10 of our top columns this week: ICYMI

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

— USA TODAY Opinion editors

1. Donald Trump's most historic and dishonest press conference

By Tom Nichols

"I have been watching and commenting on Donald Trump’s press conferences since the day he took office, but this is the moment I expected and dreaded. For four years, Donald Trump has pouted and whined and prevaricated from behind the White House podium. Each one of his capering performances was awful in its own way. The litany of lies is now too long to repeat, and his rude, bizarre behavior will be the stuff of presidential legend for decades to come." 

2. Doctor: Settle for virtual holidays this year amid COVID-19, starting with Thanksgiving

By Dr. Thomas K. Lew

"The risk is just too high to get the extended family together for turkey this year. In fact, this danger can be seen in Canada. Almost like a crystal ball into the future, Canada celebrates Thanksgiving in October, and the holiday is being blamed for leading to a surge of outbreaks."

3. Donald Trump has lost to Joe Biden, what's next? The presidential transition from hell.

By Norman Ornstein

"America can soon feel a sense of relief that we have a clear outcome, and gratitude to all the election workers and officials who kept the election itself on course with very few glitches and no signs of chicanery. What then? The next nightmare, the transition. ... Unless Trump shows a dramatic change in personality, we need to brace ourselves." 

4. As California wildfires raged, incarcerated exploited for labor

By Jared A. Brock

"While everyone knows California fought more than 600 fires this season, very few people are aware that each year, thousands of incarcerated men, women and teenagers join one of 192 inmate fire crews. They earn as little as $2.90 a day, work in brutal 24-hour shifts, battle out-of-control blazes and risk their lives in unbelievably dangerous conditions, just to get a shot at having their criminal records erased."

5. Donald Trump's attack on election integrity cries for Republican come-to-Goldwater moment

By The Editorial Board 

"With his reelection chances slipping away, Donald Trump shattered any lingering illusions that he would face the prospect of defeat with the sort of dignity and grace that the United States has come to expect of its leaders. Trump didn't calm the nation. He didn't tell Americans to be patient as overwhelmed election workers count record numbers of mail-in ballots necessitated by the coronavirus. He didn't promise to abide by the will of the people." 

6. Election 2020 exit polls: Political pundits utterly failed to predict Donald Trump's voters

By Scott Jennings

"I’m using data collected by Edison Research and used by CNN, for whom I serve as an on-air contributor. These exit polls combine in-person interviews of nearly 8,000 Election Day voters at 115 polling locations nationwide, with nearly 5,000 phone interviews with early and absentee voters. Coverage of the Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden campaign largely focused on four groups: women, racial minorities, senior citizens and suburban voters. Conventional wisdom held that Trump would be slaughtered by all of them, thereby handing Biden a landslide." 

7. Trump wants to make money off the fake 'stolen election' crisis he created. Don't let him.

By Paul Seamus Ryan

"For days, President Donald Trump has been blasting his email list with urgent pleas for contributions to fund litigation challenging the results of last week’s election. The consensus among elections experts is that these lawsuits have no chance of changing the outcome of the election, which former Vice President Joe Biden clearly won. But that’s not stopping Trump. He’s not only damaging American’s faith in our elections, he’s also misleading his donors and will probably profit off the endeavor."

8. COVID-19 vaccine trials: I took a coronavirus vaccine. Get politics out of its rollout.

By Adam Guillette

"'You’re going to turn into a zombie.' That’s what my wife, Nikki, told me after I enrolled in clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine. She was kidding of course, but I understood her concern about me taking a novel therapy developed under a White House-led program called 'Operation Warp Speed.' The title doesn’t exactly relay caution."

9. Black voters steer America toward moral clarity in presidential race

By Suzette Hackney

"Record numbers of Americans cast ballots —  nearly 160 million  — but African American voters were a critical demographic that helped determine the final outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Cities with large Black populations such as Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta bolstered Biden's lead in key battleground states the Democratic Party lost four years ago."

10. Trump-to-Biden transition is already unhinged and it won't get better: Mastio and Lawrence

By David Mastio and Jill Lawrence

"The one thing we can’t expect is what we have expected of all previous presidents: Trump conscientiously does his job and helps President-elect Joe Biden transition into office. He never has done the first (that would require discipline and selflessness), and it’s much easier to imagine him leading chants of 'lock him up' than graciously handing over the reins of power."