Your Friday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
 | | Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times |
|
1. Lawmakers are desperately working to stave off a government shutdown after stimulus talks faltered — again. |
Congress hit an impasse over a Republican bid to curb the Federal Reserve’s ability to restart pandemic relief programs and fight future financial crises. President-elect Joe Biden and other Democrats argued the proposal would eliminate a crucial tool to stabilize the sputtering economy. Negotiations could last into the weekend. |
Also in Washington: The Supreme Court will delay ruling on a Trump administration plan to omit unauthorized immigrants from census data used to allocate House seats. The practical effect of the ruling may be limited because Census Bureau officials have said they may not be able to produce the data before Mr. Trump leaves office. |
 | | Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times |
|
2. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize Moderna’s vaccine for emergency use tonight. And just in time. |
It has been a discouraging week to say the least. The U.S. recorded more than 3,600 deaths on Wednesday, shattering the previous record, and set a national case record, with more than 245,000 new infections. Above, a Covid-19 patient in Apple Valley, Calif. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
3. “I didn’t feel a thing.” |
That’s Vice President Mike Pence, who along with his wife, Karen Pence, received a coronavirus vaccine on Friday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, the senate majority leader, were among the first lawmakers to receive the vaccine. President Trump was notably absent. |
In any other era, the vaccination on live television of Mr. Pence would have been a moment to bring the nation together. But vaccine hesitancy has become deeply partisan. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Republicans were the group most likely to be hesitant about the coronavirus vaccine. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
4. President Trump has raised millions since his defeat. He’ll exit the White House with a pile of campaign funds, and few legal limits on how he can spend it. |
Mr. Trump has raised roughly $250 million since Election Day along with the Republican Party, cementing his position as an unrivaled force and pre-eminent fund-raiser. He can use it to hold rallies, hire staff and even lay groundwork for a potential 2024 run. |
Separately, Lara Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, served on the board of a company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million, according to previously undisclosed new documents. |
 | | James Estrin/The New York Times |
|
5. New York City announced major changes to admissions policies for many selective schools to address segregation issues exacerbated by the pandemic. |
The change is by far the most sweeping yet by Mayor Bill de Blasio, above left, who has faced mounting pressure during the pandemic to address concerns that admissions policies have discriminated against Black and Latino students. |
Also in New York: An oversight agency said the city’s Police Department badly mishandled protests after George Floyd’s death, finding that the police were undertrained, unprepared and had engaged in “excessive enforcement.” |
 | Get the Coronavirus Schools Briefing A newsletter on how the pandemic is upending education. Sign up |
|
|
 | | Valery Sharifulin/Tass, via Getty Images |
|
6. An internal Times review found that “Caliphate,” an award-winning podcast that sought to shed light on the Islamic State terrorist group, did not meet the standards for Times journalism. |
The review found that “Caliphate” gave too much credence to the false or exaggerated accounts of one of its main subjects Shehroze Chaudhry, a resident of Canada who said he had assumed the name Abu Huzayfah as a member of the Islamic State. The Times started its review after Canadian authorities arrested Mr. Chaudhry in September and charged him with perpetrating a terrorist hoax. |
The podcast had two main problems, said Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor: the newspaper’s failure to assign an editor well versed in terrorism to keep a close watch on the series; and the “Caliphate” team’s lack of skepticism and rigor in its reporting on Mr. Chaudhry. |
 | | Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
|
7. Cyberpunk 2077, long hyped as the game of the decade, may not be worth the hype. |
Sony, which owns and operates PlayStation, removed Cyberpunk 2077 from its online store after a week of negative reviews and criticism over the game’s poor performance. Sony also said it would offer refunds to people who bought it through the PlayStation Store. |
CD Projekt Red, the game’s developer, pledged to fix the bugs and crashes that gamers complained about and said software patches would arrive in January and February. The developer received eight million pre-orders for Cyberpunk 2077, a role-playing game set in a dystopian crime-ridden megalopolis. |
 | | Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters |
|
8. Every year, the Vatican unveils a different Nativity scene, usually donated by an Italian town. This year’s “has had problems.” |
Previous installations have included 720 tons of beach sand, a Maltese fishing boat that evoked the travails of refugees, and works of mercy with a man visiting a prison cell and another burying a shrouded body. |
This year, the Vatican went in another direction, honoring Castelli, a town in the Abruzzo region of central-eastern Italy known for centuries for its ceramics. |
“It’s hideous,” said one visitor as she looked at the ceramic menagerie of animals — chicks that looked like fallen meteorites, a camel made of ceramic cubes — with horror. “Why do they have that one with the horns?” she asked. “What is that? A turkey?” |
 | | Laura Moss for The New York Times |
|
9. And in the U.S., when it comes to decorating for the holidays this year, more is more. |
Americans are bedazzling their rooflines and yards with gusto as they demand some cheer from 2020. Sales of string lights were up 194 percent in October 2020 over last year, according to a trade report. Professional holiday decorators started getting calls as early as August with requests for special displays that cost as much as $15,000. Above, Montclair, N.J. |
The Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn is especially known for its extravagant holiday displays. “Everyone knows I’m the guy who goes a little crazy this time of year,” one resident said. |
 | | Ed Alcock for The New York Times |
|
10. Finally, time to pop the bubbly. |
“It’s been a dismal year,” our wine critic Eric Asimov writes, “but let’s look at the bright side: It’s nearly over.” That means bubbles can still feel right to mark the occasion, so Eric picked 10 sparkling wines — from Champagne and elsewhere — well worth drinking at multiple price points. |
Simply emblazoning “Champagne” on a label is no guarantee of quality. But if you’re committed to the region, Eric created this guide to finding the best Champagne for you, including 10 excellent big houses and 10 small grower-producers (and a glossary so you can sound like you know what you’re talking about). |
Cheers to that, and to the weekend. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
|
