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

202 for Thursday, December 10. In today's news, President Trump pressures congressional Republicans to join his fight to overturn the election results.

A probe turns up possible criminal conduct by the VA secretary, but Bill Barr's Justice

Department won't prosecute. And Hunter Biden confirms he is under federal

investigation.

But first, the big idea. A cold wind whipped through the South Dakota prairie

as they laid Buck Timmons to rest.

Timmons, a long-time coach and referee was not the first person in the 15,600-person town of Mitchell to die of the coronavirus.

He was not even the first of the week.

As the funeral director tucked blankets over the knees of Timmons's widow, Nancy,

Pastor Rhonda Wellstant Zell

told the small group of masked mourners

that just as there had been seasons in the coach's life, basketball season, football season,

volleyball season, Mitchell was now enduring a phase of its own, pandemic season.

In a state where the Republican Governor, Christie Nome, has defied calls for a statewide mask mandate even as cases hit record levels, Annie Gowan reports that many in a rural community, an hour west of Sioux Falls, ignored

the virus for months, not bothering with masks or social distancing.

But then people started to die, the wife of the former bank president, a state legislator,

the guy whose family has owned the bike shop in town since 1959. Then Timmons, a mild spoken 72-year-old who had worked with

hundreds of local kids. His death shook Mitchell just as its leaders were contemplating something previously denounced and dismissed

a requirement that its staunchly conservative residents wear masks Mitchell, the medical emergency helicopter,

once a rare occurrence now comes nearly every day,

fairing the growing number of people desperately ill with COVID to a hospital that might be able to save them.

...