My Daily Grind News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy suffered its sharpest contraction in at least 73 years in the second quarter because of the disruptions from the coronavirus, the government confirmed on Wednesday. Gross domestic product plunged at a 31.4% annualized rate last quarter, the deepest drop in output since the government started keeping records in 1947, the Commerce Department said in its third estimate of GDP. Output was previously reported to have contracted at a 31.7% pace in the second quarter. Source: U.S. economy contracts at 31.4% annualized rate in second quarter | Reuters The article was originally published here!

President Trump offered Amy Coney Barrett the Supreme Court nomination the same day he met with the judge on Sept. 21, three days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, according to her Senate questionnaire. Barrett submitted her 69-page nominee questionnaire — which reveals her most monumental cases, financial information, work history, public writings and details of her selection process — Tuesday evening. According to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post, Barrett tells senators that she was first contacted for the vacancy on Sept. 19, the day after Ginsburg’s death, by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone. She was invited to Washington for a meeting with Trump that Monday and was offered the nomination that same day, according to the questionnaire. Source: Trump’s Supreme Court choice meets with GOP senators as Republicans fast track nomination – The Washington Post The article was originally published here!

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump who was replaced by the President less than four months before the 2020 election, was armed with a gun and threatening to harm himself at his Fort Lauderdale home on Sunday afternoon, according to police and campaign officials. Police responded to a home in the upscale Seven Isles neighborhood around 4 p.m. in reference to a man barricaded inside a house. When officers arrived on the scene, they made contact with the woman, the man’s wife, who had called 911. She told police that her husband was armed, had access to multiple firearms inside the house, and was threatening to kill himself. Parscale’s wife Candice told police that her husband made suicidal comments in recent days and had a physical altercation with her, according to an incident report released Monday. A responding officer noticed several bruises on both of her arms that she said came from that altercation. Source: Ex-Trump campaign mana

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government said on Thursday that it was tightening its second national lockdown after coronavirus infection rates soared this week to about 7,000 new cases a day, among the highest in the world. The new measures, which go into effect on Friday, will remain in place at least until the end of the Jewish High Holy Days in mid-October. Most businesses and workplaces will have to close, and all gatherings, including protests and communal prayers, will be restricted to groups of up to 20 people outdoors within about 1,100 yards of home. “Over the past two days, we have heard from the experts that if we do not take tough and immediate measures, we will reach the edge of the abyss,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet, which met through the night to decide on lockdown restrictions. Source: With Coronavirus on the Rampage, Israel Tightens Holiday Lockdown – The New York Times The article was originally published here!

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) announced Tuesday that he believes President Trump should get to choose a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg regardless of whether he wins in November. The move clears the way for a vote this year by the GOP-led Senate on a nominee that Trump is expected to name Saturday. Source: Election 2020 live updates: Romney backs voting this year on Trump nominee to replace Ginsburg – The Washington Post The article was originally published here!

For months, scientists and public health experts have warned of mounting evidence that the novel coronavirus is airborne, transmitted through tiny droplets called aerosols that linger in the air much longer than the larger globs that come from coughing or sneezing. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees. The CDC recently changed its official guidance to note that aerosols are “thought to be the main way the virus spreads” and to warn that badly ventilated indoor spaces are particularly dangerous.“ There is growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air and be breathed in by others, and travel distances beyond 6 feet (for example, during choir practice, in restaurants, or in fitness classes),” the agency stated. “In general, indoor environments without good ventilation increase this risk.” Source: CDC says the coronavirus is airborne and carried on aerosols – The Washington Post The article was originally published here!

The White House and the pharmaceutical industry were nearing a major deal to lower drug prices. Then the administration demanded that $100 cash cards be sent to millions of seniors before the election — and the industry balked. Source: A Deal on Drug Prices Undone by White House Insistence on ‘Trump Cards’ – The New York Times The article was originally published here!

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas. The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington surrounded by family. She was 87. “Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tireless and resolute champion of justice.” Source: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies At 87 : NPR The article was originally published here!

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call. The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who described Mr. Barr’s comments on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions. Late Wednesday, a department spokesman said that Mr. Barr did not direct the civil rights divisio

A former model has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament more than two decades ago, in an alleged incident that left her feeling “sick” and “violated”. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997. Dorris, who was 24 at the time, accuses Trump of forcing his tongue down her throat, assaulting her all over her body and holding her in a grip she was unable to escape from. Source: Donald Trump accused of sexual assault by former model Amy Dorris | US news | The Guardian The article was originally published here!

The health department’s top communications official is taking a medical leave, three days after urging President Trump’s supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection and accusing government scientists of “sedition,” the agency announced Wednesday. Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, leveled the accusations and promoted other conspiracy theories in a Facebook Live event on Sunday.HHS said in a statement released early afternoon that Caputo would be on leave for the next 60 days to “focus on his health and the well-being of his family.” That means he will be gone until after the Nov. 3 election. The agency also said that Paul Alexander, a top aide to Caputo, would be leaving the agency permanently. Alexander came under scrutiny in recent weeks for his efforts to exert control over the messages coming from scientists and top health officials, including the content of weekly science reports from the Centers for Disease

One tweet claimed coronavirus numbers were intentionally inflated, adding, “It’s hard to know what to believe.” Another warned, “Don’t trust Dr. Fauci.” A Facebook comment argued that mail-in ballots “will lead to fraud for this election,” while an Instagram comment amplified the erroneous claim that 28 million ballots went missing in the past four elections. The messages have been emanating in recent months from the accounts of young people in Arizona seemingly expressing their own views — standing up for President Trump in a battleground state and echoing talking points from his reelection campaign. Far from representing a genuine social media groundswell, however, the posts are the product of a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia during the 2016 campaign. Source: Turning Point Action enlists teenagers in ‘troll farm’ spreading coordinated pro-Trump

The health department’s top spokesperson Michael Caputo called an emergency staff meeting on Tuesday to apologize for drawing negative attention to the Trump administration’s health care strategy and signaled that he might be soon departing his role, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting. The departure of Caputo, who has closely controlled the health agencies’ dissemination of information about coronavirus, would be a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to promote a possible vaccine, if one is approved in the fall. Source: Caputo apologizes to HHS staff, signals desire for medical leave – POLITICO The article was originally published here!

President Trump on Tuesday confirmed that he wanted to order an assassination against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but former Secretary of Defense James Mattis “was against it.” What he’s saying: “I would have rather taken him out. I had him all set. Mattis didn’t want to do it,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” His comments confirm a detail reported in journalist Bob Woodward’s 2018 book “Fear.” “No, I don’t regret that. I could have lived either way with that. I considered him, certainly not a good person. But I had a shot to take him out if I wanted and Mattis was against it. Mattis was against most of that stuff. He’d keep you in military but he didn’t know how to win.” Reality check: Trump’s comments Tuesday contradicted his own statement to reporters in 2018, when Trump said an operation to kill Assad “was never even contemplated.” Context: Trump wanted the assassination after it was believed the Syrian government used chemical weapons in an attack in Douma, Syria, acc

Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, confirmed that the planes are Russian MiG-29s, and also said the soldier on the far right in the ad carries an AK-74 assault rifle. The Trump Make America Great Again Committee is run by both the Republican National Committee and the campaign. Most of the low-dollar and digital donations raised by the committee goes to the campaign. The image in the ad is a stock photo available on Shutterstock.com with the title “Military silhouettes of soldiers and airforce against the backdrop of sunset sky.” The creator of the image, named “BPTU,” says they are based in Andorra, but did not respond to a Facebook message. Source: Trump ad asks people to support the troops. But it uses a picture of Russian jets. – POLITICO The article was originally published here!

Several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center documenting “jarring medical neglect” within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women. The nurse, Dawn Wooten, was employed at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company. The complaint was filed with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by advocacy groups Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network. Source: Whistleblower: There Were Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Facility | Law & Crime The article was originally published here!

Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece. Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.