Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

2002 for Wednesday, December 9th. In today's news, the Supreme Court rejects an

attempt by President Trump's allies to overturn

Pennsylvania's election results. President-elect Biden selects a housing and

agriculture secretary and the White House proposes dramatically lower unemployment benefits in

exchange for $600 stimulus checks. But first, the big idea. The United States surpassed 15 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday.

This milestone comes just five days after we reached 14 million.

Our country reported 219,282 new cases yesterday

as the contagion killed another 2,590 of our fellow Americans.

There's a lot of news to cover, including about COVID, but something that happened last night

in Boise, Idaho unsettled me. So I want to start with that. Minutes into a public health

district's virtual meeting to vote on a local mask mandate, County Commissioner

Diana Lachiondo excused herself after getting a phone call that anti-mask protesters had surrounded her home.

She told the group that she had to go because her 12-year-old son was home alone and a large group was banging on the doors. The

visibly upset commissioner who was in tears, then disconnected from the call,

leaving her colleagues,

stunned. A video of the public meetings on YouTube. leaving her stund.

A video of the public meetings on YouTube

and watching it, you just can't help but feel for her.

The commissioners soon learned

that hundreds of protesters had masked outside the district health

office and outside another board member's residence as well, targeting the

...