Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino chosen for President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet, will head a Department of Homeland Security that is expected to drastically overhaul President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as well as put Mayorkas at the forefront of the new administration’s anti-terrorism strategy.

Mayorkas will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, if confirmed by the Senate. The highest-ranking Cuban American in the Obama administration, Mayorkas was deputy secretary of DHS under then-Secretary Jeh Johnson, and before that was the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of DHS that oversees granting citizenship and other immigration benefits.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump appears to have cut ties with Sidney Powell, a key member of his legal team who also represents former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his long-running attempt to unravel a guilty plea for lying about his 2016 contacts with Russia.

The abrupt shake-up came in a terse Sunday-evening statement from the Trump campaign that offered no explanation for Powell’s removal.

“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis said in the statement. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”

Read the rest of the story at Politico

British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said on Monday that its vaccine for Covid-19 could be up to 90 percent effective in preventing the disease — the third promising breakthrough in the fight against a pandemic that has killed nearly 1.4 million people worldwide.

“This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against Covid-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,” Pascal Soriot, Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump’s campaign said Saturday it is seeking a second recount of presidential election votes in Georgia after the first one did not turn out in his favor.

Under state election rules the campaign is within its rights; the first hand recount, completed Thursday and certified Friday, had been automatically triggered by a new state law.

Campaigns can request an additional machine recount if a vote margin is within 0.5 percent. The final certified results had Joe Biden at 49.51 percent compared to Trump at 49.25 percent for a margin of 0.26 percent.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Congress will head home for a week-long Thanksgiving holiday recess without passing any sort of compromise coronavirus relief bill as the U.S. death toll passes 250,000 and millions of Americans remain on unemployment.

But there is some hope that renewed talks could see some sort of coronavirus relief aid in the coming weeks even with little time remaining on the legislative calendar before the end of the year.

Democratic aides have told ABC News that staffers of the congressional ‘Big Four’ met Thursday to discuss ways coronavirus relief could be tacked on to a must-pass spending bill that needs to clear both chambers of Congress by Dec. 11 to avert a government shutdown. The ‘Big Four’ includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

President Donald Trump‘s legal team on Thursday staged a bizarre 90-minute press conference where they outlined plans to resurrect a crumbling legal strategy, in part by recycling a litany of false claims — including several that have already been rejected in the courts.

Rudy Giuliani led the effort in a winding, and at times, angry speech in which he lashed out at the mainstream press for failing to repeat his unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud. Giuliani, sweating profusely, told gathered reporters that the claims would be the foundation of new lawsuits in multiple states.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

Attorneys representing President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in challenging thousands of ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania agreed to sign court documents on Wednesday informing the court that there was no evidence of fraud or misconduct pertaining to those ballots.

The lawsuit—filed last week by the campaign as well as the Republican National Committee and two GOP candidates for state office—sought to have the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas invalidate more than 2,200 “defective ballots” that were counted following a review by the Board of Elections.

Read the rest of the story at Law & Crime

President-elect Joe Biden got emotional during a video conference with a group of health care workers treating Covid-19 patients, getting teary-eyed after hearing a heartbreaking story from an ICU nurse.

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin played a clip of the discussion Wednesday, introducing the video as part of a segment with reporter Arlette Saenz about the challenges the Biden transition team is facing getting the Trump administration to cooperate with them.

“So Biden really, for the fourth day in a row, he and his team are again pressing the case and trying to keep the pressure on the Trump administration to begin coordinating with them when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic,” said Saenz, and as part of his effort to “trying to put a personal face to this pandemic,” Biden held a video conference with “the front line health care workers who are battling this virus day in and day out.”

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

The two Republicans on the Wayne County (Mich.) Board of Canvassers now want to “rescind” their vote to certify the 2020 election results in their county, releasing an affidavit late on Wednesday night that seeks to double back on their flip-flop from just one day earlier.

On Tuesday night, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann initially voted against certification, deadlocking the county board in a 2 – 2 tie, which would’ve pushed the vote certification up to a state board for review. The shocking move ignited a fierce, public backlashand over the course of a three-hour public meeting, the pair ultimately changed their minds, endorsing a second, unanimous vote validating the vote, which included hundreds of thousands of votes for President-elect Joe Biden from majority African-American Detroit.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq will be reduced to 2,500 in each country by mid-January, acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller announced on Tuesday.

Miller made the announcement in remarks to Pentagon reporters that highlighted the next step in what he called “President Trump’s plan to bring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a successful and responsible conclusion and to bring our brave service members home.”

He said that President Donald Trump made the decision to draw down troops in both countries in consultation with his top national securityofficials and that it did not amount to a change in policy.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the second-oldest member of the Senate, has tested positive for coronavirus.

The 87-year-old Iowa Republican said in a statement that he learned he was exposed to the coronavirus Tuesday morning and received a positive test.

“While I still feel fine, the test came back positive for the coronavirus,” Grassley said. “I am continuing to follow my doctors’ orders and CDC guidelines. I’ll be keeping up my work for the people of Iowa from home.”

Read the rest of the story at Politico

President Donald Trump was talked out of nascent plans to strike at Iran’s main nuclear site in the few remaining weeks of his administration.

Per a report in the New York Times, Trump asked about options to hit the country during an Oval Office meeting last week, just one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report that estimated Iran has now rebuilt its stockpile to nearly three tons of enriched uranium, enough to build two nuclear weapons. When Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, the country had off-loaded 97 percent of its old stockpile out of the country, leaving it with too little uranium to build even one weapon.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appeared on CNN Monday night to talk about the attacks he’s gotten from fellow Republicans and to clarify a stunning claim he made about his conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham.

In a new Washington Post interview, Raffensperger claimed that Graham suggested he exclude legal ballots

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

Fervent supporters of President Donald Trump rallied in Washington on Saturday behind his spurious claim of a stolen election and swarmed his motorcade in adulation when he detoured for a drive-by on his way out of town.

Hours later, after night fell in the nation’s capital, demonstrators favoring Trump clashed in the streets with counterprotesters, videos posted on social media showing fistfights, projectiles and clubs. Police arrested at least 20 people on a variety of charges, including assault and weapons possession, officials said. One stabbing was reported, two police officers were injured and several firearms were also recovered by police.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that Joe Biden had “won” the presidential election while saying that the election was rigged — a claim that has been widely debunked.

“He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump wrote before falsely claiming that no watchers or observers had been allowed.

It was not clear whether the tweet represented a grudging or an accidental concession by Trump that he had lost the election, which he has repeatedly claimed to have won, even after every major news organization projected Biden as the victor.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, urged the Trump administration Sunday to reverse course and begin working on a presidential transition so “nothing drops in this change of power” that would jeopardize the new administration’s ability to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

President Donald Trump and his campaign continue to pursue legal challenges in several states contesting results and making unfounded allegations of widespread fraud.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

The coronavirus pandemic is spreading with frightening speed throughout the United States, shattering records on a daily basis, stretching medical resources to breaking point and once again prompting states, counties and cities to consider economically devastating lockdowns.

On Thursday, public health officials recorded more than 150,000 new cases in a day for the first time — more than 160,000, in fact. It was only eight days earlier that the country had its first 100,000-case day. Six of the last nine days have set new records, and with colder weather driving people indoors, there is little reason to expect a respite soon.’

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

As President Donald Trump’s lawyers cling to their far-fetched schemes to overturn the presidential election, it was increasingly clear Thursday that cracks are forming in Trump’s Republican wall of support, as more GOP members stepped forward to say that President-elect Joe Biden should receive national intelligence briefings and others began to acknowledge the long-shot nature of the President’s quest.

Read the rest of the story at CNN

The firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper kicked off a rapid-fire series of high-level departures at the Pentagon on Tuesday, setting off alarms on Capitol Hill that the White House was installing loyalists to carry out President Donald Trump’s wishes during an already tense transition.

In quick succession, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned by the end of the day Tuesday, replaced by political operatives who are fiercely loyal to Trump and have trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories.

Fears continue to swirl over what these newly installed leaders will do as Trump fights the results of last week’s election, and after he has shown he is willing to use troops to solve political problems.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Several loyalists to President Donald Trump were promoted to top roles in the Defense Department on Tuesday after officials resigned following the unceremonious ouster of Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The Pentagon confirmed the resignations of the department’s top officials for policy and intelligence in a statement. The resignations include those of James Anderson, the acting undersecretary for policy; Joseph Kernan, the undersecretary for intelligence; and Jen Stewart, Esper’s chief of staff. The release said Kernan’s resignation had been “planned for several months.”

Retired Army Gen. Anthony Tata, a frequent Fox News guest, will replace Anderson. Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who works in the Defense Department and was an aide to the disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, will replace Kernan. Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official and former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who worked on the controversial House investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will replace Stewart.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and David Bossie, an outside White House adviser, have both tested positive for Covid-19, becoming the latest figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to contract the virus.

Bossie, a longtime Trump ally who was tapped to lead the effort to contest the presidential election, tested positive Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation. Bossie did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Carson went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for a test Monday morning after experiencing symptoms, according to a HUD official, who declined to discuss details of the symptoms.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump’s reelection effort, said Monday that the campaign was not remotely considering conceding to President-elect Joe Biden after the Democratic nominee was declared the winner of the 2020 White House race.

“That word is not even in our vocabulary right now,” Miller said in an interviewon Fox Business.

“We’re going to go and pursue all these legal means, all the recount methods,” he said. “We’re going to continue exposing and investigating all these instances of fraud or abuse, and make sure … [that] the American public can have full confidence in these elections.”

Read the rest of the story at Politico

President-elect Joe Biden and his advisers plan this week to demonstrate a far more assertive strategy against the coronavirus than President Trump’s, and Biden may take a more proactive role in coming weeks in congressional negotiations over an economic stimulus package.

Biden’s proposals, some of which were posted on his new transition website, include aiming to secure funds for ramping up coronavirus testing, acquiring additional protective equipment such as masks and gowns, and investing $25 billion in vaccine manufacturing and distribution.

Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tested positive for Covid-19, a source familiar with the diagnosis told NBC News on Friday.

The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes as the U.S. recorded the third straight day of more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases, breaking previous records.

It also comes as President Donald Trump and some of his allies are mounting election-related lawsuits and making baseless claims of voter fraud to fight off the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

A record number of coronavirus cases were reported Thursday, breaking a record set Wednesday of more than 100,000 cases in a single day.

A total of 120,048 people tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, nearly 16,000 more than on Wednesday, according to an NBC News tally.

The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world. More than 236,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the U.S., according to NBC News data.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Republican lawmakers and officials are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s series of false claims Thursday night about the presidential election, although many did not mention him by name.

Shortly before Trump made baseless claims at a news conference about massive voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said in a statement that once the state’s final election count is “reached and certified, all parties involved must accept the outcome of the election regardless of whether they won or lost.”

Toomey also called for patience as the votes are counted, despite Trump’s having tweeting earlier in the day that officials should “stop the count!” Speaking about the mail-in vote count, Trump also told reporters, “There has been a lot of shenanigans, and we can’t stand for that in our country.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Joe Biden predicted Wednesday that he would win the 2020 election over President Donald Trump when the final votes were counted.

“After a long night of counting, it’s clear we’re winning enough statesto win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency,” Biden told a small group of reporters at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware.

“When the count is finished, we will be the winners,” Biden said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

When President Donald Trump vowed to ask the Supreme Court to halt ballot counting, he wasn’t actually outlining his campaign’s plan. In fact, some Republicans say, Trump didn’t even understand what he was calling for.

But buried in Trump’s confusing claim was the seed of his campaign’s actual legal strategy, one they have been building for more than a year with the help of thousands of lawyers and that finally took shape this week, according to Republicans familiar with the situation.

Trump’s campaign on Wednesday filed lawsuits to halt the counting of ballots in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia — all key swing states. It’s contesting ballots in a Democratic stronghold in Nevada. And it could appeal a decision to permit late-arriving absentee ballots in North Carolina, as long as they were mailed before the election deadline.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Some Republicans are not falling in line behind President Donald Trump’s attempts to falsely declare victory and seek to halt some vote-counting in the presidential race, with several GOP leaders expressing rare public rebukes of the president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a Trump ally who usually avoids criticizing the president in public, told reportersWednesday that “claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Democrats will maintain control of the House of Representatives, NBC News projects, but their path to taking control in the Senate narrowed as numerous Republican incumbents fended off strong opposition.

Democrats, who were winning fewer House seats than they had hoped, failed to pick up some of the Senate seats they were banking on. Democratic hopes for a big night were dashed up and down the ballot, as President Donald Trump outperformed his polls against Joe Biden.

By 3 a.m. on Wednesday, 47 seats were projected to be controlled by Republicans and 46 by Democrats, including two independents who caucus with Democrats. Seven seats were still outstanding.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump made a series of false and misleading claims about the 2020 election and vote-counting processes early Wednesday morning, ranging from how he’s fared so far in the race to what will happen next.

Here’s a look at his claims, including the states he incorrectly claimed to have won and baseless allegations that his supporters were being disenfranchised.

Neither NBC News nor any other major news organization has declared a winner in the 2020 presidential race, and either candidate, Joe Biden or Trump, could still win. Here’s what the president said, and the facts.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Dr. Deborah Birx issued an internal report on Monday that took the White House to task for failing to take “much more aggressive action” as the country suffers from a massive resurgence in the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Post, Birx, one of president’s key Covid-19 task force advisers repeatedly contradicted the president’s campaign “rounding the turn” narrative about the outbreak.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

A federal court in Houston is holding an emergency hearing Monday morning over a last-ditch effort by Republicans in Texas to toss out nearly 127,000 ballots in a Democratic-leaning county.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen will hear arguments on the bid by a quartet of Texas Republicans — three candidates and a conservative activist — to invalidate all ballots cast in Harris County at drive-through polling places. The GOP contingent is arguing that the process was an illegal expansion of a limited provision for curbside voting in state law.

Read the rest of the story at Politico.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying from the coronavirus amounts to “almost nothing.”

More than 8.9 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, resulting in more than 228,000 deaths. The U.S. tallied a single-day record of more than 83,000 coronavirus cases last Friday and reported a new daily peak of more than 88,000 cases on Thursday. Deaths, an indicator that typically lags behind the number of cases, have also been on the rise.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

A House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis issued a report Friday blasting the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, calling it “among the worst failures of leadership in American history.”

“The virus is a global scourge, but it has been an American fiasco, killing more people in the United States than in any other country,” said the report, which the Democratic-run subcommittee of members of both parties released four days before Election Day.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

The Supreme Court late Wednesday declined to block lower court rulings that allow six extra days for accepting ballots sent by mail in North Carolina. The justices left the later deadline in place, a victory for Democrats in a presidential battleground state.

Earlier in the day, in a defeat for Republicans, the court declined to take another look, on a fast track, at the issue of late arriving mail ballots in Pennsylvania, leaving intact a lower court ruling that said the state must count ballots that arrive up to three days after the election.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Fact-check: False…x 70,000 a day.

The White House Science Policy Office made an outrageously inaccurate claim on Tuesday, sending out a press release with a list of President Donald Trump’s first-term accomplishments. Among them: “ending the Covid-19 pandemic.”

That is, of course, patently absurd. The nation is currently the throes of a third wave of the outbreak, in which positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising once again and the number of new cases is hitting record highs, now averaging more than 70,000 new infections per day.

In the first bullet of the statement, under “Highlights include,” the un-bylined Office of Science and Technology Policy memo proclaims in bold, all-capitalized letters: “ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.”

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

Wisconsin cannot count mail ballots that arrive well after the polls close under an order issued Monday by the Supreme Court, a defeat for Democrats in a battleground state.

By a vote of 5-3, the justices declined to lift a lower court ruling preventing the state from counting mail ballots that arrive as much as six days after Election Day. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would have granted the request.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.

Putin was responding to comments made by Trump during televised debates with Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Trump, who is trailing in opinion polls, has used the debates to make accusations that Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices in Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Joe Biden has called them false and discredited.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump’s campaign and North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to return the state to a shorter deadline for accepting late-arriving absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day.

The legislative leaders argue in their appeal that the longer deadline, which was extended after early voting had begun, will result in unequal treatment of voters and dilute the value of ballots cast before the rule was changed.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

A man who was arrested in North Carolina on child pornography charges this year had a van full of guns and drove within 4 miles of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s home with a checklist to “execute” him, authorities alleged.

The allegations against the man, Alexander Treisman, were in a detention order filed this month in U.S. District Court in Durham, North Carolina.

According to the documents, Treisman’s white van was reported abandoned in the parking lot of a bank in Kannapolis, northeast of Charlotte, on May 28. Inside, responding officers found four rifles, including an AR-style Sig Sauer, a 9 mm handgun and $500,000 in cash that was believed to be his inheritance, the order states.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Pope Francis became the first pontiff to endorse same-sex civil unions in comments for a documentary that premiered Wednesday, sparking cheers from gay Catholics and demands for clarification from conservatives, given the Vatican’s official teaching on the issue.

The papal thumbs-up came midway through the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. The film, which features fresh interviews with the pope, delves into issues Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

Senior national security officials alerted the American public Wednesday that Iran and Russia have both obtained voter data in their efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election.

“This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a surprise news conferenceWednesday evening.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday denied touching himself inappropriately in the upcoming “Borat” movie, insisting that a reported clip from the film was taken out of context.

“The Borat video is a complete fabrication,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter. “I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.”

Read the rest of the story at Politico

President Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times

Coronavirus concerns lift former Vice President Joe Biden in North Carolina while the state’s sizable evangelical and rural populations pull for President Donald Trump, producing a dead-heat contest in a state that’s backed Democratic presidential candidates just twice in the last half century.

Biden has 49% support among likely voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll in the state, with 48% for Trump. The U.S. Senate race, potentially critical for control of the chamber, is similar, with 49% support for Democrat Cal Cunningham, despite revelations of an extramarital relationship, and 47% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his fellow Republican members in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that he is “encouraging” the White House to wait until after the Nov. 3 election to reach an agreement on a Covid-19 relief package with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to three sources familiar with the conversation.

McConnell, R-Ky., was responding to a question from a Republican senator facing re-election who pressed the need to go home to campaign after next Monday’s full Senate vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump on Monday attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci during a phone call with campaign staff, calling the infectious disease specialist a “disaster” and saying every time he goes on television there is a “bomb,” but there would be “a bigger bomb if you fire him,” according to a recording of the call obtained by NBC News.

“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots — these people, these people that have gotten it wrong,” Trump said. “Fauci’s a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years. He called every one of them wrong. And he’s like this wonderful guy, a wonderful sage telling us how” to respond to the pandemic.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

This weekend, Americans face another surge in the COVID-19 pandemic. Infections have passed the 8 million mark and are rising rapidly. There are more than 218,000 dead. During the course of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the physician most Americans have relied upon for their information. But now, instead of worrying soley about developing vaccines or therapeutics, Dr. Fauci finds himself unhappily caught up in presidential politics, under protection from death threats, and forced to defend science itself.

Read the rest of the story at CBS News

President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee and affiliated joint fundraising committees raised $247.8 million in September, Trump’s campaign announced, leaving him at a significant cash deficit to former Vice President Joe Biden entering the final stretch of the 2020 election.

Biden’s campaign and affiliated committees raised a record $383 million in September, and they had $432 million in reserves at the end of the month, his campaign announced Wednesday.

Read the rest of the story at Politico.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, newly recovered from the coronavirus, urged President Donald Trump on Friday to encourage the wearing of face masks among Americans.

In his first TV interview since contracting Covid-19 earlier this month, Christie — a close ally of the White House who served as the president’s debate coach last month — said it was not enough for Trump to merely express approval of masks, as he did at a town hall event the previous evening.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is “not happy” with Attorney General William Barr after the Justice Department’s investigation of the Obama administration found no wrongdoing and quietly concluded with no criminal charges.

Trump made the comments to Newsmax TV. He also declined to say whether he would keep Barr on as attorney general for a potential second term.

“Can’t comment on that. It’s too early. I’m not happy, with all of the evidence I had, I can tell you that. I am not happy,” Trump said in the interview.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Former President Barack Obama is expected to hit the campaign trail “soon” for Joe Biden, his former vice president — a move that could help animate Democrats as the presidential race enters its pivotal final weeks.

“President Obama plans to hit the trail soon, in addition to all the other activities he’s undertaken all year in support of electing VP Biden – as he’s said, we all have to do everything we can to win on November 3,” an aide to the former president told ABC News.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively allowed the government to stop the census count immediately, blocking a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to continue gathering census information in the field until the end of October.

The Census Bureau said it wanted to stop the count so that it could start processing the data to meet a Dec. 31 deadline, set in federal law, for reporting the results to the president. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the government to keep going with its field work until Oct. 31, concluding that a longer time in the field would increase accuracy.

In a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court stayed the appeals court order.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Johnson & Johnson has paused its clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate after a participant fell ill, just weeks after it announced that trials were in their final stage.

A pause is not entirely unexpected in vaccine trials. When another vaccine trial was temporarily stopped last month, experts hailed the move as an example of the scientific rigor that is being maintained despite the understandably intense public interest in a Covid-19 vaccine.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Monday, his first since he was hospitalized for Covid-19, taking familiar hits at his Democratic rival Joe Biden and urging his supporters in the crucial battleground state to vote .

At Trump’s Florida rally, the president was also cavalier about his battle with Covid-19, telling the crowd — estimated at 7,000 people — in a state that has been hit hard by the virus that he felt strong and better than before. The president took a myriad of treatments when he was hospitalized and told the crowd he wanted to make his treatment plan available to everyone.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

A huge edge among likely female voters is fueling a 12-point national lead for Democratic nominee Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday.

The Post/ABC poll showed Biden leading Trump among likely voters, 54 percent to 42 percent. The lead is consistent with other national polls conducted in recent weeks.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

The Commission on Presidential Debates officially canceled its second candidate forum between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, scheduled for next Thursday, October 15th.

According to a statement from the CPD, the bipartisan group has scrapped next week’s town hall after Trump refused to participate after the commission insisted on holding the debate virtually.

“For the health and safety of all involved, the second presidential debate, scheduled for October 15 in Miami, would be conducted virtually,” the statement read. “Subsequently, the campaigns of the two candidates who qualified for participation in the debate made a series of statement concerning their respective positions regarding their willingness to participate in a virtual debate.”

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday he hasn’t gone to the White House since August because their approach to safety during the coronavirus pandemic “is different than mine.”

Speaking at an event in Erlanger, Kentucky, McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Congress, suggested he didn’t think the Trump administration had been doing enough to keep the White House safe from Covid-19.

“I haven’t actually been to the White House since August the 6th, because my impression was their approach to how to handle this is different from mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing,” McConnell said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump vowed Thursday not to participate in next week’s debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden after organizers announced it will take place virtually because of the president’s diagnosis of COVID-19.

“I’m not going to do a virtual debate” with Biden, Trump told Fox News, moments after the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the changes due to Trump’s diagnosis.

That cast serious doubts on whether the event will go forward, even as Biden’s campaign vowed that its candidate will participate.

Read the rest of the story at the Associated Press

The second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden will be “virtual,” with the two participants holding forth from separate remote locations, a new twist to the event added in the wake of the president being exposed to the coronavirus.

The debate’s “town hall” format will remain in place, the Commission on Presidential Debates said Thursday, with the moderator, Steve Scully, staying at the event’s original location, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami, Florida.

Read the rest of the story at Daily Variety

Top former Justice Department officials, including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Rod Rosenstein, helped drive a Trump administration policy that resulted in the separation of children from their parents, a draft inspector general report shows.

The “zero tolerance” policy ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents for crossing the border illegally, which is a misdemeanor at the first offense.

Sessions announced the policy in April 2018, saying that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with young children. It resulted in children being separated from their parents and generated a huge public outcry.

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Stephen Miller, a senior policy aide to President Donald Trump tested positive for coronavirus, he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Today, I tested positive for COVID-19 and am in quarantine,” said Miller, who has been one of the chief architects of Trump’s immigration policies. He added he has been working remotely for the last five days and has been self-isolating.

Miller, who has been regularly traveling with the president and one of his closest aides, is the latest aide in the Trump orbit to test positive for Covid-19. Numerous people tied to the White House or campaign have tested positive, including Trump and the first lady.

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President Donald Trump reversed course Tuesday night and urged Congress to approve a series of coronavirus relief measures that he would sign, including a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks for Americans.

Earlier in the day, he had halted talks between top Democrats and Republicans until “after I win” the election, which appeared to have killed the chances of a new package. Both moves by the president, who was released Monday from the hospital where he was being treated for Covid-19, were made on Twitter.

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Joe Biden said Monday that he wasn’t surprised that President Donald Trump contracted Covid-19 because the president hasn’t followed health experts’ guidelines to wear a mask and social distance.

“Quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised,” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee said during an NBC News town hall with host Lester Holt in Miami.

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President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday evening after being treated for Covid-19 for three days at Walter Reed Medical Center — and immediately took off his mask to pose for pictures before walking in.

The highly choreographed moment on the Truman Balcony came hours after Trump suggested online that the disease is not that serious a threat.

Trump walked out of the hospital’s main entrance shortly after 6:30 p.m. in a mask and a suit and tie and pumped his fist for the cameras before being driven to Marine One for the short trip back to the White House. He declined to answer questions from reporters.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris are expected to take the debate stage Wednesday night against an extraordinary backdrop that has raised the stakes of an event that for decades has been a routine, inconsequential fixture of presidential elections.

No vice president has debated while the president is known to be sick and possibly still in the hospital. And never have two vice presidential nominees debated at a time when Americans are giving far more than cursory thought to how each might lead in the top job.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News 

President Donald Trump’s medical team said Sunday that Trump’s condition was improving after multiple “episodes” over the weekend while also disclosing that Trump was placed on a steroid therapy typically used in more severe Covid-19 cases.

The update came as Trump sought to portray himself as unaffected by the deadly disease, posting photos of himself working from the hospital and taping multiple different video addresses in which he reassured the public he was doing well. On Sunday evening, he left the hospital grounds for a short motorcade ride to wave to supporters gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

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The House of Representatives passed a $2.2 trillion Covid-19 relief bill Thursday night as negotiations between the administration and Democrats have failed to yield a bipartisan deal and the time to pass new relief measures ahead of November’s election ticks away.

The measure passed 214-207. No Republicans supported it and 18 Democrats voted against it. Nearly all of the Democrats who voted against the bill are locked in close re-election races.

“Today’s package is another partisan exercise that will never become law,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., said in a statement about why she voted against it. “My focus remains on working with Democrats and Republicans to get relief to my district immediately, and partisan gamesmanship will not do it.”

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New York City reported its highest daily positivity rate since June on Tuesday, the same day elementary schools started welcoming students back in person and a day before restaurants began indoor dining.

The number — 3.25% — has been driven by rising cases in nine neighborhoods in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, officials said. As of Tuesday, they accounted for over 25.6% of new cases citywide over the past two weeks despite representing only 7.4% of the city’s overall population, according to the city’s health department. The 14-day average positivity rate in the nine ZIP codes ranged from 3.31% to 6.92% as of Tuesday.

Viewers from across the country let out their frustrations on social media while watching the first presidential debate as the face-off between President Trump and former Vice President Biden was marked by interruptions, name-calling and shouting from both candidates and moderator Chris Wallace.

Many Twitter users were critical of Wallace for his moderating skills and blamed him for not doing a good job keeping order during the 90 minutes.

House Democrats unveiled a scaled-back $2.2 trillion aid measure Monday in an attempt to boost long-stalled talks on COVID-19 relief, though there was no sign of progress in continuing negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The latest Democratic measure would revive a $600-per-week pandemic jobless benefit and send a second round of $1,200 direct payments to most individuals. It would scale back an aid package to state and local governments to a still-huge $436 billion, send a whopping $225 billion to colleges and universities, and deliver another round of subsidies to businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

According to a report by the New York Times, multiple White House staffers spent this summer pressuring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to relax its recommendations about restarting schools in the fall and succeeded in getting several key documents and communications edited, because President Donald Trump wanted schools reopened before the election.

The staffers reportedly involved include Dr. Deborah Birx and Mark Short, Vice President Mike Pence‘s chief of staff. A key source for the Times article was Olivia Troye, a former Pence staffer and lifelong Republican who resigned last month and, since then, has come out in support of Joe Biden and vocally criticized the White House in interviews this month.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

President Trump‘s former 2020 campaign manager and current campaign senior advisor, Brad Parscale, was taken into custody Sunday evening by Fort Lauderdale Police after allegedly threatening to harm himself at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ABC News has confirmed.

According to a public information officer with the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department, a 911 call was placed by Parscale’s wife who advised that “her husband was armed, had access to multiple firearms inside the residence and was threatening to harm himself. Officers determined the only occupant inside the home was the adult male,” referring to Parscale.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

President Donald Trump was loudly booed by members of the public on Thursday while visiting the casket of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has been lying in repose outside the Supreme Court.

Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, stood behind the court’s massive columns at the top of the court steps as people from the bottom of the steps loudly booed him and chanted, “Vote him out!”

A pickup truck hit a protester Thursday night in Hollywood, California, and moments later a second vehicle hit a car participating in the same protest as it tried to leave the area, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The “largely peaceful” group of protesters began marching around 7 p.m. local time with only isolated reports of vandalism, but shortly after 9 p.m., things turned violent when a blue pickup truck traveling on Sunset Boulevard maneuvered through the crowd and became involved in an altercation, according to authorities. The driver of the truck attempted to get away from the situation, but police said he struck a protester standing in the street.

Dr. Anthony Fauci slapped down Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a former ophthalmologist with dubious qualifications, for “repeatedly” misrepresenting coronavirus data to support politically motivated attacks during a Senate hearing Wednesday. When Paul asked why Fauci is a “big fan” of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo despite the state having one of the world’s worst death rates, Fauci shot back, “No, you misconstrued that senator and you’ve done that repeatedly in the past.” He said New York got hit badly and “made some mistakes” but they now have a 1 percent test positivity rate by following CDC guidelines on face masks, social distancing, outdoor activity and washing hands. “Or they’ve developed enough community immunity,” Paul quipped.

Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast

Three days of public mourning for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of equality and pioneer of women’s rights, began Wednesday when her casket arrived at the Supreme Court for a dramatic procession up the steps that were lined by more than a hundred of her former law clerks.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, announced Tuesday that he will support a vote on his Supreme Court nominee this year — which could happen before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Cindy McCain on Tuesday endorsed Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president, a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump by the widow of the GOP’s 2008 nominee.

Trump has had a fraught relationship with members of John McCain’s family since he disparaged the Arizona senator during his 2016 campaign. But the McCains have stopped short of endorsing Trump’s rivals until now.

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Joe Biden would not say whether he opposes the mounting calls in his party to add more members to the U.S. Supreme Court in retaliation for Republicans filling a vacancy right before the presidential election.

Biden told a local Wisconsin TV station Monday that he wants to keep the focus on President Donald Trump and not get distracted by the issue of so-called court-packing, an idea the Democratic presidential nominee has opposed for years.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Friday kicked off what is sure to be the most consequential Supreme Court confirmation fight in decades — and puts a spotlight on the handful of senators whose votes will determine the future of the court.

The universe of potential swing votes in the Senate is surprisingly small considering how high the stakes are. The following senators will be under enormous pressure — from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Donald Trump — to either fall in line, or break from their party in the most dramatic fashion.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

For decades, Republicans have galvanized voters around reshaping the Supreme Court, and they have benefited from it at the ballot box. But in a stark reversal, polls indicate that Democrats have the edge this year.

National and battleground state surveys taken before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday showed that voters trust Joe Biden more than President Donald Trump to pick a Supreme Court nominee and that Democrats rate the court as more important to their votes than Republicans do.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday night that he intends to allow for a floor vote in the Senate to confirm a new nominee made by President Donald Trump to replace the Supreme Court vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year,” he said.

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In an ad released on Thursday, a former senior adviser on the White House coronavirus task force lambasted President Donald Trump as a stonewalling, capricious leader with more concern for his reelection than the pandemic, and said she would be voting for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in November.

Olivia Troye, who worked as an adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security to Vice President Mike Pence before leaving the administration in August, appeared in an ad in which she shared damning anecdotes that portrayed Trump as a debilitating actor in the administration’s efforts to contain the virus. She said Trump was dismissive toward the task force’s efforts to prepare for the outbreak from early in the year, before the virus had made heavy inroads into the U.S.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

The White House scrapped an effort to send hundreds of millions of cloth masks to every U.S. household in April, choosing instead to distribute the masks to nonprofit organizations and state and federal agencies, according to an internal email from a senior Trump administration official obtained by NBC News.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told NBC News that 600 million masks have been distributed around the country to nonprofits and state and federal agencies through the means the Trump administration ultimately chose. The mask distribution program was called Project America Strong.

Public health experts said sending masks directly to Americans’ homes in the early days of the global pandemic would have sent a stronger message encouraging Americans to wear masks.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News