A coronavirus update  Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, said COVID-19 deaths are at “almost nothing.” The virus killed more than 1,000 Americans that same day, Timothy Bella points out at the Washington Post.
For a first-person account of being hospitalized with COVID-19, there’s Carlos Sánchez’s essay in The Atlantic: COVID-19 Is Killing My People—And No One Seems to Care. Jeffrey Goldberg described it as, “Mass death in Hidalgo County, Texas. Read this astonishing dispatch from a person who almost died from COVID-19.” From NPR, Pien Huang reported how Internal Documents Reveal COVID-19 Hospitalization Data The Government Keeps Hidden. “EXCLUSIVE: Which hospitals are reaching max capacity? Where are the next COVID hotspots? NPR has obtained documents showing how HHS collects and analyzes this information in detail. Experts say the data is vital and should be shared widely...This data used to be collected by CDC, until HHS took over,” Selena Simmons-Duffin explained. As for the people who aren’t sick, but are dealing with the ramifications of life in the pandemic, Wall Street Journal’s Jo Craven McGinty uncovered that With No Commute, Americans Simply Worked More During Coronavirus. “Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, Americans saved 60 million hours in commute time each workday. They spent most of that working,” Prabha Natarajan said. Heather Haddon wrote, “Working hours more at home...feels familiar.” And Anthony De Rosa added, “From mid-March to mid-September, Americans spent 60 million fewer hours commuting to and from work each day. What did many of them do with that extra time? They worked more.” Election 2020  NPR's Final Electoral Map shows that Biden Has The Edge, But Trump Retains Narrow Path, according to Domenico Montanaro. “Biden has the advantage but Trump is in striking distance in the key swing states,” he said. “Cool cool cool my home state where I’m registered to vote might be the election’s decider (2nd map) 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 ,” Laura Kressly shared, likely referring to Pennsylvania.
“Here is one thing to be cheery about,” Tyler Cowen announced. In the New York Times, Adam Nagourney explored how In Trump and Biden, We Have a Choice of Teetotalers for President. “In the early 20th century, many voters would be delighted that both candidates were teetotalers. I don’t think it matters at all in the 21st century,” Chris Stanford quoted from the piece. Brian Lyman added, “Not mentioned in the article, but Abraham Lincoln avoided alcohol in his adult life, only drinking a limited amount if a doctor advised it. Lincoln said alcohol made him physically ill; he supported private temperance but showed no interest in prohibition.” America at the polls  Texas early voting has so far exceeded the total of all its 2016 ballots, according to Will Weissert and Paul Weber at the AP. “Texans have already cast more ballots in the presidential election than they did during all of 2016, an unprecedented surge of early voting in a state that was once the country’s most reliably Republican, but may now be drifting toward battleground status,” Vivian Salama said. Sara Button exclaimed, “Texas, baby!” And Trip Jennings simply reacted with, “Wow…”
In Pennsylvania, the Trump Camp is Facing a Gap and Trying to Make Voting Harder, New York Times’ Nick Corasaniti and Danny Hakim wrote. Clifford Levy said, “Trump’s campaign in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania is pursuing a 3-pronged strategy that would effectively suppress mail-in votes in the state.” Andrew Chung tweeted, “‘We will not be cowed or ruled by a lawless, power-hungry despot. Some folks learned that the hard way in the 1700s’ — Philadelphia district attorney Lawrence Krasner, condemning Trump administration’s efforts to ‘suppress votes’ during the pandemic.” “Wow. I’m liking Philly’s DA, Lawrence Krasner,” Wade Roush admitted. In Minnesota, an appeals court says the state must segregate ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day, according to Katie Glueck, Patricia Mazzei, Mike Ives, and Glenn Thrush at the New York Times. “In the waning days of the presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden is straying way off the traditional political map to chase votes: He delivered a closing argument in an op-ed published Friday by @YonhapNews a prominent South Korean news agency,” Neil Vigdor wrote. Josh Kraushaar also highlighted this part of the piece: “President Trump has called off plans to appear at the Trump International Hotel on election night, and is likely to be at the White House instead, according to a person familiar with the plans.” This is NOT normal  According to a WSJ News Exclusive from Sarah Nassauer, Walmart Pulls Guns, Ammo Displays in U.S. Stores, Citing Civil Unrest. “Walmart has removed all guns and ammunition from the sales floors of its U.S. stores this week, aiming to head off any potential theft of firearms if stores are broken into amid social unrest,” Paul Vieira said.
At Bloomberg News, Matthew Townsend corroborated the story, publishing Walmart (WMT) Pulls Guns, Ammunition Off Shelves In Case of Election Unrest. “Cool cool cool, everything normal here,” Clementine Fletcher concluded. After the election...  Should Biden win, the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and John Muyskens highlighted that Trump’s rolled back more than 100 climate and environmental policies and it will take Biden years to restore them.
Following up on last week’s news that Bernie Sanders wants to be Biden’s Secretary of Labor, today Politico published exclusively that Elizabeth Warren will make the case to be Biden's Treasury secretary, according to Alex Scott Thompson and Megan Cassella. Thompson tweeted, “Warren wants to be Joe Biden's Treasury secretary and will make her case for it if he wins next week, according to three Democratic officials who have spoken with her inner circle.” Cassella added, “She wants it.” If the election goes the other way, Trump adviser Stephen Miller revealed his aggressive second-term immigration agenda to NBC News’ Sahil Kapur. “Miller has big plans for U.S. immigration policy if Trump wins four more years. He told me what they are,” Kapur wrote. “Trump adviser Stephen Miller outlined four major priorities: limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas,” Eugene Scott laid out. Victoria DeFrancesco Soto said, “Immigration has been out of the public eye recently but it continues to quietly dominate the Trump administration.” What the government is hiding Here Are Thousands Of Documents About Immigrants Who Died in ICE Custody, BuzzFeed News presented thanks to quite a lot of work from Kendall Taggart, Hamed Aleaziz, and Jason Leopold. Their story also revealed that More Than 40 Immigrants Have Died In ICE Custody In The Past Four Years. “BuzzFeed News has obtained thousands of pages of documents from internal investigations of deaths of immigrants held in ICE custody. We are releasing all of the case files that have been turned over,” Aleaziz said. Elsewhere, the Justice Department Is Said to Quietly Quash the Inquiry Into Tamir Rice’s Killing, Charlie Savage and Katie Benner reported in the New York Times. “EXCLUSIVE: DOJ a year ago quashed its civil-rights investigation into the police killing of Tamir Rice by blocking career prosecutors from using a grand jury -- but has kept it technically open & never told the family it will bring no charges,” Savage tweeted. Eric Lipton reminded us that Tamir Rice was “a 12-year-old Black boy carrying a pellet gun who was shot by a Cleveland police officer in 2014.” And from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Katie Shepherd revealed that the Fraternal Order of Police deleted a misleading posts celebrating the Philadelphia officers who took a toddler from his mother’s SUV. Karrie Jacobs called it “An utterly unforgivable story.” And Ryan J. Reilly said it’s “just awful.” ‘We asked. We FOIAed. We sued’  In the Washington Post, David Fahrenthold was also very busy with The State Department wouldn’t reveal its payments to Mar-a-Lago. Here’s how we found them. “We asked. We FOIAed. We sued. We spent 8 months trying to get [the] State Dept to release records on its payments to Trump properties. They wouldn’t. Here’s how we got them anyway,” Fahrenthold wrote. Earle Kimel called the story, “Trump’s $3 water and other Mar-a-Lago charges: How we reported it.”
Also from the Washington Post, we learned that A top Interior official has controversial views on race and used a white supremacist website to support them, via Darryl Fears’ reporting. “Interior's new deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, Jeremy Carl, is under scrutiny for defending Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people at a protest in Kenosha and citing an oped in a white supremacist publication,” Juliet Eilperin wrote. Foreign interference  “After President Erdogan of Turkey squeezed President Trump to shut down a criminal investigation into a Turkish bank, the Justice Department moved in ways that answered Erdogan’s pleas, an investigation by NYT has found,” Eric Lipton tweeted about his New York Times story with Benjamin Weiser: A Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influence With Trump. “New details of the Justice Department’s handling of the accusations against Halkbank reveal how Turkey’s President Erdogan pressured President Trump, prompting concern from top White House aides and U.S. prosecutors. @EricLiptonNYT and I report,” Weiser said. Richard Stevenson added, “The president was discussing a criminal case with the authoritarian leader of a nation from which Mr. Trump received at least $2.6 million from 2015 through 2018, according to tax records obtained by The Times.”
If it’s Friday, it’s probably time for another story from Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins at NBC News. The duo this week published How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge. Collins called it, “The Deepfake Peddling a Hunter Biden Dossier.” ‘This entanglement with China’  Also supposedly complicit, Wilbur Ross who — according to Foreign Policy Magazine’s Isaac Stone Fish — remained on a Chinese Joint Venture Board While Running the U.S.-China Trade War. (And they say men can’t multitask.)
“Exclusive: Wilbur Ross served on the board of a Chinese joint venture until 2019. In other words, while helping run the Trade War, the Commerce Secretary was partnered with a Chinese state-owned enterprise,” Fish tweeted, explaining that this is a massive conflict of interest. “This raises serious questions about Ross's ability to act in the interest of the Commerce Department, over his personal interests. Ross has long been criticized for his ethical violations. This entanglement with China is one of his worst.” Glenn Greenwald vs. The Intercept We lead you into the weekend with a bit of media news. Glenn Greenwald sent out My Resignation From The Intercept via Substack this week, writing, “The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.” Zaid Jilani deemed his letter “an interesting read.” Greenwald then also sent out Emails With Intercept Editors Showing Censorship of My Joe Biden Article, explaining, “There's no reason for anyone to have to decide who to believe. Feel free to see for yourselves what really happened.” “The email from The Intercept's editors raise many of the same questions & contradictions I felt when reading Glenn's piece on Biden. Fascinating stuff -- not sure they show what Glenn claims they do,” Isaac Saul said. Barry Petchesky added, “Imagine posting this and thinking it makes you look like the reasonable one.”  Then The Intercept itself, the site Greenwald helped start, published its own take on this story: Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept.
Maxwell Tani called it a “scathing Intercept response to Greenwald: ‘The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum.’” Ouch. | 
Today on the blog, 
No comments:
Post a Comment