• Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who recently recovered from covid-19 after spending seven days in a hospital intensive care unit, said that he was wrong not to wear a mask at the White House after he and President Donald Trump both came down with the coronavirus. "I believed that when I entered the White House grounds, that I had entered a safe zone, due to the testing that and I and many others underwent every day," Christie said in a statement Thursday. "I was wrong." Christie called on all political leaders to advocate for face coverings, with the practice becoming increasingly politicized even as the pandemic has killed more than 217,000 Americans. Christie added that: "Every public official, regardless of party or position, should advocate for every American to wear a mask in public, appropriately socially distance and to wash your hands frequently every day." Christie was at the White House for the announcement of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the president's nominee to the Supreme Court and to help Trump's debate preparations. "No one should be happy to get the virus and no one should be cavalier about being infected or infecting others," Christie said. Trump has since called his illness "a blessing from God," arguing it exposed him to promising therapeutics. He has also been an inconsistent advocate for mask wearing, holding large rallies of thousands of people where many of his supporters do not follow public health guidance to cover their faces. At a town hall in Miami, Trump said of Christie's statement, "He has to say that," insisting that he supports masks and calling Christie "a friend of mine."
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• Some final thoughts from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and some previously unreleased materials have been gathered by one of her former clerks and will appear in a book coming out in March. The University of California Press announced this week that it will publish "Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life's Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union," on which Ginsburg worked in collaboration with Amanda Tyler. The book was in production at the time Ginsburg died on Sept. 18 at age 87, and was originally scheduled for next fall. "Over the spring and summer of this year, as Justice Ginsburg and I assembled this book, I had the special privilege of working closely with her one last time," said Tyler, now a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. "As we exchanged drafts of various parts of this book, the Justice was every bit as rigorous an editor as she had been 20 years ago when I clerked for her. Right up until the end, she was still teaching me about the craft of writing, how important precision is, and to never use four words when three will do."
