The “very high” level will be applied to areas where the transmission of the coronavirus is rising rapidly. In these areas, pubs and bars, gyms, betting shops and casinos will be closed. Johnson announced that, from Wednesday, the city of Liverpool would be placed on “very high” alert.
Shops, schools and universities will remain open, Johnson added.
The U.K. government has been criticized for the complexity of its local lockdown measures, which differ from area to area. It is hoping the new tiered system will help to simplify things.
In Scotland and Wales, meanwhile, pubs and restaurants have already been closed in some areas, and Wales has also imposed some restrictions on movement.
A federal judge upheld Minnesota’s extension for counting mail-in ballots late Sunday after it was challenged by a pair of Republican electors in the state. A state court agreement had allowed ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 to be counted if received within seven days of the election.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
A federal judge upheld Minnesota’s extension for counting mail-in ballots late Sunday after it was challenged by a pair of Republican electors in the state. A state court agreement had allowed ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 to be counted if received within seven days of the election.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
A federal judge in Minnesota upheld a seven-day deadline extension for counting mail-in ballots on Sunday, after it was challenged by a pair of Republicans.
Minnesota extended its deadline for receiving mail-in ballots after rights groups raised concerns that the state’s previous deadline could disenfranchise voters as the state receives an unprecedented amount of absentee ballots.
In past elections, absentee ballots would only be counted if received by 8 p.m. on election day. However, a state court agreement reached with Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon allowed ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if received within seven days.
But, State Rep. Eric Lucero and James Carson – both certified Republican electors if Trump wins the state – challenged the extension arguing, among other things, that it violated federal law establishing Nov. 3 as the day of the 2020 election.
The two requested U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel block the agreement.
In her ruling late Sunday, Brasel rejected the plaintiffs claims for blocking the deadline extension. The judge also ruled that neither Lucero nor Carson had the standing to challenge the court agreement.
“[The plaintiffs] raise four theories of injury to support standing: vote dilution; uncertainty over how to vote; a risk to safe harbor compliance; and damage to their prospects for election as candidates for office. The Court considers each; none confers standing,” Brasel wrote in analysis.
The Associated Press reports that attorneys for the state had argued blocking the extension would sow confusion and potentially disenfranchise voters who’ve already been instructed their ballots can be counted if received after election day.
Minnesota began absentee voting on Sept. 18. Since then, like most of the country, the state has seen early and mail-in voting on pace to beat prior year records.
Minnesota Public Radio noted on Friday that more than 635,000 people had already cast ballots and 43.5% of the state’s registered voters had requested to vote absentee. In 2016, some 676,000 people voted early in the state.
Brasel’s ruling also comes days after a federal appeals court struck down a similar six-day extension for absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
President Trump has nominated federal appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Barrett is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary, on President Trump making the trip to Walter Reed Medical Center ‘out of an abundance of caution.’
President Trump told supporters on Sunday that he’s “tested totally negative” for the novel coronavirus, despite White House physcian, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, releasing no new statements on the president’s health.
According to Trump’s latest medical update, he completed his COVID-19 treatment on Thursday and had responded “extremely well.”
Follow below for updates on Trump’s health. Mobile users click here.
House Democrats and White House officials are telling conflicting stories over the status of the long-stalled Covid-19 relief bill negotiations Sunday morning, and a deal before Election Day is looking less likely as time wears on.
On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told host Jake Tapper that he didn’t think a deal between the Trump administration and House Democrats was dead, despite opposition from many Senate Republicans.
“No, I don’t think it’s dead at all,” said Kudlow. “I think if a deal can be reached, [Senate Republicans] will go along with it.” Kudlow tried to spin the impasseas an issue with Democrats, when in fact it has been the president’sown party presenting the biggest opposition to a deal.
At issue are dueling proposals between House Democrats and White House negotiators. House Democrats passed a revised version of their HEROES Act earlier this month, which now features $2.2 trillion (down from some $3 trillion in the version passed in May) to cover an extension of expanded unemployment insurance and another round of stimulus checks. But the White House has rejected that package and countered with its own $1.8 trillion proposal.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said talks “remain at an impasse” in a letter sent out to House DemocratsSunday morning.
“This proposal amounted to one step forward, two steps back,” she wrote in the letter,referring to the negotiations. “When the President talks about wanting a bigger relief package, his proposal appears to mean that he wants more money at his discretion to grant or withhold, rather than agreeing on language prescribing how we honor our workers, crush the virus and put money in the pockets of workers.”
Last week, negotiations hadstalled over five key areas of disagreement, as Vox’s Li Zhou explained, which included state aid and language regarding coronavirus testing and contact tracing.
The stakes of passing another stimulus are high.Earlier this week, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell warned another coronavirus wave could hit the economy hard, and called for the government to enact more stimulus aid for struggling Americans.
Yet the same day he made that statement, Trump tweeted that he was cutting off negotiations with House Democrats, saying he would only reengage if he wins the election. After a stock market plunge in response to his tweets, and perhaps influenced by his plummeting poll numbers, Trump swiftly reversed himself.
…request, and looking to the future of our Country. I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business. I have asked…
But for a deal to happen, Trump needs to get his party’s buy-in.Over 20 Senate Republicans have now publicly said they oppose or are reticent to pass a second round of relief, despite a still-cratering economy, even if the White House agrees to a deal.
It’s perhaps the most firm break the chamber’s GOP members have made from Trump in recent memory.
A new wave of infections could spell doom for the economy
The failure to pass a new stimulus bill is taking place against the backdrop of a struggling economy and worsening pandemic.
Though the unemployment rate has improved from a high of 14.7 percent in April to 7.9 percent in September, according to US Labor Bureau statistics, the number of Americans applying for jobless benefits remains distressingly high. If the pandemic forces states to go back into lockdown or issue new business closures, the numbers could only get worse.
That could spell disaster for the slowly recovering economy, especially if no deal is reached and Senate Republicans refuse to play ball.
Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what’s happening in the news, from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world: Contribute today from as little as $3.
The result: Several narrow paths to a fast 270 electoral votes for Biden, and basically none for Trump — barring a major surprise in states he lost four years ago. The president likely cannot win another term in the White House without waiting days to find out, though Trump has hinted that he could try to claim he won on election night based on vote counts that won’t yet include many mail ballots, which more Democrats are planning to use this year.
Biden is currently leading in swing state polls, putting him on course to win the Electoral College once ballots are fully counted, regardless of what happens on election night. But his leads are smaller, or the race is tied, in the battleground states that have a better chance of being called soon after the polls close. That may not matter in a vacuum, but the situation has led some Democrats, fearful that the president could sow chaos during an extended period of uncertain vote-counting, to push for extra investment in states that could help Biden notch a clear win quickly after the polls close.
“In the past, the tipping point was the state that got you the Electoral College victory,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper said. This year, he said, “Given what Trump is doing … people see that if you can make the tipping point ending the nightmare before it starts, make that the tipping point.”
Other Democrats are urging the party to resist the push for an election night knockout and proceed without considering how fast votes will be counted. “Our goal is to get the 270 irrespective” of the timing, said Guy Cecil, chair of Priorities USA, the flagship pro-Biden outside group. “We’re not making adjustments based on winning at a particular period of time.”
How Biden’s high floor gives him a narrow path to 270 on Nov. 3
Biden has an election night floor of 226 Electoral College votes from states where some combination of favorable exit polling and fast vote-counting should lead to quick race calls. This includes the nominal battleground states of Minnesota and New Hampshire, where he leads by 9 points apiece in the latest polling averages — and it gives Biden several plausible, if slim, shots of hitting 270 electoral votes before calls in those three critical states with a slower ballot process: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
(The above map has the electoral votes of both Maine’s 2nd District and Nebraska’s 2nd District uncalled.)
Most of Biden’s paths to 270 before those states are called begin with securing Florida, where election officials are confident in their state’s ability to count the vast majority of ballots quickly. “I think Florida is in a good position to be the shining star on election night,” Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, the current president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association, previously told POLITICO.
If Biden can net Florida on election night — no sure thing regardless of timing — Democrats could secure the other 15 electoral votes in three ways: winning North Carolina, Ohio or the combination of Arizona and Iowa.
For Democrats bullish on closing Trump out on election night, Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, is an especially appealing target. Trump won Ohio by about 8 percentage points four years ago, and until recently, it was not considered a 2020 battleground. But Biden is now running about even with Trump in the state, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, and ballots are expected to be counted there quickly.
“The opportunity for Donald Trump to cause chaos is in the states where the votes are counted afterwards and it’s drawn out for days or weeks,” said Pepper, the Ohio Democratic Party chair. “Ohio — because it counts first, announces first — it eliminates that opportunity for Trump to do that.”
A victory in Ohio, he said, could make Trump’s efforts in other states “irrelevant.”
If Biden loses Florida, or if the results there are too close to call, it will be very difficult for him to get to 270 electoral votes on election night. He could try to cobble together the remaining votes in a combination of North Carolina, Arizona, Iowa and Ohio, but the likeliest paths all include Florida.
(Biden has also led in polls in Nevada — the only battleground state that is mailing all voters a ballot, regardless of whether they requested one or not — but officials have already warned that they’re not expecting results quickly. “It is unlikely that we will have results on election night,” Jennifer Russell, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, wrote in an email.)
There’s also the chance that Biden could win in a major blowout, in which he flips Florida and North Carolina en route to a winning map that includes other big wins like Texas and Georgia.
Some Democrats also remain skeptical about Biden’s prospects in Florida and, especially, Ohio, and have privately groaned about spending in those states. One Democratic strategist who works with major donors said the party would gain more by spending that money in more clearly winnable states and “on a real voter protection program [rather] than spend money on states we have no business spending money on.”
A Biden campaign official said the campaign’s priorities are not determined by what time states report results on election night. And Cecil, the chair of Priorities USA, said the group is not considering trying to land the final blow on election night when figuring out where to spend.
“The reality is that the places where people have suggested that the race can be called either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, places like Florida, were places that we were already investing significantly prior to this final push by the president to call the election into question,” Cecil said. “We’re just making those investments based on what we believe are the six states that are most likely to lead us to 270.”
Trump’s 2016 path would stretch past election night 2020
Even if Trump is holding onto the electoral votes that went his way in 2016 and gets election night race calls from exit polls and the states expected to count votes quickly, the results would still be likely to leave him shy of an Electoral College majority when he goes to sleep that night.
This map leaves the three crucial Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania remaining uncalled on Nov. 3 because of how long it is expected to take to count a wave of mail-in ballots. Trump won those three states, collectively, by about 80,000 votes in 2016.
In this scenario, Trump’s only path to an election night victory would be to win a state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, such as Minnesota. But he is not running within the margin of error in current polls there.
(The above map does not represent Trump also carrying the electoral vote for Maine’s 2nd District, as he did in 2016, but his hypothetical 260 electoral college votes does include ME-02.)
Meanwhile, Trump’s 2016 map is fragile, especially in those three Great Lakes states but also in Arizona, where Biden has built a consistent polling lead. Florida is looking tough for the president too, while polls are close in other Trump states like Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and even Texas.
The president could also very well win states like Florida, Arizona and Ohio, but victories there may not be clear shortly after polls close.
Arizona and Florida count ballots fairly quickly, but both states have recent experience with close races that have gone uncalled past election night. Trump has sought to delegitimize the ballot count in both states in the past.
Days after the 2018 midterm elections, Trump called for Florida to stop tallying ballots as the vote count in GOP Sen. Rick Scott and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ races tightened, falsely claiming that “large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged.”
“Must go with Election Night!” he wrote on Twitter, in a refrain that remains seared into Democrats’ minds this year.
Ohio, meanwhile, allows clerks plenty of time before Election Day to begin processing mail ballots. But the state also accepts ballots received up to 10 days after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by the Monday before Election Day. That means that the state could linger uncalled until that deadline passes if the race is very close.
“So if any candidate has a 4 or 5 percent lead on election night, and they’re winning by a million votes and there’s only a couple hundred thousand outstanding absentee ballots, then the contest is over, right? I think numerically, that’s pretty straightforward,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an interview in September. “But if it’s a tighter race … well, then yeah, you just can’t say that it’s a conclusive result yet at that point.”
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
The Associated Press was forced to add an editor’s note to a recent story about the Supreme Court on Saturday, in which the outlet made it seem as if the Democratic strategy to pack the high court would “depoliticize” the bench.
The article, written by Iris Samuels, centered on a debate between Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Gov. Steve Bullock, his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election.
The AP’s original post reportedly read, “Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts.”
The report referred to President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
The line about court-packing serving as a way to “depoliticize” the bench was removed to reflect the idea that it was not a statement of fact, but rather the political opinion of a Democratic lawmaker.
The editor’s note read, “This story has been edited to make clear that it is Bullock’s opinion, rather than a fact, that adding justices to the Supreme Court would depoliticize the court.”
The new line was changed to: “Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures including adding justices to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts.”
Bullock went on to echo the AP’s sentiments and agreed that adding more justices would pave the way for less partisanship within the judiciary.
“We need to figure out the ways to actually get the politics out of the court,” he said. “That’s anything from a judicial standards commission, or we’ll look at any other thing that might be suggested, including adding justices.”
Daines, who said he’ll support Barrett’s confirmation, claimed adding justices to the bench would threaten gun rights and other Constitutionally protected liberties.
Investigators have concluded that Dolloff was acting as a security guard at the time of the incident, according to a tweet from the Denver Police Department (DPD). It reads, in part, “further investigation has revealed that, at the time of the shooting, the suspect was acting in a professional capacity as an armed security guard for a local media outlet and not a protest participant.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most popular face in fighting the coronavirus, released a statement Sunday disputing being used in a new advertisement from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign meant to tout the White House’s handling of the pandemic.
The 30-second spot seeks to highlight how Trump, who caught COVID-19 this month, and the U.S. economy are recovering from the contagion. It tries to portray the president as taking decisive action despite previously downplaying the disease in public.
“President Trump tackled the virus head on as leaders should,” the narrator says, followed by a short clip of Fauci saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.”
But Fauci rebuked the use of the small snippet in the ad on Sunday, which made it seem as if he was endorsing Trump’s effort. He said in his “nearly five decades of public service” he has never endorsed a candidate publicly.
“The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials,” Fauci said in a statement provided to CNN.
The clip comes from an interview Fauci did in March, where he was talking about how much time he had been devoting to combating the coronavirus.
“I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the task force,” Fauci said at the time. “I’m connected by phone throughout the day and into the night and when I say night, I’m talking twelve, one, two in the morning. I’m not the only one. There’s a whole group of us that are doing that. It’s every single day. So I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more. I mean, obviously, we’re fighting a formidable enemy — this virus. This virus is a serious issue here.”
Trump campaign manager Tim Murtaugh defended using Fauci’s image and words in the spot when reached for comment on Sunday.
“These are Dr. Fauci’s own words,” he said. “The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth.”
The president repeated that defense in a Tweet Sunday night, writing, “They are indeed Dr. Fauci’s own words. We have done a “phenomenal” job, according to certain governors. Many people agree.”
Trump opined over the summer about how Fauci was seen as more credible source than him. He noted Fauci’s high approval ratings outpacing his own while working for the administration.
That’s about 28 percentage points higher than the 40% who said the same about Trump, according to the survey.
But Fauci’s approval numbers took a significant dip among Republicans with his favorables nosediving by about 30% since April. Roughly 48% of GOP voters said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in him while at the same time confidence in him increased among Democrats from 80% to 86% since April.
The president’s reelection team using Fauci in such a prominent ad could be interpreted as an admission that despite some conservatives souring on the public health official, he remains a popular and trusted figure in terms of combating the virus.
The confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett will kick off Monday despite criticism from Democrats about the event possibly being unsafe because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin at 9 a.m. ET and last though Thursday.
Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said that he expects the committee to approve the 48-year-old judge by Oct. 22, giving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell enough time to bring the nomination to the Senate floor before Election Day.
The confirmation battle, set in the middle of the contentious election contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, has so far lacked the theatrics of the last fight over a Supreme Court nominee.
But the consequences could prove dramatic, as Trump aims to solidify a 6-3 conservative majority on the country’s highest court. Barrett was nominated to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who served for nearly three decades on the Supreme Court and became its most senior liberal justice.
Barrett is expected to speak at the end of the day on Monday. In prepared remarks, the judge focuses on her family, introducing the Judiciary Committee to her seven children and her husband, Jesse.
She also praises Ginsburg and her judicial mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom she has said she shares a philosophy. Ginsburg and Scalia were close friends but ideological opposites.
Barrett will also express her view that courts should avoid making policy decisions and value judgments, which she will say “must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people.”
“The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try,” she will say.
Looming over the confirmation is Ginsburg’s final wish that she not be replaced until after the election, which Biden and his congressional allies have called on Republicans to heed. Barrett does not address Ginsburg’s dying statement in her prepared remarks, but does share kind words about the late justice.
“I have been nominated to fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat, but no one will ever take her place. I will be forever grateful for the path she marked and the life she led,” Barrett will say.
Mr. Graham caused another stir at a candidate forum on Friday when he declared that Black people “can go anywhere in this state” as long as they are “conservative, not liberal.” Critics quickly called out Mr. Graham,who is white, for what they described as an attempt to dictate an acceptable path for Black political leaders while debating Mr. Harrison, who is Black,in a state with a long and troubled racial history.
Mr. Harrison will have the money to amplify that or any other past Graham comments. On a drive Mr. Loftis made last week from Columbia to Charleston, the Harrison campaign “owned every billboard from here to there,” he said. But given the state’s conservative bent, he added, “I’m not sure money can take Jaime over the top.”
Still, the fact that the race is competitive at all speaks to the intense energy among Democrats, and to how Republican worries about a challenging year have turned into fears of a national landslide. South Carolina, which voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 by more than 14 points, has not elected any Democrat statewide since 2006 and has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, when Ernest F. Hollings was re-elected.
Mr. Harrison’s huge fund-raising total also speaks to Democratic voters’ specific anger at Mr. Graham, who has become one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal defenders and, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is leading the charge to confirm Judge Barrett.
Mr. Harrison has been campaigning heavily across the state, including in “deep Republican areas that Democrats usually write off,” said Tameika Isaac Devine, a Democrat who serves on the Columbia City Council.
And, flush with cash, Mr. Harrison has been able to blanket the state with advertising.
“You cannot turn on your TV and not see Jaime, you cannot go on the internet and not see Jaime, you cannot open your mailbox and not see Jaime,” said State Senator Dick A. Harpootlian, a Democrat who represents the Columbia area.
Mr. Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said he voted for Mr. Graham six years ago because the senator was then a bipartisan moderate.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
The University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab released a poll of likely voters last week, which showed President Trump leading among seniors against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, but by a substantially smaller margin than he had in 2016 against then-rival Hillary Clinton.
The poll was released on Oct. 6 and drew from 3,142 residents, 39 percent of which were Republican, 38 percent were Democrat and 22 percent had no party affiliation. The respondents were also 53 percent female and 47 percent male, according to the research lab’s press release.
One of the questions read, “If the presidential election were held today and the candidates were Donald Trump for the Republican Party and Joe Biden for the Democratic Party, who would you vote for?”
Trump garnered 50 percent from voters 65 and older, with 47 percent going for Biden.
Another question voters were asked was to compare their vote now, to how they voted in 2016 and the results showed Trump previously had a 14 point lead with voter 65 and older back when he faced Clinton.
The same poll found 86 percent of Democrats believe the results from the November election will be fair, compared to just 58 percent of Republicans.
The survey also found only 27 percent of respondents thought the first presidential debate held on Sept. 29, “was very or somewhat influential in their vote decision in the coming election.”
The shift in strategy from the White House caps a week in which the president and his negotiators adopted a dizzying number of different approaches to securing a relief package through Congress. On Oct. 3, the president demanded that Congress approve a relief package, before abruptly calling off negotiations with Democrats three days later, and then calling for action on only a handful of priorities, including airline relief and $1,200 stimulus checks. On Wednesday, Mnuchin and Pelosi began discussing a stand-alone measure to provide relief for the airline industry, but those talks were abandoned the next day as President Trump again pushed for a wider agreement.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has criticised Donald Trump’s reelection campaign for using his words out of context to make it appear as if he was praising the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci said in a statement to CNN on Sunday. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the [Republican] campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”
In the video released on Saturday, Fauci can be heard saying “I can’t imagine that … anyone could be doing more” as the advert boasts of Trump’s response to Covid-19, which has claimed the lives of more than 214,000 Americans and infected more than 7.7m people.
The clip came from an interview Fauci gave to Fox News, in which he was describing the work that he and other members of the White House coronavirus task force undertook to respond to the virus, not Trump.
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar)
Fauci has responded to this: “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago.” (via @jaketapper) https://t.co/G57Q9rqCXj
A majority of Americans do not approve of the president’s handling of the crisis, according to several recent polls. The Trump campaign said it would not stop running the adverts.
“These are Dr Fauci’s own words,” said Trump’s communication director Tim Murtaugh. “The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration.
“The words are accurate and directly from Dr Fauci’s mouth.”
For months during the course of the pandemic, Trump has often been at odds with Fauci, delivering contradictory public health messages and publicly expressing frustration with the doctor’s more sober take on the crisis.
In the spring, as the virus ravaged the north-east of the country, Fauci was a regular at the White House’s coronavirus press briefings. But in June, Fauci said he was no longer invited to the briefings, with Trump claiming to Fox News that Fauci was “a nice man, but he made a lot of mistakes”. Polls conducted in early summer found a majority of Americans trusted Fauci’s assessments of the pandemic, whereas less than a third trusted Trump’s.
As cases began to rise across many parts of the country, Trump encouraged states to quickly reopen their economies for the summer. Fauci at the time cautioned against reopening without appropriate social distancing measures in place, contradicting Trump’s messaging that states should not delay.
Fauci has largely remained a neutral, authoritative public health figure over the course of the pandemic, refusing to harshly criticise the administration’s approach, and opting to do dozens of virtual interviews to offer his recommendations to Americans. Trump has since replaced Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx, another respected public health expert who was once a regular at the White House press briefing, with Dr Scott Atlas, who is neither an epidemiologist nor an infectious disease expert.
Atlas, a regular on the Fox news network, has come under scrutiny by public health experts for questioning the effectiveness of masks and parroting the Trump administration’s optimistic timeline for a Covid-19 vaccine.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a letter to the Attorney General’s office on Sunday, arguing that Judge Amy Coney Barrett left out answers to the Senate questionnaire given to Supreme Court nominees prior to their confirmation hearing.
The letter was authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Dick Blumenthal, D-Conn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Coons, D-Del., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.
“We write regarding additional omissions in the materials provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Judge Amy Coney Barrett in relation to her Supreme Court nomination,” the letter stated.
Committee members said this is their second letter requesting more information about Barrett’s background and that the supplemental questionnaire she submitted, “raises more questions than it answers.”
The Senators took issue with Barrett taking part in public speeches and seminars where the issue of abortion and reproductive rights were discussed back in 2013. The lawmakers insinuated Barrett omitted these talks on purpose and only included them on her supplemental submission after reports of the talks were leaked to the media.
The letter went on to criticize Barrett’s ties to a pro-life advertisement she signed as a faculty member of the University of Notre Dame. Senate Democrats argue this — and another pro-life advertisement Barrett signed as a member of the St. Joseph County Right to Life Organization in 2006 — are worthy of further investigation and asked that she produce the 2006 ad at her hearings.
The last issue listed in the letter had to do with Barrett having done legal work defending a steel magnate who Democrats claim was, “accused of orchestrating the bankruptcy of a major Pennsylvania hospital system.”
“Please immediately provide an explanation for the omission of these materials and please provide any other responsive materials that have not been disclosed by Judge Barrett,” the letter stated.
This news comes just one day before Barrett’s confirmation hearings are set to being, in what will likely be one of the most bitter, partisan battles for a seat on the high court in recent memory.
Denver authorities on Sunday identified the security guard who was arrested after a fatal shooting near dueling protests by left-wing and right-wing demonstrators.
The Denver Police Department said in a statement that Matthew Dolloff, 30, was being held for investigation of first-degree murder in a shooting Saturday outside the Denver Art Museum that left one man dead.
Jail records show that Dolloff was being held without bond.
Authorities have not identified the victim of the shooting. The protests had taken place earlier at Denver’s Civic Center, where people had gathered for a “Patriot Rally” and a Black Lives Matter-antifa “soup drive.”
NBC affiliate KUSA reported that it had retained Dolloff as a private security contractor through Pinkerton, the risk management and security services firm. The outlet said it had begun using private security in recent months while covering protests.
Pinkerton did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. The Denver Police Department said Dolloff was acting “in a professional capacity as an armed security guard” for a local media outlet at the time of the shooting.
In an apparent response to social media posts linking Dolloff to the anti-fascist movement, the department said it was “unaware of whether the suspect is personally affiliated with any political organization.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if Dolloff has a lawyer.
A Denver police official, Joe Montoya, said Saturday a verbal altercation preceded the shooting, which occurred as the protests were winding down. Photos of the confrontation captured by a Denver Post photographer appeared to show a man spraying something at another man with a handgun.
Montoya said that video had been recovered, but he declined to provide details. He said two guns and a can of mace were found from the scene. He said investigators were still trying to determine what happened.
“We don’t want any erroneous information going out, any speculation, because that’s really what hurts us, and that’s what gets everybody angry and motivated to commit more violence, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent,” Montoya said at a news conference.
Helen Richardson, the Denver Post photographer who photographed the shooting, said in an Instagram post that “this thing whole thing just saddens me beyond words.”
“I fear for what the weeks ahead hold for all of us,” she said.
WASHINGTON — The campaign of South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison said Sunday it had raised a colossal $57 million in the past three months, a record-breaking sum aimed at unseating Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The single-quarter haul brings Harrison’s campaign total to $86 million this cycle.
And while Sen. Graham has not yet released his third-quarter fundraising he said in a pair of interviews last month on Fox News that he was “being killed financially.”
“I’m being killed financially. This money is because they hate my guts,” Graham said during an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Sept. 24. Later that evening he told Fox host Sean Hannity that he needed financial help with his Senate race.
“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham told Hannity, adding: “Help me. They’re killing me moneywise. Help me. You did last week. Help me again.”
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
