EFTA00025443.pdf

From: The Washington Post
To: <
Subject: The Daily 202: As a baseball season like no other begins, escaping coronavirus proves
impossible
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 17:45:53 +0000
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The Washington Post
The Daily 202
Intelligence for leaders.
Presented by American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
ii,Jame By James Hohmann
s with Mariana Alfaro
Hohma I Email
As a baseball season like no other begins,
escaping coronavirus proves impossible
A reporter approached Sen. Mitt Romney in the Capitol on Wednesday
afternoon to ask: "Do you have confidence in the president's handling of
this crisis right now?"
"Which? There are so many crises going on," replied Romney (R-Utah).
"I'm not sure which."
L. :Mitt Romney arrives for this week's Senate Republican lunch. (Stefani
[Reynolds/Bloomberg)
Mitt Romney arrives for this week's Senate Republican lunch. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
The 2012 GOP presidential nominee was not trying to be flip and lamented
President Trump's response to the novel coronavirus when the reporter
clarified. But our nation faces cascading crises: the worst civil unrest since
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1968, the worst economic upheaval since 1933 and the worst public health
emergency since 1918. This morning's jobs report shows another 1.4
million workers filed for unemployment benefits last week, the 18th
straight week that more than a million Americans have filed claims.
Other ongoing crises get less attention because of the contagion, but that
does not mean they have been solved. There is an opioid crisis causing
deaths of despair, the climate crisis that imperils the future of the planet, a
looming sovereign debt crisis that most political leaders seem nonchalant
about, rising great-power conflict with China, including a new space race,
and fresh complications overnight in Afghanistan as America struggles to
exit her longest war.
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assistance benefits cancer patients.
Professional sports offer a comfortable getaway from the challenges of life
and the burdens of reality. For a few hours, and a few bucks, you can go to
the ballpark and escape. That has always been part of the joy that comes
with the price of admission.
On this Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season, delayed by
nearly four months because of the coronavirus, such escapism is
impossible. Largely, this is because no one is safe from covid-19. To wit, the
Kansas City Royals revealed Wednesday that Hunter Dozier, who hit 26
home runs last season, tested positive and will be placed on the injured list.
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This abridged 6o-game season, instead of the usual 162, will not be
baseball as we know it; it might better be described as covidball. First off,
there will be no spectators allowed in the stands, so all of us will be
watching on television and fake crowd noise will be piped into the
ballparks.
There is supposed to be social distancing — and mask wearing — in the
dugout. Players have been told not to give high-fives. Or spit. Or chew
sunflower seeds. Coaches have been told they are not allowed to touch their
faces.
iti
Tradition-bound Major League Baseball has made rule changes that would
have been considered sacrilege not long ago, including introducing
designated hitters in the National League and starting extra innings with
an automatic runner on second base.
Historically and culturally, baseball has been far less political and polarized
than professional football and basketball. Players have tended to be less
outspoken than their counterparts in other sports. (I touched on this in
2017 after completing a personal quest to watch games at all 3o major
league stadiums.)
But times are changing. The sport has not been immune to the national
reckoning on racial injustice. San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler
and several of his players knelt during the national anthem earlier this
week before an exhibition game, provoking an attack by Trump. "Looking
forward to live sports," he tweeted on Tuesday, "but any time I witness a
player kneeling during the National Anthem, a sign of great disrespect for
our Country and our Flag, the game is over for me!"
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In a show of solidarity, "Black Lives Matter" will be stenciled on several
mounds across the league this weekend, including in Washington. The
league has also given players the option to wear patches on their jerseys
that use the phrase.
The topsy-turvy process that got us to Opening Day has itself been a
metaphor for the country's broader struggle to control the virus. Baseball is
the first of the big four sports to play a regular season game since March.
The United States has lagged Europe and Asia in restarting professional
sports. Players are being tested regularly now, but there have been long
delays in turning around results — just like for the rest of society — that
limit the values of the tests.
Vr
So often, it has felt like America just cannot catch a break these past few
months. It is perhaps apt that the forecast calls for scattered
thunderstorms to linger in Washington into the evening before tapering off
after sunset.
adjusts his face mask during a Senate health committee hearing on June 30. (Al
rago/Reuters)
Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, adjusts his face mask
during a Senate health committee hearing on June 30. (AI Drago/Reuters)
Tony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, will throw the
ceremonial first pitch of the first game at 7 p.m. Eastern in Washington as
the Nationals take on the New York Yankees. ESPN will broadcast it live. In
a video released Wednesday by the Nationals, the 79-year-old Fauci said he
was nervous about getting the ball past home plate. Washington star Ryan
Zimmerman told him not to worry. "If you bounce it, there's nobody there
to boo you," he quipped.
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I will never forget flying to Houston last October to watch the Nationals
win in the World Series with my dad. But it feels hard to believe that
incredible playoff run was just nine months ago. It feels like nine years.
The season opener is a doubleheader: The Dodgers will play the Giants
tonight in Los Angeles after the Nationals-Yankees game. But San
Francisco's star catcher Buster Posey will not play. He has opted to sit out
the season because he and his wife adopted identical twin girls who were
born prematurely, and he doesn't want to put them at risk. Among the
dozen or so other stars skipping this season are Zimmerman, Atlanta's
Nick Markakis, Los Angeles's David Price and Colorado's Ian Desmond.
The members of my fantasy baseball league normally gather in the
basement of a Capitol Hill bar for an annual draft. This year, we gathered
virtually to respect social distancing protocols. We also waited to hold our
draft until late last night because so many players kept announcing that
they wouldn't play this season. None of us wanted to pay for pitchers and
hitters who will not generate any stats for our teams.
(For those who care about the game, the roster for "The 2O2s" includes
Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor, Clayton Kershaw, Nelson Cruz, Javier Baez,
Jose Altuve, Matt Olson, Eddie Rosario and Kyle Schwarber. Picking Cole
as one of my staffing pitchers creates a somewhat awkward dynamic
tonight because I will be cheering for the Nationals as the new Yankees ace
starts against them. So it goes.)
Everything comes with some risks amid the pandemic. The first road game
for the Nationals will be against the Toronto Blue Jays. But no one knows
where that game will take place because Canada is not allowing its sole
MLB team to play in the country. On Wednesday, the state of Pennsylvania
told the Blue Jays that they will not be allowed to play their home games
this season at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, as they had hoped to do.
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"In recent weeks, we have seen a significant increase in the number of
COVID-19 cases in southwestern Pennsylvania," said Rachel Levine,
secretary of the state Department of Health, in a statement. "To add
travelers to this region for any reason, including for professional sports
events, risks residents, visitors and members of both teams. We know that
this virus does not discriminate and can even make professional athletes
very sick. We are committed to protecting the health and well-being of all
Pennsylvanians."
More team coverage:
• Thomas Boswell: "This MLB season will be weird and not without
risk. I can't wait."
• Jesse Dougherty: "This was not the Opening Day the Nationals had
planned, but at least it's here."
• Dave Sheinin: "The baseball season starts Thursday. How it ends is
anyone's guess."
• Jerry Brewer: "Sports are doing what they can to remain viable, just
like the rest of us."
• Scott Allen: "Shut out from Nationals Park, fans look for other ways to
make Opening Day memorable."
• George Will created his annual baseball trivia quiz for Opening Day.
(You can take it here.)
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The coronavirus
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P.Sophie Cunningham, seen here on the right after a win in last year's NCAA
women's college basketball tournament, believes she has had the coronavirus twice.
(Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Sophie Cunningham, seen here on the right after a win in last year's NCAA women's college basketball
tournament. believes she has had the coronavirus twice. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Anecdotal evidence is mounting that you can get covid-19
twice, but doctors remain unsure.
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"When Sophie Cunningham, a guard for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury,
returned to training last week after a bout with covid-19, she ... said she
believed she had been infected twice — once in March and then again in
June or July," Carolyn Johnson and Ariana Eunjung Cha report. "Daniel
Griffin, an infectious diseases doctor and researcher at Columbia
University Medical Center, said that with every virus — including
chickenpox, for which antibodies are supposed to last a lifetime — there are
cases of people who become sick again after recovering from the initial
illness. When it comes to Ebola, American doctor Ian Crozier was declared
free of the virus but then doctors found it lurking in his eye. In HIV/AIDS,
a baby in Mississippi born to an HIV-positive mother was thought to be
cured but then the virus reemerged 27 months after therapy was stopped.
So in a world where 14.5 million people have had the coronavirus, a small
number with resurgent sickness should not be cause for alarm....
"At the University of Pennsylvania, there was the pregnant woman infected
in March who was fine for two months and then became so sick during
childbirth she had to be put on a ventilator. At Cleveland Clinic, there was a
patient with very mild symptoms in February — just a loss of smell and
taste — who was well for two months, but then needed to be hospitalized in
early May and was confirmed to have the virus again. And at ProHealth
Care in Long Island, there was a man infected at the end of March who was
never sick enough to be hospitalized. He showed up again in July, this time
very ill. 'He thought he had an immunity shield, so he took care of his son
when he got covid,' Griffin said. Two weeks later, he was in the ER' The
man, who had a very high antibody response the first time and donated his
plasma so it could be used to treat other coronavirus patients, had barely
any when doctors recently tested his blood in the hospital."
There are conflicting explanations for what's going on. "For severe acute
respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome
(MERS), the antibodies seem to last for a year or longer. But other
coronaviruses, such as the four that cause the common cold, act differently.
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People seem to be able to get them each season, over and over again,"
Carolyn and Ariana report. "Last week, a British study posted to a preprint
server added to the body of evidence that virus-fighting antibodies drop off
steeply two to three months after infection ... It was quickly followed by
another study, also not peer-reviewed, of antibodies in nearly 20,000 New
Yorkers with mild or moderate covid-19 symptoms. After retesting 120 of
those people three months later, researchers at Mount Sinai Health System
found virus-fighting antibodies were largely stable and had even increased
in people that started with lower levels right after their infections."
The Senate GOP scrapped Trump's demand for a payroll
tax cut.
Senate Republicans have cast aside one of Trump's key demands in their
emerging coronavirus stimulus package, refusing to include a payroll tax
cut in their opening offer to Democrats, which Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is aiming to announce later today. "The
development came amid a frantic GOP effort to try and salvage other parts
of the package, though the entire process remained fluid and there was
confusion among Republican aides about when a deal might be reached,"
per Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim and Jeff Stein.
• Ascena Retail Group, the conglomerate behind women's apparel
brands Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant and Catherines, filed for bankruptcy
and said it would close some of its 2,800 stores. (Abha Bhattarai)
• LinkedIn, which is laying off 96o staff, joins a growing group of
employers announcing layoffs for white-collar jobs, as coronavirus
losses continue to ripple beyond low-wage work to better-paying jobs
in auto manufacturing, technology and consulting. "Economists and
human resources experts said the job cuts at Linkedln were further
evidence that hiring for white-collar jobs has stalled and did not bode
well for a short-term recovery," Jena McGregor reports.
• The top executives of biotechnology company Novavax stand to collect
millions even if their vaccine never makes it to the market. The stock
options earmarked for CEO Stanley Erck and three other executives
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are worth more than $100 million. They're contingent on the vaccine
making it to a Phase 2 trial, which is said to be imminent. (Hamza
Shaban)
The U.S. will soon surpass 4 million confirmed cases.
"Trump painted a wishful view Wednesday of the U.S. response to the
coronavirus pandemic, in which existing treatments can almost cure
patients flooding hospitals, all schools will safely reopen this fall, and the
country's soaring cases are confined to a handful of states," William Wan
and Jacqueline Dupree report. "The rosy assessment he issued at a White
House news briefing ... was undermined by the alarming reality that on
Wednesday, almost every metric showed just how badly America is losing
its fight against the virus. The number of daily deaths on
Wednesday surpassed 1,10o, the first time that mark had been reached
since May 29. And total deaths in the United States since the start of the
pandemic increased to more than 140,000. California on Wednesday
passed New York in the number of total confirmed coronavirus cases ...
"With transmission rapidly spiking in many areas, governors in
Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio joined the growing number of
states mandating face coverings statewide. More than 3o states
require people to wear masks. ... [Trump] declined to press for a
nationwide mandate for masks, despite the near-universal urgings of
public health experts.... On Wednesday, an influential model created by
the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation ... said wider mask-wearing
by Americans had caused the institute to revise projections on how many
people will die of covid-19 by Nov. 1. Earlier, it had forecast 224,50o deaths
by that date. Now, it estimates 219,90o deaths by Nov. 1 — a decrease of
about 5,000 deaths. If 95 percent of Americans wore masks when leaving
their homes, that number would drop further to 185,900, IHME
researchers said."
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A Texas county is storing bodies in trucks because so
many residents are dying.
"Texas, which reported 197 deaths and 10,893 hospitalizations, has been
one of the states hardest hit by the resurgent coronavirus. Hidalgo County,
at the southern tip of the state on the U.S. border with Mexico, has seen
cases rise 6o percent in the last week ... with deaths doubling to more than
36o," Reuters reports. "Crematoriums in the Hidalgo area have a wait list
of two weeks ... forcing the county to use five refrigerated trucks that can
hold 50 bodies each. Hidalgo's top medical official, Dr. Ivan Melendez,
partly blamed (Republican Gov. Greg) Abbott's move to override local
officials for the spike in coronavirus infections, which he said has jammed
the local medical system at every level."
Banks face a unique coronavirus problem: Robbers in
masks.
Financial regulators and banks fear masks could double as handy disguises
for would-be bank robbers, and there have been a few mask-involved
attempted robberies. "In one case, a man walked into a Houston bank with
a bandanna covering his face and handed a teller a note: 'I didn't get a
stimulus or that iok loan. I lost my business to Covid so please make this
easy and comply,' Renae Merle reports. "Another would-be robber in
Florida, entered a Wells Fargo branch wearing sunglasses, gloves and a
white cone-like mask over his face. He approached a teller's window
demanding money, according to the arrest warrant. But the bank employee
had trouble hearing the robber's demands — through the mask. 'The male
got upset and repeated himself several times' and eventually left empty handed, according to the arrest warrant.... Despite the robbery attempt,
Wells Fargo began requiring customers to wear masks July 13. They are
also required by Bank of America. JPMorgan Chase said its employees are
required to wear masks but they would comply with local ordinances when
it comes to their customers."
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D.C. imposed one of the most stringent mask requirements
in the country.
"Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said her order requires people older than 2 to
wear a mask when they leave the house and are likely to come into contact
with others. It's one of the strictest mask ordinances in the country — and
came on the same day the city recorded 102 new coronavirus cases, the
highest daily number since early June," Julie Zauzmer, Ovetta Wiggins,
Dana Hedgpeth and Rachel Chason report. "John Falcicchio, the mayor's
chief of staff, said D.C. police will be empowered to fine people not wearing
a mask, although the city expects such fines to be limited. As the city's case
counts rise, Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt said Wednesday that an
increasing proportion of those newly diagnosed infections involve younger
people."
• The virus could push 250,000 into hunger in the D.C. region,
according to a report by the Capital Area Food Bank. About half of the
food bank's 450 partner groups and food pantries are still closed
because of the pandemic. (Kyle Swenson)
• Southwest Airlines said it will no longer let travelers fly without
masks, thus enacting the strictest mask policy among U.S. airlines.
(Lori Aratani)
• Trump attended a fundraiser at his D.C. hotel without a mask. The
city sent an investigator to inspect the hotel. (Fenit Nirappil and Julie
Zauzmer)
• Two cafeterias used by staff in the White House complex were closed
after an employee tested positive. (NYT)
Colleges are creating special quarantine housing for
students who get infected or exposed.
Michigan State University will quarantine sick students in a 500-person
"isolation dorm." Penn State will quarantine sick students at an on-campus
hotel, while the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will convert two
dorms — one for students who have been exposed to the virus and another
for those confirmed to have it. (Teo Armus)
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• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said children are "stoppers" of the
virus. While there is evidence that younger children especially may
not transmit the virus as easily, claiming that children may stop the
spread of the disease shows a stunning lack of due diligence, writes
Post fact checker Glenn Kessler.
• A new poll shows 6o percent of parents with school-age children say
they'd rather wait for schools to reopen later to minimize infection
risks, even if their kids miss out on academics, according the Kaiser
Family Foundation.
• Trump said he would be comfortable sending his son and
grandchildren back to school. (Colby Itkowitz)
• Teachers across Arizona protested against reopening schools in
"motor marches." (Arizona Republic)
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) reiterated his plan to let parents
choose between sending their kids back to school or educating them
online. (Miami Herald)
Quote of the day
"This is everything I was trying to warn people about," said Rebekah
Jones, a Florida Department of Health employee who created the
state's corona virus dashboard and was fired by DeSantis after being
labeled an "alarmist"for predicting that the state would suffer 4,000
covid-.0 deaths. (Yahoo News)
Divided America
(,Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler joins protests in his city. (Jonathan
Maus/Bikeportland via Reuters)
Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler joins protests in his city. (Jonathan Maus/Bikeportland via Reuters)
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler got tear-gassed by federal
agents.
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"Wheeler choked on tear gas late Wednesday as he stood outside the
federal courthouse in downtown Portland, where federal agents set off
explosives and fired chemicals into a crowd of hundreds," Marissa Lang
reports. "The Democratic mayor ... had strapped on lab goggles to help
protect his eyes, but still, the mayor said, his face burned and eyes watered.
`It's hard to breathe — it's a little harder to breathe than I thought,'
Wheeler told The Washington Post while a man with a leaf blower turned
the nozzle on the mayor to clear away any gas still hanging in the air. 'This
is abhorrent. This is beneath us.' As Wheeler stood at the fence, he was
heckled and insulted. ... For hours before Wheeler's brush with chemical
irritants, the mayor made a contentious and, at times, tense attempt to talk
with protesters. On the wall of the justice center behind him, activists had
displayed a list of demands. The last demand on the list, which included
defunding the Portland Police Bureau by 5o percent and expelling federal
forces from the city, was for Wheeler to resign. ... After nearly an hour,
Wheeler had enough. A thick cloud of gas hung over the place where he
stood as he and two security officers pushed through the crowd and away
from the federal building."
The House voted to remove Confederate statues from the
Capitol.
The chamber also voted to "replace the bust of Roger B. Taney, the U.S.
chief justice who wrote the Supreme Court decision that said people of
African descent are not U.S. citizens," Felicia Sonmez and Donna Cassata
report. "The vote was 305 to 113 for the bill that would replace the bust of
Taney, which sits outside the old Supreme Court chamber on the first floor
of the Capitol, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of
the Supreme Court. ... Democrats were unified in backing the measure; all
the no votes came from Republicans, who were divided with 72 GOP
lawmakers voting for the bill and 113 opposed."
• The GOP-controlled Senate is poised to defy Trump's veto threat and
force the renaming of 10 military bases that honor Confederate
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generals. The name changes are included in the $740 billion military
spending bill, a final version of which the Senate has yet to pass. But
the chamber voted yesterday to end the debate period for
amendments without taking up a measure from Sen. Josh Hawley (R Mo.) that sought to strip the legislation's requirement to rename the
bases. (Karoun Demirjian)
• George Washington University will consider retiring the school's
"Colonials" moniker and renaming the campus's community center.
The center is named after Cloyd Heck Marvin, a former university
president credited with expanding the school but also known for being
a segregationist who resisted admitting black students. (Lauren
Lumpkin)
Trump announced a surge of federal law enforcement into
Chicago and Albuquerque.
"Appearing at an event with top federal law enforcement officials and the
family members of crime victims, Trump delivered fiery talking points that
took direct aim at those who have advocated redirecting funding from law
enforcement to other endeavors. He blamed the recent increases in
violence in some cities on leaders who have endorsed such steps and said
he planned to increase federal law enforcement's presence to reduce
crime," Matt Zapotosky reports. "Soon after he finished speaking,
Chicago's mayor accused Trump of seeking to distract from his handling of
the coronavirus pandemic.... The deployments, at least at first, will be
focused in Chicago and Albuquerque, where Attorney General William P.
Barr said the Justice Department will roll out a program it launched earlier
this month in Kansas City, Mo., to increase the number of agents from the
FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The program
was named `Operation Legend' to honor 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who
was shot and killed in Kansas City last month."
• Barr falsely claimed that federal agents have already arrested 200
people in K.C. as part of "Operation Legend." A Justice Department
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later tried to clarify that his number included arrests dating back to
last year and included state and FBI arrests in other joint operations.
(Kansas City Star)
• Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) said he's prepared to
arrest federal agents if they bring the tactics they've used in Portland
to his city. "Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who
unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges
from my office," he said. (Bloomberg News)
• The number of people trying to buy guns who are not legally allowed
to own them has more than doubled this spring, according to internal
FBI data. A year ago, in March, the FBI's National Instant Criminal
Background Check System ran background checks on 823,273
attempted gun buys, blocking about 9,500 people from buying guns.
This March, the system processed more than 1.4 million background
checks and blocked 23,692 gun sales. (Politico)
• The fired Minneapolis police officer who put his knee on George
Floyd's neck was charged with felony tax evasion. Authorities allege
that Derek Chauvin failed to claim more than $460,000 in income —
at least $96,000 of that in his off-duty security work. (Star Tribune)
• A Canadian court said sending asylum seekers back to the U.S.
violates their rights. The court "threw out a long-standing deal that
has allowed the country to send asylum seekers back to the United
States, saying it violates their rights by exposing them to likely
detention and possible removal on the U.S. side," Amanda Coletta
reports.
• Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, died
at 97. Charles picked up his brother's mantle by leading black voter
registration efforts in Mississippi in the 196os. He was elected the first
black mayor of a mixed-race Mississippi town since Reconstruction.
(Olesia Plokhil)
The elections
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At least 76 percent of American voters can cast ballots by
mail this fall.
"As of now, nearly i8o million Americans who are eligible to vote would be
able to cast a ballot by mail. Of those, 22 million live in states that will
accept fear of the coronavirus as an excuse to vote absentee, or have
switched to become 'no excuse' states," Kate Rabinowitz and Brittany
Renee Mayes report. "Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia
already allowed anyone to vote absentee. But many of these places are
making the process easier. California will start proactively mailing ballots
to registered voters, joining universal vote-by-mail states such as Colorado.
Many states will send every registered voter an absentee-ballot application.
These types of statewide expansions affect another 63 million eligible
voters. In some states like Nebraska, individual counties are planning to
send mail-in voting applications in the absence of a statewide directive. For
voters in nine states — Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia — in person voting remains the only option unless they can provide an approved
reason not related to fear of the coronavirus. Traditional absentee excuses
include military deployments or illness."
Republican lawmakers are privately having conversations
about what happens if Trump refuses to relinquish power.
"Most legal experts said it is hard to envision that Trump would actually try
to remain in office after a clear defeat by Biden, considering the uproar that
would follow," Elise Viebeck and Robert Costa report. "But his
unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power has forced
academics and political leaders — including, privately, some GOP
lawmakers — to contemplate possible scenarios.... Among the possibilities:
Trump could claim victory before the vote in key states is fully counted — a
process that could take days or even weeks this year because of the
expected avalanche of absentee ballots. He could also spend weeks refusing
to concede amid a legal war over which votes are valid and should be
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included in the tally ... Or he could simply refuse to leave on Jan. 2O. ...
This year, the president has attacked the security of voting by mail at least
5o times ... There is no evidence that mail voting leads to the kind of
massive fraud Trump has described....
"In GOP circles, private talk about Trump's assertions veers
from alarm to shrugging off his comments as simply incendiary
political salvos. One moderate Republican House member, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly and avoid Trump's
wrath, said he expects Trump to `leave quickly' if it is a blowout defeat. But
he said he worries about a narrow election and whether Trump would go to
extreme lengths to `protect his personal brand."It's something we'd all
rather not think about, but it's there,' he said. The president is being
backed by a bustling Republican operation in 15 states to monitor voting
locations and ensure a heavy GOP presence at polling sites. Trump's
reelection campaign and the RNC are working together to
recruit 50,000 volunteers to serve as `poll watchers,' according to
advisers to both groups, with $2o million set aside for courtroom fights ...
Democrats and voting rights advocates, meanwhile, are mustering their
own legal effort to make it easier to cast ballots by mail, filing more than 5o
lawsuits in 25 states."
• A new Quinnipiac University poll finds Biden leading Trump by one
point in Texas, 45 percent to 44 percent. Voters there say they like
Trump better, but they're seriously considering breaking for the
former vice president. (Aaron Blake)
• Biden claimed that Trump is America's "first" racist president. That's
not correct: A dozen presidents owned slaves. Others like Woodrow
Wilson used racist language. And many others, think Andrew
Jackson, enacted racist policies. Trump's spokeswoman also insists
that he is not racist. (Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner)
Trump keeps bragging about passing a cognitive test, but it
doesn't mean what he thinks it does.
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"In another Fox News interview [last night], Trump couldn't resist
revisiting what he said was the hardest part of the test — repeating five
words, in order. Trump said he was first asked to repeat a set of words —
'person,"woman,"man,"camera,"TV,' he said, offering a hypothetical
example — and then, later in the assessment after some time had elapsed,
he was again asked whether he remembered those same words, in order,"
Ashley Parker and William Wan report. "'And they say... 'Go back to that
question, and repeat them. Can you do it?" Trump said, mimicking the
doctors administering the exam. `And you go, `Person, woman, man,
camera, TV.' They say, 'That's amazing. How did you do that?' I do it
because I have, like, a good memory, because I'm cognitively there.' ...
Experts say the president's fixation on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment
... is particularly puzzling because the test is normally administered
only if someone is concerned that they or their loved ones may
be experiencing dementia or other cognitive decline. Getting a perfect
score — as Trump has repeatedly claimed he did — merely signifies that the
test-taker probably does not have a cognitive impairment as measured by
the exam."
Senate primaries are exposing growing fissures inside the
GOP.
The Senate Leadership Fund formally took a side Wednesday in a
contested GOP primary for a candidate to succeed retiring Kansas Sen. Pat
Roberts (R). The super PAC's aim is to stifle the chances of former Kansas
secretary of state Kris Kobach. Kobach choked in a very winnable
governor's race two years ago. SLF, which is closely aligned with
McConnell and run by his former chief of staff, will launch a $1.2 million
ad campaign promoting Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) in the primary. The
primary in Tennessee to replace retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander is also
becoming nastier: The Trump-endorsed candidate, former U.S.
ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, launched attack ads this week against
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his main competitor, Manny Sethi, an orthopedic surgeon whom Ted Cruz
endorsed. (Seung Min Kim and Rachael Bade)
Trump's company applied to trademark the word "telerally."
Then Trump held one.
In an application to the trademark office, a subsidiary of the organization
said the word will be used for "organizing events in the field of politics and
political campaigning." The trademark application could mark a shift in the
company's business model, which has always stayed one step away from
politics and doesn't market itself as a political company. By filing it,
trademark experts said, the company is saying it intends to enter this
business soon. (David Fahrenthold and Colby Itkowitz)
Following weeks of erratic behavior by Kanye West, his
wife addressed his bipolar disorder.
Kim Kardashian West issued a statement requesting "compassion and
empathy" from the public, as the rapper claims that he's running for
president. "We as a society talk about giving grace to the issue of mental
health as a whole," the reality TV star wrote, "however we should also give
it to the individuals who are living with it in times when they need it most."
West held what was billed as a campaign rally in North Charleston, S.C., on
Sunday, during which he attacked abolitionist Harriet Tubman and
revealed that he and Kardashian had seriously considered terminating
their first pregnancy. "For the following two nights, West sent — and, in
most cases, deleted — tweets detailing a strained relationship with his
family," Sonia Rao reports. "He also stated that Kardashian tried to get him
medical attention and, later on, claimed he has been trying to divorce her."
Social media speed read
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The president joined his eldest son in attacking Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.),
the No. 3 member of House GOP leadership and the highest-ranking
conservative woman in Congress:
The newest branch of the military had a meta message:
Trump's description of the coordinator of his coronavirus task force was
magical:
Videos of the day
Stephen Colbert was confused by Trump's message to Ghislaine Maxwell:
GJ
Seth Meyers said Trump is trying to convince America that he suddenly
cares about the virus:
The Congressional Black Caucus hosted a special session on the House
floor for members to remember the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.):
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