In Brief: October 11, 2020

Biden hits Trump on economy in critical Pennsylvania county

ERIE, Pa. — With the backdrop of a union facility in a key battleground county of Pennsylvania, Joe Biden on Saturday blistered President Donald Trump as only pretending to care about the working-class voters who helped flip the Rust Belt to the Republican column four years ago.

“Anyone who actually does an honest day’s work sees him and his promises for what they are,” Biden told a masked, socially distanced crowd at a training facility for plumbers and other tradespeople.

The Democratic challenger has hammered Trump on the economy in recent weeks, from sweeping indictments of how the president has downplayed the novel coronavirus and its economic fallout to a withering personal contrast between Biden’s middle-class upbringing with that of the multimillionaire’s son and self-proclaimed billionaire.

Nowhere could Biden’s arguments prove more decisive than in Erie County. Long a Democratic bastion, it was among the most populous counties in the nation to flip from the Democratic column to Republicans in 2016.

Delta adds insult to injury in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana

LAKE CHARLES, La. — The day after Hurricane Delta blew through besieged southern Louisiana, residents started the routine again: dodging overturned cars, trudging through knee-deep water to flooded homes with ruined floors and no power, and pledging to rebuild after the storm.

Delta made landfall Friday evening near the coastal Louisiana town of Creole with top winds of 100 mph (155 kph). It then moved over Lake Charles, a city where Hurricane Laura damaged nearly every home and building in late August. No deaths had been reported as of Saturday afternoon, but officials said people were not out of danger.

While Delta was a weaker storm than Category 4 Laura, it brought significantly more flooding, Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said. He estimated that hundreds of already battered homes across the city took on water. The recovery from the double impact will be long, the mayor said.

“Add Laura and Delta together and it’s just absolutely unprecedented and catastrophic,” Hunter said. “We are very concerned that with everything going in the country right now that this incident may not be on the radar nationally like it should be.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said no fatalities had been reported as of Saturday, but a hurricane’s wake can be treacherous. Only seven of the 32 deaths in Louisiana and Texas attributed to Laura came the day that hurricane struck. A leading cause of the others was carbon monoxide poisoning from generators used in buildings without electricity.

Specter of election chaos raises questions on role of military

WASHINGTON — It’s a question Americans are unaccustomed to considering in a presidential election campaign: Could voting, vote-counting or the post-vote reaction become so chaotic that the U.S. military would intervene?

The answer is yes, but only in an extreme case. There is normally no need for the military to play any role in an election. The Constitution keeps the military in a narrow lane — defending the United States from external enemies. Civil order is left largely to civilian police. But there is an obscure law, the Insurrection Act, that theoretically could thrust the active-duty military into a police-like role. And governors have the ability to use the National Guard in state emergencies if needed.

The potential use of troops, either active duty or National Guard, at the polls or in post-election unrest has been discussed by governors and military leaders. The possibilities arise as President Donald Trump asserts without evidence that mail-in balloting will create election fraud and suggests that he might not accept an election loss. Stationing troops at polling places on Election Day — even if just to protect citizens as they vote — raises worries about voter intimidation.

Lesson not learned: Europe unprepared as second wave of COVID-19 hits

ROME — Europe’s second wave of coronavirus infections has struck well before flu season even started, with intensive care wards filling up again and bars shutting down. Making matters worse, authorities say, is a widespread case of “COVID-fatigue.”

Record high daily infections in several eastern European countries and sharp rebounds in the hard-hit west have made clear that Europe never really crushed the COVID-19 curve as hoped, after springtime lockdowns.

Spain this week declared a state of emergency for Madrid amid increasing tensions between local and national authorities over virus containment measures. Germany offered up soldiers to help with contact tracing in newly flaring hotspots. Italy mandated masks outdoors and warned that for the first time since the country became the European epicenter of the pandemic, the health system was facing “significant critical issues” as hospitals fill up.

From wire sources

The Czech Republic’s “Farewell Covid” party in June, when thousands of Prague residents dined outdoors at a 500-meter (yard) long table across the Charles Bridge to celebrate their victory over the virus, seems painfully naive now that the country has the highest per-capita infection rate on the continent, at 398 per 100,000 residents.

“I have to say clearly that the situation is not good,” the Czech interior minister, Jan Hamacek, acknowledged this week.

No ‘dogma’: Democrats walk tightrope on Barrett’s faith

WASHINGTON — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Three years later, Barrett is back before senators as President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The nomination poses a politically risky test for lawmakers as they try to probe Barrett’s views on issues of abortion, health care access and gay marriage without running afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition against a religious test for public officials.

“Her religion is immaterial,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, but it’s not out of bounds to question “the views themselves that she has articulated.”

Brazil reaches 150,000 deaths from COVID-19 milestone

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s count of COVID-19 deaths surpassed 150,000 on Saturday night, despite signs the pandemic is slowly retreating in Latin America’s largest nation.

The Brazilian Health Ministry reported that the death toll now stands at 150,198. The figure is the world’s second highest behind the United States, according to the tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

The milestone has rekindled the pain of Naiane Moura, a sales consultant, who lost her father Elivaldo to COVID-19 in April. The 58-year-old postman had no prior illness and battled COVID-19 for seven days in a public hospital in Manaus, Brazil’s largest city in the Amazon.

“When I see 150,000, I see my father alongside many other faceless bodies,” Moura said by phone. “I didn’t imagine that we would reach that number. I don’t believe that we will ever be able to totally overcome this.”

Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro played down the severity of the virus while deaths mounted rapidly in Brazil. The 65-year-old president flouted social distancing at lively demonstrations and encouraged crowds during outings from the presidential residence.

White House virus aid offer is panned by Pelosi, Senate GOP

WASHINGTON — A new White House coronavirus aid offer got bad reviews from both ends of the political spectrum on Saturday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected the most generous Trump administration plan to date as “one step forward, two steps back.” The Republicans who control the Senate dismissed it as too expensive and a political loser for conservatives.

Pelosi said she is still hopeful that progress can be made toward a deal but it’s as clear as ever that GOP conservatives don’t want a deal on her terms.

The White House had boosted its offer before Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Pelosi spoke on Friday afternoon. President Donald Trump is eager for an agreement before Election Day, even as his most powerful GOP ally in the Senate said Congress is unlikely to deliver relief by then.

“Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” Trump said Friday on Twitter.

Men accused in plot on Michigan governor attended protests

LANSING, Mich. — Among the armed protesters who rallied at the Michigan Capitol against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown this past spring were some of the men now accused in stunning plots to kidnap her, storm the Capitol and start a “civil war.”

The revelation has sparked scrutiny of rallies that were organized by conservative groups opposed to the Democratic governor’s orders and egged on by President Donald Trump. It has also prompted renewed calls from Democrats for a gun ban in the building — an effort that so far has failed even after they reported feeling threatened by rifle-carrying protesters who entered the Statehouse.

At least one man accused of aiding in the surveillance of Whitmer’s home as part of the alleged scheme to kidnap her stood in the Senate gallery on April 30 as majority Republicans refused to extend an emergency declaration that was the underpinning of Whitmer’s stay-at-home and other restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. “Several” of the 13 men arrested in the plots against the state government were seen at Capitol protests this year, the state attorney general’s office said.

A man whom the FBI identified in court papers as a leader in the alleged plot, Adam Fox, attended an “American Patriot” pro-gun rights rally at the Capitol on June 18 to recruit members of anti-government paramilitary groups to attack the Statehouse, according to a federal complaint that cites a recording from a confidential informant.

“I’m not surprised — and anyone who is just hasn’t been paying attention,” Whitmer told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. There have been Republican lawmakers and at least one sheriff at the protests, she said, “who fraternize with these domestic terror groups, who egg them on, who encourage them, who use language that incites them. They too are complicit.”