AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Trump promises court fight over Pennsylvania absentee votes
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign are signaling they will pursue an aggressive legal strategy to try to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mailed ballots that are received in the three days after the election.
The matter could find its way to the Supreme Court, especially if those ballots could tip the outcome in the battleground state.
The three-day extension was ordered by Pennsylvania's top court. The Supreme Court refused to block it, but several conservative justices have indicated they could revisit the issue after the election.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, already has told local elections officials to keep the late-arriving ballots separate, but also to count them. She acknowledged that a post-election court fight could change that.
Trump’s threat of legal action comes as he has been delivering a chaotic closing message during the waning days of the campaign as he lags behind Democratic rival Joe Biden nationally and by narrow margins in key battleground states. The president has made a flurry of last-minute campaign stops trying to hold onto states he won in 2016, including Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina. Over the weekend, he continued to rail against absentee ballots, frustrated by a Supreme Court ruling that didn’t deliver a clear GOP win, continuing a monthslong push to sow unfounded doubt about potential voter fraud.
___
'Raw exposed nerves': Anxious nation awaits Election Day
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — She could have dropped her ballot at the post office, but she wasn’t sure if she should trust the mail. She considered slipping it into the secured ballot box just outside of City Hall, but what if something happened? A fire maybe; or theft.
This year has delivered so many shocks that anything seemed possible. So 58-year-old Diane Spiteri trudged up three flights of steps to place her absentee ballot straight into the hands of the clerk in this critical battleground suburb of Detroit.
As the traditional Election Day closes in, Americans are exhausted from constant crises, on edge because of volatile political divisions and anxious about what will happen next. Their agony is not in deciding between President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Most made that choice long ago. Instead, voters arriving in record numbers to cast early ballots say basic democratic foundations feel suddenly brittle: Will their vote count? Will the loser accept the result? Will the winner find a way to repair a fractured, sick and unsettled nation?
“I just can’t wait until the whole thing is over. And I think it’s long from over, even after Tuesday. There’s just so much anxiety,” said Spiteri, who voted last week for Biden. “I am hoping that there wasn’t too much damage done in the last four years that it can’t be undone.”
Here in Macomb County and across the country, some say the stress has made them physically ill. Others have obsessively tracked polls to soothe their nerves, or bought guns, or researched moving abroad, or retreated to a cabin in the woods. Tension has ratcheted up, sometimes within families, as each side believes the other is threatening to usher in the end of America as we know it.
___
Hospitals competing for nurses as US coronavirus cases surge
FENTON, Michigan (AP) — As the coronavirus pandemic surges across the nation and infections and hospitalizations rise, medical administrators are scrambling to find enough nursing help — especially in rural areas and at small hospitals.
Nurses are being trained to provide care in fields where they have limited experience. Hospitals are scaling back services to ensure enough staff to handle critically ill patients. And health systems are turning to short-term travel nurses to help fill the gaps.
Adding to the strain, experienced nurses are "burned out with this whole (pandemic)” and some are quitting, said Kevin Fitzpatrick, an emergency room nurse at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan, where several left just in the past month to work in hospice or home care or at outpatient clinics.
“And replacing them is not easy," Fitzpatrick said.
As a result, he said, the ER is operating at about five nurses short of its optimal level at any given time, and each one typically cares for four patients as COVID-19 hospitalizations surge anew. Hospital officials did not respond to requests for comment.
___
With post-election lawsuits looming, a final push for votes
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Down to the wire with the threat of court battles looming, supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden scrambled Monday to rally swing-state voters to drop off ballots, visit precincts in person and ensure their votes are counted.
As months of President Donald Trump undercutting the legitimacy of mail-in votes gave way to promises he would challenge them in court, both sides made a final push to ensure their supporters turned out, even with the lingering threat of lawsuits aimed at invalidating ballots.
“Do not put ballots in the mail. Hand-deliver your mail ballot to your county election office, satellite election office or other designated drop box or drop-off location,” Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said Monday. “Do it today. Do not wait.”
With about 700,000 of some 3.1 million requested mail ballots in Pennsylvania still outstanding, some voters like 57-year-old Daniel Pigott took the warning to heart.
Pigott stood in a line of dozens of voters outside the Bucks County government building on a blustery Monday waiting to cast his vote after being alerted there was a problem with his mail-in ballot.
___
Trump threatens to fire Fauci in rift with disease expert
OPA-LOCKA, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is suggesting that he will fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after Tuesday’s election, as his rift with the nation’s top infectious disease expert widens while the nation sees its most alarming outbreak of the coronavirus since the spring.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Opa-locka, Florida, Trump expressed frustration that the surging cases of the virus that has killed more than 231,000 people in the United States this year remains prominent in the news. That sparked his supporters to begin chanting “Fire Fauci.”
“Don’t tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election,” Trump replied to thousands of supporters early Monday, adding he appreciated their “advice.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tweeted later Monday in response: “We need a president who actually listens to experts like Dr. Fauci.”
Biden has sought to keep the campaign focused on what he says is a disastrous federal response to the pandemic. Trump is countering by using the race’s final hours to accuse Biden of wanting to force the country back into a lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.
___
2 dead, 15 wounded in Vienna terror attack, authorities say
VIENNA (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on people enjoying a last evening out in Vienna before a coronavirus lockdown Monday in a terror attack that left at least two dead — including one of the attackers — and 15 wounded, authorities said.
“I am glad that our police were able to neutralize one of the attackers,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. “We will not never allow ourselves to be intimidated by terrorism and will fight these attacks with all means.”
Police said that several shots were fired shortly after 8 p.m. on a lively street in the city center and that there were six shooting locations.
Austria’s top security official said that authorities believe there were several gunmen involved and that a police operation was still going on hours later.
“It appears to have been a terror attack,” Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told public broadcaster ORF, adding that the assailants were armed with rifles. He said the army had been asked to guard key locations in the city to allow police officers to pursue the attackers.
___
Trump talks legal action, Biden on offense in 2020 finale
SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump cast doubt in advance on Tuesday's election results, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden pushed ahead on offense on the final full day of campaigning ahead of an election conclusion that could have consequences for the U.S. for years to come.
The president threatened legal action to stop vote counting in crucial states including Pennsylvania, where both candidates campaigned Monday, and his advisers put out a statement accusing Democrats of trying to “subvert state deadlines for receiving and counting ballots.”
If Pennsylvania ballot counting takes several days, as is allowed, Trump charged that “cheating can happen like you have never seen. ”
Biden dipped into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago. He focused on the central message of his campaign: that Trump cost lives by mismanaging America's response to the worst pandemic in a century.
“Donald Trump is not strong, he’s weak," Biden declared in Cleveland. "This is a president who not only doesn’t understand sacrifice, he doesn’t understand courage.”
___
AP PHOTOS: In Mexico, a quieter Day of the Dead under COVID
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s usually ebullient and colorful Day of the Dead celebration was quieter and lonelier than usual, with many cemeteries were closed to visits because of fears of spreading the coronavirus.
Mexican families often visit graveyards to decorate their relatives’ tombs with flowers and sing, talk and snack during the Nov. 1-2 observance. But this year, most had to make do with the traditional home altars that bear a photograph of the deceased and their favorite food, along with candles and marigold petals.
In a break with tradition, some altars of COVID-19 victims also included urns with their ashes.
That was the case of the altar to Dr. Guillermo Flores, one of over 1,700 medical personnel in Mexico who have died so far of COVID-19. He was the head of the intensive care unit at a local hospital and died Oct. 13 after battling the disease for a month.
“I never thought this year’s altar would be for him,” said his wife, Alexandra Valverde. Immigrants from Ecuador, where ceremonies for the dead are more solemn, the couple didn’t do much in previous years to mark the Day of the Dead.
___
Judge rejects GOP effort to throw out 127,000 Houston votes
HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday rejected another last-ditch Republican effort to invalidate nearly 127,000 votes in Houston because the ballots were cast at drive-thru polling centers established during the pandemic.
The lawsuit was brought by conservative Texas activists who have railed against expanded voting access in Harris County, where a record 1.4 million early votes have already been cast. The county is the nation’s third-most populous and a crucial battleground in Texas, where President Donald Trump and Republicans are bracing for the closest election in decades on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's decision to hear arguments on the brink of Election Day drew concern from voting rights activists, and came after the Texas Supreme Court rejected a nearly identical challenge over the weekend.
“We cannot allow participation to be limited simply because there are those who choose to think that they have the ability and the authority to decide who votes,” Democratic Rep. Al Green, of Houston, said outside the courthouse after the ruling. “It’s the Constitution that determines who votes.”
Hanen said those who oppose drive-thru centers — who were represented by former Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill— had no standing to bring a lawsuit. He added that people had already voted and that conservative activists had months to bring a challenge sooner.
___
NCAA's Election Day off sends message but is it needed?
A summer of activism, sparked by protests of racial injustice, led to a grassroots movement to give college athletes the day off from sports on Election Day.
The NCAA latched on to the idea and, under a mandate approved in September, organized athletics will go dark on college campuses across the country. It has not gone over without a hitch: Tuesdays are typically when that week's game plan is first put into action, and there has been grumbling from a few football coaches.
Clemson safety Nolan Turner, who is from the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, said Monday he had already voted by absentee ballot.
“We're going to have our typical Tuesday practice today, and then (Tuesday) will kind of be a midweek day, get refreshed, get the body feeling good and really get dialed in on our game plan and what we've got to do against Notre Dame," Turner said of the top-ranked Tigers' trip to Indiana this weekend.
That's the point Turner's coach, Dabo Swinney, was making last month when he said he “didn't understand” the NCAA decision. Many players will have already voted and those that haven't probably wouldn't need all day to do so.