AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Barrett vows fair approach as justice, Democrats skeptical
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett presented her conservative approach to the law Monday at the start of fast-tracked confirmation hearings, while Democrats, powerless to stop her, tried to cast her as a threat to Americans’ health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.
With her large family sitting behind her in a hearing room off-limits to the public and altered for COVID-19 risks, Barrett delivered views at odds with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat President Donald Trump nominated her to fill, likely before Election Day.
“Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life,” declared the 48-year-old federal appeals court judge, removing the protective mask she wore most of the day to read from a prepared statement.
Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee, laying out her judicial philosophy, which she has likened to that of her conservative mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Senate, led by Trump’s Republican allies, is pushing Barrett’s nomination to a quick vote before Election Day, Nov. 3, and ahead of the the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court is to hear a week after the election.
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Takeaways: Coronavirus at center of Supreme Court hearings
WASHINGTON (AP) — The coronavirus won't surrender the national stage to anyone — not to President Donald Trump, Judge Amy Coney Barrett or majority Republicans holding the power to confirm nominees to the Supreme Court.
The disease that's killed more than 213,000 people in the United States dominated the Senate hearings that opened Monday in Washington. From the start, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were on the defensive about rushing Barrett's confirmation before the Nov. 3 election. Yet they appeared to have enough votes to elevate Barrett to the high court.
Here are some takeaways from the first of four days of Barrett's confirmation hearings.
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SETTING THE TONE
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As a pandemic presses on, waves of grief follow its path
In a strong voice tinged with her Irish homeland, Fiona Prine talks hauntingly about loss. From her COVID-19 infection and isolation — self-imposed in hopes of sparing her husband, folk-country legend John Prine — to his own devastating illness and death, she’s had more than her share in this year like no other.
Illness and death are the pandemic’s most feared consequences, but a collective sense of loss is perhaps its most pervasive. Around the world, the pandemic has spread grief by degrees.
While less than 1% of the global population is known to have been infected, few on Earth have been spared some form of loss since the coronavirus took hold. With nearly 1 million deaths worldwide, full-blown bereavement is the most recognizable.
But even smaller losses can leave people feeling empty and unsettled.
Layoffs. Canceled visits with Grandpa. Shuttered restaurants. Closed gyms. These are losses that don’t fit neatly into a “Hallmark category.’’ But they are not insignificant — especially when anxiety is already heightened, says psychologist and grief specialist Robert Neimeyer of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition.
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Trump ready for 1st rally since contracting coronavirus
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just a week after his release from the hospital, President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Monday for the first time since contracting the coronavirus as he tries to stage a late comeback in the election's final stretch.
Trump, whose doctor said Monday for the first time that he had received a negative test for COVID-19, faces a stubborn deficit in national and battleground state polling. He will be headlining a rally in Sanford, Florida — the first stop in a busy week that will include events in Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
The robust schedule underscores the work Trump needs to do as he tries to win over voters just three weeks before Election Day. And it comes amid still-unanswered questions about the impact so much travel so soon could have on the 74-year-old president's health. The progression of COVID-19 is often unpredictable, and there can be long-term complications.
After Air Force One lifted off from Joint Base Andrews, the president's doctor released an update on his health that said Trump had tested negative for the virus — and had done so on consecutive days. His doctor, Navy Cmdr. Scott Conley, said that the tests, taking in conjunction with other data, including viral load, have led him to conclude that Trump was not contagious.
For days, the White House had sidestepped questions as to whether Trump had tested negative. Conley over the weekend said that the president met Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for safely discontinuing isolation and that by “currently recognized standards,” Trump was no longer considered a transmission risk.
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California GOP says it owns unofficial ballot drop boxes
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s Republican Party on Monday acknowledged owning unofficial ballot drop boxes that state election officials said are illegal.
After receiving reports about the drop boxes in three counties, California's secretary of state issued a memo Sunday telling county registrars these boxes were illegal and that ballots must be mailed or brought to official voting locations.
“In short, providing unauthorized, non-official vote-by-mail ballot drop boxes is prohibited by state law,” the memo said.
On Monday, state GOP spokesman Hector Barajas said that the party owns the boxes and has no plans to remove them. He would not say how many exist or where they are located. Barajas said the state’s law governing so-called ballot harvesting allows an organization to collect and return groups of ballots and that collection boxes provided by a private organization to help people vote are no different.
“Democrats only seem to object to ballot harvesting when someone else does it,” Barajas said.
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Biden makes big push in Ohio, once seen as long shot for him
CINCINNATI (AP) — Joe Biden campaigned Monday in Ohio, attempting to expand the battleground map and keep President Donald Trump on the defensive in a state thought to be out of reach for Democrats after Trump's wide margin of victory there four years ago.
The Democratic presidential nominee stressed an economic message and touted his own record while casting Trump as having abandoned working-class voters who helped him win Rust Belt states that put him in the White House in 2016.
In Toledo, Biden addressed United Auto Workers who represent a local General Motors’ powertrain plant. The former vice president spoke in a parking lot with about 30 American-made cars and trucks arrayed nearby, and he struck a decidedly populist note, praising unions and arguing that he represented working-class values while the Republican Trump cared only about impressing the Ivy League and country club set.
“I don’t measure people by the size of their bank account,” Biden said. “You and I measure people by the strength of their character, their honesty, their courage.”
Biden highlighted his role as vice president as the Obama administration rescued the U.S. auto industry after the 2008 financial collapse. President George W. Bush signed the aid package after the 2008 election, but the Obama administration managed most of the rescue program.
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Stocks are soaring, and most Black people are missing out
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans who own stocks are pulling further away from those who don't, as Wall Street roars back to record heights while much of the economy struggles. And Black households are much more likely to be in that not-as-fortunate group that isn't in the stock market.
Only 33.5% of Black households owned stocks in 2019, according to data released recently by the Federal Reserve. Among white households, the ownership rate is nearly 61%. Hispanic and other minority households also are less likely than white families to own stock.
Many reasons are behind the split. Experts say chief among them is a longstanding preference by many Black investors for safer places to put their money — the legacy, some say, of decades of discrimination and fear. Also, many were never taught what they were missing out on.
“We didn’t have a grandfather or aunt or uncle or mom and dad educating us on the markets because they didn’t benefit from it because of historical discrimination in this country,” said John Rogers, founder and co-CEO of Ariel Investments.
Black people have also often lacked the opportunity to build up wealth, park it in the market and watch it grow over time. In general, they have lower incomes, which leaves less money to invest after paying bills. Many also work jobs that don't offer retirement plans like a 401(k).
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Black churches mobilizing voters despite virus challenges
NEW YORK (AP) — For the Rev. Jimmy Gates Sr., the 2008 presidential election year was one to remember — and not just because it yielded a historic result as the nation elected its first Black president.
The pastor of Zion Hill Baptist Church in Cleveland recalls how, on the last Sunday of early voting before the general election, he and his congregation traveled in a caravan of packed buses, vans and cars to the city’s Board of Elections office and joined a line of voters that seemed to stretch a mile.
“What a sight to see,” Gates said. “Seniors, middle-aged people, young people.”
In recent election cycles, Black church congregations across the country have launched get-out-the-vote campaigns commonly referred to as “souls to the polls.” To counteract racist voter suppression tactics that date back to the Jim Crow era, early voting in the Black community is stressed from pulpits nearly as much as it is by the candidates seeking their support.
But voter mobilization in Black church communities will look much different in 2020, due in large part to the coronavirus pandemic that has infected millions across the U.S. and has taken a disproportionate toll on Black America.
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Roberta McCain, John McCain's mother, dies at 108
PHOENIX (AP) — Roberta Wright McCain, the mother of the late Sen. John McCain who used her feisty spirit to help woo voters during his 2008 presidential campaign, has died. She was 108.
A spokesperson for daughter-in-law Cindy McCain says Roberta McCain died Monday. A cause of death was not immediately released.
“It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my wonderful Mother In-law, Roberta McCain,” Cindy McCain posted on Twitter. “I couldn’t have asked for a better role model or a better friend.”
In a tweet, granddaughter Meghan McCain thanked her “Nana” for teaching her how to live life with “grit, conviction, intensity and love.”
“There will never be another one like you, you will be missed every day. I wish my daughter had gotten to meet you,” said McCain, who gave birth to her first child last month.
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Microsoft attempts takedown of global criminal botnet
Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election.
The operation to knock offline command-and-control servers for a global botnet that uses an infrastructure known as Trickbot to infect computers with malware was initiated with a court order that Microsoft obtained in Virginia federal court on Oct. 6. Microsoft argued that the crime network is abusing its trademark.
“It is very hard to tell how effective it will be but we are confident it will have a very long-lasting effect,” said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at ESET, one of several cybersecurity firms that partnered with Microsoft to map the command-and-control servers. “We’re sure that they are going to notice and it will be hard for them to get back to the state that the botnet was in.”
Cybersecurity experts said that Microsoft’s use of a U.S. court order to persuade internet providers to take down the botnet servers is laudable. But they add that it’s not apt to be successful because too many won’t comply and because Trickbot’s operators have a decentralized fall-back system and employ encrypted routing.
Paul Vixie of Farsight Security said via email “experience tells me it won’t scale — there are too many IP’s behind uncooperative national borders.” And the cybersecurity firm Intel 471 reported no significant hit on Trickbot operations Monday and predicted ”little medium- to long-term impact” in a report shared with The Associated Press.