top two vote-getters in the 21-person all-party special election for Loeffler’s seat in November.


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/30/biden-harris-back-to-georgia-452236

Man hospitalized for COVID-19 after Queens Republican club Christmas party

At least one person has been hospitalized for COVID-19 after attending an indoor Christmas dance party hosted by the Whitestone Republican Club earlier this month, the Eagle has learned.

James Trent, chair of the affiliated Queens Village Republican Club, was admitted to North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset where he is recovering from COVID-19, he said from his hospital room Wednesday morning.

Trent said he first began experiencing COVID symptoms two days after attending the Dec. 9 party, which featured a conga line of maskless patrons dancing to the BeeGees in a widely viewed video first reported by the Eagle.

Trent said he was surprised that he got COVID after attending the party because he “wasn’t doing anything risky.”

“I wasn’t on the conga line. I ate by myself,” he said. “I don’t know how I got this."

When asked whether he regretted attending the party, Trent said it was an “interesting question.”

"It was a wonderful time and a great party, but I’m not happy I got sick," he said.




https://queenseagle.com/all/man-hospitalized-for-covid-after-queens-republican-clubs-christmas-party