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After expressing frustration at the slow pace of approval for coronavirus treatments, and causing controversy by publicly linking the Food and Drug Administration to the “deep state” conspiracy theory, Donald Trump on Sunday announced the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma, a method which has been used to treat flu and measles, for Covid-19 patients.
Covid-19 has killed more than 175,000, cratered the economy and upended the president’s hopes of re-election. The White House has sunk vast resources into an expedited process to develop a vaccine, known as Operation Warp Speed, which aides hope will produce an “October surprise” before the presidential election on 3 November.
Making the announcement at a press conference, and with FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn standing with him, Trump added to days of White House officials suggesting politically motivated delays in approving a vaccine and therapeutics.
“This is what I’ve been looking to do for a long time,” Trump told reporters on Sunday at the White House. “I’m pleased to make a truly historic announcement in our battle against the China virus that will save countless lives.”
Critics say that name for the virus, based on where it originated, is racist. Furthermore, though more than 64,000 Covid-19 patients in the US have already been given convalescent plasma, a go-to tactic for new diseases, there is no solid evidence that it fights the virus.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted: “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after 3 November. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!”
The “deep state” conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats exists to thwart the president’s agenda. Former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic propagator of the theory, has also said it is “for nut cases” and “none of this is true”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s tweet “scary” and “beyond the pale”.
The news site Axios, meanwhile, reported that trade adviser Peter Navarro was a driving force behind claims about the “deep state” and Covid treatments. Citing two sources in a meeting last Monday, Axios said Navarro aggressively confronted FDA officials, saying: “You are all deep state and you need to get on Trump Time.”
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows took the battle to the Sunday talk shows, telling ABC’s This Week: “We’ve looked at a number of people that are not being as diligent as they should be in terms of getting to the bottom of it. This president is about cutting red tape. He had to make sure that they felt the heat. If they don’t see the light, they need to feel the heat because the American people are suffering.”
Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb defended his old employer.
“I firmly reject the idea they would slow-walk anything or accelerate anything based on any political consideration or any consideration other than what is best for the public health and a real sense of mission to patients,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.
At the White House, in answer to a reporter from the fringe, far-right One America News, Trump doubled down.
“We broke the logjam over the last week,” he said, “to be honest I think that there are people in the FDA [who] can see things being held up and wouldn’t mind so much.”
Shortly after being challenged on his claims about plasma treatment compared to caution from officials including FDA commissioner Hahn, Trump ended the briefing.
There is little data on how effective plasma is or whether it must be administered fairly early in an illness, Dr William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University, told the Associated Press.
Hundreds of drugs are being developed, he added, and Trump “has made all kinds of therapeutic suggestions” that are not supported by science and are even dangerous.
Those statements from the president include claims about the possible value of treating patients with ultraviolet light and bleach. Trump reportedly recently became enthusiastic about oleandrin, a plant extract derived from a toxic shrub which scientists warned against.
The president is perhaps best known for his ardent embrace of the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. In March the FDA granted emergency authorization for distribution of the drugs. In June the agency revoked it, in light of growing evidence they don’t work and could cause serious side effects. The FDA also warned doctors against prescribing the drugs in combination with remdesivir, a drug that was shown to help patients with Covid-19.
Trump listens as FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn speaks. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
Axios cited a senior administration official as saying Navarro, “a fervent proponent of hydroxychloroquine … remained angry at the FDA for saying the drug didn’t work against Covid-19.”
Trump told reporters the order regarding plasma was “only possible … because of Operation Warp Speed. That is everybody working together. We’re years ahead of approval. If we went by the speed levels of past administrations we’d be two years, three years behind where we are today and that includes and vaccines that you’ll be hearing about very soon.”
The president also expressed support for the idea the American people have a “right to try” treatments still being researched.
Hahn has emphasized that routine evaluation procedures will remain in place to evaluate vaccine candidates. Furthermore, a top FDA official overseeing trials vowed to resign if the administration approved a vaccine before it was shown to be safe and effective.
Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, made his promise during a call with pharmaceutical executives, government officials and others, Reuters reported.
“I think this administration has put more pressure on the Food and Drug Administration than I can remember,” Schaffner told the AP. “Everybody is just a little bit nervous.”
One person was reportedly arrested for possession of a weapon at a protest after officers found a firearm in their possession. At least three others were arrested for assaulting police and refusing lawful orders, authorities said.
Pepper spray was used in several instances, according to police, including one incident in which a protester allegedly approached police threateningly while brandishing a pipe.
Demonstrators were heard chanting “no RNC in CLT,” using an acronym to refer to the city, as well as repeating “Black Lives Matter.”
Several people were also arrested during Friday’s protests, according to the AP.
GOP figures are not scheduled to speak from the city directly due to ongoing concerns across the country about the spread of COVID-19, and will instead deliver addresses remotely. Trump plans to accept the nomination on Thursday at The White House.
Visible GOES-16 satellite image of Hurricane Marco (left) and Tropical Storm Laura (right) at 12:50 p.m. EDT Sunday, August 23. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB)
The Hurricane Hunters found winds of 75 mph in Marco on Sunday morning, and at 11:30 a.m. EDT the National Hurricane Center upgraded Marco to hurricane status. Marco is the third hurricane of the 2020 season, arriving over two weeks before the average day of arrival of the season’s third hurricane, September 9.
At 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, August 23, the center of Marco was located about 280 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, headed north-northwest at 14 mph with a central pressure of 992 mb. Marco had adequate conditions for intensification, with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) near 30.5 degrees Celsius (87°F), moderate wind shear of 15 – 20 knots, and a drying atmosphere with a mid-level relative humidity of 60%. Satellite images showed Marco to be a small storm, and small storms can intensify and weaken quickly.
Figure 1. Predicted path of Marco from the 12Z Sunday, August 23 runs of the top hurricane tracking models used by NHC. The official NHC forecast is the heavy black line. Potential landfall locations were clustered over Louisiana. (Image credit: weathermodels.com)
Marco expected to hit Louisiana as tropical storm or category 1 hurricane
Marco will continue to experience adequate conditions for intensification through Monday afternoon. Thereafter, wind shear is expected to rise, potentially causing Marco to weaken to a strong tropical storm by the time of landfall on Monday evening in Louisiana. A stronger storm is more likely to track farther to the east, near the Mississippi/Louisiana border, while a weaker storm is more likely to turn more to the northwest with the low-level flow, and make landfall in western Louisiana.
A small storm like Marco can experience large changes in intensity quickly, so a sudden ramp-up in wind shear could weaken it abruptly on Monday afternoon and cause the storm to shift towards western Louisiana.
How might Marco affect Laura?
Marco is expected to bring a storm surge of 4 – 6 feet along portions of the Louisiana coast, and it is likely that coastal water levels will still be elevated there by the time Laura passes by (see more on Laura below). Typically, it takes several days for storm surge levels to subside – longer if the storm brings heavy rains over a large area causing a great deal of runoff. As a relatively small storm not expected to drop prodigious rains over a large area, it is a good bet that Marco will leave coastal water levels elevated by 1 – 2 feet when Laura arrives, creating a modest increase in the storm surge threat in Louisiana from that storm.
When two tropical cyclones approach within about 900 miles of each other, they tend to rotate counter-clockwise around a common center, then go their separate ways, in a process called the Fujiwara effect. In rare cases they may merge into one storm, but the resulting storm will not be stronger than either of the original two storms, as wind shear from each weakens the other. It appears that Marco and Laura will be too far apart, and Marco will be too small, to have such an interaction.
It is exceptionally unusual to have two tropical storms or hurricanes approaching the northern Gulf Coast within two days of each other, as it appears Marco and Laura will. In fact, there are only two other times on record when the Gulf of Mexico has had two named storms at the same time. In 1933, two hurricanes made U.S. landfall within 24 hours, but they were much further apart: one struck near Brownsville, Texas, while the other hit the east coast of Florida. No other U.S. hurricanes have made landfall within 60 hours of each other, according to Phil Klotzbach (Colorado State University).
Figure 2. Radar image of Tropical Storm Laura taken at 1:01 p.m. EDT Sunday, August 23. Curved bands (yellow and orange colors) from a developing inner core were present between Cuba and Haiti. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)
Tropical Storm Laura a formidable threat to U.S.
Tropical Storm Laura brought torrential rains on Sunday to the nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola, after the storm made landfall in the eastern Dominican Republic Saturday evening.
The center of Laura passed over the Dominican Republic’s capital, Santo Domingo, near 12:30 a.m. EDT Sunday, bringing heavy rain and wind gusts to 40 mph. A personal weather station in Santo Domingo recorded 5.74” from Laura as of 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, and another station just southwest of the city recorded 9.29”. In Haiti, a personal weather station in the capital of Port-a-Prince recorded 6.45″. The city recorded wind gusts up to 39 mph.
Laura brought flooding rains and a few high wind gusts to Puerto Rico on Saturday. At 2:09 p.m. EDT Sunday, Camp Santiago, located about five miles inland from the south coast of Puerto Rico, recorded sustained winds of 52 mph, gusting to 75 mph, when a powerful mesoscale vortex from Laura passed overhead.
At 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, August 23, Laura was located in the waters between Haiti and Cuba, about 55 miles south of the eastern tip of Cuba. Laura was headed west-northwest at 21 mph with top sustained winds of 50 mph and a central pressure of 1004 mb. Radar from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, showed that Laura quickly began to build an inner core in the waters between Cuba and Haiti early on Sunday afternoon, but this structure will be disrupted once the center moves over the high mountains of eastern Cuba late Sunday afternoon.
Satellite images on Sunday showed Laura as a well-organized storm. The cloud pattern showed an impressive symmetry, with high-level cirrus clouds that streamed out in all directions, indicating excellent upper-level outflow. Laura’s thunderstorms were intense with very cold cloud tops, another indication of good organization. Laura was embedded in a moderately dry region of the atmosphere, with a mid-level relative humidity of 60%, but the light to moderate upper-level wind shear of 5 – 15 knots helped keep the dry air from substantially affecting the storm.
A track over Cuba, then into the Gulf
The Bermuda high, steering Laura, will be strong and will extend far to the west, steering the storm generally to the west-northwest over the next four days, and the Sunday morning runs of the models continued to indicate a track that will take Laura over Cuba on Sunday and Monday, with the storm emerging into the Gulf of Mexico on Monday night.
Figure 3. The 6Z Sunday, August 23, forecast of the COAMPS-TC model, which made the best 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-day intensity forecasts of any model in 2019, predicted Laura would traverse Cuba, reorganize over the Gulf of Mexico, and peak as a category 3 hurricane shortly before landfall Wednesday night in Louisiana. The COAMPS-TC was the third-best track model in 2019, behind the European model and UKMET model. (Image credit: Naval Research Laboratory)
Intensification likely once Laura gets into Gulf of Mexico
When Laura emerges into the Gulf of Mexico, conditions for intensification are expected to be very favorable. Ocean temperatures are a very warm 30 – 31 degrees Celsius (86 – 88°F) across much of the Gulf of Mexico, and an upper-level high pressure system with light winds will be present, bringing light to moderate wind shear and excellent upper-level outflow. The atmosphere will be somewhat dry, with a mid-level relative humidity of 60%, but with that light wind shear, dry air is unlikely to present a significant impediment to intensification. Tropical Storm Marco will be too small and too far inland to bring increased wind shear from its upper-level outflow.
It will take a day or so for Laura to recover after a long traverse over land. This recovery may be slowed by the possibility that Laura will expand in size as it traverses Hispaniola and Cuba – something that happened to Hurricane Ike when it took a similar path in 2008. When a storm’s core is over land, its outer portions tend to develop since the inner core cannot, leading to an expansion of the hurricane’s size.
A large storm takes a long time to spin up, but generates a larger storm surge than its Saffir-Simpson wind scale classification might suggest. Ike ended up bringing a devastating storm surge characteristic of strong category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in Texas on the Bolivar Peninsula as a high-end category 2 storm. If Laura behaves similarly, it may be a large storm that takes considerable time to spin up, but delivers a formidable storm surge to the coast.
On Monday night and Tuesday morning, Laura will be passing over the deep, warm waters of the Loop Current (see below), but will not be sufficiently organized to take full advantage. By Tuesday afternoon, Laura will likely be crossing over a cool eddy in the Gulf with limited heat content, which will make rapid intensification unlikely. However, the storm will have a long stretch of warm waters with high heat content Tuesday night until landfall Wednesday night or Thursday morning, and rapid intensification during that time is a good possibility. The 12Z Sunday runs of the HWRF and HMON intensity models predicted that Laura would peak as a category 4 hurricane; the 6Z Sunday run of the COMAPS-TC model predicted a category 3 peak. Residents along the Gulf Coast should anticipate the possibility that Laura will rapidly intensify right up until landfall, potentially reaching major hurricane status.
Figure 4. Predicted path of Laura from the 6Z August 23 run of the European model’s 51 ensemble members (colored lines, which show minimum central pressure). Model members showed a wide range of potential landfall locations along the U.S. Gulf Coast, mostly in Texas and Louisiana. (Image credit: weathermodels.com)
Where will Laura go?
The NHC cone of uncertainty should probably be wider than depicted for Laura, since model solutions for the storm have a wide spread covering much of Texas and Louisiana for potential landfall locations. The trend in the models has been to build the Bermuda high steering Laura farther to west, pushing the storm more westward, towards Texas.
The best-performing model for Laura so far has been the UKMET model, which at all times has out-performed all other models and the official NHC forecast. The UKMET model’s 12Z Sunday forecast predicted a landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border Wednesday night as an intensifying hurricane. It appears that steering currents will keep Laura moving after it comes ashore, so it is unlikely to stall out and produce the type of catastrophic inland rains generated by Harvey in 2017. Instead, storm surge would more likely be the greater threat with Laura.
Figure 5. Ocean Heat Content (OHC) levels in the Gulf of Mexico on August 23, 2020. The warm waters of the Loop Current lay just off the northwest coast of Cuba, and Laura is expected to pass over this high heat content water before encountering a cool eddy with limited heat content in the central Gulf. OHC values higher than 75 kilojoules per square centimeter (light green colors) are highly favorable for rapid intensification of hurricanes. Near-shore waters along the continental shelf are too shallow to have a relevant number for OHC, and are left white in this image. (Image credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science)
The role of ocean heat content in Laura’s intensification
In the Gulf of Mexico, the deepest warm water is found in the Loop Current – an ocean current that transports warm Caribbean water through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico. The current flows northward into the Gulf of Mexico, then loops southeastward just south of the Florida Keys (where it is called the Florida Current), and then goes just west of the westernmost Bahamas. From there, the waters of the Loop Current flow northward along the U.S. coast and become the Gulf Stream.
With current speeds flowing at about 1.8 mph (0.8 m/s), the Loop Current is one of the fastest currents in the Atlantic Ocean. The current is about 200 – 300 km (125 – 190 miles) wide, and 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep, and is present in the Gulf of Mexico about 95% of the time. During summer and fall, the Loop Current provides a deep (80 – 150 meter) layer of very warm water that can provide a huge energy source for any hurricanes aspiring to become rapidly intensifying major hurricanes.
The Loop Current commonly bulges out in the northern Gulf of Mexico and sometimes will shed a clockwise rotating ring of warm water that separates from the main current. This ring of warm water slowly drifts west-southwestward towards Texas or Mexico at about 2 – 3 miles per day. This feature is called a “Loop Current ring,” “Loop Current eddy,” or “warm core ring,” and can provide a key source of energy to fuel rapid intensification of hurricanes that cross the Gulf (in addition to the Loop Current itself).
The Loop Current pulsates in a quasi-regular fashion and sheds rings every 6 to 11 months. When a Loop Current eddy breaks off in the Gulf of Mexico at the height of hurricane season, it can lead to a dangerous situation where a vast reservoir of energy is available to any hurricane that might cross over. That is what occurred in 2005, when a Loop Current eddy separated in July, just before Hurricane Katrina passed over and “bombed” into a Category 5 hurricane. The eddy remained in the Gulf and slowly drifted westward during September. Hurricane Rita passed over the same Loop Current eddy three weeks after Katrina, and also explosively deepened to a Category 5 storm.
In 2020, fortunately, no warm Loop Current eddy is present in the central Gulf (though there is a warm eddy in the western Gulf, southeast of the Texas/Mexico border). Instead, a prominent counter-clockwise rotating cool eddy lies in the central Gulf. Passage of Laura over this cool eddy may slow the intensification process. However, once Laura leaves the cool eddy, the storm will have a long stretch of waters with high ocean heat content until landfall, and rapid intensification is a good possibility.
Bob Henson assisted with writing content for this posting.
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The SCU Lightning Complex started on Aug. 16 with multiple fires within the complex. These fires have since merged into two major fires and are broken into three zones: Canyon, Calaveras and Deer.
COUNTIES: Multiple locations throughout Santa Clara County, Alameda County, Contra Costa County, San Joaquin County and Stanislaus County
Alameda County
All of Mines Road, south of Mile Marker 10 to the county line
South of Welch Creek Rd. to the fire perimeter
Alameda/Santa Clara County Line East of Calaveras Rd. at Welch Creek Rd. to the fire perimeter
San Joaquin County
South of West Corral Hollow Road to Stanislaus County line
West of I-580 to Alameda County line
East of Alameda County line to I-580 and the Stanislaus County line
Santa Clara County
North of Magnolia Ct. and Magnolia Way,
East of Lower Thomas Grade along the East Dunne Corridor
East of Hwy 101 to Meltcalf Rd.
East of Coyote Creek,
East of Cochrane Rd.,
East of Hill Rd.,
South of Main Ave. North of Dunne Ave., West of Shingle Valley Rd. and Anderson Lake to include the Jackson Oaks and Holiday Lake Estates
South of Metcalf Rd.
East of San Jose City limits
South of Mt. Hamilton Rd.
North of Metcalf Rd. & San Felipe Rd., East to the County Line
East of San Antonio Valley Rd. to Del Puerto Canyon Rd. to the County Line
South of Stanislaus County Between Santa Clara County Line and I-5
West of I-5 North of Stanislaus/Merced County Line
North of Stanislaus/Merced County Line
East of Santa Clara County Line, East if Ed Levine County Park, Felter Rd., Sierra Rd., Toyon Ave., and Mt. Hamilton Rd. Three Springs Rd.
Toyon Ave., and Mt. Hamilton Rd. to Three Springs Rd.
North of Hwy 130 to Santa Clara County Line
West of San Antonio Valley Rd.
West of Mines Rd. to Santa Clara County Line
East of 3 Springs Rd. and Mt. Hamilton Rd.
South of Santa Clara County Line
North of Mt. Hamilton Rd. to Three Springs Rd.
South of Santa Clara County Line
West of the Fire Perimeter
East of Ferguson Rd. East and North of Hwy 152
West of Merced County Line
North of Hwy 152
South of Metcalf Rd at Shingle Valley Rd.
East to the Stanislaus County line
East of Shingle Valley Rd. and everything East of Anderson Lake, East of Coyote Creek
East of Coyote Reservoir, East of Roop Rd., East of Leavesley Rd., East of Crews Rd
East of Ferguson Road.
East and North of Hwy 152
West of Merced County Line, North of Hwy 152
South of Metcalf Road at Shingle Valley Road, East to the Stanislaus County Line
Alameda County / Stanislaus County:
Frank Raines Park to Mines Road
Del Puerto Canyon Road 1 mile to Mines Road
CZU LIGHTNING COMPLEX FIRE
The CZU August Lightning Complex fire continues to burn in Southern San Mateo County and Northern Santa Cruz County.
Communities of Loma Mar and Dearborn Park Area (Zone SMC E018)
Pescadero Creek County Park Area (Zone SMC E024)
Butano Community Area (Zone SMC E098)
Butano State Park Area including Barranca Knolls Community (Zone SMC E019)
Butano Creek Drainage (Zone SMC E055)
South Skyline Blvd. Area near Highway 9 (SMC E049)
Russian Ridge Open Space Reserve Area (Zone SMC E027)
Middleton Tract Area (Zone SMC E044)
Portola Redwoods State Park and the Portola Heights Community Area (Zone SMC E048)
Pescadero Beach Area (Zone SMC E075)
Bean Hollow Area (Zone SMC E042)
Pescadero Area (Zone SMC E043)
San Gregorio Area (Zone SMC E022)
La Honda Area (Zone SMC E028)
Red Barn Area (Zone SMC E010)
Russian Bridge Open Space Area (Zone SMC E027)
Skylonda Area (Zone SMC E012)
Langley Hill Area ( Zone SMC E010)
Bean Hollow Area (Zone SMC E042) (8/20/2020 6:00 pm)
Santa Cruz County
Waterman Gap Loop, Upper Hwy 236, Boulder Creek Golf Course, Heartwood Hill, Lodge Road, Community of Little Basin, Lower China Grade, Upper China Grade, Community of Kings Hwy, Lower Jamison Creek, Gallion Heights, Fallen Leaf Neighborhood, Foxglove Lane
Saratoga Toll Road, San Lorenzo Park, Riverside Grove-Community of Teilh Drive, Wildwood Road
Everyone on Empire Grade Road, from Felton Empire north, all of Pine Flat Road, all of Ice Cream Grade, Bonny Doon Road, in between Pine Flat Road, Martin Road, and all associated side streets are under an evacuation order.
Bonny Doon south of Ice Cream Grade, to include Pine Flat Road South is now under an evacuation order
Areas of Alba Road, Hubbard Gulch and Fanning Grade.
All areas of Ben Lomond
The area of Lompico
All areas adjacent to the Bonny Doon and San Lorenzo Valley should be prepared to evacuate if necessary
Areas West of Highway 9 to Empire Grade
South from Bear Creek Road to Felton, this includes Ben Lomond
Paradise Park
University of California Santa Cruz, campus only
The areas of Zayante Canyon
Scotts Valley West of State Route 17
Davenport south
All areas of Felton
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has hit back at President Donald Trump’s attacks on his mental capabilities.
In recent months, 74-year-old Trump and his campaign have clung to verbal gaffes Biden has made and repeatedly, without evidence, sought to paint the president’s 77-year-old rival as mentally unfit, often referring to him as “Sleepy Joe.”
In an interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace last month, Trump declined the opportunity to label Biden as senile, but said he was “mentally shot.”
Biden was pressed about Trump’s attacks on his mental fitness by ABC News anchor David Muir in his first joint sit-down interview running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
The former Vice President insisted that despite his age, he “absolutely” could serve two terms as president. If elected, Biden would be 78 on Inauguration Day in January 2021 and the oldest ever occupant of the White House.
“[Trump’s] campaign has called you ‘diminished.’ And I’m curious how you’d respond to that,” Muir asked Biden.
“Watch me. Mr. President, watch me. Look at us both,” Biden said, referring to Harris, 55. “Look at us both, what we say, what we do, what we control, what we know, what kind of shape we’re in.”
Biden acknowledged that it is “legitimate” to ask anyone over the age of 70 whether or not they are fit to lead the country. “Only thing I can say to the American people, it’s a legitimate question to ask anybody. Watch me,” he added.
Later, Biden said that when he called himself a transition candidate, he did not mean a one-term president. “We haven’t spent nearly enough time building the bench in the Democratic Party,” Biden told Muir.
He said he wants to make sure that when the election is over, “we have a new Senate, we won back statehouses, we’re in a position where we transition to a period of bringing people up to the visibility that they need to get to be able to lead nationally.”
Asked if that means he is leaving open the possibility of serving eight years as president, Biden replied: “Absolutely.”
Biden accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination with a 24-minute speech during the first ever virtual Democratic National Convention.
Many praised the address, including Wallace on Fox News, who said he thought it was “enormously effective.”
“Remember, Donald Trump has been talking for months about Joe Biden as mentally shot,” Wallace said. “I thought that he blew a hole, a big hole in the characterization.”
Meanwhile, Trump has stumbled through some of his own interviews of late. He recently bragged about passing a cognitive test that is designed to flag signs of dementia in older people and insisted Biden would not be able to pass it.
Biden and Harris’ first joint sit-down interview will air on ABC on Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET.
The Florida Keys are under a Coastal Flood Watch as a result of Tropical Storm Laura.
“The #FloridaKeys are under a Coastal Flood Watch starting tonight and ending late Monday night,” the National Weather Service Key West tweeted early Sunday. “The passage of TS #Laura to our west will bring strong SE breezes across the island chain, which will result in 1-2 additional feet of saltwater flooding.”
Some roads may be closed, according to the National Weather Service, which also notes that low-lying property may be inundated.
Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola early Sunday.
Vehicles drive through a flooded street caused by Tropical Storm Laura in Salinas, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Aug. 22, 2020. Laura began flinging rain across Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on Saturday morning and was expected to drench the Dominican Republic, Haiti and parts of Cuba during the day on its westward course. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
Another tropical storm, Marco, is nearing hurricane strength as it crosses the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said 8 a.m. EDT Sunday. It is expected to make landfall in southeastern Louisiana or Mississippi Monday, sometime from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.
Tropical Storm Laura is also projected to hit Louisiana, possibly as a hurricane, later this week. Laura is expected to make landfall about 36 to 48 hours after Marco in the same general area.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering fast tracking an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed in the U.K. for use in the United States ahead of the nation’s upcoming presidential election, according to a Financial Times report, which cited three people briefed on the plan.
One option, according to the FT report, would involve the U.S. Food and Drug Administration awarding “emergency use authorization” for the vaccine, which was developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca told the FT that it hasn’t discussed an emergency use authorization for its potential vaccine with the U.S. government. A spokesperson for Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, told FT that any claim of an emergency authorization for a vaccine before the election is “absolutely false.”
On Saturday, President Donald Trump made a baseless accusation that the FDA was standing in the way of drug companies’ efforts to test potential coronavirus vaccines and treatments for political reasons.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back saying on Twitter and called on the FDA to not succumb to political pressure from the White House.
She added that Trump’s “dangerous attempt to inject himself into the scientific decisions of @US_FDA jeopardizes the health & well-being of all Americans.”
The White House, FDA and Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The availability of a vaccine before the U.S. presidential election could allow Trump to justify his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has faced widespread criticism.
During his convention speech on Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden bashed Trump’s response to the public health crisis, calling it the “worst performance of any nation on Earth.”
The coronavirus has infected more than 5.6 million people in the U.S. as of Saturday, roughly a quarter of the globe’s reported cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data. On Friday, the U.S. recorded at least 1,100 deaths, bringing the nation’s death toll above 175,000.
Monday’s lineup will feature Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chamber’s lone Black Republican, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who chairs the Trump Victory Committee’s finance committee.
Other notable names include Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Black Democrat who supports the president; Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla.; and Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters earlier this summer from the steps of their mansion.
On Tuesday, first lady Melania Trump will speak, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, albeit reportedly from Israel; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky; Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa; former Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida; and Attorneys General Jeanette Nuñez of Florida and Daniel Cameron of Kentucky.
The president’s children, Eric and Tiffany Trump, are also slated to speak that night, in addition to Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student who sued CNN and The Washington Post for defamation, and Mary Ann Mendoza, whose son, Sgt. Brandon Mendoza, was killed by an undocumented immigrant in a drunken driving collision in 2014.
Asked about Pompeo’s unusual setup, addressing a political convention while on official foreign travel, McDaniel wouldn’t speak to that buttold CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that the RNC and Trump campaign were paying for all of their events, including the programming and staging.
Vice President Mike Pence, second lady Karen Pence and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway will speak on Wednesday night, which will also feature Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Joni Ernst of Iowa; Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota; and Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin of New York.
Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump, who is married to the president’s son Eric Trump, and Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina candidate who defeated the White House’s pick in a GOP primary for chief of staff Mark Meadows’ congressional seat, will also speak that night.
The final night will include speeches by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey (who switched from the Democratic Party in December), White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump, White House aide Ja’Ron Smith and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.
Thursday’slineup also includes UFC President Dana White; evangelist Franklin Graham; Alice Johnson, a criminal justice reform advocate who was granted clemency in 2018; and, of course, the president himself, who will accept the nomination at the White House instead of Charlotte, N.C., or Jacksonville, Fla., where Republicans had planned to hold their convention in person.
Some delegates are still gathering in Charlotte. McDaniel, however, insisted that everyone was tested before leaving for the city and that testing was being conducted on site, adding that Republicans were taking action to allow people to live their lives while they hold a convention in a healthy, safe way.
Of the president’s speech on Thursday night at the White House, McDaniel said that “it is being paid for by the Republican National Committee and the campaign, not the taxpayers.”
Republicans are looking to their national convention to boost their most vulnerable Senate incumbents and help preserve their increasingly tenuous majority in the chamber.
The convention comes at a particularly crucial moment for the GOP’s Senate majority. Republican incumbents in several states are facing the fight of their political lives, while Democrats have begun expanding their electoral battleground into states that were previously of little concern to the GOP.
With the current Senate battleground map, a Democratic majority now appears within reach.
In Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina, Republican senators are either trailing or running neck and neck with their Democratic challengers. Meanwhile, GOP-held seats in Georgia, Iowa and Montana have come into play in recent months.
The GOP also hopes to take back a Senate seat in Alabama held by Democrat Doug Jones, who won in a 2017 special election.
Handled successfully, Jennings said, the convention could give Republicans a chance to not only rally their political base, but to make a high-profile appeal to voters still on the fence about supporting the GOP.
“Conventions offer an opportunity for the entire party to make voters generally feel better about the direction the party would generally take the country,” Jennings said. “From the perspective of it being a party branding exercise, yeah, I think if it’s done successfully by Trump’s operation it will help all Republicans. In that particular case a rising tide would lift all boats.”
But some Republicans expressed skepticism in the convention’s ability to drastically alter their party’s political standing, especially in down-ballot contests.
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the event into a largely virtual convention, raising the possibility of technical hiccups. And some Republicans worry that the convention will heavily feature the culture wars that Trump has long put at the center of his political brand instead of focusing on more concrete priorities like the economy or a second-term policy agenda.
Indeed, the Republican convention’s list of speakers is expected to feature a handful of conservative figures, including a St. Louis couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in June and a former Kentucky Catholic high school student who became enmeshed in controversy last year following an interaction with a Native American protester at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.
“Look, do we want to make this thing about policy and not the president? Of course,” one veteran GOP operative said. “But I think to an extent, you have to accept that it’s the Trump show.”
Some Republicans, however, said the convention’s virtual format may be a win for incumbent senators, allowing them to spend valuable time in their home states instead of huddling with party elites away from their constituents.
Trump will almost certainly be the chief communicator of the Republican agenda at the convention, Polyansky said. But he added that many of the president’s accomplishments — the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for instance — wouldn’t have been possible without a GOP-controlled Senate, and that it would be wise to highlight that fact.
“Yes, there are certainly positive executive orders — things that the president himself will understandably point to as singular, solo successes,” Polyansky said. “But in many instances, the success we’ve seen across the board from historic tax relief to desperately needed pandemic support really have home roots with Senate Republicans. And I think that’s a great opportunity for them to have the spotlight too.”
Republicans get one advantage in that their convention comes after the Democratic convention, giving a final word of sorts in this month of conventions to the GOP.
Jesse Hunt, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that the GOP will now have the chance to sharpen its counterargument against Democratic control in Washington.
“Last week was a window into the socialist nightmare that’d exist if Democrats capture the White House and Senate this fall,” Hunt said. “It’s important Republicans continue to present to voters what’s at stake if we allow the most extreme voices in their party to take control at a time our nation can least afford it.”
Both Laura and Marco are exceptional storms, the earliest L and M systems in the Atlantic on record. They are the latest dominoes to fall in a season that has already featured the earliest C, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K tropical storms and hurricanes. With already more tropical systems than in an average year, the season has been twice as active as average.
President Trump heads into this week’s Republican National Convention with national polls showing him trailing in his race for re-election. But surveys also identify strengths in his political standing, some of them not widely noted, that could help him close the gap by Election Day.
Mr. Trump lags behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 9 percentage points, this month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found. The president’s share of support, now at 41%, hasn’t topped 44% this year against Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump also trails…
Federal officials described them as the “fires of hell,” a “holocaust” that blackened 775,000 acres of timber and chaparral and produced miles-high clouds resembling a nuclear bomb blast.
It was the Siege of ’87, when two weeks of dry lightning strikes in late August and early September sparked thousands of wildfires in Northern California and Oregon, drawing an army of 19,000 firefighters.
In 1999, hundreds of lightning-caused fires in the Big Sur region and the state’s north merged into two of the nation’s top blazes that year.
During a 33-hour period in June of 2008, more than 5,000 lightning strikes ignited some 1,000 fires across Northern California, the Sierra Nevada and the Central Coast.
This month’s explosion of lightning-sparked fires in the Bay Area will undoubtedly go down in the record books as the Siege of 2020. In the span of a week, some of them have merged together to form the second- and third- largest wildfires in modern state history.
But big fires ignited by storms that streak the skies with thousands of lightning bolts are nothing new.
Though California’s most destructive wildfires are often caused by people or equipment during high winds, many of the state’s largest recorded blazes have started with lightning strikes in the north or the Central Coast.
As of Saturday morning, the LNU Lightning Complex fire in the Napa-Sonoma County region had scorched more than 300,000 acres, making it the state’s second-largest after 2018’s human-caused Mendocino Complex fire.
At roughly 292,000 acres, the SCU Complex fire in the East Bay region is the third-largest.
The enormous volume of lightning strikes — some 12,000 — and the number of ignitions — 585 so far — makes it impossible for firefighting crews to contain many of the starts before they blend together, forming monsters that can burn for weeks or even months before dying out.
There is likely more to come, given the forecasts of thunderstorms, dry lightning and wind gusts for the Bay Area on Sunday and Monday.
Though the scale of the last week’s dry lightning strikes seems extraordinary, Cindy Palmer, a meteorologist in the Bay Area office of the National Weather Service, said it wasn’t that unusual.
“I think people have short memories,” she said.
Two colliding weather systems — tropical moisture from the south and a high-pressure ridge from the east — are producing thunderstorms that spit out lightning but little rain. Last weekend, Palmer said, lightning struck in one spot 10 miles from the nearest rainfall.
The moisture in the storm systems is in the higher atmosphere, and much of it evaporates before it reaches Earth’s surface.
“It’s not that these storms aren’t raining,” Palmer said. “It’s that they’re not producing enough rain to stop a fire from starting.”
That is especially true after an exceptionally dry winter in Northern California, and a heat wave that has parched wildland vegetation.
Lightning strikes are relatively rare in coastal Southern California. But they do occur in the mountains and deserts during the summer monsoon season.
A recent lightning strike sparked the Dome fire, which incinerated stands of Joshua trees in the Mojave National Preserve.
When Jon Keeley, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and research ecologist Alexandra Syphard analyzed California wildfire ignitions, they found that lightning was the cause of the majority of blazes in Northern California forests but accounted for less than a quarter of the starts in Southern California’s four national forests.
The Southland’s worst wildfires are driven by Santa Ana winds — and are almost always caused by people, downed power lines or equipment sparks.
President Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, sharply disparaged the president and said she believed he paid a friend to take his SATs in audio recordings published by the Washington Post Saturday night.
Trump “has no principles — none,” Barry said in the recordings provided to the Post. “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
Barry’s comments were made in a set of secret recordings in 2018 and 2019 by her niece, Mary Trump, who has emerged as a fierce critic of the president.
Barry said that Donald Trump “doesn’t read,” that “he was a brat,” and that she did his homework for him, adding that she believes he paid a friend to take the standardized tests that allowed him to transfer from Fordham University to the University of Pennsylvania.
The allegation that Trump cheated on a college entrance exam was one of the oft-questioned parts of a book by Mary Trump released earlier this year, in which she describes the dramatic inner workings of the Trump family and how it shaped the president’s psyche. The recordings with Barry, provided to the Post to substantiate the allegation, seem to be one of the underpinnings of her book.
Mary Trump’s spokesperson told the Post she recorded her aunt to gather evidence supporting her claim that she was cheated out of a significant portion of her inheritance after her grandfather and family patriarch Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999.
Barry, Robert Trump, and Donald Trump joined a lawsuit to prevent Mary from getting a larger inheritance, and she eventually settled the matter in 2001, after being told the estate was worth $30 million. She later came to believe it was worth around $1 billion and the family had lied about its value.
The Trump family has a long history of tax evasion and fraudulent business practices
Barry’s comments mark the first time a member of the family besides Mary Trump has publicly disparaged the president, and his history of deception. But Barry — a former federal judge — has been implicated in the Trump family’s shady financial activity.
The 2018 Times investigation revealed a pattern of tax evasion that allowed Donald Trump to receive the current equivalent of at least $413 million from his father. Fred Trump, the family’s patriarch whose real estate business was the foundation of its wealth, further enriched the family by hiding millions of dollars of gifts through shell companies.
As David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner of the Times reported in 2018:
Much of [the $413 million] came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
The IRS didn’t catch on, and Fred Trump transferred more than $1 billion to his children. The Trumps paid only about $52.2 million in taxes, rather than the at least $550 million they could have been forced to pay.
In 2018, a lawyer for Donald Trump denied the Times’s reporting, saying the allegations of “fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” adding, “there was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone.”
Barry was the co-owner of one of those shell companies used to draw cash from their father’s businesses by marking up purchases already made by employees rather than buying equipment for Fred Trump’s buildings, the Times reported, as it claimed to do. The millions of dollars siphoned through the company went — untaxed — to Barry, Donald Trump, and their other siblings.
After the Times’s investigation was published, a judicial conduct council launched an investigation into how Barry benefitted from those tax schemes and may have influenced them. The Times reported last year that Barry, now 83, retired 10 days after a court official told complainants that the investigation would get “the full attention” of the council, ending the investigation. (Barry was appointed as a federal judge by President Ronald Reagan. She complained in Mary Trump’s recordings that Donald Trump long held his “only favor” to her over her head: asking his lawyer Roy Cohn to push Reagan to appoint more female judges.)
Donald Trump claimed on the campaign trail to be a self-made billionaire and built his trust with many voters on the premise that his business expertise would benefit the country. But the Times’s reporting illustrates how Trump — who was earning $200,000 annually in today’s dollars by the age of 3 — was propped up by family wealth.
The beneficiaries of the family scheme are now among the most powerful people in America. That will be on full display beginning Monday, when the Republican National Convention will convene with part digital, part in-person events throughout the week.
Some of the key speakers at the convention will be members of the Trump family. In addition to the president, Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Tiffany Trump are all slated to appear, making it a true family affair.
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Image caption
Tens of thousands filled the central square in Minsk despite heavy police presence
Opposition supporters in Belarus have held a mass rally in the capital Minsk, two weeks after a disputed election gave President Alexander Lukashenko another term in office.
Tens of thousands filled the central square despite heavy police presence.
The protesters say Mr Lukashenko stole the election and want him to resign.
The president has vowed to crush the ongoing unrest and previously blamed the dissent on unnamed “foreign-backed revolutionaries”.
Recent protests were met with a crackdown in which at least four people were killed. Demonstrators said they had been tortured in prisons.
According to official results, Mr Lukashenko – who has ruled Belarus for 26 years – won more than 80% of the vote in the 9 August election and opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya 10%.
There were no independent observers and the opposition alleges massive vote rigging.
Some estimates put the crowd at more than 100,000.
After gathering in the square, some demonstrators moved towards the “Hero City” war memorial and the presidential palace, the approach to which is blocked by a security cordon.
Earlier in the day, the defence ministry issued a statement invoking Belarus’s sacrifices during World war Two, and saying the army would take over the protection of war memorials.
This weekend’s rally follows the country’s biggest protest in modern history last Sunday, when hundreds of thousands filled the streets. Strike action in key factories across the country is also keeping up the pressure on the president.
Media captionWhat lies behind the Belarus protests?
Losing fear
Analysis by Jonah Fisher, BBC News, Minsk
This was another massive demonstration carried out under the noses of Alexander Lukashenko’s security forces.
Belarus’s beleaguered president had instructed his interior ministry to end the “unrest” and promised to “solve the problem”. But in the end no serious effort was made to stop protesters gathering.
In the back streets leading into Independence Square there were long lines of riot police and army trucks. They looked on as the swelling crowd ignored loudspeaker warnings that this was an illegal gathering and to disperse.
These demonstrations are organic and loosely organised, so in the square there is no stage or PA system. That means no place for the few opposition leaders that remain free in Belarus to make speeches.
Instead the protesters marched around chanting “Long live Belarus” and “Go Away Lukashenko” before heading off towards a war memorial. Some told me that they had been scared to come but now felt safe surrounded by so many like-minded Belarusians.
What has Lukashenko said?
The 65-year-old president insists he won the election fairly and has ruled holding another poll. On Saturday he accused Nato of “trying to topple the authorities” and install a new president in Minsk.
He said he was moving troops to the country’s western borders to counter a Nato build-up in Poland and Lithuania, and vowed to “defend the territorial integrity of our country”.
Image copyright EPA
Image caption
President Alexander Lukashenko told his officials to prepare forces on the border with Poland
“The regime is trying to divert attention from Belarus’s internal problems at any cost with totally baseless statements about imaginary external threats,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told AFP news agency on Saturday.
Mr Lukashenko has also accused an opposition council – set up by Ms Tikhanovskaya to organise peaceful transition – of trying to seize power. Two of its members were questioned by police on Friday.
Belarus – the basic facts
Where is Belarus? It has Russia – the former dominant power – to the east and Ukraine to the south. To the north and west lie EU and Nato members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Why does it matter? Like Ukraine, this nation of 9.5 million is caught in rivalry between the West and Russia. President Lukashenko, an ally of Russia, has been referred to as “Europe’s last dictator”. He has been in power for 26 years, keeping much of the economy in state hands, and using censorship and police crackdowns against opponents.
What’s going on there? Now there is a huge opposition movement, demanding new, democratic leadership and economic reform. Mr Lukashenko’s supporters say his toughness has kept the country stable.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday accused the Trump White House of covering up the role Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin played in recruiting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor with no prior experience working for the U.S. Postal Service.
In a letter to Robert Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, Schumer wrote that as part of his investigation into DeJoy’s selection and unanimous appointment in May, his office “learned of the role Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had with the Postal Board of Governors, including through meetings with individual governors as well as phone calls with groups of governors, which has not been previously disclosed by the board.”
“This administration has repeatedly pointed to the role of [executive search firm] Russell Reynolds to defend the selection of a Republican mega-donor with no prior postal experience as postmaster general while at the same time blocking the ability of Congress to obtain briefings from the firm and concealing the role of Secretary Mnuchin and the White House in its search process,” the New York Democrat wrote.
Schumer demanded that the Board of Governors—which is completely controlled by Trump appointees—immediately release Russell Reynolds from any nondisclosure agreement barring the firm from providing details about its postmaster general search and provide a full “explanation of the role of President Trump and Secretary Mnuchin in the search process for a new postmaster and the selection of Mr. DeJoy.”
Schumer’s investigation into the process that resulted in DeJoy’s appointment began in June, when he demanded that the Board of Governors turn over any communications with the White House related to the postmaster general’s selection. Shortly after taking charge of USPS on June 15, DeJoy moved to impose operational changes that caused severe mail backlogs across the nation. DeJoy this week vowed to suspend, but not reverse, the changes.
“In your July 2 response to me, the board asserted that much of the information I requested was confidential and declined to provide it,” Schumer wrote Wednesday. “As a result, my staff sought the cooperation of Russell Reynolds with Congress… My office was informed by counsel for Russell Reynolds that the board was not willing to waive its nondisclosure agreement so that Congress could satisfy its oversight obligations.”
In response to stonewalling by the Board of Governors and the Trump White House, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) tweeted, “If it looks like a cover-up, sounds like a cover-up, and smells like a cover-up, it’s a cover-up.”
On Wednesday, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) obtained documents confirming that Mnuchin was involved in the Board of Governors’ effort to find a replacement for former Postmaster General Megan Brennan, a 34-year Postal Service veteran who retired in June.
As CREW’s Donald Sherman and Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel wrote Wednesday, the documents reveal that “Mnuchin met with the United States Postal Service Board of Governors in February to discuss the search for a new postmaster general as part of his larger campaign to exert influence over the USPS.”
“It’s clear that Mnuchin had a candidate for postmaster general in mind, who was personally invested in USPS competitors,” Sherman and Honl-Stuenkel continued. “The Washington Postreports that Louis DeJoy, the eventual pick, was recruited by Mnuchin.”
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