AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Barrett to face senators on health care, legal precedent
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will face senators' questions over her approach to health care, legal precedent and even the presidential election during a second day of confirmation hearings on track to lock in a conservative court majority for years to come.
The mood is likely to shift to a more confrontational tone as Barrett, an appellate court judge with very little trial court experience, is grilled in 30-minute segments Tuesday by Democrats gravely opposed to President Donald Trump's nominee, yet virtually powerless to stop her rise. Republicans are rushing her to confirmation before Election Day.
“This should not be President Trump's judge,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats say the winner of the presidential election should choose the nominee.
“This should be your judge,” she said.
Barrett presented her approach to the law as conservative and fair on Monday at the start of fast-tracked confirmation hearings. Democrats cast her as a threat to Americans’ health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Defiant Trump defends virus record in 1st post-COVID rally
SANFORD, Florida (AP) — Defiant as ever about the coronavirus, President Donald Trump on Monday turned his first campaign rally since contracting COVID-19 into a full-throated defense of his handling of the pandemic that has killed 215,000 Americans, joking that he was healthy enough to plunge into the crowd and give voters “a big fat kiss."
There was no social distancing and mask-wearing was spotty among the thousands who came to see Trump's return to Florida. He held forth for an hour, trying to get his struggling campaign back on track with just weeks left before Election Day.
Though he was hospitalized battling the virus only a week ago, Trump's message on COVID-19 was unaltered since his diagnosis: a dubious assessment that the pandemic was just about a thing of the past. Hundreds of people in the U.S. continue to die of the virus every day.
“Under my leadership, we're delivering a safe vaccine and a rapid recovery like no one can even believe," Trump insisted. “If you look at our upward path, no country in the world has recovered the way we have recovered."
His voice was perhaps a touch scratchy but otherwise, Trump was, well, Trump.
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Biden makes big push in Ohio, once seen as long shot for him
CINCINNATI (AP) — Joe Biden made two campaign stops Monday in Ohio, attempting to expand the battleground map and keep President Donald Trump on the defensive in a state long 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. The president's reelection campaign countered that few expected Trump to win Ohio so comfortably four years ago and that he would repeat a similar upset on Election Day.
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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2nd COVID-19 vaccine trial paused over unexplained illness
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — A late-stage study of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate has been paused while the company investigates whether a study participant’s “unexplained illness” is related to the shot.
The company said in a statement Monday evening that illnesses, accidents and other so-called adverse events “are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies,” but that its physicians and a safety monitoring panel would try to determine what might have caused the illness.
The pause is at least the second such hold to occur among several vaccines that have reached large-scale final tests in the U.S.
The company declined to reveal any more details about the illness, citing the participant’s privacy.
Temporary stoppages of large medical studies are relatively common. Few are made public in typical drug trials, but the work to make a coronavirus vaccine has raised the stakes on these kinds of complications.
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Asia Today: China city says it's tested 3 million for virus
BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in the eastern Chinese port city of Qingdao said Tuesday that they have completed coronavirus tests on more than 3 million people following the country’s first reported local outbreak of the virus in nearly two months.
The city’s health department said no new positive cases had been found among the more than 1.1 million test results returned thus far. The city said it had a total of 12 cases, six with symptoms and six without, since the new outbreak was first spotted over the weekend at a hospital.
The National Health Commission, however, said Tuesday that at least six new cases of the virus were found in Qingdao in the past 24 hours.
The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear. China's methods for logging and reporting of virus numbers has been questioned since the pandemic first began late last year in its city of Wuhan.
The National Health Commission numbers released Tuesday reported a total of 30 new virus cases in the previous 24 hours nationwide. It broke down those numbers into 13 cases in which people had symptoms and 17 cases in which they had no symptoms. The total number of locally transmitted cases, both with and without symptoms, was 11, while the rest were listed as imported.
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Trump intensifies focus on Harris in final weeks of campaign
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Grasping for a comeback, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are intensifying their focus not on Democratic nominee Joe Biden, but on his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris — arguing without evidence that it’s Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, who would really be in charge if Democrats win the White House.
The effort is laced with sexist and racist undertones, and one that is aimed at winning back Republicans and independents who are comfortable with Biden’s more moderate record, but may associate Harris with Democrats’ left flank, despite her own more centrist positions on some major issues.
During the past week, Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News that Harris would assume the presidency within “three months” of Biden's inauguration. During a conversation with Rush Limbaugh, he warned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would “replace” Biden with Harris. And the president called her a “monster” during an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.
Trump's focus on Harris is building as he tries to regain an advantage against Biden, who is leading most national and battleground state polls three weeks before the election. Trump has long sowed doubt about Biden's fitness for the job, but is especially eager to shift attention after contracting the novel coronavirus and confronting his own health scare.
At his first campaign rally since being hospitalized for the virus, Trump told a Florida crowd on Monday that Biden has “a lot of bad days coming."
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5 men in Michigan governor kidnapping plot to face hearings
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Five men accused in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will appear in federal court Tuesday for a hearing on whether they should be detained before trial.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sally Berens will oversee the bail and detention proceeding in Grand Rapids for Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta — all Michigan residents. A sixth man, Barry Croft, was being held in Delaware.
The FBI made arrests last week after using confidential sources, undercover agents and clandestine recordings to foil the alleged kidnapping conspiracy. Some defendants had conducted coordinated surveillance of the Democratic governor's vacation home in northern Michigan in August and September, according to a criminal complaint.
The men were trying to retaliate against Whitmer due to her “uncontrolled power” amid the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said. They said four of the men had planned to meet last week to pay for explosives and exchange tactical gear.
Whitmer, who was considered as Joe Biden’s running mate and is nearly halfway through a four-year term, has been widely praised for her response to the virus outbreak but also sharply criticized by Republican lawmakers and people in conservative areas of the state. The Capitol has been the site of many rallies, including ones with gun-toting protesters calling for her ouster.
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California orders GOP to remove unofficial ballot boxes
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's chief elections official on Monday ordered Republicans to remove unofficial ballot drop boxes from churches, gun shops and other locations and Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned those behind the “vote tampering" could face prosecution.
Republican refused, saying they are taking advantage of California's liberal ballot collection law that allows anyone to collect ballots from voters and deliver them to county election offices.
“As of right now, we're going to continue our ballot harvesting program,” California Republican Party spokesman Hector Barajas said.
Due to the coronavirus and concerns about health safety at polling places, California for the first time mailed ballots for the Nov. 3 election to all active registered voters — more than 21 million people. The ballots come with pre-paid envelopes for voters to mail back, free of charge.
State law also allows county election officers to set up drop boxes throughout the county where people can drop off their ballots in person. The secure boxes can sometimes weigh more than 600 pounds and are monitored frequently by local election officials.
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UK unemployment ascent accelerates amid winter job fears
LONDON (AP) — Unemployment across the U.K. spiked sharply in August, a clear signal that the jobless rate is heading towards levels not seen in nearly 30 years when a British government salary-support scheme ends this month and new local restrictions are imposed to suppress a resurgence of the coronavirus.
The Office for National Statistics said Tuesday that unemployment rose by 138,000 in the three months to August from the previous three-month period. The unemployment rate jumped to 4.5%, its highest rate since early 2017, from 4.1% in the previous quarter.
So far, Britain has been spared the sharp rises in unemployment seen in the United States because of the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which has paid most of the salaries of workers who have not been fired. Some 1.2 million employers have taken advantage of the program to furlough 9.6 million people at a cost to the government of nearly 40 billion pounds ($52 billion).
At one stage, around 30% of the U.K.'s working population was on furlough. Although they weren't working over the past few months, they were not counted as unemployed.
Since the program ends at the end of October, many of those still on furlough are expected to be made redundant and unemployment to rise further.
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When school is home and home is school, which rules prevail?
CHICAGO (AP) — Toys that look like weapons. Barefoot students. Disruptive imagery in the background. Pets roaming the room. All a clear violation of rules inside most American classrooms. But that was when most American students were actually inside schools.
How do standards like these translate when everyone is logging on from home? Schools are struggling to figure it out this fall — yet another adaptation demanded of educators during the coronavirus pandemic.
In the learn-from-home world, teachers and experts can easily imagine the friction of extending regular classroom discipline into young people's previously private spaces.
Can students have posters visible in the background backing social or political movements that others disagree with or find racist? Can they wear clothes at home that are banned from classrooms? How can a teacher respond when a student says or does something that the instructor deems rude, offensive or threatening?
Weeks into the fall semester, a growing number of school officials are navigating those grey areas.