We’ll be shutting down today’s blog shortly. Here’s a glance at today’s major news items:
Trump’s decision to unilaterally extend federal unemployment insurance through executive order will almost certainly prompt a legal challenge from Democrats on the grounds that only the legislative branch has the constitutional authority to determine federal spending.
But the US president brushed aside concerns on Saturday, suggesting that he believes public sentiment will carry the day.
“If we get sued, it’s somebody that doesn’t want people to get money, OK?” he said. “And that’s not going to be a very popular thing.”
As recently as Monday, White House senior economic adviser Larry Kudlow said: “We have got to fix and extend the unemployment issue right now. … I don’t think that can be done administratively. I think that requires an act of Congress.”
Trump has since departed his Bedminster club for the Hamptons, where he is due to attend two fundraisers tonight.
The question-and-answer session following Trump’s thinly veiled campaign speech was short even by the more abbreviated standards of the post-disinfectant era. He fields seven questions from reporters, mostly focusing on the legality of Saturday’s executive orders and the decision to reduce benefits from $600-a-week to $400, which he says “gives [people] a great incentive to go back to work”.
The eighth is a follow-up from CBS correspondent Paula Reid, who asks why Trump continues to make the false statement that he passed Veterans Choice, a program allowing veterans to get full medical bills paid at hospitals outside the VA (which in fact was enacted in 2014).
Rather than responding, Trump abruptly ends the presser and walks out amid enthusiastic applause from the club members at the rear of the ballroom as YMCA by the Village People plays over the sound system.
Donald Trump has signed an executive order and three memoranda intended to provide additional relief to address the coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout after the White House failed to reach a deal with Congress.
Speaking at a news conference from his private golf club in the leafy New Jersey hamlet of Bedminster, the US president said the directives will extend federal unemployment benefits at $400-a-week (a $200 cut from the present amount), defer payroll tax through the end of 2020 (“most likely” retroactive to 1 July), defer and forgive interest on student loans and extend moratoriums on evictions, defer student loan payments and extend the federal moratorium on evictions.
Trump signed the order before the gathered press and several dozen club members, who watched from the back of the ballroom and applauded enthusiastically in spots.
The announcement came one day after Trump first signaled his willingness to take executive action on the lapsed economic relief measures amid congressional gridlock. Negotiations between the two sides, which have dragged on for two weeks with scant indications of progress, have collapsed with the two sides around $1tn apart in the amount of money they want to commit to extending support to millions faced with economic hardship as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The impasse meant that the $600-a-week bonus pandemic jobless federal benefit, which expired at the end of July, would be lost and potentially lead to a sharp rise in poverty rates and homelessness.
Trump preceded the signing with a campaign-style political speech, blending pre-written remarks and trademark ad-libs, which placed the blame for stalemate at the foot of the Democrats.
“What they really want is bailout money for states that are run by Democrat governors and mayors and that have been run very badly for many, many years and many decades in fact,” Trump said. “These people, I honestly don’t believe they love our country.”
Unlike Friday night’s presser, most of the club members who were permitted to observe the proceedings were wearing face masks when they entered.
A fourth coronavirus test for Ohio governor Mike DeWine came back negative on Saturday following conflicting positive and negative results on Thursday ahead of a planned meeting with Donald Trump.
DeWine was administered a rapid point-of-care antigen test at a mobile testing site on Thursday before he was scheduled to greet Trump at the airport upon his arrival in Cleveland, in keeping with White House protocol for anyone scheduled to come in contact with the president, who has downplayed the importance of testing.
But the initial positive test was followed by two negative results from a polymerase chain reaction test on Thursday, then a third on Saturday.
The Associated Press describes the PCR test as “the most commonly used test in the country” and “considered the gold standard by medical professionals”, saying more than 1.3m Ohioans have been tested with it.
Health officials in Arizona reported 1,054 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 56 more deaths on Saturday.
The figures from the state’s department of health services raise the total number of confirmed cases to nearly 186,000 and the reported death toll to 4,137 since the start of the pandemic. The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested and studies suggest people can be infected without feeling sick, authorities said.
The rolling seven-day average for newly reported cases was 1,577.7 on Friday, the lowest since 18 June, according to tracking by the Associated Press.
The father and son jailed on murder charges in the slaying of Ahmaud Arbery are asking a Georgia judge to grant them bond and to throw out two charges in their indictment.
Arbery, 25, was killed by Travis McMichael on 23 February after he and his father, Gregory McMichael, chased Arbery in their truck and shot him while he was jogging in his neighborhood in the town of Brunswick. They said they believed Arbery was a robbery suspect.
The men were arrested in May, months after the killing, along with a third man who filmed footage of the shooting that went viral. The delay in bringing charges sparked national outrage.
The AP reports:
Gregory McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, were jailed and arrested in May, more than two months after Arbery was slain. The 25-year-old Black man was chased and fatally shot after the McMichaels, who are white, spotted him running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.
Attorneys for both men filed legal motions Thursday asking Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley to set a bond that would allow the McMichaels to be freed pending trial. The judge denied bond last month for William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., a third man charged in Arbery’s killing.
Attorneys for 34-year-old Travis McMichael argued he has no prior criminal history and poses no risk of fleeing.
“He does not have passport, and most importantly, his family, including his parents and three-year-old son, are here in Georgia,” attorneys Robert Rubin and Jason Sheffield wrote.
Speaking of the veepstakes, the Biden campaign has shot down a Fox News “scoop” that a running mate has already been chosen. TJ Ducklo, the national press secretary for Biden 2020, has confirmed that a brief exchange between Biden and a reporter while the presumptive Democratic candidate was enjoying a bike ride with a small entourage on Saturday morning was “clearly a joke.”
A quick transcript of the back-and-forth between Biden as he rolled past Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, the son of Fox & Friends stalwart Steve Doocy:
Peter Doocy: “Have you picked a running mate yet?”
Biden: “Yeah, I have.”
Doocy: You have? Who is it?
Biden: “You.”
The junior Doocy, whose network has breathlessly kept in lockstep with the Trump campaign’s messaging of Biden as a feeble, old man locked in his basement, played it straight and took the candidate for his word, prompting the Democrat’s campaign to step in.
“When Vice President Biden has made a decision on who his running mate will be, he will let the American people know,” Ducklo tweeted. “And can confirm, it’s not @pdoocy of @FoxNews.”
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer traveled to Delaware on Sunday to meet with Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee continues to weigh potential running mates ahead of the November election, the Associated Press reports, citing two high-ranking state Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The meeting, which Whitmer’s office declined to confirm or deny, is thought to be Biden’s first in-person sitdown with a potential vice president.
The 48-year-old Lansing native has been tipped as a rising figure in the party since delivering the Democrats’ response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February, but her national profile has soared amid the coronavirus pandemic. Whitmer’s strict stay-at-home order was implemented to lower one of the nation’s highest Covid-19 rates and drew strong criticism from some conservatives. However, it successfully flattened the curve of new cases and fatalities.
Continued aggressive steps to curb the outbreak and withering criticism of the federal response made her the target of attacks from the White House and placed her at the center of a storm of protest by armed groups, some of whom brought their weapons right into the state capitol.
Biden has pledged to select a woman and has conducted an expansive search, including US senators Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, California representative Karen Bass and former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice.
Reuters reports that Donald Trump is almost certain to announce an executive order to provide economic relief for those who have suffered economically during the pandemic when he gives a press conference at 3.30pm ET today.
“Amid congressional inaction, POTUS will be taking action to help Americans in need,” the official told Reuters.
Republicans and Democrats have failed to reach agreement over a new package, with the sides around $1tn apart in the amount of money they want to spend (the Republicans want a lower outlay).
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has announced a campaign called Fight the Spread, which encourages residents to wear masks, get tested for Covid-19 and practice social distancing. The state reported 67 new deaths from the virus on Saturday. South Carolina has a 15.9% positivity rate among those tested according to the state’s department of health, in comparison, New York’s is 0.93%.
The Kansas City Star reports that Covid-19 deaths in the city rose by 60% over two weeks in late July and early August (22 July to 5 August). The number of new cases and hospitalizations also rose steeply over the same time period.
“Our deaths have been very significantly increasing,” Rex Archer, director of the Kansas City Health Department, said on Friday.
My colleague Ed Helmore has news of the large gathering of bikers taking place in South Dakota, and how it has caused conflict with the Great Sioux Nation:
Thousands of bikers heading to South Dakota’s 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally will not be allowed through Cheyenne River Sioux checkpoints, a spokesman for the Native American group said on Saturday.
The decision to prevent access across tribal lands to the annual rally, which could attract as many as 250,000 bikers amid fears it could lead to a massive, regional coronavirus outbreak, comes as part of larger Covid-19 prevention policy. The policy has pitted seven tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation against federal and state authorities, which both claim the checkpoints are illegal.
A duty officer for the Cheyenne River Sioux told the Guardian Saturday that only commercial and emergency vehicles will be let through the checkpoints onto reservation land.
A number of bikers that had tried to enter but had been turned back, they said. Other reservations in the region, including the Oglala Sioux, were also turning away bikers that had attempted routes to Sturgis that pass through sovereign land.
Under Cheyenne River tribal guidelines non-residents driving non-commercial out-of-state vehicles are never allowed through the reservation. During the rally, non-commercial vehicles with South Dakota plates are also not allowed through.
You can read the full story below:
In a sign that the pandemic is easing in Florida, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration says 6,836 people are currently in hospital due to Covid-19, down from 7,942 last Saturday.
A total of 30,251 people in Florida have been admitted to hospital due to Covid-19 since the pandemic started, according to the state’s department of health. According to the New York Times, 7,926 have died from the disease in Florida.
While professional sports have returned to the US with varying degrees of success in recent weeks, the picture for college sports looks murkier as the new school year comes into view. Students are, of course, not under contract for their sporting services and (most but certainly not all) college athletics departments do not have the resources of leagues such as the NBA and NFL to conduct widespread testing of their players.
Last week, UConn football team became the first major program to say it would not participate in the upcoming season due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On Saturday, the Mid-American Conference said it is postponing all fall sports – including football, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey and women’s volleyball. They will now be contested in spring 2021.
“The Council of Presidents unanimously voted to take this action with the health and safety of its student-athletes, coaches and communities as its top priority,” the MAC said in a statement. “It is the intention of the membership to provide competitive opportunities for the student-athletes in these sports during the spring semester of 2021.”
The New York Times has reported on rumours that South Dakota governor Kristi Noem was a possible replacement for Mike Pence as vice president. Although the Times reports that those rumours are most likely nonsense, the story does contain a great detail: Donald Trump had ambitions to have his image etched on South Dakota’s Mt Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
According to the Times:
Last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?
That then led to a gift from Noem:
In private, the efforts to charm Mr. Trump were more pointed, according to a person familiar with the episode: Ms. Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore that included a fifth presidential likeness: his.
My colleagues Daniel Strauss and Lauren Gambino have reported on the wave of progressive victories by people of color in recent months:
Progressive Democrats are enjoying a wave of victories in federal primaries across the country with some especially notable triumphs for Black activist candidates.
Those successes, candidates and strategists say, are due to a mixture of broad energy from the Black Lives Matter movement, failure of conventional policy remedies to meet the moment and a rock-solid infrastructure of progressive organizations.
The latest victory came in Missouri on the same night the state voted to expand Medicaid – a longtime liberal goal. Cori Bush, a liberal activist and registered nurse, defeated the 10-term congressman William Lacy Clay in the Democratic primary.
A few days later Marquita Bradshaw, an environmental justice activist, became the first Black woman to win the Democratic party’s nomination in Tennessee. In the process of Bradshaw’s surprise victory she defeated James Mackler, the preferred candidate of Senate Democrats’ national campaign arm.
Both candidates ran on positions familiar to the progressive community: racial justice, Medicare for All and environmental justice. The victories by the candidates, both Black women, are the latest in a strong of upsets liberals have enjoyed this year.
You can read the full story below: