AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

As virus surges in some US states, emergency rooms swamped

A fast-rising tide of new coronavirus cases is flooding emergency rooms in parts of the United States, with some patients moved into hallways and nurses working extra shifts to keep up with the surge.

Patients struggling to breathe are being placed on ventilators in emergency wards since intensive care units are full, officials say, and the near-constant care they require is overtaxing workers who also are treating more typical ER cases like chest pains, infections, and fractures.

In Texas, Dr. Alison Haddock of the Baylor College of Medicine said the current situation is worse than after Hurricane Harvey, which swamped Houston with floodwaters in 2017. The state reported a new daily record for virus deaths Friday and more than 10,000 confirmed cases for the fourth consecutive day.

“I’ve never seen anything like this COVID surge,” said Haddock, who has worked in emergency rooms since 2007. “We’re doing our best, but we’re not an ICU.”

Patients are waiting “hours and hours” to get admitted, she said, and the least sick people are lying in beds in halls to make room for most seriously ill.

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Remembering John Lewis, rights icon and `American hero'

WASHINGTON (AP) — People paid great heed to John Lewis for much of his life in the civil rights movement. But at the very beginning — when he was just a kid wanting to be a minister someday — his audience didn’t care much for what he had to say.

A son of Alabama sharecroppers, the young Lewis first preached moral righteousness to his family’s chickens. His place in the vanguard of the 1960s campaign for Black equality had its roots in that hardscrabble Alabama farm and all those clucks.

Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington, and spoke shortly before the group’s leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to a vast sea of people.

If that speech marked a turning point in the civil rights era — or at least the most famous moment — the struggle was far from over. Two more hard years passed before truncheon-wielding state troopers beat Lewis bloody and fractured his skull as he led 600 protesters over Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Searing TV images of that brutality helped to galvanize national opposition to racial oppression and embolden leaders in Washington to pass the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act five months later.

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Given a chance, Trump would push court pick before election

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have tried to make it clear: Given the chance, they would push through a Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy occur before Election Day.

The issue has taken on new immediacy with the disclosure Friday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer after four earlier bouts with the disease. The 87-year-old liberal, who apologized in 2016 for her pointed public criticism of Trump during his first campaign, says she has no plans to retire.

The development has focused even more on what's at stake this election, with the winner in position to help shape the trajectory of the court for years to come.

Trump administration officials have underscored that Trump would not hesitate to fill an opening before voters have their say Nov. 3, less than four months away, on whether to give him a second term.

Four years ago, also in a presidential election year, the GOP-controlled Senate refused to vote when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Merrick Garland, a federal judge, to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in February. Nine months before that year's election, McConnell said voters should determine who would nominate the person to fill that seat.

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Trump talks less about virus, states look inward for answers

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken an increasingly hands-off approach to the coronavirus crisis in recent days even as COVID-19 cases and deaths have surged to record highs in a huge slice of the country, including areas where he has enjoyed strong support.

Meanwhile, governors and big city mayors in much of the United States are sending a blunt message to their constituents: Don’t expect a federal cavalry to save the day.

Throughout the crisis, the president has been quick to convey certitude, with threats to state and local officials who did not heed his warnings. But as the pandemic has continued to ravage the nation, his actions have largely been muted.

Large districts in Los Angeles, Houston and suburban Washington are among those to defy Trump's demand that schools fully reopen this fall. They announced this past week that the escalating virus cases will cause them to delay opening their buildings for in-person learning. Others districts, including New York City and Chicago, have laid out initial plans for a combination of in-person and online learning.

At the same time, governors and mayors have largely stopped pleading for more federal government help. Instead, they are making it clear that it will be on the shoulders of communities to stem the accelerating spread of the virus.

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Doctor who survived COVID-19 bewildered by public disregard

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Dr. Michael Saag spends much of his time treating patients fighting for their lives and working with colleagues who are overwhelmed and exhausted by the relentless battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he enters a different world when he walks out the door of his Alabama clinic: one where many don’t wear masks, keep their distance from others or even seem aware of the intense struggle being waged against a virus that has cost about 140,000 lives nationwide and made so many — including the doctor — seriously ill.

The disconnect is devastating.

“It’s a mixture of emotions, from anger to being demoralized to bewilderment to frustration,” Saag said.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have increased an average of more than 1,500 a day over the past week in Alabama, bringing the total to more than 62,100 since the pandemic began in March. At least 1,230 people have died and health officials say fewer than 15% of the state’s intensive care beds are available for new patients. Some hospitals are completely out of room.

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'We really need help': Coronavirus overwhelms rural Oregon

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Heather Griggs presses a phone to her ear in a makeshift office in the small brick courthouse that once served as a jail in rural Pendleton, a place best known for its annual rodeo.

Her assured tone masks her exhaustion when she tells the person on the other end that they may have been exposed to COVID-19. It’s a call she has made thousands of times since March, but lately there has been a heightened sense of urgency.

The coronavirus has torn through the small Oregon community where farmers grow crops such as potatoes, onions and grains. In Umatilla County, where Pendleton is located, the rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 is about 16%. That's a measure of how widespread the disease is in the community, and the World Health Organization recommends it stay below 5%.

In the county with a population of 77,000, the virus has infected more than a thousand people and killed nine, overwhelming its limited resources and employees.

“I’m tired,” said Griggs, who's working as a contact tracer.

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Surging Democrats expand Senate targets to GOP states

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's come to this for Republicans straining to defend their Senate majority in November's elections: They're air-dropping millions of dollars into races in Alabama, Kentucky and other red states where Donald Trump coasted during his 2016 presidential election triumph.

This year, challenged by Trump's fumbled handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the crippled economy and his racially inflammatory stances, Republicans face potentially competitive races they'd normally have locked down. Compounding their problems is strong fundraising by Democratic candidates that's kept them in contention in unlikely locations.

“The president’s weakening poll numbers over the last several months have made down-ballot races more competitive,” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. While saying he believes Republicans will win many of the contested seats, Ayres added, “It’s fair to say the map is expanded.”

GOP fretting is being aggravated by some polls showing Trump trailing nationally and in some battleground states against Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

And while it's early and well-known senators can differentiate themselves from an unpopular president atop their ticket, Democrats are defending just 12 Senate seats this November to Republicans' 23. The GOP controls the Senate 53-47.

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Oregon officials decry federal agents after protest clashes

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Militarized federal agents deployed by the president to Portland, Oregon, fired tear gas against protesters again overnight as the city’s mayor demanded that the agents be removed and as the state’s attorney general vowed to seek a restraining order against them.

Federal agents, some wearing camouflage and some wearing dark Homeland Security uniforms, used tear gas at least twice to break up crowds late Friday night, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been a nightly feature in deeply liberal Portland since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd on May 25. President Donald Trump has decried the disorder and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blasted the protesters as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city, helping make the clashes between police and demonstrators a national focus.

The administration has enlisted federal agents, including the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and an elite U.S. Customs and Border Protection team based on the U.S.-Mexico border, to protect federal property. But Oregon Public Broadcasting reported this week that some agents had been driving around in unmarked vans and snatching protesters from streets not near federal property, without identifying themselves.

Tensions also escalated after an officer with the Marshals Service fired a less-lethal round at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him.

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Trump's trouble in suburbs key to suddenly competitive Ohio

CINCINNATI (AP) — During a background briefing with reporters in December, President Donald Trump's reelection campaign team gave only passing mention of Ohio. Certainly no one suggested a full-scale fall advertising strategy for the state he carried convincingly in 2016.

But less than four months until this November's election, Trump is facing an unexpectedly competitive landscape in Ohio because he has lost ground in metropolitan and suburban areas, threatening the overwhelming advantages he has in rural areas, state data show.

Trump's campaign has budgeted $18.4 million in television advertising in Ohio for this fall, second only to Florida, according to campaign advertising tracking data.

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has named Aaron Pickrell, a former top Ohio adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, as a senior strategist, Biden campaign officials said. Four other campaign staff members in the state were announced Friday. But the Biden campaign has not gone so far as to book its own television advertising in Ohio, where 18 electoral votes are at stake. Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points four years ago.

Still, Trump's heavy investment in Ohio and a series of midterm and municipal government gains by Democrats since 2016 suggest the president probably will have even more difficult terrain in other pivotal states in the industrial heartland — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — that he won by much smaller margins.

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No Canada: Blue Jays barred from playing games in Toronto

TORONTO (AP) — The Blue Jays won't play their home games in Toronto this year because Canada's government doesn't think it's safe for players to travel back and forth from the United States, one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said Saturday the federal government had denied the Blue Jays' request to play at Rogers Centre, confirming what an official familiar with the matter had told The Associated Press ahead of the announcement.

The team had been given clearance by city and provincial governments to play in its home stadium and was awaiting approval from Canada’s federal government. The other 29 Major League Baseball teams plan to play in their home ballparks, without spectators, when the pandemic-shortened 60-game season begins on July 23.

Mendicino told The AP frequent travel to the U.S., where COVID-19 cases are surging, was the biggest issue.

“There were serious risks if we proceeded with the regular-season proposal of the MLB and the Jays and therefore we concluded it was not in the national interest,” Mendicino said. “I get that some people will disappointed but this decision can’t be taken as a fan. It is taken on behalf of the health and safety of Canadians.”