7 Things: Alabama backs Texas challenge of Pennsylvania’s vote, Shelby seeks to avoid a government shutdown, Alabama’s coronavirus numbers are very bad and more …

7. Biden vows to reopen schools

• Former Vice President Joe Biden has vowed that within his first 100 days in office as president, he wants to have almost every school in the country reopened for in-person instruction. This comes after he said he would ask people to wear masks for his first 100 days.
• Biden has also said that he wants to distribute 100 million vaccines for the coronavirus in that span of time. He advised, “It should be a national priority to get our kids back into school and keep them in school.” Biden added that they would need more funding to make sure students and teachers are protected.

6. Jones is still the frontrunner to be Attorney General

• U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) is still seen as the frontrunner to be U.S. Attorney General if former Vice President Joe Biden takes office as president. Jones hasn’t commented on whether he’d accept such a nomination, though.
• Biden has made a point of choosing people who would be considered “diverse” picks for each appointment, and while Jones is a white male, he’s being considered for his legal record on issues of race and civil rights.

5. Alabama small businesses are getting in on Georgia’s Senate race 

• Alabama state director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) Rosemary Elebash has weighed in on how small businesses are closely watching the U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia.
• Elebash outlined, “Small business owners need a business-friendly Senate to stop tax increases, increasing federal minimum wage and restoring individual mandate for health insurance premiums.”

4. Alabama hospitals looking for retired nurses

• As coronavirus hospitalizations continue to climb, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital has started requesting that retired nurses and nursing students come to work as the hospital deals with staffing challenges. UAB chief nursing officer Terri Poe noted they “find ourselves challenged beyond where we were a few months ago.”
• Decatur Morgan Hospital is also looking for nurses, according to a spokesperson. Kelli Powers stated, “If there is any retired nurses or retired physicians that would like to come back and help, we would love to do that.” Powers added that it doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but they just need some help. She said, “We would work with you, if you could only work a few hours just to give somebody a break.”

3. Coronavirus smashing records as vaccine progresses

• Yesterday, the United Kingdom saw their first vaccination and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported favorably on Pfizer’s vaccine, but the good news can’t turn into tangible results soon enough for the state of Alabama.
• The Yellowhammer State is seeing record numbers of hospitalizations for COVID-19 patients for eight of the last nine days. BamaTracker shows an average of 2,710 new cases of the coronavirus over the last wee, and that is the biggest week so far.

2. Government shutdown should be avoided

• U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has commented on the issue of whether there will be a government shutdown due to having to approve a budget. This comes as a one-week stopgap to avoid a partial shutdown on Friday.
• Shelby said that there’s a way to get the budget negotiations worked out, and he believes that they will. He believes they’ll have enough time to avoid an actual government shutdown.

1. Texas is going to court

• A lawsuit has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by Texas as a challenge to the voting procedures in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The lawsuit states that these voting procedures violated the Constitution. Texas is not alone, as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and South Dakota have joined the case.
• The argument is that the Electors Clause of the Constitution was violated as there were changes made to procedures outside of state legislatures that were instead made in court or through executive action. As a result, Texas is saying that there were “voting irregularities.”