AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST
Biden faces tough choice of whether to back virus lockdowns
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden faces a decision unlike any other incoming president: whether to back a short-term national lockdown to finally arrest a raging pandemic.
For now, it's a question the president-elect would prefer to avoid. In the week since he defeated President Donald Trump, Biden has devoted most of his public remarks to encouraging Americans to wear a mask and view the coronavirus as a threat that has no regard for political ideology.
But the debate has been livelier among members of the coronavirus advisory board Biden announced this week. One member, Dr. Michael Osterholm, suggested a four- to six-week lockdown with financial aid for Americans whose livelihoods would be affected. He later walked back his remarks and was rebutted by two other members of the panel who said a widespread lockdown shouldn't be under consideration.
That's a sign of the tough dynamic Biden will face when he is inaugurated in January. He campaigned as a more responsible steward of America's public health than President Donald Trump is and has been blunt about the challenges that lie ahead for the country, warning of a “dark winter” as cases spike.
But talk of lockdowns are especially sensitive. For one, they're nearly impossible for a president to enact on his own, requiring bipartisan support from state and local officials. But more broadly, they're a political flashpoint that could undermine Biden's efforts to unify a deeply divided country.
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Trump, still not conceding defeat, trumpets vaccine progress
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gliding over significant challenges still to come, President Donald Trump offered a rosy update on the race for a vaccine for the resurgent coronavirus as he delivered his first public remarks since his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden. He still did not concede the election.
Trump spoke from the the Rose Garden Friday as the nation sets records for confirmed cases of COVID-19, and as hospitalizations near critical levels and fatalities climb to the highest levels since the spring. He said a vaccine would ship in “a matter of weeks" to vulnerable populations, though the Food and Drug Administration has not yet been asked to grant the necessary emergency approvals.
Public health experts worry that Trump’s refusal to take aggressive action on the pandemic or to coordinate with the Biden team during the final two months of his presidency will only worsen the effects of the virus and hinder the nation’s ability to swiftly distribute a vaccine next year.
As states impose new restrictions in the face of rising caseloads, Trump asked all Americans to remain “vigilant." But he ruled out a nationwide “lockdown" and appeared to acknowledge that the decision won't be his much longer.
“This administration will not be going to a lockdown,” he said. “Hopefully whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration it will be I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
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Bloomberg's big spending struggles to sway election outcomes
WASHINGTON (AP) — After pouring more than $1.2 billion of his personal fortune into presidential politics this election, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has little to show for it.
His only win during a short-lived Democratic bid for the White House was in the territory of American Samoa. And after pledging to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat President Donald Trump, he routed $110 million to Florida, Ohio and Texas — all states that President-elect Joe Biden lost.
Bloomberg, who built a media and financial services empire before turning to electoral politics, has long used his $55 billion in estimated wealth to play kingmaker, with no shortage of candidates and causes seeking favor.
Yet after dumping $1.1 billion into his campaign, he waited until September to follow through on his vow to spend big to unseat Trump. His investment was especially disappointing in Florida, a battleground state that is normally decided by razor-thin margins but that Trump won this year by 3.4 percentage points.
The showing could raise questions about Bloomberg's ability to use his vast financial resources to sway politics in the future. Some Democrats are now questioning the mystique that has long shrouded Bloomberg's political operation, which promotes itself as shrewd, dispassionate and data-driven when making decisions about how to invest in campaigns.
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Can Trump win with 'fantasy' electors bid? State GOP says no
Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House.
State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate's victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted.
“I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud — which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who says he’s been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.”
The idea loosely involves GOP-controlled legislatures dismissing Biden's popular vote wins in their states and opting to select Trump electors. While the endgame was unclear, it appeared to hinge on the expectation that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court would settle any dispute over the move.
Still, it has been promoted by Trump allies, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and is an example of misleading information and false claims fueling skepticism among Trump supporters about the integrity of the vote.
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Amid virus surge, Paris hospitals begin to see signs of hope
PARIS (AP) — Dry-coughing as he pedals — a hack, hack, hack after-effect of his own personal battle with COVID-19 — the doctor cycles through the dark of pre-dawn Paris, speeding to a crisis meeting at his hospital where, way back in February, the disease carried away the first of what has now become more than a quarter-million dead in Europe.
In the nine months since then, critical care chief Philippe Montravers and the 150 doctors and nurses he leads at the towering Bichat Hospital in Paris have become experts about their enemy. That knowledge is proving invaluable against the second deadly surge of the virus that is again threatening to overwhelm European health systems.
Puffing and spluttering as he pedals, because his lungs are still congested, Montravers details the progress that he and his team have made in their care since they fought off the gruesome initial wave of cases last spring, therapeutic advances that are helping Bichat and other hospitals better resist the renewed tide of infections. Bichat in February was the first hospital outside Asia to record the death of a person infected with the virus: an 80-year-old tourist from China.
“In the first wave, people didn’t dare come to the hospital. They were scared, scared of being infected,” Montravers recalls. “When they arrived, they were on their last legs, exhausted, unable to move, and so — hop! — we intubated and ventilated them.”
Now, there are steroid treatments that weren't available to Bichat's doctors in the first surge. They have also learned not to put patients on ventilators if at all possible and to instead keep them awake and bathed in oxygen, dispensed through face masks instead of invasive tubes. The sick are also savvier, and are seeking help earlier for their symptoms, making them easier to treat.
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Progressives look to make early mark on Biden White House
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Leading progressives are pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to embrace their policy agenda even as more centrist Democrats argue such proposals prevented the party from retaking full control of Congress.
For now, much of the lobbying centers on who Biden should — or should not — appoint to key posts as he builds out the administration that will take office in January.
The left-leaning think tank Progressive Change Institute partnered with more than 40 activist groups and on Friday released a detailed list of 400 progressive policy experts they want Biden to bring on. That follows a separate effort from more than half a dozen progressive groups this week that signed letters urging the president-elect against naming anyone with ties to major corporate interests to key Cabinet posts.
“Now is absolutely the moment to push Biden to do what’s necessary to meet the moment," said David Segel, a former Rhode Island state representative and executive director of Demand Progress, which was among those signing the letters. "And that means a robust economic response, a robust health care response, a willingness to push back against concentrated corporate power that’s fomenting inequality. And he has a mandate to do all of that.”
The jockeying amounts to the opening round of what is likely to be a lengthy debate over the future of the Democratic Party. Some centrists have blamed losses in the House and a disappointing performance in the Senate on Republicans' ability to paint Democrats as having moved too far to the left.
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Democrats keep winning the popular vote. That worries them.
Democrats won the popular vote in this year's presidential election yet again, marking seven out of eight straight presidential elections that the party has reached that milestone.
And, for some Democrats, that's worrisome.
President-elect Joe Biden has so far won 50.8% of the vote compared to the 47.4% who voted for President Donald Trump, a 5 million vote advantage that is likely to grow as Democratic bastions like California and New York continue to count ballots. Biden's 77.5 million votes to date are the most for any winning candidate, and Trump's 72.3 million also set a high water mark for a losing one.
Experts predict Biden's margin of victory will surpass former President Barack Obama's 4 percentage point popular vote lead in 2012. Only Obama's landslide 2008 victory — with a 7 percentage point margin in the popular vote — was larger in recent elections.
But what alarms many Democrats is a growing gap between their popular vote tallies and their political power. Democrats may be winning over more supporters, but as long as those votes are clustered on the coasts or in cities and suburbs, they won't deliver the congressional victories the party needs to enact its policies.
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Asia Today: India virus surge continues in New Delhi
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's overall tally of new coronavirus cases remained steady on Saturday, but officials were watching a surge of cases in the capital that comes as people socialize during the festival season.
India's Health Ministry reported 44,684 new positive cases in the past 24 hours and 520 deaths. Of those, 7,802 new cases were reported in New Delhi, with 91 deaths.
India’s has seen 8.7 million infections since the pandemic began — the second-most in the world — but daily new infections have been on the decline from the middle of September. The county has also seen more than 129,000 virus deaths.
New Delhi has seen a spike in recent weeks, recording more new cases than any other Indian state. The rising numbers coincide with a busy festival season nationwide, with millions celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, on Saturday.
COVID-19 beds in government-run hospitals are nearly full and the availability of intensive care unit beds with ventilator support in the city has reached an all-time low, according to the government data. The New Delhi government has said that cases are projected to rise to nearly 12,000 daily by the end of November.
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AP Week in Pictures, Global
NOV. 7 - 13, 2020
This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published in the past week by The Associated Press from around the world.
The selection was curated by AP photo editor Patrick Sison in New York.
Follow AP visual journalism:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apnews
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Round 2: Green jackets brace for more red numbers at Masters
It’s peak 2020 that even the Masters is being forced to slow-walk the results. According to the schedule, we’ve reached the halfway point of the tournament … except roughly half the field has yet to arrive.
So pay close attention. Here’s what we know so far:
There have already been plenty of spills (looking at you, Bryson DeChambeau), but the thrills (Tiger Woods still in the hunt) may just be beginning. Based on the soft conditions over the first two days and the completed scorecards turned in, this championship is on pace to smash some records.
The strong play was evident at the top of the leaderboard, where no less than four players — established stars Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas, plus lesser-knowns Cameron Smith and Abraham Ancer — shared the lead at 9 under. But the battles for the prime slots below are every bit as competitive.
There were another four golfers at 8 under, including two, Hideki Matsuyama and Jon Rahm, who will finish up Round 2 on Saturday morning with more than enough holes to steal the lead. And talk about traffic: There’s another five golfers at 7-under, three of whom also have a shot at the top slot by the time everyone in the field tees off for Round 3 today.