During his tenure in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, he said the board had minimal interaction with the administrations, and “certainly no communication regarding the hiring of the postmaster general.”
The board hired two search firms to assist in the selection process by conducting a nationwide search. One of them, Russell Reynolds Associates, compiled a database of prospective candidates and provided a subset of dozens of names it deemed most promising to the board.
Mr. DeJoy’s name was not among those initially provided, according to people familiar with the process. But Mr. Duncan raised Mr. DeJoy’s name during a discussion among board members about other prospective candidates. Mr. Duncan, who has been involved in a super PAC that supports Mr. Trump’s re-election, had met Mr. DeJoy through Mr. DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos. Both had been appointed by Mr. Trump to help lead the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.
After the board received a readout from Russell Reynolds, which indicated that Mr. DeJoy was already in the firm’s database and was qualified, Mr. Barger went to lunch with Mr. DeJoy to assess his interest in, and suitability for, the post.
Mr. Barger was impressed, and reported his impressions to the full board the same day. “It’s uncommon to find somebody from outside the Postal Service who also has a history of success working with the Postal Service,” Mr. Barger said in an interview on Friday.
Nearly two months after the meeting in Mr. Mnuchin’s office about the search process, Mr. Duncan wrote a follow-up letter to the Treasury secretary indicating that the board had “narrowed the search to a small number of finalists, each of whom would serve the country well.”
Mr. Barger rejected suggestions that Mr. Mnuchin was playing politics with the Postal Service, noting that Democratic governors had met with top Treasury officials under Mr. Mnuchin. Mr. Mnuchin was not involved in the board’s decision to select Mr. DeJoy, Mr. Barger said, adding that the board “viewed Secretary Mnuchin as a stakeholder who was doing his job in having an interest in how our process was moving forward, but certainly nothing more than that.”
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Fire-fighters are working 72-hour shifts but say it is not enough to contain the blazes
US President Donald Trump has declared that wildfires burning through homes and devastating precious forestry in California are a major disaster and he has released federal aid.
More than 14,000 fire-fighters are battling 585 fires that have now burnt nearly one million acres (400,000 ha).
Forecast high winds are threatening to drive flames into more populated areas as foul air blankets the state.
At least six people have died and thousands have evacuated.
Most of the destruction has been caused by three large fires complexes in mountainous and wooded rural areas.
On Saturday Governor Gavin Newsom said the SCU Lightening Complex fire south and east of San Francisco is the third-largest in California’s history.
Video tweeted by the governor showed burnt tree stumps against the reddened fumes-filled sky and plumes of white smoke rising from ash-laden ground.
An evacuation order on Saturday extended to thousands of people in the Bay area near San Jose and warned others to be prepared to abandon their homes at short notice.
Exhausted fire-fighters continue to battle the flames, with some working 72-hour shifts in the dangerous, hot conditions reports AP news agency. “They’re scrambling for bodies” to help fight the fires, an official in the city of Fresno told Reuters news agency.
In California’s oldest state park, flames scorched redwood trees that began their lives more than 2,000 years ago. The historic visitor centre of Big Basin State Park was burnt to the ground and officials say some trees, which tower as high as 330ft (100 metres), have fallen as the area was “extensively damaged”.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Park officials fear that redwoods, the world’s tallest trees, have fallen in the fires
The state faces are more acute shortage of personnel than usual – the coronavirus pandemic has depleted a fire-fighting corps made up of prisoners, which has helped the state battle blazes since World War Two, due to early releases from jail.
At least 43 people including fire-fighters have been injured, and hundreds of buildings have burned down and thousands more are threatened.
After doubling in size on Friday, the fires continued to grow moderately on Saturday and fire-fighters made some progress in containing the flames.
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Hundreds of buildings have burnt including this historic 157-year old farmhouse
The largest wildfire, called the LNU Lightening complex, is in the prominent wine-growing areas of Napa and Sonoma north of San Francisco and is just 15% contained, CalFire said on Saturday.
Further south in Santa Cruz county, 115 homes have been destroyed and some residents evacuated.
“I left with my clothes … two guitars and a dog,” one evacuee in Santa Cruz told CNN affiliate KGO.
Fire-fighters dug a fireline around the University of California Santa Cruz campus as flames came within a mile of the buildings and surrounding area.
Gov Newsom has requested help from as far afield as Australia and Canada. Fire-fighters, engines and surveillance planes raced in from US states including Oregon, New Mexico and Texas.
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Fires have burned through parts of California’s wine-producing regions
With more than 650,000 coronavirus cases, California also has the highest number of infections in the US, and some evacuees have said they are afraid to go to emergency shelters.
US agencies have updated disaster preparedness and evacuation guidance in light of Covid-19. People who may be required to flee have been to told to carry at least two face masks per person, as well as hand sanitiser, soap and disinfectant wipes.
Here are some key guidelines for protecting yourself against Covid-19 if you must evacuate to a shelter:
Wash your hands often
Keep six feet of distance from anyone not among your household
Wear a face covering when possible, and if possible, wash it regularly
Avoid sharing food and drinks
Frequently disinfect your area in the shelter (including toys and electronics)
Emergency shelters are enforcing social distancing rules and mask wearing, and have even given individual tents to families to self-isolate. Some counties are seeking to set up separate shelters for sick evacuees or anyone who is found to have a high temperature.
Officials say people should consider sheltering with family and friends.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
Evacuation centres, including at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, must also enforce social distancing rules
Officials also advise people to remain indoors due to the poor air quality outside.
California is also facing electricity shortages, which have caused rolling blackouts for thousands of customers. Officials have appealed for residents to use less power or risk further cuts.
Satellite images show smoke blanketing nearly all of California, as well most of Nevada and southern Idaho.
Media caption‘I’m sorry to tell you that your house is gone’
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The House voted on Saturday to provide $25 billion in funding to the U.S. Postal Service while blocking operational changes that have slowed down service ahead of the election.
The proposal passed largely along party lines, 257-150, with 26 Republicans voting with Democrats.
The “Delivering for America Act” would require that all official election mail be treated as “first-class mail,” prohibit the removal of mail sorting machines and mailboxes, and reverse any already implemented changes that could delay mail delivery.
Democrats, some Republicans and civil rights organizations have accused Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a donor to President Donald Trump’s campaign, of engineering changes at the agency in an effort to sow distrust in mail-in voting and impact the results of the election as Americans are expected to vote by mail in unprecedented numbers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“No American should ever have to choose between their health, safety and wellbeing on one hand, and their constitutional right to vote on the other,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Saturday. “Don’t mess with USPS.”
DeJoy, testifying before the Senate on Friday, called the accusations against him “outrageous” and said changes to the Postal Service were necessary to address its poor finances. He said the agency is “fully capable” of delivering ballots in a timely fashion this fall, but he committed to stopping additional operational changes ahead of the election. He did not, however, say he would reverse those already in motion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Saturday said the bill was an attempt to hold DeJoy to his commitment to deliver ballots after his “ambiguous” testimony.
“His comments are one thing, his actions will be another,” she said.
Democrats passed the measure Saturday with some support from Republicans, but most denied the need for new funding and policy changes and accused Democrats of turning the post office into a political football.
“This bill is a sham, it is a shame, it is not needed right now,” Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga., said on the House floor Saturday.
“It’s not a real crisis,” said House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., after calling Democrats’ concerns a “conspiracy theory” in a tweet.
On Saturday, Democrats released new data from the USPS showing declines in timely priority mail deliveries this summer and suggested the service issues were “far worse than we were told,” House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has dismissed the need for a standalone bill on the post office, while the White House has threatened a presidential veto.
Moments after the House officially passed its bill, McConnell issued a statement calling the bill a “stunt” and stating that the Senate will not pass it.
“They’ll be hearing from their constituents because this hits home — not receiving your mail in a timely fashion hits home,” Pelosi said of Senate Republicans. “Not receiving your prescriptions, especially for our veterans, hits home in a way that is harmful to our country.”
ABC News’ Mike Levine and Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
Firefighters make a stand in the backyard of a home in front of the advancing C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire on Friday. California is seeing some of the worst first in the state’s history.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
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Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Firefighters make a stand in the backyard of a home in front of the advancing C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire on Friday. California is seeing some of the worst first in the state’s history.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed, close to a million acres of land have been scorched and at least six people have died in one of the worst series of wildfires in California’s history.
More than 13,700 firefighters are battling nearly two dozen major fires throughout the state, fire officials said Saturday. Five broad areas of the state are on fire, and the largest blazes remain mostly uncontained.
“The worst is not behind us,” tweeted Thom Porter, chief of Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. “We are in a battle rhythm. New lightning activity is expected across the state. Double your efforts, to lookout for yourselves and each other.”
The fires were sparked by nearly 12,000 lightning strikes in a dry California terrain that hasn’t seen much rain. The “lightning siege” created close to 600 new wildfires, said Jeremy Rahn, a public information officer for Cal Fire, at a briefing Saturday.
The National Guard is providing helicopter support while Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve is supporting the effort with C-130 aircrafts equipped with water tanks to fight the fire from above.
Two of the fire systems now raging are among the five largest wildfires in California history, Cal Fire reports. More than 100,000 people face evacuation orders as fires have ravaged over 900,000 acres — an area larger than Rhode Island.
“We understand that many people are stressed and anxious,” Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said. “We ask that you please rely on each other. Help each other. Check on your neighbors. Stay calm.”
Most of the deaths throughout the state have come from a set of fires known as the L.N.U. Lightning Complex, covering an area of 314,000 acres around Napa Valley. It’s the second-largest fire in the state’s history. These fires have killed four people and destroyed more than 560 structures, state officials said. As of Saturday afternoon, the blaze was only 15% controlled.
Moving south, approximately 20 different fires merged into three major fires that now comprise the S.C.U. Lightning Complex, which is around Santa Clara and Alameda counties. This series of fires has burned over 291,000 acres, and as of Saturday morning had destroyed 10 structures — though more than 20,000 structures were at risk, according to Cal Fire. It’s the third largest wildfire in the state’s history.
The fires burned actively through the night, and officials expect fire activity to increase later today as smoke clears the area.
“The protection of sensitive wildlife and critical power and communication infrastructure remains a top priority,” Cal Fire said in a statement. The agency said these fires were approximately 10% contained.
Fires also rage in Northern California. The C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire, concentrated in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, has so far consumed over 63,000 acres, Cal Fire reports. As of Saturday morning only 5% of the fire was contained. Smoke from the fires is limiting visibility and hampering aircraft operations, officials said. Approximately 77,000 people in the area have been evacuated.
More lightning is expected over the next few days, which could spark more wildfires.
“Incoming weather is concerning to us,” said Cal Fire’s Ian Larkin, unit chief for San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference on Postal Service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned President Trump’s efforts to “suppress” the vote and “scare” people away from the polls in November and encouraged Americans to make a plan to vote.
“Don’t pay any attention to what the president is saying because it is all designed to suppress the vote,” Pelosi said at a rare Saturday news conference ahead of a vote on a U.S. Postal Service funding bill.
Pelosi and Democrats have accused Trump of trying to sabotage the November election by delaying the mail and peddling misinformation about mail-in voting.
Now they say Trump is deploying more voter suppression tactics by suggesting he’ll send law enforcement to polling places to monitor the election.
“Why would he do that, except to scare people off?” Pelosi said.
“It’s in their playbook that they’ll have people intimidated to vote by having ICE agents … or other law enforcement there to instill fear in people as they show up,” she said. “…It’s scary but ignore that. It’s a suppress-the-vote tactic.”
Trump, who is opposed to widespread mail-in voting and has warned of potential fraud, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday that he’s interested in having law enforcement at the polls to monitor the votes and avoid fraud.
“We’re going to have everything,” Trump said. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals. But it’s very hard.”
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, arrived in Berlin on a special flight Saturday for treatment by specialists at the German capital’s main hospital.
“Navalny is in Berlin,” Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization that organized the flight, told The Associated Press. “He survived the flight and he’s stable.”
After touching down shortly before 9 a.m. in an area of the capital’s Tegel airport used for government and military flights, Navalny was taken by ambulance to the downtown campus of Berlin’s Charite hospital.
The hospital later said extensive tests were being carried out, and doctors would not comment on his illness or treatment until those were completed.
An ambulance believed to transport Alexei Navalny arrives at the Charite hospital in Berlin, Germany, Saturday, August 22, 2020.
Markus Schreiber/AP
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter Saturday that the struggle for Alexey’s life and health is just beginning, but that with the flight to Berlin, the first step has at least been taken.
Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to the hospital after the plane made an emergency landing. He was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city of Omsk.
His supporters believe that tea he drank was laced with poison and that the Kremlin is behind both his illness and a delay in transferring him to a top German hospital.
Alexei Navalny, center, and Kira Yarmysh, foreground left, pose for a selfie inside a bus on their way to an aircraft at an airport outside Tomsk, a city in Siberia, Russia Thursday, August 20, 2020.
gluchinskiy/AP
His team made arrangements to transfer him to Charité, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders and dissidents. But when German specialists arrived in Siberia aboard a plane equipped with advanced medical equipment on Friday morning at his family’s behest, Navalny’s physicians in Omsk initially said he was too unstable to move.
Navalny’s supporters denounced that as a ploy by authorities to stall until any poison in his system would no longer be traceable. The Omsk medical team relented only after a charity that had organized the medevac plane revealed that the German doctors examined the politician and said he was fit to be transported.
Deputy chief doctor of the Omsk hospital Anatoly Kalinichenko then told reporters that Navalny’s condition had stabilized and that physicians “didn’t mind” transferring the politician, given that his relatives were willing “to take on the risks.”
The Kremlin denied resistance to the transfer was political, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was purely a medical decision. However, the reversal came as international pressure on Russia’s leadership mounted.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from running. Since then, he has been promoting opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of the ruling party, United Russia.
His Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level. But he had to shut the foundation last month after a financially devastating lawsuit from a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging an eye.
Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from jail where he was serving a sentence on charges of violating protest regulations. His team also suspected poisoning then. Doctors said he had a severe allergic reaction and sent him back to detention the following day.
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The US House of Representatives has passed a bill to fund the US Postal Service, amid ongoing complaints by Democrats that the Trump administration is attempting to sabotage the delivery of mail-in ballots ahead of the presidential election in November.
The Democratic bill, which passed on Saturday despite opposition from Republicans, would provide $25bn in aid for the USPS and prioritize election mail as “first class”, to ensure ballots arrive in time to be counted in an election in which the coronavirus pandemic will cast a shadow over in-person voting.
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, said the bill was necessary to “reject the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the critical mission of the postal service”.
On the floor of the House, James Comer of Kentucky, the ranking Republican on the oversight committee, said the Democrats’ bill was the “result of a legislative process only slightly less absurd than the conspiracies, insinuations, and fabrications that gave rise to the purported need for it”.
The bill is unlikely to progress further, with the Republican-held Senate unwilling to pass it. The White House has also signaled it would veto the bill, with Republicans claiming the postal service has plenty of cash on hand and is being used by Democrats for political purposes.
Democrats have accused Louis DeJoy, a major donor to Donald Trump who is now postmaster general, of implementing cost-cutting measures meant to slow the mail, with the intention of aiding Trump in the election.
Experts have pointed out there is no evidence to support these claims and Trump himself has voted via the mail multiple times himself.
On Friday, DeJoy conceded that mail delivery had slowed down but refused to reinstate hundreds of mail sorting machines that have been removed, ostensibly because of a decline in deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic.
He has, however, reversed a plan to remove hundreds more of the machines ahead of the election.
On Saturday the Democratic chair of the House oversight committee, Carolyn B Maloney of New York, released internal USPS documents from a briefing to DeJoy on 12 August.
Maloney said DeJoy had been warned of “steep declines and increasing delays nationwide over the last two months as a result of his drastic operational and organizational changes”.
In a statement, Maloney said: “To those who still claim there are ‘no delays’ and that these reports are just ‘conspiracy theories’, I hope this new data causes them to re-think their position and support our urgent legislation today.
“We have all seen the headlines from every corner of our country, we have read the stories and seen pictures, we have heard directly from our constituents, and these new documents show that the delays are far worse than we were told.”
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Firefighters reported progress for the first time Saturday in containing the collection of fires raging across Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, but warned that the trend could quickly change with weather conditions.
Calmer winds, lower temperatures and moisture from the marine layer allowed crews to form stronger fire lines from Davenport to La Honda against the 63,000-acre CZU Complex fire, Cal Fire officials said in a 6 a.m. briefing Saturday. The blaze is about 5% contained and has destroyed 97 structures.
The weather “gave us an opportunity to get a hold of, and get some lines constructed, and get a little bit of a toehold into this incident,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mark Brunton, adding, “A really big win for us yesterday, fantastic job by our folks.”
Crews in La Honda and Pescadero to the north and Davenport to the south reported fires were spreading but managed to keep firm control lines against the flames, Brunton said. Along Highway 9, the blaze made a small push into Boulder Creek.
The fire officially grew by 6,000 acres since Friday, although some of that increase is thanks to more accurate mapping, officials said.
Still, the progress could quickly fade. The National Weather Service issued a “fire watch” from Sunday to Tuesday as thunderstorms move northward — potentially causing another round of dry lightning strikes. The marine layer is also expected to subside as temperatures rise.
Firefighting resources also remain limited, said Deputy Fire Chief Jonathan Cox, especially in the Ben Lomond and Bonny Doon area, where some locals have refused to evacuate in favor of trying to save their homes. Crews are stuck waiting on help from out of state after Gov. Gavin Newsom called on Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Nevada and New Mexico to provide engines.
“It could be days,” Cox said. “We’re seven days into this, and we’re getting out-of-state resources just trickling in.”
The North Bay’s LNU Complex fire meanwhile grew by about 12,000 acres overnight to 314,207 acres across Napa, Solano, Sonoma, Lake and Yolo counties and is 15% contained as of Saturday morning. A total of 560 structures have been destroyed with another 30,500 threatened.
The SCU Complex has burned 291,968 acres across Santa Clara, Alameda, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties — an increase of about 17,000 acres overnight — and was 10% contained as of Saturday morning. It has destroyed five structures and threatens 20,065 more.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The familiar thud of a bass ripped through front-porch speakers on a recent Friday night in Columbus’ University District, where students had begun returning to apartments and houses surrounding Ohio State University’s campus. The music wafted over the clicking of ping-pong balls, muffling the unmasked conversations and laughter of students reunited with friends on the cusp of another unprecedented semester.
A few hours earlier, the university wrapped up its daily campus move-in, checking students into residence halls under a regimented new system of one-hour time slots spread over 12 days to limit crowding and encourage physical distancing. The university will rely on symptom tracking and mass testing to help detect even a hint of an outbreak in residence halls, campus health officials have said.
Large universities resuming any kind of in-person operations this fall have rewritten campus protocols and procedures, reinvented the move-in process and developed detailed testing protocols in an effort to operate as safely as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.
But when more than 65% of students live outside of university housing, how does a place like Ohio State keep the virus from stepping onto campus after a Friday night party?
“You want to be safe for like, your relatives and everyone, but we also want to enjoy our senior year, too, so it’s kind of just straddling the line of being safe, but still having fun,” said Ohio State senior A.C. Secrest as he sat with his roommates on the front porch of his off-campus house, where neighboring yards were littered with discarded red cups and emptied beer cans.
While classes at Ohio State are set to begin Tuesday using a hybrid model of both in-person and online classes, large universities in other states are calling off in-person instruction or asking students to stay home.
Columbus Public Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika W. Roberts said she supports Ohio State’s ”robust” plans to welcome students back to campus and its infection control measures. Those include required use of face masks in indoor and outdoor settings, participation in daily health checks, health and safety training, and mandatory COVID-19 testing for students living on campus and random surveillance testing for others.
The city has yet to trace any COVID-19 outbreaks to the university area or student activity or gatherings in particular, and Roberts believes recent city and state orders that bars cut off alcohol sales at 10 p.m. will help curb the spread of the virus when the semester begins.
Still, by Friday evening, the university was already in the process of opening “dozens” of student disciplinary cases stemming from student parties that officials said failed to follow social distancing rules.
Striking a balance between feeling untouchable, the urge to be with friends, and the need to take precautions is difficult for students, some said.
From left, Georgia Santino, Claire Tzagournis, Claudia Santino and others eat on the patio at Ethyl & Tank on Friday, August 7, near Ohio State…. From left, Georgia Santino, Claire Tzagournis, Claudia Santino and others eat on the patio at Ethyl & Tank on Friday, August 7, near Ohio State. Georgia attends Columbus State and her sister Claudia goes to Oregon University; Claire attends Miami of Ohio.Fred Squillante, Columbus Dispatch
“The hardest part for most students is, like, social life,” Kaia Erickson, a junior nursing major, said while wearing a mask and walking to a friend’s house. “Just finding that balance between hanging out with friends, while also social distancing.”
Some students are going to party, said Matt Benge, a senior actuarial science major.
“But I think I can see it dying down pretty quick, like if action was taken by the university,” he said. “There’s definitely gonna be a group of students that are just going to go as far as the university or the police will let them.”
Ohio State students are required to sign a pledge promising to follow university rules and health guidance. Students who fail to comply with safety requirements could be referred for university disciplinary action.
The pledge doesn’t make any specific references to parties or off-campus gatherings, but in an email to students, Vice President for Student Life Melissa S. Shivers reminded students not to gather in groups larger than 10 people, on or off campus.
The consequences of not following such guidelines can be “so dire,” she said, and not only for students.
“In addition to another interrupted semester, we also impact the entire community around us, the businesses and neighborhoods that are such an important part of our extended Buckeye family,” Shivers wrote. Repercussions include students losing their right to come to campus and student groups losing recognition by the university.
The dozens of disciplinary cases opened after parties this week are “likely to result in interim suspensions,” Shivers wrote in another notice to students.
“Perhaps knowing about the action we are taking will influence your decisions and prompt you to encourage others to take this situation seriously,” she warned students. “And remember that this is all about more than the individual. We have one shot at this – responding to what so many of you asked for: an on-campus semester at Ohio State.”
While Ohio State has aimed to reduce campus density by limiting class sizes and residence hall occupancy, the tightly packed houses and apartments nearby are likely to be nearly as full as a typical school year. In some off-campus housing, as many as 20 students can live under a single roof.
Justin Garland represents area landlords at the local University Area Commission and is property manager for Buckeye Real Estate, which manages about 1,000 off-campus rental units. His company has reworked its practices to limit contact with students as they move in and out. Garland said most tenants have kept their off-campus leases.
The University Area Commission has reached out to city leaders to brainstorm possible approaches and guidelines about front lawn and house parties, said commission President Doreen Uhas Sauer, who added it’s not clear who would enforce such rules.
When receiving reports or large gatherings, Ohio State student life officials will work with Columbus Public Health and OSU police to “determine the best course of action for responding,” university spokesman Ben Johnson said in a written statement.
Students and the permanent residents living west of campus have “a great deal of respect for each other’s lifestyles,” said Uhas Sauer. But local residents have expressed concerns about student gatherings and congregate living arrangements.
“Ohio State students may be making pledges to the university that in essence are about wearing masks in public and being observant and being good neighbors,” she said. “I have no doubt we have so many students who do the right thing, but still you kind of are concerned about this.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference on Postal Service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned President Trump’s efforts to “suppress” the vote and “scare” people away from the polls in November and encouraged Americans to make a plan to vote.
“Don’t pay any attention to what the president is saying because it is all designed to suppress the vote,” Pelosi said at a rare Saturday news conference ahead of a vote on a U.S. Postal Service funding bill.
Pelosi and Democrats have accused Trump of trying to sabotage the November election by delaying the mail and peddling misinformation about mail-in voting.
Now they say Trump is deploying more voter suppression tactics by suggesting he’ll send law enforcement to polling places to monitor the election.
“Why would he do that, except to scare people off?” Pelosi said.
“It’s in their playbook that they’ll have people intimidated to vote by having ICE agents … or other law enforcement there to instill fear in people as they show up,” she said. “…It’s scary but ignore that. It’s a suppress-the-vote tactic.”
Trump, who is opposed to widespread mail-in voting and has warned of potential fraud, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday that he’s interested in having law enforcement at the polls to monitor the votes and avoid fraud.
“We’re going to have everything,” Trump said. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals. But it’s very hard.”
Radar image from San Juan, Puerto Rico, of Tropical Storm Laura at 11:03 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 22, 2020. Laura had a well-defined center at mid-levels, with an inner core beginning to develop. (Image credit: National Weather Service via Mark Nissenbaum/ Florida State University)
Tropical Storm Laura grew more organized as it plowed through the Leeward and Virgin Islands Friday night through Saturday morning, but remained a minimal tropical storm with top winds of 40 mph at 11 a.m. EDT Saturday.
As of 9 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Laura brought gusts as high as 37 mph to Dominica, 46 mph to St. Croix, 40 mph to St. Thomas, 38 mph to Sint Maarten, 37 mph to Antigua, and 36 mph to Guadeloupe. Rainfall amounts of 1 – 2 inches were common across the Weather Underground personal weather station network in the Leeward and Virgin Islands.
At 2:09 p.m. EDT Saturday, Camp Santiago, located about five miles inland from the south coast of Puerto Rico, recorded sustained winds of 52 mph, gusting to 75 mph.
Figure 1. Visible GOES-16 satellite image of Laura at 10 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 22. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB)
At 2 p.m. EDT Saturday, August 22, Laura was located about 20 miles southwest of Ponce, Puerto Rico, headed west at 18 mph with top sustained winds of 50 mph and a central pressure of 1004 mb. The storm was experiencing light upper-level wind shear of 5 – 10 knots, but wind shear occurring at middle levels of the atmosphere was still causing Laura to suffer some misalignment, with the low-level center displaced from the circulation center at mid-levels. However, this misalignment was less than on Friday, which has allowed more organization.
Satellite images on Saturday showed a modest amount of heavy thunderstorm activity slowly increasing in intensity, organization, and areal coverage. High level cirrus clouds streaming north and south away from Laura showed the storm was establishing upper-level outflow, a sign of increased organization. Radar from San Juan, Puerto Rico, showed that Laura had a well-defined center at mid-levels.
Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were favorable for development, near 29.5 degrees Celsius (85°F), but Laura was embedded in a moderately dry region of the atmosphere, with a mid-level relative humidity of 60%. In addition, the wind shear affecting Laura was injecting dry air into the circulation, slowing development.
Figure 2. Predicted path of Laura from the 6Z Saturday, August 22 run of the operational GFS model (black line) and its 21 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, from Texas to the Florida Panhandle. (Image credit: Tropical Tidbits)
A track over Hispaniola and Cuba predicted
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 five days, and the Saturday morning runs of the models continued to mostly predict a track that will take Laura over the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba. The 0Z Saturday runs of the European, GFS, UKMET, COAMPS-TC, and HMON models all predicted that Laura would encounter significant disruption by these islands. The 12Z version of all the models, including the HWRF, were also on board with this idea.
Figure 3. The 0Z Saturday, August 22, forecast of the COAMPS-TC model, which made the best 5-day intensity forecasts in 2019, predicted Laura would traverse Hispaniola and Cuba, reorganize over the Gulf of Mexico, then rapidly intensify just before landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a category 3 hurricane. The COAMPS-TC was the third-best track model in 2019, behind the European model and UKMET model. (Image credit: Naval Research Laboratory)
Lots of uncertainty once Laura gets into Gulf of Mexico
Some time Monday or Tuesday, Laura will fully emerge into the Gulf of Mexico, where conditions for intensification are expected to be very favorable. The traverse over Hispaniola and Cuba may destroy Laura’s circulation, as predicted by two of the top statistical intensity models, the DSHP and LGEM. That outcome seems unlikely, though, as all the global dynamical models predict Laura will survive.
The exact timing of Laura’s emergence into the Gulf is very uncertain, as just a slight wobble in its track could mean the difference between the storm’s traversing over mountainous Cuba or tracking over the warm Gulf waters just to the north of the island. In addition, the models disagree considerably on how much of a weakness might exist in the Bermuda high steering Laura at that time. The trend in the models has been to show less of a weakness in the steering high, allowing it to push Laura more toward the west towards Texas.
Among the 12Z Saturday model runs, the HMON model had the farthest west track for Laura, calling for landfall near Brownsville, Texas, as a category 3 hurricane on Thursday morning. The HWRF and European models were the farthest east, predicting landfall in southeastern Louisiana on Wednesday; the HWRF predicted a category 4 hurricane at landfall. The GFS and UKMET models showed a weaker category 2 hurricane at landfall in central Louisiana and near the Texas/Louisiana border, respectively (though these models should not be trusted for intensity forecasts).
Ocean temperatures are a very warm 30 – 31 degrees Celsius (86 – 88°F) over much of the Gulf of Mexico, the atmosphere will be moist, and it appears that wind shear will be less of a problem for Laura than earlier thought, with moderate wind shear of 10 – 20 knots a good bet. However, Laura may experience increased wind shear from the upper-level outflow from Tropical Storm Marco, which is expected to be in the northwest Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday (see below).
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 in 2008 when it took a similar path. Conditions were favorable for development of Ike during its traverse over the islands, but since its core was over land, the outer portions of the storm developed instead. That led to a big expansion of the hurricane’s size, resulting in Ike’s taking a very long time to spin up once its core emerged over water. A large storm generates a larger storm surge, and Ike ended up bringing a devastating storm surge, characteristic of a much stronger hurricane, when it made landfall in Texas on the Bolivar Peninsula as a high-end category 2.
Once Laura establishes an inner core over the Gulf of Mexico, rapid intensification is a good possibility. 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. Visible GOES-16 satellite image of Marco at 10:30 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 22. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB)
Marco intensifies in western Caribbean
Figure 5. Radar image of Marco at 11:10 EDT August 22. (Image Credit: INSMET)
Tropical Storm Marco formed in the northwest Caribbean at 11 p.m. EDT Saturday, August 21, making it the earliest thirteenth storm on record for an Atlantic hurricane season. There is a tie for previous record-earliest thirteenth storm of the season, with Lee on September 2, 2011, and Maria on September 2, 2005. (Lee was originally the twelfth storm of the 2011 season, but an unnamed system reached tropical storm strength on September 1, just before Lee, was discovered in post-season analysis.)
At 2 p.m. EDT Saturday, August 22, the center of Marco was located about 90 miles east-northeast of Cancun, Mexico, headed north-northwest at 12 mph with a central pressure of 992 mb. Marco was taking advantage of favorable conditions to quickly intensify. In addition, Marco was in a moist large-scale environment, with a mid-level relative humidity of 70%. SSTs near 30 degrees Celsius (86°F) and light wind shear of 5 – 10 knots also favoring development. Marco is a small storm, and small storms can intensify and weaken quickly. Radar images from Cuba showed that Marco had built nearly a complete eyewall on Saturday morning.
Figure 6. Predicted path of Marco from the 6Z Saturday, August 22 run of the operational GFS model (black line) and its 21 ensemble members (colored lines, which show minimum central pressure). Potential landfall locations were widely spaced along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. (Image credit: Tropical Tidbits)
Marco expected to ‘shoot gap’ between Cuba and Mexico
Although earlier model runs had Marco angling left and passing over the Yucatan Peninsula, Marco’s center has consolidated further east than expected. Thus, Marco is now predicted to shoot the gap between Cuba and Mexico, which should allow the storm to intensify into a category 1 hurricane over the warm waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico, where SSTs are 30 degrees Celsius (86°F).
An upper-level trough of low pressure over the Gulf will bring dry air and high wind shear to Marco beginning on Sunday, though, limiting how much intensification can occur. With wind shear expected to be a high 20 – 30 knots Sunday night through Tuesday, a small storm like Marco should weaken considerably, and be at most a strong tropical storm when it makes its expected landfall on Monday or Tuesday along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Will Laura and Marco perform a Fujiwara dance in the Gulf of Mexico?
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, since wind shear from each weakens the other.
More commonly, when two storms interact, one will weaken or destroy the other with its wind shear, just as Hurricane Wilma did to Tropical Storm Alpha in 2005. The Saturday morning model runs showed limited support for a Fujiwara interaction between Marco and Laura.
A tropical wave off coast of Africa has zero potential to develop
A tropical wave located near the coast of Africa Saturday morning has diminished in intensity. The disturbance will move west-northwest at 15 – 20 mph over the tropical Atlantic and bring heavy rain showers and a threat of flash flooding to the Cabo Verde Islands over the weekend. The 0Z Saturday operational runs of the GFS, European, and UKMET models did not show development of this wave during the coming five days. In a 2 p.m. EDT Saturday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave the new African tropical wave two-day and five-day odds of formation of 0%.
Figure 7. Forecast for Tropical Storm Bavi made at 11 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Image credit: Joint Typhoon Warning Center)
South Korea at risk from Tropical Storm Bavi
The northwest Pacific, which is usually the most active ocean basin globally for tropical cyclones, has been unusually quiet so far this year. As of August 22, the basin had experienced nine named storms, three typhoons, and one major typhoon.
According to Dr. Phil Klotzbach’s Real-Time TC Activity page, the normal tallies by this point in the year are 12 named storms, seven typhoons, and three intense typhoons. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) year-to-date in the basin was just 14% of average. The relative lack of activity is expected in a year that is trending towards La Niña conditions, when the monsoon trough that breeds typhoons shifts westwards, closer to land. As a result, the amount of time storms spend over water is shortened, limiting development.
On Saturday, the ninth named storm of the Northwest Pacific season – Tropical Storm Bavi – formed in the waters north of the Philippines and east of Taiwan. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) predicted in its 11 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 22, forecast that Bavi would develop into the northwest Pacific’s second major typhoon of the season, and move northwards and make landfall in South Korea on Wednesday as a category 2 storm. Ocean temperatures along Bavi’s track are unusually warm – about 30 degrees Celsius (86°F), which is approximately two degrees Celsius (3.6°F) above average.
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President Donald Trump said Thursday he wants to dispatch law enforcement officials to polling places in November to guard against voter fraud, even though it’s unclear whether he can legally do so.
Voting rights advocates have raised concerns that even if Trump’s idea doesn’t come to fruition, it could discourage some voters from heading to the polls. It’s the latest in a series of statements indicating Trump’s interest in influencing how people vote in the November presidential election.
“We’re going to have everything,” the president told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals.”
Federal law prohibits officials from sending “armed men” to “any place where a general or special election is held,” and only local officials have influence over police and sheriff’s deputies. But his messaging may inspire local action, and even the prospect of having figures of authority like police guarding polling places could have the effect of intimidating voters and discouraging them from turning out to vote.
“This is just such an old, dirty voter suppression tactic,” Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told the Washington Post. “There is no doubt that this is about instilling fear and depressing participation in communities of color.”
In recent years, citizen groups organized to watch for voter fraud have recruited people to serve as poll watchers during elections. The Republican National Committee has also stepped up a campaign to recruit around 50,000 poll watchers to deploy during the November general election.
That’s made possible by the lapse in 2018 of a decades-old consent decree intended to protect against exactly what Trump suggested on Fox News. In the early 1980s, Democrats accused the RNC of voter intimidation due to a program of off-duty law enforcement officers who patrolled polls in predominantly Black and Latino areas.
The Democratic National Committee sued, and the RNC entered into a federal consent decree in which it agreed not to pursue such “ballot security” measures. In the decades since, the RNC has been careful to avoid activities that could be construed as voter suppression, leaving the orchestration of poll watcher programs to campaigns and local organizations.
That means this fall will mark the first presidential election in decades in which the group is able to spearhead poll-watching activities. The RNC has said their new poll watcher program will not include law enforcement officials but will rely on citizen volunteers, that volunteers will focus on both Democratic and GOP-leaning areas, and that they plan to be careful to be legally compliant so as not be put under another consent decree.
Trump has long sowed doubt about safe voting methods
Trump’s comments are the latest in a series suggesting he’s interested in undermining Americans’ faith in the election results and discouraging certain kinds of voting.
The president has long railed against mail-in voting, which he’s argued is ripe for fraud and manipulation. There is little evidence to support that claim, but civil rights advocates have raised concerns that the repeated messages could impact voters’ faith in election systems.
But the public clearly hasn’t gotten the distinction: Republican voters seem to be listening to the president’s warning more than Democratic ones, prompting some local Republican parties to quietly promote mail-in voting despite the president’s rhetoric.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized the U.S. Postal Service as costly and inefficient. Last week, he said on Fox News he opposed $25 billion of proposed additional funding for the Postal Service because he didn’t want it to be used for mail-in voting. He’s suggested withholding $3.6 billion in election funding for states to help prepare local election systems for the pandemic, including facilitating mail-in voting.
“They need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
He’s also proposed delaying the 2020 election “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.”
All of these messages have already had an impact on how Americans think about the election. A poll from NBC and the Wall Street Journal indicated that 45 percent of Americans believe votes in the 2020 election will be accurately counted — down from the 59 percent that believed so in 2016. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans also believe that mail-in ballots won’t be counted accurately.
As Trump continues to cast doubt on the methods for voting in the fall, voting experts fear it may delegitimize the results of the November election — another chaotic turn in an already tumultuous election year.
Trump will visit the Charlotte convention site during a visit to North Carolina on Monday, a Republican close to the Trump campaign told POLITICO on Friday, ahead of the event’s scheduled kickoff that evening. More than 300 Republican delegates and party officials still plan to meet in their host city for an in-person roll call vote and procedural business after Trump previously scrapped plans to speak in the city over the state’s social distancing guidelines.
The Democratic National Committee announced in July that its planned Milwaukee convention would instead go all-virtual as outbreaks in coronavirus cases worsened across the country. Delegates’ roll call vote played out in a series of virtually broadcast videos recorded in all 57 states and territories, with Biden accepting his party’s nomination from his home state of Delaware.
The bulk of Republicans’ programming will take place in and around the Washington, D.C., area — mostly on federal property. Trump has said he plans to deliver his nomination speech from the White House Rose Garden next week, while Vice President Mike Pence is expected to speak at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Md.
Lara Trump piled on her father-in-law’s attacks in a Saturday interview with NBC’s “Weekend Today,” disparaging Democrats’ convention as a “dark, dismal and really depressing vision of America.”
“Ours will be hopeful and inspirational and patriotic,” the senior Trump campaign adviser said, adding that the president would play a part in each night of the Republican convention.
Trump’s Saturday tweet barrage continued with false claims that the Democratic Party omitted the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance during its four nights of national convention programming.
He also alleged Democrat-run cities “rampant with crime” could see spillover into suburban areas, repeating a fear-based allusion in an attempt to court suburban female voters, a key electoral bloc that is turning away from the president in recent polling.
“Why would Suburban Women vote for Biden and the Democrats when Democrat run cities are now rampant with crime (and they aren’t asking the Federal Government for help) which could easily spread to the suburbs, and they will reconstitute, on steroids, their low income suburbs plan!” Trump wrote.
Trump also again weighed in on protests in Portland, Ore., which have persisted in the city since the death of George Floyd in May, saying he’s waiting to be asked by the state’s governor to squelch the unrest.
“Another bad night of Rioting in Portland, Oregon. A small number of Federal troops there to protect courthouse and other Federal property only (great job!),” Trump said. “Wanting to be asked by City & State to STOP THE RIOTS. Would bring in National Guard, end problem immediately. ASK!”
Trump then traveled by motorcade to his golf resort in Sterling, Va., arriving there around 10 a.m., according to pool reports.
The size of the blaze puts it behind only the Mendocino Complex fire of 2018, which burned about 459,000 acres, on the state’s list of largest fires on record since 1932. The fire complex, composed of several blazes burning in proximity, has destroyed 480 structures and threatens 30,500 more, according to Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency.
Tropical Storm Laura is forecast to track through the Caribbean and south of Florida, where it could strengthen into a hurricane, according to the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center. Florida is now outside of the storm’s forecast cone except the far west Keys. Tropical Storm Marco is forecast to move into the Gulf of Mexico toward the coasts of Texas or Louisiana. By early next week. As of Saturday morning, Marco was not forecast to strengthen into a hurricane.
Welcome to our weekly analysis of the state of the 2020 campaign.
The week in numbers
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign said it raised $70 million during the four-day Democratic National Convention.
21.8 million people tuned in on television for Biden’s big night at the convention on Thursday, according to Nielsen, slightly more than the 21 million who watched former President Barack Obama and Senator Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden’s running mate, on Wednesday. The TV viewership for the nominee’s speech was down about 21 percent from Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech four years ago, though many people watched online.
A new Gallup poll put President Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent. Americans’ approval of his handling of the economy — typically his strong suit — was 48 percent, roughly even with his numbers from June but 15 percentage points off his career high in the winter, just before the pandemic struck.
Pollsters mostly paused their work during the convention, waiting for things to play out before taking a fresh read of the country. But at the start of the week, threeseparatepolls by respected outlets showed Biden leading Trump by an average of eight points.
Catch me up
Democrats breathed a collective sigh of relief this week after the party pulled off an all-virtual convention, half political music video and half Joe Biden infomercial, largely without a hitch.
And whether you liked the content of Mr. Biden’s acceptance speech or found yourself unmoved by his message, one thing was clear: He outperformed the low expectations set in part by his general-election opponent.
The Joe Biden of the Republican Party’s telling is a gaffe machine whose age has rendered him unable to speak clearly, a caricature built over months of tweets by Mr. Trump, scores of interviews by his allies and nightly roasts by popular conservative media figures. The Joe Biden many Americans saw this week was cleareyed and capable of commanding an audience, albeit reading from a teleprompter in a room that was largely empty.
If that is a low bar, it is because Mr. Trump and some of his most prominent allies have helped to lower it.
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