The Chronicles of Weibel
Fred E. Weibel Elemmentary
January 18, 2021
The 2020 Presidential Election
​
by Sameer Rajdev & Advika Bamididpati
In the 2020 U.S. presidential election there were so many interesting things that happened. For example, did you know we hit a milestone in the amount of people eligible to vote that actually came and voted? This was the first time that more than 159 million people voted in America. Joe Biden not only received the most amount of votes, winning the election, but the most amount of votes so far in presidential candidates history. He won more than 81 million votes and 306 electoral votes, meaning he won both the popular vote and the electoral college votes too. People also believe Joe Biden won because he had won important “swing states”. “Swing states'' are one of the names for states that will usually swing between Democrat or Republican. In other words you can’t really predict which party will win that state until the actual election. Even though 2020 might have not been the greatest year, we definitely hit many great milestones in this election.
However, while Biden may be officially president, Trump is not going to let him off so easily. Trump has made a series of unproven claims that the voting was fraudulent. He has said multiple times that ballots have been destroyed and that he would have won the election had it not been for the destruction of real ballots and the addition of fake ballots. According to the Washington Post, he has even asked Georgia's government to “find me 11,780 ballots”. However, the government responded by saying that the ballots were counted fairly. This proves that any claims that Trump has, in fact, won the election, are wrong.
Covid-19 Vaccine
​
by Advika Bamididpati
Health officials and scientists have released a vaccine for Covid-19! You may have heard about Covid-19 vaccines when quarantine started. This is because it became a race to create a vaccine for the virus. Since this is a worldwide pandemic, almost every company related to this field of technology wanted to be involved in discovering the vaccine. As soon as companies caught a hold of some experimental ideas, they tested them out. Pfizer and Moderna are two companies that have developed vaccines.
Whenever there is an infectious disease the first thing we should do is to contain it, then find a cure, and make sure that we cannot get reinfected. That’s exactly what we are trying to do now. Though you could argue we aren’t doing a great job of containing it. But now the vaccines are out! Although you might think this took too long, it usually takes years to develop a vaccine. Since they developed these ones in about a year, they have actually been created and gotten it approved the fastest in history. Another reason you may have felt it took a while is because there had been many false rumors from the beginning that a vaccine would be coming out soon.
Pfizer and BioNTech worked together to come up with a vaccine called BNT162b2. The FDA called an emergency authorization of Pfizer and BioNTechs’ product. However, now Moderna’s vaccine is also available....Read more
​
The Storming of the Capitol
​
by Sameer Rajdev
A few days ago, Capitol Hill was breached by protesters insisting Trump was president after Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election. According to Bloomberg, the motivation for the protest is “disrupting congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.” Also, Bloomberg says that “Trump eggs on supporters'', implying that the protest had started on his suggestion, but it is probably untrue. Some people think that the Georgia runoff elections, along with Trump's claims about a fraudulent election, set off this protest. Others think that this protest had begun to be organized as soon as Biden had won the election. What really matters though is what kind of protest is going on. At first the supporters had had a peaceful protest. However, according to ABC news, a law enforcement officer shot a woman, and then the protest became more aggressive. In fact, the electoral votes that have been lost have been burned by the mob. Trump, on the other hand, hasn’t been very eager to stop the mob. Only after multiple senators, representatives, and law workers told Trump to stop, he tweeted a video that told his supporters to “go home”, even while continually pushing misinformation that “this election was stolen from us”. However, the president seems to expect his supporters to listen to his message, because according to CNBC, the National Guard was sent to the Capitol yesterday. The force includes Washington DC’s force of 1,100 people as well as the full guard from Virginia and Maryland. However, Capitol Hill today was strangely quiet. That was because the National guard and other Law enforcement officers finally wrested back control of the Capitol. All that was left of the protest were broken and burning objects. According to USA today, Trump, who has been known to dismiss BLM protesters as thugs, has said that these protesters were “great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.” However, I sincerely hope that an incident like this will never happen again. The mobs destroyed electoral votes and stole the possessions of lawmakers, forcing those lawmakers to hide under their own desks, some even forced to wear gas masks. However, soon the count will go on and the Capitol will be fixed up. In the meantime, remember to stay safe, wear a mask, and stay six feet apart.
Stimulus: A Possible Deal
​
by Sameer Rajdev
As COVID-19 rages through the country, it’s also destroying jobs. Here’s how we fixed those problems.
​
As America is bombarded by problems, politicians need all their time to fix those gaping holes. But they seem to forget the lives falling apart thanks to COVID-19. We are talking about the millions of unemployed people and failing businesses in our country. Some are looking back at the (now passed) stimulus bill. Basically it’s money from the government given to people and businesses who qualify for financial aid during a crisis. Just a few weeks ago, the Congress and Senate had many discussions about a stimulus bill. Finally, it seems that they’ve stopped fighting. Senator Mitch McConnell said “Compromise is within reach” (Source CNBC, The Exchange). The compromise between Democrats and Republicans includes $300 a week for 18 weeks for financially pressed individuals. This amounts to a total of $5400, providing some help to people desperate for money. There is also some coverage for small businesses and states. This coverage includes $288 billion for small businesses and $160 billion for cities and states (Source:Washington Post) totalling a whopping 900 billion.
This, however, is in stark contrast with the deal the Democrats would have liked (particularly Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), which would have included a stimulus of a generous $2.4 trillion for financially pressed people, businesses, and cities. However, not all Democrats are in Pelosi’s boat. In fact, president Joe Biden gave a blessing of sorts to the stimulus bill, saying “wouldn’t be the answer, but it would be immediate help for a lot of things, quickly.” However, others say that this stimulus bill is unfair. Some of Mitch Mconnell’s critics are saying that he is only using this stimulus bill to fund the rich. For example, an anonymous speaker said on CNBC that,“he,[Mconnell] wants to use that money for funding big businesses.'' However,since the stimulus bill has helped greatly, these critics have been quickly silenced....Read More