Morning Distribution for Wednesday, January 20, 2021

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Wednesday, January 20, 2021 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [President Donald J. Trump]( [The Final Two Months of Trump’s Presidency Were The Most Important Ones]( By [Perry Bacon Jr.]( The [lame duck part of President Trump’s tenure]( will likely be defined by his [relentless effort to overturn the 2020 election results]( which culminated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after Trump [urged his supporters]( to go to Capitol Hill to try to stop the certification of the results. But Trump’s fight against electoral reality wasn’t the only important thing that happened in his final two-and-half months in office. Here’s a look, via several key numbers, at some of the really big things Trump and his administration did and didn’t do in its final weeks … 6 executions The use of the death penalty [at the state level has been declining](, particularly in liberal-leaning states but also in conservatives ones. At the federal level, the [government had not executed someone since 2003]( — through most of George W. Bush’s presidency and the entirety of Barack Obama’s presidency — until this past July. But former Attorney General William Barr, backed by Trump, [made it a priority to allow federal executions to move forward](. The federal government has executed 13 people since July, including six people since it became clear that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Put another way: Almost half of the federal executions in the last 18 years have occurred in the final two months of Trump’s tenure. Those six executions, in particular, [have infuriated liberals]( since Biden [opposed the death penalty as a candidate]( and [his team may have delayed these executions once in office](. 77,000 deaths More than [77,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in December]( according to the [COVID Tracking Project,]( the deadliest month of the virus outbreak in the United States so far. (December is notable because it was Trump’s last full month in office.) Deaths from the coronavirus have [surged since early November]( going from around 1,000 deaths per day to more than 3,000 per day in the last few weeks. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [One Super Bowl Isn’t Enough For Some Legacies, Apparently]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.