Fires are raging across the west. More than 85 significant wildfires are burning across the region. In California, high, dry winds stoked dozens of out-of-control blazes that have forced helicopter rescues and evacuations. In Washington, more acres burned in a single day than firefighters usually see all year, and the fires scorched farming town of Malden. Fires also forced people to flee in Oregon and Idaho.
Mike Pence and officials from Donald Trump’s campaign are expected to attend a a fundraiser hosted by a couple that subscribe to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. The event is scheduled to take place in Montana. Hosts Caryn and Michael Borland shared QAnon memes and posts on their social media.
Trump acknowledged in March that he was trying to downplay the threat of coronavirus, according to a new book from Bob Woodward. The president told the journalist earlier this year, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Trump also acknowledged coronavirus was “deadly” and airborne as early as February, while publicly saying the virus would “disappear”.
Reacting to Woodward’s book, Trump said he “perhaps” misled the country about coronavirus to avoid creating panic. When asked whether he had misled the American public, the president said this afternoon, “Well, I think if you said in order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so. The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.”
Biden accused Trump of betraying the country by downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic. Delivering a speech in Warren, Michigan, the Democratic nominee said, “He had the information. He knew how dangerous it was. He failed to do his job on purpose ... It was a life and death betrayal of the American people.”
A senior DHS official claimed he was told to stop providing intelligence assessments of Russian election interference. In a new whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy, the former acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, said he was told an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation should be “held” because it “made the President look bad”. The House intelligence committee has called on Murphy to testify about the allegations later this month.
Trump released his list of potential future supreme court nominees. The list included three Republican senators: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. But Hawley and Cruz quickly signaled they did not plan to leave the Senate anytime soon.
Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, is refusing to enforce a White House coronavirus taskforce recommendation to close bars and require people to wear masks after Covid-19 infections in some of the state’s cities surged.
Meanwhile, coronavirus cases have risen sharply across the whole midwest in recent weeks, putting the region at the forefront of America’s pandemic. The region accounted for six of the eight states with the highest number of new Covid-19 cases by early September even as infections fell in other parts of the US previously among the worst hit.
North Dakota has the largest number of positive cases per capita in the country over the past 14 days. Iowa and South Dakota are enduring the highest percentage increases. Missouri has seen more than 1,300 new cases a day on average over the past week.
In Iowa, the increase was centered on university towns following the return of students to classes. By late August, two of the state’s cities, Ames and Iowa City, were enduring the worst coronavirus surges in the country. The per capita infection rates were higher than any individual country.
Amid warnings that the failure to enforce masks and social distancing was likely to cost hundreds of additional lives in the coming months, the White House taskforce said in a report on 31 August that bars “must be closed” in 61 of Iowa’s 99 counties and seating in restaurants should be limited. It also recommended restrictions on the size of gatherings in the worst-hit counties, along with the closure of gyms.
Jessica Krug, the George Washington University professor who made headlines around the world after confessing she was in fact a white woman from Kansas City despite having claimed she was Black has resigned, according to the university.
“Dr Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week,” noted the university in a statement issued Wednesday.
Last week, the university announced it had cancelled classes taught by Krug. Her colleagues in the history department had called on her to step down from her post, saying they were “shocked and appalled by Dr Jessica Krug’s admission on September 3, 2020, that she has lied about her identity for her entire career”.
In a Medium essay, Krug said she claimed identities “that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness”.
Large, fast-moving fires raged on across the American west on Wednesday, destroying hundreds of homes in the Pacific north-west and sending a dense plume of smoke that turned skies amber across parts of the region.
More than 85 significant wildfires are burning across the west. In California, high, dry winds stoked dozens of out-of-control blazes that have forced helicopter rescues and evacuations. In Washington, more acres burned in a single day than firefighters usually see all year, and the fires scorched farming town of Malden. Fires also forced people to flee in Oregon and Idaho.
“The geographic scale and intensity of what is transpiring is truly jarring,” wrote Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“What’s remarkable is that there’s so many fires,” said Chris Field, who directs the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Even as someone whose job is to understand what’s happening, it’s really hard to keep up.”
Mike Pence and top officials from Donald Trump’s campaign are slated to attend a Montana fundraiser next week hosted by a couple who have expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an event invitation obtained by the Associated Press and a review of social media postings.
The hosts of the fundraiser, Caryn and Michael Borland, have shared QAnon memes and retweeted posts from QAnon accounts, their social media activity shows. The baseless conspiracy theory posits that Trump is fighting entrenched enemies in the government and also involves satanism and child sex trafficking.
Beyond the vice-president, the 14 September fundraiser in Bozeman, Montana, is expected to draw influential figures in the president’s orbit including Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump fundraising official who is dating Donald Trump Jr, the GOP chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee finance chairman. Todd Ricketts, and the RNC co-chairman Tommy Hicks Jr, the event invitation shows.
While many Republicans have dismissed QAnon, the fundraiser is another sign of how the conspiracy theory is gaining a foothold in the party. Trump has hailed the Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, another QAnon supporter, as a “future Republican star”. The president has refused to condemn QAnon, recently telling reporters that the conspiracy theory is “gaining in popularity” and that its supporters “like me very much”.
Poll: Slight shift away from Biden in Kenosha in wake of protests
A poll of voters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from Marquette Law School found that while Joe Biden still leads Donald Trump by four points, the Democratic candidate’s support is slipping slightly in the wake of protests against police brutality and a deadly shooting.
The police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black 29-year-old father, sparked widespread protests in Kenosha. Amid demonstrations, a white Trump supporter was charged with shooting two men and injuring another.
A health official hired by a Donald Trump appointee has been working to prevent Dr Anthony Fauci from talking about dangers that Covid-19 poses to children, Politico reported on Wednesday.
The attempts by Dr Paul Alexander – who serves as a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) assistant public affairs secretary – were described in emails obtained by Politico.
Alexander reportedly told media liaisons at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about what Fauci should discuss during interviews. Alexander opined on Fauci’s possible responses to inquiries from publications such as Bloomberg News, HuffPost and BuzzFeed.
“I continue to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even university students in a widespread manner … and I disagree with Dr Fauci on this. Vehemently,” Alexander wrote in a 27 August email, in response to a press office rundown of Fauci’s planned remarks to Bloomberg.
In an email Tuesday, Alexander also told Fauci’s spokesperson that he should not advocate mask-wearing by children in a planned MSNBC sit-down.
“Can you ensure Dr Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children,” Alexander reportedly said in this email. “There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children, especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero.”
The White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that AstraZeneca’s decision to pause global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine was “unfortunate” – but not an uncommon safety precaution in a vaccine development process.
The UK drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had voluntarily paused trials, including late-stage ones, after an unexplained illness in a participant.
The company said it was working to expedite a review of safety data by an independent committee to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline.
“This particular candidate from the AstraZeneca company had a serious adverse event, which means you put the rest of the enrollment of individual volunteers on hold until you can work out precisely what went on,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the top public health expert on the coronavirus, said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday morning.
“It’s really one of the safety valves that you have on clinical trials such as this, so it’s unfortunate that it happened,” Fauci added. “Hopefully, they’ll work it out and be able to proceed along with the remainder of the trial but you don’t know. They need to investigate it further.”
The vaccine, which AstraZeneca is developing with the University of Oxford, has been described by the World Health Organization as probably the world’s leading candidate and the most advanced in terms of development.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University school of public health said via Twitter that the significance of the interruption was unclear.
“We have no idea whether this is a big deal or not. Science is hard. This is why we have to let the trials play out. I remain optimistic we will have a vaccine found to be safe and effective in upcoming months,” he said, but cautioned: “Optimism isn’t evidence. Let’s let science drive this process.”
That’s it from me on this very newsy Wednesday. My west coast colleague Maanvi Singh will take over for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Trump acknowledged in March that he was trying to downplay the threat of coronavirus, according to a new book from Bob Woodward. The president told the journalist earlier this year, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Trump also acknowledged coronavirus was “deadly” and airborne as early as February, while publicly saying the virus would “disappear”.
Reacting to Woodward’s book, Trump said he “perhaps” misled the country about coronavirus to avoid creating panic. When asked whether he had misled the American public, the president said this afternoon, “Well, I think if you said in order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so. The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.”
Biden accused Trump of betraying the country by downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic. Delivering a speech in Warren, Michigan, the Democratic nominee said, “He had the information. He knew how dangerous it was. He failed to do his job on purpose ... It was a life and death betrayal of the American people.”
A senior DHS official claimed he was told to stop providing intelligence assessments of Russian election interference. In a new whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy, the former acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, said he was told an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation should be “held” because it “made the President look bad”. The House intelligence committee has called on Murphy to testify about the allegations later this month.
Trump released his list of potential future supreme court nominees. The list included three Republican senators: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. But Hawley and Cruz quickly signaled they did not plan to leave the Senate anytime soon.
A government watchdog group asked North Carolina officials to investigatea report that Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, pressured his employees in the private sector to donate to Republican candidates and then reimbursed them through his company.
Louis DeJoy testifies before the House oversight committee. Photograph: Tom Williams/AP
The complaint, filed by the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, came after former employees of DeJoy’s logistics company, New Breed Logistics, told the Washington Post DeJoy would push them to write checks or attend Republican fundraisers.
DeJoy would subsequently increase bonus payments to make up for those contributions. A DeJoy spokesman did not directly address whether DeJoy had made such arrangements to the Post, but said DeJoy had not run afoul of campaign finance laws.
In a filing with the North Carolina State Board of Elections, lawyers for Common Cause noted the state sets a $5,100 maximum individual donation limit and prohibits donors from giving money either anonymously or under someone else’s name.
The group asked North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, to launch a similar investigation.
“Our state’s campaign finance laws are designed to protect the fundamental integrity of our elections and guard against undue influence by self-serving mega donors and special interests,” Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina.
“Violations of these laws undermine public trust in our democracy and must be treated with the utmost seriousness. No one is above the law, no matter the size of their bank account.”
DeJoy, a major Republican donor, was appointed postmaster general by the USPS board of governors earlier this year, despite having no prior experience at the agency. A former governor told Congress last month that DeJoy did not appear to be a serious candidate for the job and struggled to answer questions about the position.
He has faced loud calls for his resignation after reports of widespread mail delays across the country. DeJoy conceded last month that a program he implemented to try and get trucks to run on time had caused delays, but offered few details on what he was doing to fix it. He also said he would not reinstall mail sorting machines that had been removed from post office facilities.
Senator Ted Cruz said it was “humbling and an immense honor” to be included on Trump’s list of potential future supreme court nominees, but the Texas Republican indicated he would remain in the Senate for the time being.
“In the Senate, I have been blessed to lead the fight to preserve our constitutional liberties – every day, to defend the rights of 29 million Texans – and I look forward to continuing to do so for many years to come,” Cruz said in a statement.
It's humbling and an immense honor to be considered for #SCOTUS.
Read my statement here on @realDonaldTrump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees he announced today he might choose from in a second term.👇 pic.twitter.com/oOjuCHSs80
