AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Trump is leaving hospital, exhorts nation don't fear virus
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday he's leaving the military hospital where he has been receiving an unprecedented level of care for COVID-19, immediately igniting a new controversy by declaring that despite his illness the nation should not be afraid of the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans.
Trump's doctor, Navy Cdr. Sean Conley, said the president would not be fully “out of the woods” for another week but Trump had met or exceeded standards for discharge from the hospital. Trump is expected to continue his recovery at the White House, where the reach of the outbreak that has infected the highest levels of the U.S. government is still being uncovered.
Trump himself made a point of sounding confident. He tweeted, "I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life. ... I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
Trump’s message that people shouldn’t fear the virus alarmed infectious disease experts and suggested the president’s own illness had not caused him to rethink his often-cavalier attitude toward the disease, which has also infected the first lady and several White House aides, including new cases revealed on Monday.
“We have to be realistic in this: COVID is a complete threat to the American population,” said Dr. David Nace of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, an expert on infections in older adults.
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Epic scale of California wildfires continues to grow
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The staggering scale of California's wildfires reached another milestone Monday: A single fire surpassed 1 million acres.
The new mark for the August Complex in the Coast Range between San Francisco and the Oregon border came a day after the total area of land burned by California wildfires this year passed 4 million acres, more than double the previous record.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the amount of land scorched by the August Complex is larger than all of the recorded fires in California between 1932 and 1999.
“If that’s not proof point, testament, to climate change, then I don’t know what is," Newsom said.
The August Complex began as dozens of fires ignited by lightning in the Mendocino National Forest in mid-August and became California's largest fire on record in September. As of Monday, it covered nearly 1,566 square miles (4,055 square kilometers).
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Poll: Many Americans blame virus crisis on US government
WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans blame the U.S. government instead of foreign nations for the coronavirus crisis in the United States, a rebuke to the Trump administration's contention that China or other countries are most at fault, a new poll shows.
The poll by The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted before President Donald Trump tested positive for the virus Friday and was hospitalized. Trump has downplayed the severity and impact of the pandemic in recent months.
Although many see plenty of blame to go around and there's a wide bipartisan divide over who is responsible, 56% of Americans say the U.S. government has substantial responsibility for the situation. That compares with 47% who place that much blame on the governments of other countries and only 39% who say the same about the World Health Organization.
“It reflects a general lack of confidence in the way the government has handled the situation,” said Austin Wright of the Harris School for Public Policy.
More than 1 million people worldwide, including more than 200,000 Americans, have died of COVID-19 in the outbreak. Trump has squarely blamed the virus' spread on China, where it originated, and an inadequate response from the WHO.
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Biden aims to expand map as Trump recovers from coronavirus
MIAMI (AP) — As President Donald Trump recovers from the coronavirus, Joe Biden is capitalizing on having the campaign trail largely to himself by hitting critical swing states and investing in longtime Republican bastions that he hopes might expand his path to victory.
The Democratic presidential nominee made his second trip to Florida in a little over two weeks on Monday. His visit to Miami was designed to encroach on some of Trump's turf, even swinging through Little Havana, a typically conservative area known for its staunch opposition to the communist government that Fidel Castro installed in Cuba.
He'll follow up with a trip later this week to Arizona, which hasn't backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.
Biden is complementing the expanded campaign travel with a late-stage ad push, reserving more than $6 million in television airtime in Texas — for decades deeply red — through the end of October, according to an Associated Press analysis of CMAG data. He also plans to spend $4 million on advertising in Georgia, another Republican-leaning state that Democrats are feeling bullish about.
Trump, meanwhile, has scaled back advertising in both states and has begun doing the same in Ohio, which he also won in 2016.
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Trump court nomination hangs over Senate shuttered by virus
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is shut down by COVID-19 infections, but Republicans are refusing to delay confirmation of President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court. They are even willing to make special arrangements so sick senators can vote, and Democrats appear powerless to stop them.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Monday that he'll go to the Capitol “in a moon suit” to vote if he's still testing positive for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 209,000 Americans and infected millions.
The push to put conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before Nov. 3 is like nothing seen in U.S. history so close to a presidential election. Trump's nomination of Barrett in a Rose Garden ceremony apparently became ground zero for the infections now gripping the president, his White House and its Senate allies. Three GOP senators, including Johnson, have now tested positive for the virus and several more are quarantined at home — denying Republicans a functioning majority.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee, said after talking by phone Monday with Trump that the president is “very excited about Judge Amy Coney Barrett being confirmed to the Supreme Court.”
The rapid pursuit of Trump's third court nominee is as much about securing a conservative court for a generation to come as it is about giving Republicans what they see as their best chances at reelection. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the chamber would close to legislating through Oct. 19 over the COVID-19 infections, but the court hearings will go on as scheduled. With Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden in polls and their own Senate majority at risk, Republicans hope a Supreme Court vote in the week before Election Day will save their jobs.
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He's fought COVID-19 for months. Can he ever really beat it?
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Larry Brown had been on a ventilator for 37 days. Nurses periodically turned the 45-year-old former Indiana State football player onto his stomach to help him breathe. Though sedated, he had tried to pull off the equipment keeping him alive, so his arms were strapped down.
But Brown’s lungs were filling with fluid, and doctors didn’t expect him to last much longer. As visitors weren’t allowed in the intensive care unit, a nurse placed a phone next to his ear.
“Thank you for fighting so hard, Larry,” his sister-in-law, Ellie Brown, told him. She was careful not to say goodbye. If he could hear her, that might scare him.
Like millions of COVID-19 cases, Brown’s had started with minor symptoms — fatigue, loss of appetite. When he fell ill in mid-March, people in the United States were becoming familiar with the novel coronavirus. Mask use wasn’t widespread outside hospitals. Around Brown’s hometown, Indianapolis, fewer than 10 new cases were reported each day, on average. Businesses were just starting to shutter around him in response to state orders — but only until the country could flatten the curve, nearly everyone thought. And the vast majority of cases weren’t severe, officials said.
Yet Brown spiraled quickly. His doctors were stumped as they scoured medical texts for treatments. His close-knit family watched him deteriorate in the hospital, even as others recovered from the virus.
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Some Orthodox Jews bristle at NYC's response to virus surge
NEW YORK (AP) — Amid a new surge of COVID-19 in New York’s Orthodox Jewish communities, many members are reviving health measures that some had abandoned over the summer — social distancing, wearing masks. For many, there’s also a return of anger: They feel the city is singling them out for criticism.
The latest blow: an order Monday from Gov. Andrew Cuomo temporarily closing public and private schools in several areas with large Orthodox populations. It will take effect Tuesday.
“People are very turned off and very burned out,” said Yosef Hershkop, a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn who works for a chain of urgent-care centers. “It’s not like we’re the only people in New York getting COVID.”
Over the past few weeks, top government officials, including Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, have sounded the alarm about localized upticks in COVID-19 after several months in which the state had one of the nation’s lowest infection rates. Officials say the worst-hit ZIP codes overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and in a couple of nearby counties.
The goal is to head off a feared second wave of infections months after the city beat back an outbreak that killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers.
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Vision 2020: Can a voter fix a problem on a mail-in ballot?
WASHINGTON (AP) — If a ballot is tossed because of some issue — maybe a missing signature or it got damaged — will the voter be notified that the ballot's been invalidated? And can the voter cast a new ballot?
This is a tough one — because the rules vary from state to state. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a state-by-state rundown, but that list isn't comprehensive so voters should check with their local elections officials to understand their options.
Voter advocacy groups worry that those unaccustomed to voting by mail will make some kind of error that could invalidate their vote. A study by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission estimates that 1% of mail-in ballots were rejected in the 2016 presidential election. Experts say the main reason was because ballots did not arrive in time.
States that allow so-called “ballot curing” require elections officials to notify voters when something's wrong with a ballot, such as a missing signature or if their signature doesn't match the one on file. The voter will be given a chance to correct it.
Other states have adopted temporary rules on voting by mail — or absentee voting — because of the high interest spawned by the coronavirus pandemic.
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New Jersey governor: Trump fundraiser 'put lives at risk'
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump's fundraiser at his Bedminster golf club hours before he announced he had contracted the coronavirus was wrong and “put lives at risk,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday.
Murphy called the trip the “wrong decision at every level” and said it should have been canceled. He said the state is trying to keep tabs on the 206 attendees and 19 workers in an effort to thwart a potential outbreak stemming from the gathering Thursday.
Guests at that event said it included a photo opportunity with Trump and an indoor roundtable with him that one attendee said lasted 45 minutes or more.
“The actions leading up to and following this event have put lives at risk,” Murphy said at an afternoon news conference. "This is very much a race against the clock.”
Murphy, a Democrat, made several television appearances Monday, saying state and federal officials were still working on contact tracing and had reached most of the guests. He urged anyone at the club while the president was there to quarantine for two weeks.
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3 win Nobel medicine prize for discovering hepatitis C virus
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that led to cures for the deadly disease and tests to keep the scourge out of the blood supply.
Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton were honored for their work over several decades on an illness that still plagues more than 70 million worldwide and kills over 400,000 each year.
“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world,” the Nobel Committee said in announcing the prize in Stockholm.
The challenge now is to make these still-expensive drugs more widely available and to stem the spread of the disease among drug users, whose sharing of needles has led to spikes in cases.
“What we need is the political will to eradicate it” and to make the drugs affordable enough to do it, Alter said.