Biden virtual town hall marks new normal for campaigning
CHICAGO — Joe Biden held a town hall in Illinois — or at least tried to — from 800 miles away in Delaware. Bernie Sanders is staging daily news conferences from Vermont, instead of his usual rallies around the country with thousands of supporters.
The global coronavirus pandemic has sent the 2020 presidential campaign into a virtual phase.
Big rallies and handshakes are out. Virtual phone banks and town halls are the new normal. Political parties and groups are canceling in-person gatherings.
States holding primaries in coming weeks have urged more voters to cast ballots by mail and extended hours for early voting centers in an effort to avoid election day crowds. On Friday, Louisiana’s governor said he planned to postpone his state’s April 4 primary to June.
The Biden campaign scrapped plans for a Chicago rally ahead of Illinois’ Tuesday primary due to warnings from public and health officials against large gatherings. Instead, the Democratic front-runner was supposed to take questions Friday in a virtual town hall via Facebook live.
Stocks roar back on hopes for gov’t
virus plan
NEW YORK — Wall Street roared back from its worst day in 30 years Friday with a broad rally that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly 2,000 points higher — its biggest point gain ever — after President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency.
Fueled by a late-day surge while Trump was speaking, the Dow saw its largest percentage gain since 2008. The rally recouped many of the losses from a day earlier, when the index experienced its worst slide since the Black Monday crash of 1987 and European indexes had one of the worst drops on record. The major indexes each closed with gains of more than 9%.
The session capped a dizzying week on Wall Street, with wild swings driven largely by uncertainty over how much damage the coronavirus would cause to the global economy. By Thursday, the Dow had suffered two drops of more than 2,000 points and the longest-ever bull market had ended.
Then on Friday stocks rallied, shooting sharply upward in the last half-hour of trading as investors appeared to gain confidence that the Trump administration has a plan to combat the outbreak from both a health care and economic perspective.
Despite Friday’s pickup, the market still ended the week with its second-worst weekly loss in the past 10 years. All the major indexes are in what traders call a bear market.
From wire sources
Lawyer: Man killed by officer was asleep when police fired
SILVER SPRING, Md. — A Maryland man who was shot and killed by a police officer was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, an attorney for the 21-year-old man’s family said Friday. The man’s girlfriend was also wounded.
The Montgomery County Police Department said in a news release Friday that Duncan Socrates Lemp “confronted” police and was shot by one of the officers early Thursday. Rene Sandler, an attorney for Lemp’s relatives, said an eyewitness gave a “completely contrary” account of the shooting. She said police could have “absolutely no justification” for shooting Lemp based on what she has heard about the circumstances.
“The facts as I understand them from eyewitnesses are incredibly concerning,” she told The Associated Press.
The warrant that police obtained to search the Potomac home Lemp shared with his parents and 19-year-old brother doesn’t mention any “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, Lemp’s relatives said in a statement released Friday by their lawyers. Nobody in the house that morning had a criminal record, the statement adds.
“Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility onto Duncan or his family, who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home, is not supported by the facts,” the statement says.
