Summary
Here is a summary of the latest events:
- Trump returns to public events with ‘law and order’ speech at White House. Defiant in the face of slipping opinion polls, and determined to justify his implausible claim of a swift and full recovery from his encounter with Covid-19, the US president returned to public events on Saturday with a brief “law and order” speech from a White House balcony.
- Republicans express fears Trump will lose presidential election. Ted Cruz fears an election “bloodbath”. His fellow top Republican senator Thom Tillis is talking in terms of a Joe Biden presidency. And even Mitch McConnell, the fiercely loyal Senate majority leader, won’t go near the White House over Trump’s handling of coronavirus protocols.
- Forecast projects 395,000 US Covid-19 deaths by February. A model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicts 181,000 people will die from Covid-19 in the US between now and 1 February.
- Lindsey Graham says Black people can ‘go anywhere’ in South Carolina if conservative. In a televised campaign event, the South Carolina senator said African Americans and immigrants can “go anywhere” in his home state but they “ just need to be conservative”.
- Louisiana picks up pieces after Hurricane Delta blows through state. The day after Hurricane Delta blew through the besieged Louisiana bayou, residents started the routine again: dodging overturned cars on the roads, trudging through knee-deep water to flooded homes with ruined floors and no power, and pledging to rebuild after the storm.
- US Covid cases climb as midwestern states report steep increases. Covid-19 cases are again climbing in the US, with the highest daily rates of new infections since August, when major states such as Florida became hotspots, new data from Johns Hopkins University’s Covid-19 tracker shows.
- Federal judge blocks Texas governor’s order to shut down ballot drop-off sites. On Friday evening, US federal judge Robert Pitman blocked Texas governor Greg Abbott’s order to shut down mail-in ballot drop-off sites across the state as the election is currently under way.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden continued to frame the November election as a choice between the interests of Scranton and Park Avenue in a speech on Saturday night at the Plumbers Local Union No 27 training center in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“Anyone who actually does an honest day’s work sees him and his promises for what they are,” Biden told a masked, socially distanced crowd at a training facility for plumbers and other tradespeople in Pennsylvania’s fourth-largest city.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 – by fewer than 2,000 votes in Erie – helped deliver him the key battleground state and the presidency, even as he lost the popular vote. He became the first Republican presidential nominee to carry the longtime Democratic bastion since Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984 and the first to win Pennsylvania since George HW Bush’s election in 1988.
Erie County rebounded strongly to Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
“The president can only see the world from Park Avenue. I see it from Scranton and Claymont. Y’all see it from Erie,” Biden told union officers and members, referring to his childhood hometowns in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s campaign that was seeking to block the use of drop boxes as receptacles for mail ballots, require ballot signatures to match voter registration records and allow nonresident poll watchers at polling places in all-important battleground state.
The Associated Press reports:
The ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan who was appointed by Trump in Pittsburgh also poured cold water on Trump’s claims that Pennsylvania is fertile ground for election fraud.
Trump’s campaign said it would appeal at least one element of the decision, with barely three weeks to go until Election Day in a state hotly contested by Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The lawsuit was opposed by the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, the state Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP’s Pennsylvania office and other allied groups.
“The ruling is a complete rejection of the continued misinformation about voter fraud and corruption, and those who seek to sow chaos and discord ahead of the upcoming election,” Wolf’s office said in a statement.
The state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat whose office fought the Trump campaign’s claims, called the lawsuit a political stunt designed to sow doubt in the state’s election.
“We told the Trump campaign and the president, ‘put up or shut up’ to his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro told the Associated Press. “It’s important to note they didn’t even need to prove actual voter fraud, just that it was likely or impending, and they couldn’t even do that.”
Trump’s campaign said in a statement that it looked forward to a quick decision from the appeals court “that will further protect Pennsylvania voters from the Democrats’ radical voting system.”
Ranjan’s opinion made a point of noting the lack of evidence of fraud put forth by the campaign.
“While Plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is ‘certainly impending,’” Ranjan wrote. “They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions.”
Updated
Six US states saw record single-day increases in coronavirus cases on Friday, according to NBC News.
The record highs in Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia come at a time when nationwide numbers are on the climb and a seventh state, Wisconsin, has set up a field hospital to cope with the influx of patients.
“We have to get back to the basics in fighting this virus,” Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, said on Twitter this week, as the state posted another record day of Covid-19 infections.
Wisconsin set up a field hospital near state fairgrounds to treat what could be an overflow of patients with Covid-19. More than 8,000 people in the state are hospitalized.
“We are on the verge of a crisis in Green Bay and our surrounding counties,” Dr Paul Casey, emergency department head at Bellin health systems in Green Bay, Wisconsin, told CNBC.
More than 211,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said African Americans and immigrants can “go anywhere” in his home state but they “just need to be conservative” during a televised candidates’ forum on Friday night.
Graham, who finds himself in a tooth-and-nail reelection battle with Democratic challenger Jamie Harrison in a once-safe conservative district, made the remark in the context of political careers and said his opponent would lose because he is a Democrat, not because he is Black.
“Do I believe our cops are systemically racist? No,” Graham said. “Do I believe South Carolina is a racist state? No. Let me tell you why. To young people out there, young people of color, young immigrants, this is a great state, but one thing I can say without any doubt, you can be an African American and go to the Senate but you just have to share our values.”
He went on to say: “If you’re a young, African American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative, not liberal”.
Listen to Lindsey Graham declare what Black people can and can’t do.
— Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) October 10, 2020
This is textbook white supremacy.
pic.twitter.com/IRJfSEWWVt
The comment was in response to a question about civil unrest, and as America reckons with its long history of racism and ongoing police brutality, including the national revulsion following the killing of Black man George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was asked whether Donald Trump should be resuming rallies on Saturday in Delaware before departing for a scheduled a campaign event in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“I think it’s important the president makes sure of two things,” Biden told reporters. “One, that he is clear, he is not a spreader like his, like Dr Fauci said the super spreader event he had for the Supreme Court announcement.
“And secondly, I think it’s important that he make it clear to all the people that they should be socially distanced, they can be on the lawn, that’s fine. But in fact, they should be socially distanced and wearing masks. That’s the only responsible thing to do. And I don’t know what’s going on at the moment now, but I hope he does that.”
Biden, who last week said he would be screened more frequently for Covid-19 and committed to release the results of all future tests, told reporters he tested negative on Saturday morning.
Updated
Donald Trump’s reelection bid was officially endorsed by the Taliban on Saturday, the latest improbably headline in a campaign season with no shortage of them.
According to CBS News:
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview: “We hope he will win the election and wind up U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.” The militant group expressed some concern about Mr. Trump’s bout with the coronavirus. “When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but seems he is getting better,” another Taliban senior leader told CBS News.
The announcement came on the same day Trump’s opponent in the November election, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, was endorsed by climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told CBS News that it rejects the Taliban’s support.
Close-ups of Donald Trump’s right hand during today’s remarks from the White House balcony show a couple of flesh-colored bandages, presumably where he received intravenous injection.
His remarks were also significantly shorter in duration than anticipated: Trump spoke for 17 minutes after White House officials said he would be at the podium for a half hour.
Questions about the US president’s health continue to loom amid the refusal of doctors or aides to reveal when Trump last tested negative for coronavirus. He insisted he was “medication-free” during a Friday night appearance on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time opinion show that was pitched as a “medical evaluation”.
“We pretty much finished, and now we’ll see how things go. But pretty much nothing,” Trump said when Fox medical analyst Dr Marc Siegel asked the president what medications he was still taking.
Updated
House speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday said a new $1.8tn economic stimulus proposal from the Trump administration “amounted to one step forward, two steps back” and would need changes to get support from congressional Democrats.
The California lawmaker said in her weekly letter to Democratic colleagues the Trump administration’s proposal lacked a “strategic plan to crush the virus” and gave US president too much discretion to decide how funds were allocated.
“At this point, we still have disagreement on many priorities, and Democrats are awaiting language from the Administration on several provisions as the negotiations on the overall funding amount continue,” Pelosi’s letter said.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Friday he doubted lawmakers would pass a package before the general election on 3 November.
“The proximity to the election and the differences of opinion over what is needed at this particular juncture are pretty vast,” McConnell told a news conference in his home state of Kentucky.
The number of New Yorkers hospitalized with the coronavirus continues to rise, state governor Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday, as authorities heightened their focus on banning mass gatherings in Covid-19 hotspots.
Cuomo announced that 826 people were hospitalized with the virus – the highest number since 15 July.
Eight further coronavirus deaths were recorded in New York on Friday.
Still, the governor insisted the “numbers remain good news,” noting that public health officials traced 18% of positive tests this week to a so-called “Red Zone” that’s home to 2.8% of the state population.
Today's update on the numbers:
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 10, 2020
Of the 134,579 tests reported yesterday, 1,447 were positive (1.07% of total)
Total hospitalizations are at 826.
Sadly, there were 8 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/oHwu73Utpj
Six coronavirus clusters have cropped up in Brooklyn and Queens, as well as Broome, Orange and Rockland counties, the Associated Press reports.
The state has closed schools and nonessential businesses in those areas and limited gatherings.
“It’s going to take the work of all of us now to make sure we don’t go backwards on our hard-fought progress,” Cuomo said in a statement.
“We must all continue to wear our masks, wash our hands, remain socially distant, and above all, stay New York Tough.”
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn said Saturday that church officials “are left with no choice” but to abide by new restrictions that temporarily limit the size of religious gatherings in the Covid-19 hotspots.
The restrictions limit attendance at all houses of worship to 25% capacity, or a maximum of 10 people.
The diocese had sued the state in federal court this week, saying Cuomo’s plan would effectively force over two dozen of its churches to close their doors even though they “have been reopened for months in strict adherence to all medical and governmental guidance without any Covid-related incidents whatsoever.”
US district judge Eric Komitee called the case a “difficult decision” but sided with Cuomo in denying the church’s request for a temporary restraining order.
The government, he ruled late Friday, “is afforded wide latitude in managing the spread of deadly diseases under the Supreme Court’s precedent”.
“There is no reason for this latest interference with our First Amendment right to celebrate Mass together,” DiMarzio said in a statement responding to the ruling.
“So we will continue to press the courts and our elected officials to end it as soon as possible.”
The ruling followed a similar decision Friday by another judge in the Eastern District of New York who refused to block Cuomo’s plan.
That ruling followed an emergency hearing in a lawsuit brought by rabbis and synagogues who said the restrictions were unconstitutional and sought to have enforcement delayed until after the Jewish holy days.
Trump says lockdown measures are 'unscientific'
Trump calls lockdown policies during Covid-19 “unscientific”. His contempt for the more than 210,000 people who have died of Covid-19 is astonishing. A model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicts if social distancing measures are eased, there were will be around 285,000 additional deaths between now and 1 February, bringing the total death toll to just over 500,000 in the US.
Trump, who once led the charge in a campaign that ended with five young Black men wrongly convicted of rape, boasts about how much he has done to help Black people in the criminal justice system.
Trump has laughably claimed the Democrats have “communist” policies. He then congratulates himself on how much he will help Black and Latino communities if he is reelected.
He says Black and Latino businesses have been looted by “leftwing fanatics” during the recent protests following George Floyd’s death in May. This is fast turning into his usual campaign speech – he now repeats his false claims that there will be widespread election fraud in the coming weeks.
Trump then turns to fracking, for no apparent reason. Well, it’s because he’s talking to his wider base, but there you go. He says Joe Biden will ban fracking (he won’t).
Trump says police are needed to support communities of color, and says that Democrats will reduce law enforcement putting such communities in danger. In fact, Joe Biden has not said he will defund police.
Trump says Black and Latino voters are rejecting “radical socialist leftist” policies. In fact, Democrats hold a huge lead among Black and Latino voters.
Trump is now speaking, sounding hoarse. He said he needs people to “vote into oblivion” the Democrats.
“I’m feeling great,” he says calling Covid-19 by the racist name “China Virus”.
A podium and microphone has been set up on the White House balcony, where Donald Trump will address the crowd soon. While they will not be exposed to the (probably still infectious) president, there were few signs of masks as people gathered in tightly packed groups as they prepared to enter the event. White House officials said people will be required to wear masks during the address and will have their temperatures checked before entering the grounds and gathering on the South Lawn.
It is believed Trump will address issues of race in today’s speech, and the crowd appeared a lot more diverse than at a usual Trump event. Candace Owens, who is leading a campaign to encourage Black voters to leave the Democratic party, has helped organise the event. David Smith profiled Owens last year, you can read his article below:
Updated
Covid-19 cases are again climbing in the United States, with the highest daily rates of new infections since August, when major states such as Florida became hotspots, new data from Johns Hopkins University’s Covid-19 tracker shows.
Now, several midwestern states are posting steep increases in Covid-19 cases, with at least one setting up a field hospital to cope with the flood of patients. Cases are also ticking up in the north-east, where tight restrictions had the virus under control for most of the summer.
“We have to get back to the basics in fighting this virus,” Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, said on Twitter this week, as the state posted another record day of Covid-19 infections.
The state set up a field hospital near state fairgrounds to treat what could be an overflow of patients with Covid-19. More than 8,000 people in the state are hospitalized. More than 213,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US.
“We are on the verge of a crisis in Green Bay and our surrounding counties,” Dr Paul Casey, emergency department head at Bellin health systems in Green Bay, Wisconsin, told CNBC.
More than 57,000 people tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday, one of the highest tallies since this summer, when Florida, Texas and California were national hotspots. Cases began to decrease in August, and Florida has since completely reopened, including allowing bars and restaurants to operate at full capacity.
Cases are now ticking up in Florida again, but the most worrying trends in recent weeks has come from the midwest, where towns in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wisconsin have seen steep increases.
You can read the full report below:
Forecast projects 395,000 US Covid-19 deaths by February
A model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicts 181,000 people will die from Covid-19 in the US between now and 1 February. That would bring the total deaths from the virus since the start of the pandemic to just over 396,000. The model predicts that deaths will peak at 2,300 a day in mid-January.
However, the numbers are based on current Covid-19 protocols being followed. If 95% of the US population wears masks, the model predicts 102,000 people will die between now and 1 February. If social distancing measures are eased, the model says there were will be around 285,000 additional deaths between now and 1 February, bringing the total death toll to just over 500,000 in the US.
As we wait for Donald Trump’s words to his supporters at the White House, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said he spoke to the US president about Covid-19 earlier today.
I spoke with @POTUS Trump this morning. I wished him and @FLOTUS well following their recent COVID-19 diagnosis. https://t.co/QAq04KylUx
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 10, 2020
“I spoke with @POTUS Trump this morning. I wished him and @FLOTUS well following their recent COVID-19 diagnosis,” wrote Trudeau on Twitter.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said: “The Prime Minister wished both the President and First Lady well following their recent Covid-19 diagnosis. The Prime Minister also recalled the President’s expressions of concern for Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s health after her Covid-19 diagnosis last March. The two leaders discussed the ongoing efforts to manage the pandemic and keep citizens in both countries safe ... The President and Prime Minister agreed to stay in close contact.”
Donald Trump will attend rallies in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Iowa next week. He trails Joe Biden in Pennsylvania and leads by a narrow margin in Iowa, according to the latest polls.
Patients with severe cases of Covid-19 - and Trump’s use of steroids for his lungs suggest he had (or has) a serious case – are thought to be contagious for up to 20 days after they first show symptoms, meaning the president could well continue to infect people at both events.
“Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. announced that President Donald J. Trump will deliver remarks at Make America Great Again Rallies in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, October 13th, 2020 at 7:00 PM EDT and in Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday, October 14th, 2020 at 6:00 PM CDT,” the president’s campaign said in an email sent on Saturday.
Trump supporters gather at White House - many without masks
Trump supporters are starting to gather for his address at the White House later. White House officials have said attendees will be required to wear masks and have their temperature checked before entering. Early photos suggest that many of them are definitely not wearing masks before the address. Maybe they’re heeding the president’s words when he said Americans shouldn’t be “afraid” of a virus that has killed more than 210,000 people in the US.
If you’re wondering why the crowds are less white than the president’s usual events, it’s because it has partly been organised by conservative activist Candace Owens who is behind Blexit, a campaign to get Black voters to leave the Democratic party. There are reports that some of the attendees have been paid to travel to the event.
Updated
Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Republican senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, has endorsed Joe Biden’s campaign for president.
In an advert titled “Like John Did”, Cindy McCain says that America deserves a president “who will honor our fallen heroes.” That appears to be a reference to reports that Donald Trump referred to soldiers who were captured and killed as “losers” and “suckers”.
Cindy McCain also described her husband’s friendship with Biden, saying that although they would argue in the Senate, they still had a warm relationship because “they always put their friendship and their country first.”
The president and John McCain had a contentious relationship. In his 2016 election campaign, Trump mocked the senator for being captured during the Vietnam War. He continued to insult McCain after the senator’s death from cancer in 2018, something that McCain’s daughter described as a “new bizarre low”.
McCain was immensely popular in Arizona, the state he served as a senator for 31 years. Trump won Arizona in the 2016 election, but is trailing Biden in polls this time around.
Updated
Away from politics, hurricanes continue to plague the south. The Associated Press has the latest:
Ripping tarps from damaged roofs and scattering massive piles of storm debris in the wind and water, Hurricane Delta inflicted a new round of destruction in Louisiana communities still reeling along a path Hurricane Laura carved just six weeks earlier.
Delta hit as a category 2 hurricane, with top winds of 100mph (155km/h) before rapidly weakening over land. By Saturday morning, it dwindled to a tropical storm with 45mph (75km/h) winds, but storm surge and flash floods continued to pose dangers across much of south-western Louisiana and parts of neighboring Texas. Mississippi also got its fair share of rain overnight.
Delta made landfall Friday evening near the coastal town of Creole, only 15 miles (24km) or so from where Laura struck land in August, killing 27 people in Louisiana. It then moved directly over Lake Charles, a waterfront city about 30 miles (50km) inland where the earlier hurricane damaged nearly every home and building, and where moldy mattresses, sawed-up trees and other debris still lined the streets.
Lake Charles’ mayor, Nic Hunter, spoke with the Associated Press as he rode out Delta’s arrival downtown.
Hunter said tarps were flying off homes across the city, and piles of wreckage were being blown around, some of it floating in the surge of ocean water.
“I’m in a building right now with a tarp on it and just the sound of the tarp flapping on the building sounds like someone pounding with a sledgehammer on top of the building,“ Hunter said. ”It’s pretty intense.”
Water leaked through the ceiling of Ernest Jack’s bedroom in Lake Charles as he tried to sleep through the storm. Jack said a tarp covering roof damage caused by Laura hadn’t blown off. His windows were covered to protect against flying debris.
“It’s raining real hard; it’s flooding; the wind is strong,” Jack said Friday night. “I’m OK. I’m not worried about nothing, just praying that everything goes well.”
Delta, the 25th named storm of an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, made the record books when it struck the Gulf coast. It was the first Greek-alphabet-named hurricane to hit the continental US. And it became the 10th named storm to hit the mainland US this year, breaking a century-old record set in 1916, according to Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach.
Delta was the fourth named storm to strike Louisiana in 2020.
Police in Maryland are investigating an incident in which a threatening letter was left at a house which had a Biden-Harris sign in its front yard.
WABL reported that the letter said: “If you are a Biden-Harris supporter, you will be targeted. We have a list of homes by your election signs. We will not comply or give anything up, especially our guns.” It also threatened to execute Harris and Biden on television.
“We call on everyone to respect others’ private property rights and their First Amendment right to display their support for the candidate of their choice,” Steven Clark, chairman of the Frederick county Republican Central Committee, said in a statement.
Local Democrats also condemned the incident. “The entire Frederick County Democratic Central Committee condemns these threats of violence in the strongest possible terms and sends our heartfelt good wishes to the residents whose peace has been violated in such an unsettling manner,” the group’s chairperson, Deborah Carter, said.
Richard Luscombe has more information on today’s scheduled address from Donald Trump at the White House:
Defiant in the face of slipping opinion polls, and determined to justify his implausible claim of a full recovery from his encounter with Covid-19, Donald Trump will return to public events on Saturday with a “law and order” address to 2,000 invited guests from the White House balcony.
Questions about the president’s health are still swirling following the refusal of doctors or aides to reveal when Trump last tested negative for coronavirus, and today’s lunchtime in-person event – just six days after he left Walter Reed medical center following a three-night stay – appears to counter his own government’s health guidelines over large gatherings and social distancing.
But after another tumultuous week in which Trump lost further ground to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and with the 3 November general election little more than three weeks away, the president is seizing an opportunity to try to reposition himself in the race, despite the apparent health risk to attendees from a man likely to still be contagious.
In a Friday night interview on Fox News, Trump, who was given a cocktail of antiviral drugs and strong steroids during his hospital stay, insisted he was “medication-free”.
“We pretty much finished, and now we’ll see how things go. But pretty much nothing,” Trump said when Fox medical analyst Dr Marc Siegel asked the president what medications he was still taking.
Earlier in the day, Dr Sean Conley, Trump’s personal physician, issued a letter clearing the president to return to in-person campaign events, but omitting any medical justification, including crucial information about any negative coronavirus tests.
In the Friday interview, Trump said he had been tested, but gave a vague answer about it. “I haven’t even found out numbers or anything yet,” he said. “But I’ve been retested and I know I’m at either the bottom of the scale or free.”
Trump’s speech today at the White House South Lawn will address “law and order” and protests around the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd and issues around race, sources revealed on Friday.
The Democrats will be making their own contribution to Donald Trump’s address in Washington DC today.
The Democratic National Committee War Room said a mobile billboard, displaying statistics on the coronavirus, will travel the streets of the capital while the president makes his speech later today. The truck will also play a recording of an interview in which Anthony Fauci called a White House event two weeks ago “a superspreader” event. The event in question was to announce the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court. Some people at the event did not wear masks, and many attendees have since been diagnosed with Covid-19.
The billboard is expected to display figures such as the more than 210,000 death from Covid-19 in the US.
“Even after the White House has been turned into a hotspot in this pandemic, Trump still hasn’t learned his lesson or started listening to his own public health experts,” Democratic spokesperson Lily Adams said in a statement. “Instead, he is doubling down with another potential superspreader event today and a return to rallies next week.”
Climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg has endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential bid, saying “the upcoming US elections [are] above and beyond” party politics.
I never engage in party politics. But the upcoming US elections is above and beyond all that.
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 10, 2020
From a climate perspective it’s very far from enough and many of you of course supported other candidates. But, I mean…you know…damn!
Just get organized and get everyone to vote #Biden https://t.co/gFttFBZK5O
“I never engage in party politics,” she wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “But the upcoming US elections is above and beyond all that. From a climate perspective it’s very far from enough and many of you of course supported other candidates. But, I mean…you know…damn! Just get organized and get everyone to vote #Biden.”
Thunberg recently said too much burden is being placed on the young to solve the climate crisis.
“We should not be the ones having to do this,” she said last month. “It should be up to adults and people in power in those who have caused this problem in the first place.”
During an appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s show on Friday, Donald Trump said antibody treatment Regeneron had been crucial for his recovery from Covid-19.
“I was in not great shape and we have a medicine that that healed me, that fixed me,” Trump said. “It’s a great medicine. I mean I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy. And I recovered immediately, almost immediately. I might not have recovered at all from Covid.”
However, in a joint statement led by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, medical groups said more research is needed before conclusions are reached.
“Promising results among small numbers of patients to approaches that include antibody therapies are not a substitute for the rigorous scientific review that is essential to ensuring the safety and effectiveness of medicines,” read the statement.
“Relying on such limited data can put patients at risk of adverse events, and an EUA can reduce the ability to conduct the clinical trials that are needed to assess the safety and efficacy of antibody treatments.”
In a year of escalating political violence in the United States, Facebook has served as a key organizing tool for violent extremists.
An alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was planned in part on Facebook, with one leader of the scheme broadcasting a video of his frustrations with Whitmer to a private Facebook group, and participants later sharing footage of their paramilitary exercises and bomb-making training, according to an FBI affidavit.
A related Michigan militia group facing terrorism charges also used Facebook to recruit new members, according to the Michigan state police.
Before Michigan, there was the militia group in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that used a Facebook event to encourage armed citizens to take to the streets, and the anti-government “boogaloo” cop-killer in California this May allegedly met his accomplice on Facebook. The deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, was originally organized as a Facebook event.
Facebook has defended itself as working hard to keep users safe and to adapt to emerging threats on its platform, as well as coordinating closely with law enforcement. But evidence has mounted for years that Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of using Facebook to “bring the world closer together” and to “give people the power to build community” has also built powerful tools for radicalization and coordinated violence.
Read the full article below:
The White House communications director, Alyssa Farah, says that today’s address from Donald Trump will be short and to the point. Although, as many of you will have noticed, brevity is not exactly the president’s strong point.
“The President’s at a great distance, he’s gonna be up on the balcony and very briefly address the supporters there,” Farah told reporters at the White House on Saturday.
If reports that 2,000 people have been invited to watch the president’s address are true, that seems a large crowd – and a lot of Covid-19 risk – for a few words on law and order.
Farah also appeared on Fox on Saturday morning and said the president is keen to go head-to-head with Joe Biden again, despite next week’s debate being canceled.
“The president is eager to get in front of the American people side to side with Joe Biden and make the case for his record and how it just stacks up much better for the American people so we’re gonna look for another opportunity to do that,” Farah said. “We’re gonna push to do something and whether it’s through the debate commission or other avenues, you can rest assured the American people will hear from Donald Trump.”
Rebekah Powers was 11 when members of her faith group, the People of Praise, gathered around as she sat on a chair and laid their hands on her to pray. Powers’ sister had shown a gift for speaking in tongues, a defining trait of the followers of the small charismatic Christian community, and Rebekah was expected to do the same.
But after what seemed like an eternity, she proved unable to produce a sound.
“I couldn’t get it, and I stayed there an hour and a half before they gave up and finally said, ‘You just have blockage. You need to just work on your sin and be more open,” she said.
The 41-year-old had a rebellious spirit and left People of Praise when she turned 18. It has taken decades of therapy and hard work to overcome the intense feelings of shame and fear of damnation that she said marked her childhood. The Christian faith group, based in South Bend, Indiana, dominated every aspect of her early life, she said.
Next week, Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative appellate court judge who is a prominent member of the 1,700-member strong People of Praise, will sit before the Senate judiciary committee to face questions about her judicial philosophy as part of her controversial confirmation to take a seat on the supreme court. A successful appointment, replacing the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will cement a conservative dominance on the powerful body.
You can read the full article below:
Updated
A little more on Donald Trump’s public address, which is scheduled to take place at the White House later today.
The speech will be on one of the president’s pet topics, law and order. He has invited 2,000 people to attend and will speak from the White House balcony. Attendees will be required to bring masks and undergo temperature checks after the White House Rose Garden event two weeks ago to confirm Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for the supreme court was described as a “superspreader” by Dr Anthony Fauci.
Trump has been unclear on whether he is still contagious after his own Covid-19 diagnosis last week. “I haven’t even found out numbers or anything yet, but I’ve been retested and I know I’m at either the bottom of the scale or free,” Trump said on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Friday. “They test every couple of days, I guess, but it’s really at a level now that’s been great – great to see it disappear.”
Trump also admitted on Fox that he had taken the steroid dexamethasone because it helps keep “the swelling down of the lungs.” Patients with serious cases of Covid-19 can still be contagious up to 20 days after diagnosis.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has been released from hospital after undergoing treatment for Covid-19.
“I am happy to let you know that this morning I was released from Morristown Medical Center,” he wrote on Twitter. “I want to thank the extraordinary doctors & nurses who cared for me for the last week. Thanks to my family & friends for their prayers. I will have more to say about all of this next week.”
I am happy to let you know that this morning I was released from Morristown Medical Center. I want to thank the extraordinary doctors & nurses who cared for me for the last week. Thanks to my family & friends for their prayers. I will have more to say about all of this next week.
— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 10, 2020
Christie was one of a number of senior Republicans who had been in contact with Donald Trump and subsequently tested positive for the virus. At least 22 people acrodd Donald Trump’s White House, election campaign and military leaders have tested positive for coronavirus in a flurry of recent infections.
Christie’s diagnosis was of particular concern as he is overweight and asthmatic, two categories that present risk factors for Covid-19 sufferers. He checked himself into hospital last Saturday and told CNN he was treated with remdesivir, the same anti-viral medication taken by Trump.
A federal judge has blocked a proclamation in Texas that decrees that counties can offer only one drop-off site for mail-in ballots. The order from Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott would force many Texans, particularly in rural counties, to undertake long journeys to vote.
Judge Robert Pitman dismissed the Texas government’s argument that its policy would prevent voter confusion and prevent election fraud.
Pitman, an Obama appointment, wrote in his decision that the current policy would result in “creating voter confusion … causing absentee voters to travel further distances … causing absentee voters to wait in longer lines … [and] causing absentee voters to risk exposure to the coronavirus when they hand deliver their absentee ballots on Election Day.”
Texas has the second-most electoral votes of any state, with only California holding more. Many believe if more Texans had easy access to voting it would be a swing state rather than a reliable Republican one.
For more on Texas’s role in November’s election, read our analysis below:
It was the week the men in white coats finally came for Donald Trump.
Seven doctors in face masks emerged from Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington attempting to assure a skeptical world that its most famous patient was beating the coronavirus.
They had rushed the US president on to experimental antiviral drugs and prescribed an aggressive course of steroids not available to the average patient.
But they could not cure what many critics regard as Trump’s chief pathology: chronic narcissism. He took a triumphant helicopter flight back to a White House ravaged by Covid-19, staged a tough guy “Mussolini moment” on its balcony and unleashed a blitzkrieg of tweets so erratic that they shocked even battle-hardened Trump watchers.
Doctors said his physical vital signs were improving; pollsters said his political vital signs were flatlining, with his rival, Joe Biden, leading by 16 percentage points in a CNN survey less than a month before the presidential election. Some said that, if Trump was deliberately trying to sabotage his own campaign, he could hardly do a better job than the past week.
Read the rest of the article below:
As attention is focused on Donald Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, there is a sobering reminder that the virus still has a hold on large parts of the United States. Johns Hopkins University figures show Friday was the third consecutive day with more than 50,000 reported news cases of Covid-19 in the United States. The last time that happened was mid-August. More than 210,000 people have now died from the virus in the United States.
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Saturday. As we close in on the election, the day is likely to continue to be dominated by Donald Trump’s actions in the wake of his Covid-19 diagnosis. Here’s a quick catch-up of where we are, and a little of what we might expect to see today …
- The president is expected to hold his first in-person event since testing positive got Covid-19. It is scheduled to take place at the White House and will return to one of the foundations of Trump’s campaign, law and order.
- The second presidential debate has been canceled but Trump plans in-person events.
- Trump outraged by Democrats’ plan to assess president’s fitness to serve.
- ‘It instilled such problems’: ex-member of Amy Coney Barrett’s faith group speaks out.
Updated
