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If you've been too busy with holiday activities to check on the news this week, good for you. Here's the latest...

• — Nashville terror attack. The Christmas Day suicide-bombing in downtown Nashville, Tenn., that injured eight and shook police officers in the area who witnessed it firsthand, may have been the work of a conspiracy theorist. The lone perpetrator, Anthony Quinn Warner, who died in the attack, allegedly believed that shape-shifting "lizard people" in human form are bent on world domination. He also appeared to harbor paranoia about 5G cellular technology. Nashville police were warned by Warner's then-girlfriend in 2019 that he was building bombs in his RV. —ABC News
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• — COVID-19. As hospitals across the nation reach maximum capacity, the first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant, originally discovered in Britain, was detected in Colorado yesterday. Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden criticized the current distribution rates of the vaccine. "The effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should," Biden said. At the current rate, "it's going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people." Biden's priorities are to increase spending to expedite vaccine distribution, expand Covid testing, and help reopen shuttered schools. —Reuters
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• — Stimulus. Despite support from President Trump and the Democratic-controlled House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has temporarily blocked the motion to expand direct pandemic relief payments to Americans from $600 to $2,000. Instead, he introduced legislation yesterday that would combine increased payments with a repeal of online liability protections known as Section 230 and the establishment of a commission to study voter fraud—two pet causes of Trump. —CNN
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• — Defense policy bill. After the House overwhelmingly voted to override the president's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate appears poised to follow suit. The issue is likely to come to a head on New Year's Day or the following day, in a rare Saturday vote, with a group of lawmakers threatening to drag out the veto fight as they try to leverage the $740 billion defense measure into getting a vote on the House-passed stimulus checks bill. If Congress is successful in overriding the veto, it would mark the first such instance in the Trump presidency. —The Hill
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• — Election certification. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said in a statement today that he will object to the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory during the joint session of Congress next Wednesday, alleging that some states failed to follow their election laws and that Big Tech interfered on behalf of Biden. Hawley is the first senator to say he will object to the certification, joining a group of House Republicans. Biden will still be certified the winner, but the move will force Senate Republicans to go on the record on whether they agree with Trump's baseless allegations—many of which have been thrown out in court. —Axios
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• — Tamir Rice case. The Justice Department announced yesterday that no federal criminal charges will be filed against the two Cleveland police officers who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, citing a lack of evidence. Federal prosecutors said the grainy, time-lapse video of the shooting, which showed officers shooting the boy just two seconds after stepping out of their patrol cars, failed to show whether Rice had reached for what officers thought was a handgun. The object turned out to be a black toy Airsoft pistol that Rice was playing with in the moments before he was killed. —BuzzFeed News

Katyal & Monsky: Pence's moment of truth

"[Vice President Mike Pence] now stands on the edge of history as he begins his most consequential act of leadership. The question for Vice President Pence, as well as other members of Congress, is which side of history he wants to come down on. Can he show the integrity demonstrated by every previous presidential administration? The American people accept a graceful loser, but a sore loser never goes down well in the history books." —Neal Katyal and John Monsky in The New York Times

Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general of the U.S. and the author of "Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump," is a law professor at Georgetown. John Monsky is the creator of the American History Unbound series of multimedia productions and is a board member of the New York Historical Society.

MORE: Pence declined to back Gohmert-led effort to upend election, lawyers indicate —Politico

Alonso: Would Trump grant secret pardons?

"A secret pardon would enable [the pardon recipients] to keep clemency in their back pocket in case of some future 'witch hunt,' to quote Trump, while at the same time avoiding the uproar that would undoubtedly come with a public pardon announcement. We cannot know for sure if Trump will do this, of course. But with his having done the previously unthinkable so many times, no one should be surprised if he issues pardons before he leaves office that never see the light of day unless the recipient is investigated or prosecuted." —Daniel Alonso on CNN

Daniel Alonso, a former federal and New York State prosecutor, is a partner at Buckley LLP in New York.

MORE: Sen. Pat Toomey calls Trump's pardon frenzy a 'misuse of power' —New York Daily News

Kolbe: Gearing up for the cyberconflict era

"Unlike nuclear weapons, or even sophisticated conventional arms, powerful cyberweapons are cheap to produce, proliferate with alarming speed and have no regard for borders. Unable to match the United States in military spending, Russia, China, Iran, and even North Korea view cybertools as a great equalizer. Why? Because the United States is singularly vulnerable to cyberattack: America is more reliant on financial, commercial, and government networks than our adversaries, and, at the same time, our systems are frighteningly open and vulnerable to attack." —Paul R. Kolbe in The New York Times

Paul R. Kolbe served for 25 years in the CIA's directorate of operations overseas. He is currently director of the Intelligence Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

MORE: Incoming national security adviser: Pentagon hasn't granted meeting with Biden transition team since Dec. 18 —The Hill

French: A victory lap for Putin

"Moscow's greatest nemesis and former arch-rival is laying coat after coat of fresh muck on the once-shiny patina of its international reputation and prestige. They were built on notions that once seemed almost unshakable: universal-seeming values of democracy and the rule of law. Beyond such things, there was also an American example that other countries were urged to aspire to but few could quite match—of solid institutions, unswayed by the political winds of each season." —Howard W. French in World Politics Review

Howard W. French is a foreign correspondent and global affairs writer and the author of "Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power."

MORE: Russia gives Kremlin critic Navalny an ultimatum: Return immediately or face jail —Reuters

Butler: Press freedom under attack in China

"For all these reasons, [Chinese dissident journalist] Zhang Zhan's trial and conviction are about much more than one person running afoul of China's ruling Communist Party. It shows that Chinese citizens can still muster the courage to defy the Communist Party. Her case exposes in sharp relief the hypocrisy of the Chinese government and its application of its constitution, and it is a reminder to all of us about the true character of the regime that has put her in jail and cannot tolerate anyone telling the truth about how it governs." —Steven Butler on CNN

Steven Butler is the Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

MORE: China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins —Associated Press

Gopnik: 'A republic if you can keep it'

"The only way to stave off another Trump is to recognize that it always happens. The temptation of anti-democratic cult politics is forever with us, and so is the work of fending it off. The rule of law, the protection of rights, and the procedures of civil governance are not fixed foundations, shaken by events, but practices and habits, constantly threatened, frequently renewable. 'A republic if you can keep it,' Benjamin Franklin said. Keeping a republic is a matter not of preserving it like pickles but of working it like dough—which sounds like something you'd serve alongside very weak tea. But it is the essential diet to feed our democracy if we are to make what always happens, for a little while longer, happily unhappen." —Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker

Adam Gopnik, a staff writer, has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1986. He is the author of "A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism."

MORE: Forget the conspiracy theories—here are the real election security lessons of 2020 —Politico

We live in a day and age when so few people seem to know what they are talking about, wouldn't know a fact if it bit them, and are clueless about history prior to maybe a year ago. That said, I find it funny and incredibly sad whenever I ask people to explain the things they say. Try it with your own family. Just be sure to social distance and wear masks.

Ask them to define socialism, fascism, communism, federal republicanism, and Nazism. Then ask them to state some countries, and leaders, that practiced each in the last 100 years. I realize many will change the subject, maybe even call you a communist or socialist for asking such questions. Tease them with the fact that Nazism actually derives from national socialism. After their head explodes, ask what someone against fascism—since the "faux-patriots" (those are the folks who claim to "own" patriotism now) claim to be against fascism—might be called. Then laugh out loud, and cry later, when you realize how dumbed-down we have become as a nation. —Bill T., Arizona

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.