AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Trump, Biden push into crucial first 2020 campaign face-off
CLEVELAND (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden prepared to face off Tuesday in their crucial first debate of the 2020 campaign, the most pivotal opportunity yet for the candidates to outline starkly different visions for a country facing multiple crises.
Trump and Biden arrived in Cleveland hoping the debate would energize their bases of support, even as they competed for the slim slice of undecided voters who could decide the election. It has been generations since two men asked to lead a nation facing such tumult, with Americans both fearful and impatient about the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 of their fellow citizens and cost millions of jobs.
With just 35 days until the election, and early voting already underway in some states, Biden steps onto the stage holding leads in the polls — significant in national surveys, close in some battleground states — and looking to expand his support among suburban voters, women and seniors. Surveys show the president has lost significant ground among those groups since 2016, but Biden faces his own questions encouraged by Trump’s withering attacks.
Trump will have arguably his best chance to try to reframe the campaign as a choice between candidates and not a referendum over his handling of the virus that has killed more people in America than any other nation. Americans, according to polling, have soured on his leadership in the crisis, and the president has struggled to land consistent attacks on Biden.
Leaving the White House for Cleveland, Trump pumped his fist for supporters gathered on the White House lawn but did not address reporters. He spent the morning in informal debate preparations while a more formal session was set for the afternoon once he arrived in Ohio. Biden held an umbrella to ward off the Delaware rain as he boarded a new, bigger campaign plane en route to Cleveland. He, too, did not address reporters.
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Crowds out, masks in: Debating in the age of the coronavirus
CLEVELAND (AP) — Crowds and pageantry are out. COVID-19 tests and masks are in.
Presidential debates are typically some of the most exciting nights of the campaign season, drawing a crowd of thousands of staffers, media and guests.
But this year, as with almost everything else, things are very, very different, with a long list of precautions in place.
Instead of the usual auditorium setting, the debate is being hosted by the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University in the 27,000-square-foot (2,500-square-meter) atrium of the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion on the clinic’s Health Education Campus. Notre Dame, the original debate host, withdrew because of the pandemic.
Not long ago, the building was transformed into a temporary, 1,000-bed surge hospital, named Hope Hospital, for expected coronavirus patients. Though it never ended up needing to be used, the floor where the debate stage was built was not long ago lined with beds for patients and copper piping to bring in oxygen.
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COVID-19 cases rising among US children as schools reopen
After preying heavily on the elderly in the spring, the coronavirus is increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption of sports, playdates and other activities.
Children of all ages now make up 10% of all U.S cases, up from 2% in April, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported Tuesday. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the incidence of COVID-19 in school-age children began rising in early September as many youngsters returned to their classrooms.
About two times more teens were infected than younger children, the CDC report said. Most infected children have mild cases; hospitalizations and death rates are much lower than in adults.
Dr. Sally Goza, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the rising numbers are a big concern and underscore the importance of masks, hand-washing, social distancing and other precautions.
“While children generally don’t get as sick with the coronavirus as adults, they are not immune and there is much to learn about how easily they can transmit it to others,’’ she said in a statement.
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Trump facing devastating debt load? Experts say not so fast
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump reportedly must pay back more than $300 million in loans over the next four years, raising the possibility his lenders could face an unprecedented situation should he win a second term and not be able to raise the money: foreclosing on the leader of the free world.
But financial experts say the notion of Trump going broke anytime soon is farfetched.
Even with a total debt load across his entire business empire estimated at more than $1 billion, they note he still has plenty of assets he could cash in, starting with a portfolio that includes office and condo towers, golf courses and branding deals that have been valued at $2.5 billion.
Based on Forbes magazine estimates of the value of his buildings, for instance, selling his partial interests in just two properties— an office complex in San Francisco and a Las Vegas tower that houses a hotel and condos — could bring in $500 million alone.
And even if he doesn’t sell, that kind of valuation backing up the loans could make them easier for him to refinance.
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Lawyer for Flynn says she updated Trump on status of case
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn told a judge Tuesday that she recently updated President Donald Trump on the case and asked him not to issue a pardon for her client.
The attorney, Sidney Powell, was initially reluctant to discuss her conversations with the president or the White House, saying she believed they were protected by executive privilege. But under persistent questioning from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, she acknowledged having spoken to the president within the last few weeks to update him and to request that he not pardon Flynn.
She did not elaborate on the request, but it presumably reflected the defense team's desire to secure a legal, rather than political, victory for their client and to have the judge concur with the Justice Department's assertion that the prosecution should be abandoned. Attorney General William Barr, who appointed a U.S. attorney from Missouri to investigate the handling of the case, moved in May to dismiss the case despite Flynn's own guilty plea in the Russia investigation.
That request is pending, with Sullivan not immediately ruling one way or the other on Tuesday.
Powell's acknowledgement that she had recently spoken with the president about the case that arose from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe underscored the politically charged nature of the prosecution. Flynn has emerged as something of a cause célèbre for Trump supporters, while critics of Barr’s action — including former FBI and Justice Department officials — have decried what they see as the politicization of law enforcement in the move to drop the case.
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California's wine country residents facing fire fatigue
NAPA, Calif. (AP) — Will Abrams and his family packed their pickup truck with laptops, clothes, sleeping bags and a tent and quickly left their rental home in California's wine country after seeing flames on a hill about a quarter-mile away Monday morning. It was their third hurried fire evacuation in as many years.
In 2017, Abrams woke up to find their Santa Rosa home on fire and cleared burning branches from the driveway so he could get his wife and children to safety. Their home was destroyed. Then last year, the family evacuated as another wildfire bore down on Sonoma County. They were terrified to cross into the San Francisco Bay Area amid smaller grassland fires sparked by power lines falling in the midst of strong, hot winds.
“This time we hurried up and packed up the car, and we were in gridlock traffic on (Highway) 12 while the flames were approaching from behind," Abrams said Tuesday. He and his wife tried to entertain the kids by making conversation so they wouldn't panic. “It was just obviously traumatic on a personal level, but also just that so little has changed since the fires of 2017 in terms of preparedness and prevention."
They have been told this home is still standing. But with the Glass Fire still completely uncontained, the Abrams and their 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter are staying in Berkeley until they are allowed to return.
“I’m trying to prepare my kids and let them know that climate change is part of life and they’re going to have to deal with it as they get older and also trying to provide them a sense of safety and security. It's not easy. But we should not accept this is the way it's going to be," he said.
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Black Appalachians find hope in national reckoning on race
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Dayjha Hogg has known racism her entire life, but until recently she thought she and her family had to face it on their own.
Hogg, 19, lives in Whitesburg, Kentucky, a town of 2,000 people in the heart of Appalachia. She is biracial — born to a Black father and a white mother — and can recall times when she and her brothers were targets of racial slurs, suspicious glances and rude comments.
But in the wake of this year’s nationwide protests against institutional racism — sparked by George Floyd’s killing in Minnesota — Black Appalachians have found an opportunity for their history and struggles to be recognized more widely. Though the national reckoning on racism has raised awareness about the issue for many white Americans, that it is also echoing in the hills of Appalachia is particularly striking in a region that isn’t known for its diversity.
Hogg saw how the message of the protests — which were also fueled by the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky — was resonating when she organized a rally in her home county of Letcher, where 2% of the population of about 20,000 is Black. She thought only a few people would show up, but roughly 200 did, most of them white.
“This is my home,” Hogg said. “All my friends and all these young people, they’re ready to fight.”
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Disney to lay off 28,000 at its parks in California, Florida
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Squeezed by limits on attendance at its theme parks and other restrictions due to the pandemic, The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday it planned to lay off 28,000 workers in its parks division in California and Florida.
Two-thirds of the planned layoffs involve part-time workers but they ranged from salaried employees to hourly workers, Disney officials said.
Disney’s parks closed last spring as the pandemic started spreading in the U.S. The Florida parks reopened this summer, but the California parks have yet to reopen as the company awaits guidance from the state of California.
In a letter to employees, Josh D'Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experience and Product, said California's “unwillingness to lift restrictions that would allow Disneyland to reopen" exacerbated the situation for the company.
D’Amaro said his management team had worked hard to try to avoid layoffs. They had cut expenses, suspended projects and modified operations but it wasn’t enough given limits on the number of people allowed into the park because of social distancing restrictions and other pandemic-related measures, he said.
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Justice Ginsburg buried at Arlington in private ceremony
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was buried Tuesday in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, laid to rest beside her husband and near some of her former colleagues on the court.
Washington last week honored the 87-year-old Ginsburg, who died Sept. 18, with two days where the public could view her casket at the top of the Supreme Court's steps and pay their respects. On Friday, the women's rights trailblazer and second woman to join the high court lay in state at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman to do so.
Already the capital is looking ahead to confirmation hearings expected to begin Oct. 12 for Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Donald Trump announced Saturday as his nominee for Ginsburg's seat. Barrett was meeting with senators on Tuesday.
Arlington, just over the Potomac River from Washington, is best known as the resting place of approximately 400,000 service members, veterans and family members. But Ginsburg is the 14th justice to be buried at the cemetery.
Ginsburg’s husband Martin Ginsburg was buried at Arlington in 2010 following his death from cancer. He had served in the Army as an artillery school instructor at Fort Sill in Oklahoma when the couple were newlyweds. The couple was married for 56 years and had two children. The justice had kept the framed, folded flag from her husband’s casket in her office at the court.
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Titans have NFL's 1st COVID-19 outbreak; next game still on
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans won't be back inside their building until Saturday at the earliest because of eight positive tests for the coronavirus, the first outbreak to hit the NFL as it tries to play a full schedule amid the pandemic.
Tennessee is scheduled to host Pittsburgh in a matchup of two of the league's seven remaining undefeated teams on Sunday, and Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said his team has been “given a mandate” to prepare as if the game will be played on time — even if the Titans are unable to practice.
“We’re going to trust the medical experts,” Tomlin said. “If they deem it safe for us to proceed, we’re going to go down there with the intention of playing and playing to win.”
Tennessee suspended in-person activities through Friday after the NFL said three Titans players and five personnel tested positive for the coronavirus. The NFL had played three weeks without a COVID-19 outbreak. Now, the Titans will become the first significant in-season test of the league's virus protocols.
The Minnesota Vikings also suspended in-person activities Tuesday following the Titans' test results. The Titans beat the Vikings 31-30 in Minneapolis last weekend.