The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the fall of the Republic.
163,665 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S.
80 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION DAY
The Washington Post
Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote
Trump on Thursday said he opposes both election aid for states and an emergency bailout for the U.S. Postal Service because he wants to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail, putting at risk the nation’s ability to administer the Nov. 3 elections.
Trump has been attacking mail balloting and the integrity of the vote for months, but his latest broadside makes explicit his intent to stand in the way of urgently needed money to help state and local officials administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic. With nearly 180 million Americans eligible to vote by mail, the president’s actions could usher in widespread delays, long lines and voter disenfranchisement this fall, voting rights advocates said.
Trump said his purpose is to prevent Democrats from expanding mail-balloting, which he has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, would invite widespread fraud. The president has also previously admitted that he believes mail voting would allow more Democrats to cast ballots and hurt Republican candidates, including himself.
With early momentum, Harris to focus on connecting with minorities, activists, women in swing states
Within the first 24 hours after Sen. Kamala D. Harris was named Joe Biden’s running mate, top Democrats were reaching out to syndicated Black radio hosts, eager to line up appearances for Harris on their popular shows.
In roughly the same period, Biden’s campaign cited Harris in a broad fundraising appeal, raising an impressive $34 million, largely from a new set of donors excited by Harris’s role, and sold $1.2 million worth of Biden-Harris lawn signs.
And in coming weeks, the Biden campaign plans to deploy the U.S. senator from California to swing states — often virtually, but at times in person — to connect with Black voters, young activists and suburban women, groups whose support for Biden is solid but far from guaranteed. Joint television interviews are in the works over the next few weeks.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The United States Postal Service warned Pennsylvania that mail ballots may not be delivered on time to be counted because the state’s deadlines are too tight for its “delivery standards,” casting fresh doubt on Pennsylvania’s ability to conduct much of the 2020 election by mail.
The warning came in a July 29 letter from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president for the Postal Service, to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, whose department oversees elections. That letter was made public for the first time late Thursday in a filing the Pennsylvania Department of State submitted to the state Supreme Court, in which it asked the court to order that mail ballots be counted as long as they are received up to three days after the Nov. 3 election.
If the court agrees, it will increase the likelihood that the results of the presidential race between … Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden won’t be known for days after the election.
Black Democrats in Pa. are ‘beaming with pride’ after Biden picks Kamala Harris for vice president
Joe Biden on Tuesday named Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first woman of color on a major presidential ticket — and exciting many Democrats across Pennsylvania, who called the California senator a historic nominee who could inspire broad swaths of voters.
But some who had hoped for a more liberal candidate to balance Biden’s relative centrism offered muted comments, focusing more on defeating President Donald Trump than on any enthusiasm for Harris.
Harris, whose father is from Jamaica and mother is from India, could be the first woman to serve as vice president. Her selection came after many Democrats urged Biden to pick a Black woman, arguing that the party needs a ticket that reflects its diversity and that of the country. Their imperative only grew in recent months as protests against systemic racism swept the country, drawing in people of all races.
Motherboard
The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election
The United States Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given, Motherboard has learned through interviews with postal workers and union officials. In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.
Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.
Even to local union officials, USPS has not announced any policy, explained why they are doing this, what will happen to the machines and the workers who use them. Nor has management provided a rationale for dismantling and removing the machines from the facility rather than merely not operating them when they’re not needed.
The Oregonian
USPS removes mailboxes in Portland and Eugene, cites ‘declining mail volume’
Residents of Portland and Eugene were alarmed this week to see some U.S. Postal Service mailboxes removed from neighborhood streets and hauled away in flatbed trucks.
The sight of mailboxes being carted off caused concern in light of recent comments by … Donald Trump about cutting Postal Service funding. Trump has also criticized voting by mail.
But a Postal Service spokesperson said declining mail volume means the Postal Service is removing “duplicate” boxes from areas that have multiple collection boxes. The USPS confirmed that four mailboxes were removed in Portland this week.
Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon coast seafloor
Lynnae Ruttledge was worried when she heard Facebook planned to build a landing spot for an undersea fiber-optic cable near her Oregon Coast home.
Then, on April 28, the drilling crew hit an unexpected area of hard rock. The drill bit became lodged and the drill pipe snapped 50 feet below the seafloor. The crew was able to recover some of the equipment, but they left the rest where it lay.
Today, about 1,100 feet of pipe, a drill tip, various other tools and 6,500 gallons of drilling fluid sit under the seafloor just off the central Oregon coast. Facebook has no plans to retrieve the equipment.
Edge Cable Holdings, a Facebook subsidiary responsible for the project, notified the county of the accident on May 5, but it did not explicitly mention the abandoned equipment. That information didn’t emerge until a meeting with state officials June 17, nearly two months after the malfunction, said Ali Hansen, a Department of State Lands spokeswoman.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
White House warns of ‘widespread and expanding’ COVID-19 spread in Georgia
Trump’s coronavirus task force warns that Georgia continues to see “widespread and expanding community viral spread” and that the state’s current policies aren’t enough to curtail COVID-19.
The task force “strongly recommends” Georgia adopt a statewide mandate that citizens wear masks, joining a chorus of public health officials, Democrats and others who have warned that Gov. Brian Kemp’s refusal to order face coverings has plunged the state into deeper crisis and will prolong recovery.
“Current mitigation efforts are not having a sufficient impact,” the report said. Businesses, such as nightclubs, bars and gyms, currently open with some restrictions in Georgia, should be closed in the highest risk counties, the report said.
Kemp drops lawsuit against Atlanta over mask mandate, coronavirus restrictions
Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday withdrew his lawsuit challenging the city of Atlanta’s mask mandate and coronavirus restrictions, ending a legal feud between the Republican governor and the Democratic leader of the state’s capital city over how to contain the pandemic.
Kemp said he will instead sign an executive order Saturday that is expected to specify that local governments can’t order private businesses to require masks. It is also likely to remove a provision that explicitly outlawed cities and counties from mandating face coverings, administration officials say.
“Unfortunately, the mayor has made it clear that she will not agree to a settlement that safeguards the rights of private property owners in Georgia,” said Kemp, citing a “stalemate” in negotiations.
Al-Jazeera
Global coronavirus deaths top 750,000
The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 750,000 people worldwide since it first emerged in China in December, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.
The global caseload has reached 20,666,156 while more than 12.8 million people have recovered.
Israel, UAE announce normalisation of relations with US help
Israel and the United Arab Emirates have reached an agreement - brokered by the United States - to work towards a "full normalisation of relations", a deal the Palestinians called a "treacherous stab in the back".
Under the agreement announced by the … Donald Trump on Thursday, Israel said it has agreed to "delay" the annexation of Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank, but the plan "remains on table".
The UAE is the first Gulf Arab state and the third Arab nation - after Egypt and Jordan - to announce active ties with Israel.
The Atlantic
The Good Son: How Jared Kushner has become his father-in-law’s most dangerous enabler.
Jared Kushner, the second-most-powerful man in the White House, is quite a bit smarter than the most powerful man, his father-in-law, the president. Donald Trump possesses a genius for the jugular, but he evinces few other signs of intelligence. He certainly displays no capacity, or predisposition, to learn. His son-in-law, by contrast, appears to have sufficient analytic acumen to comprehend that the country has been brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic. Kushner might not be the brightest public servant in American history—he is a Harvard graduate who is also a leading symbol of college-admissions corruption, and a businessman with a substantial record of failure—but he has shown flashes of effectiveness in his time at the White House. Because he projects a facsimile of capability and because he shows, at irregular intervals, a seemingly genuine interest in governing, he is also an exasperating mystery.
Like many Americans, I’ve been watching Kushner for four years now, and I’ve asked myself this question: Why does he enable his father-in-law’s worst impulses? The answer, I believe, is embedded in the core of his biography. I’ve spent months studying Kushner’s personal history. This story is built on more than two dozen interviews, with current and former White House officials who have worked intimately with Kushner, as well as outside advisers whose wisdom he has sought, business associates, and old family friends. (Kushner himself declined to comment.)
all it the Jerusalem pilgrimage of summer 2020. Every Saturday night, thousands of young people from around Israel gather outside the prime minister’s residence, on Balfour Street, beating drums, blowing whistles, and holding signs quoting biblical injunctions against bribery and demanding the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces trial on three counts of corruption. Netanyahu, having presided over a plunging economy and a botched response to a second wave of COVID-19, finds his popularity slipping—although, according to polls, his Likud party would remain the largest after a new election. Netanyahu has dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchists” and “leftists”—read: elite Ashkenazis—while his son Yair, who tweeted his heartfelt wish that the protesters would die of the coronavirus, has mocked them as “aliens,” extraterrestrials. His father “finds them amusing,” Yair told an interviewer.
On a recent Saturday night, some demonstrators wore sparkling antennae and green masks, and carried posters with drawings of ET. proud alien, one read. Another proclaimed: i’m here from the planet jupiter. The planet’s Hebrew name, Tsedek, means “justice.” The posters were mostly hand-drawn, expressions of the intensely personal way Israelis relate to their country. Strangers gave one another a thumbs-up for a particularly clever slogan. There were dozens of Israeli flags.
Los Angeles Times
How a rush to reopen drove Los Angeles County into a health crisis
Los Angeles County’s pandemic response in the early weeks was considered a national model. The county was among the first to enact a shutdown, push residents to wear masks and provide universal testing.
But success is often the enemy of public health. When the infection curve flattened in early May, elected officials believed it was safe to rapidly reopen the economy. Then it all went wrong.
Los Angeles Times reporters reviewed months of public statements and documents from L.A. officials to understand the factors that set the stage for a resurgence of the coronavirus in June that ultimately killed more than 1,600 people.
‘Chaos and confusion’: Post Office cuts fuel worries over mail voting
The United States Postal Service has possibly never been more important, or more embattled. […]
Election officials expect to send a record number of mail ballots to voters this fall, as states seek to avoid the spread of the deadly coronavirus at in-person polling places. But the more prominent role of the postal service, formed by the Second Continental Congress at the start of the Revolutionary War, comes as it weathers more serious challenges than snow, rain, heat or gloom of night.
The pandemic has led to staff shortages and a steep decline in letter mail, the most profitable part of the service, worsening its precarious financial situation. And now a close Trump ally and GOP donor put in charge of the agency has introduced unpopular policies that have delayed mail and raised concerns that voters won’t get their ballots on time.
Members of Congress in both parties have called on the organization to reverse the changes, and Democrats have asked for an investigation into the motives and fallout of the policies. The moves have been portrayed as cost cutting at a struggling institution, but critics say the president and his allies are attempting to undermine faith in the postal service — which 91% of Americans view favorably — to suppress the November vote and, ultimately, to move one step closer to privatizing the organization.
CNBC
Dr. Fauci on U.S. coronavirus outbreak: ‘I’m not pleased with how things are going’
White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he is not pleased with the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.
U.S. public health officials are beginning to see a “disturbing” uptick in the rate of coronavirus tests that come back positive in some regions of the nation, Fauci said during a National Geographic panel moderated by ABC News Correspondent Deborah Roberts, which aired on Thursday. “Bottom line is, I’m not pleased with how things are going.”
“We certainly are not where I hope we would be, we are in the middle of very serious historic pandemic,” he added.
Senate adjourns through Labor Day without reaching a stimulus deal. Here’s where things stand now
The Senate is officially adjourned through Labor Day despite not coming to an agreement on its next coronavirus stimulus package.
Congress and the White House have spent the past few weeks debating what to include in the package, but have been unable to come to an agreement. One of the biggest sticking points: Jobless benefits. Democrats want a continuation of the enhanced unemployment payment of $600 per week, while Republicans say that amount is too high. Democrats are also pushing for more than $900 billion for state and municipal aid, and $60 billion in food assistance, far higher than what Republicans have proposed. […]
The federal eviction moratorium expired at the end of July… Trump’s executive order aimed at eviction does not actually extend the moratorium… As many as 40 million Americans could face eviction, according to Emily Benfer, an expert on evictions and health justice lawyer.
Bloomberg
Covid-19 Shaping Up to Be Battle for Years Even With Vaccine
The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be a challenge for years to come even with a vaccine, according to pharmaceutical and public-health experts.
While a vaccine will provide some measure of protection to societies around the globe, the virus is likely to flare up from time to time and be constantly battled, much like the flu and other pathogens.
“We know this virus is not going away any time soon. It’s established itself and is going to keep on transmitting wherever it’s able to do so,” Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist for the World Health Organization, at the “How Covid-19 Is Reshaping the Global Healthcare Ecosystem” event hosted by Bloomberg Prognosis. “We know we have to live with this.”
Trump-Appointed Judge Demands Evidence of Mail-in Voting Fraud
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump gave the president’s campaign one day to turn over evidence to support its claims of widespread mail-in voting fraud or admit that it doesn’t exist.
The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and local election boards on June 29 over their plan for mail-in balloting for the November 3 elections. Trump’s team claimed the plan “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”
U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan in Pittsburgh on Thursday asked the campaign to put forward previous examples of such fraud. “Plaintiffs shall produce such evidence in their possession, and if they have none, state as much,” said Ranjan, who took his seat on the bench in August 2019. He gave the campaign until Friday.
AP News
Mail-in ballots sent to Trump, First Lady in Florida
Donald Trump has requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s Tuesday primary election, despite weeks of criticizing the practice.
Ballots were mailed on Wednesday to both the president and First lady Melania Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort, which Trump lists as his legal address, according to online Palm Beach County elections records. Both previously voted by mail for the presidential preference primary in March, according to records.
Following multiple claims that mail-in voting was unsafe and vulnerable to fraud, Trump changed his mind about the practice last week, at least in Florida.
Trump’s EPA dumps methane emissions rule for oil, gas fields
Andrew Wheeler, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, signed the rollback of the 2016 methane emissions rule in Pittsburgh as the agency touted the Trump administration’s efforts to “strengthen and promote American energy.”
The EPA first proposed the rollback last year, accusing the Obama administration of enacting a legally flawed rule, and agency officials said it would save companies tens of millions of dollars a year in compliance requirements without changing the trajectory of methane emissions. […]
“It’s not only negligent, it’s unlawful,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We won’t sit silently while the EPA allows this super pollutant to rapidly warm our atmosphere.”
The Guardian
Trump exiting Paris accord will harm US economy
Withdrawing from the Paris agreement does not make economic sense for the US, a group of economists has argued, as the cost of clean energy has fallen since the agreement was signed in 2015, while the risks of climate catastrophe have increased.
Economists from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics examined the economic case for the US withdrawal, which President Donald Trump signalled in June 2017, and which will take effect on 4 November, the day after this year’s presidential election.
They found that climate breakdown would cause growing losses to US infrastructure and property, and impede the rate of economic growth this century, and that an increasing proportion of the carbon emissions causing global heating would come from countries outside the US. That gives the US a vested interest in whether the Paris agreement succeeds or fails, regardless of whether the US fulfils its own voluntary obligations under the accord.
Brazil experiences worst start to Amazon fire season for 10 years
The Amazon has seen the worst start to the fire season in a decade, with 10,136 fires spotted in the first 10 days of August, a 17% rise on last year.
Analysis of Brazilian government figures by Greenpeace showed fires increasing by 81% in federal reserves compared with the same period last year. Coming a year after soaring Amazon fires caused an international crisis, the new figures raised fears this year’s fire season could be even worse than last year’s.
“This is the direct result of this government’s lack of an environment policy,” said Romulo Batista, senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace Brasil. “We had more fires than last year.”
Deutsche Welle
Belarus to release all detained protesters: Interior Ministry
Belarus has begun releasing hundreds of detained demonstrators who took to the streets following the disputed presidential election result, with the Interior Ministry vowing to release all the protesters by Friday morning.
"We will release everyone by 6:00 am," Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Barsukov told reporters in Minsk early on Friday.
On Thursday evening, the Interior Ministry issued an apology to bystanders who were injured during the crackdown — a move that comes after intense pressure from the European Union.
UN human rights experts demand probe into Beirut explosion
UN human rights experts on Thursday demanded a prompt and independent probe into the deadly twin blasts that rocked the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Some 38 experts raised the demand, citing concerns over irresponsibility and impunity in Lebanon.
"We support calls for a prompt, impartial, credible and independent investigation based on human rights principles, to examine all claims, concerns and needs in relation to the explosion as well as the underlying human rights failures," the group said in a joint statement.
The explosion, the biggest in Beirut's history, killed at least 172 people and injured another 6,000. Some 250,000 were also left homeless due to the August 4 blasts.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Third body camera video in George Floyd killing shows officer pushing bystanders
A third body camera video from the day George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police was publicly released by the court Thursday, showing that an officer pushed two men as he tried to keep angry bystanders at bay.
Former officer Tou Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, filed Thao’s body camera video with the court to support a motion to dismiss criminal charges against him. Paule has argued in court filings that the case should be dropped because Thao was focused on crowd control and didn’t have a full view of what was happening as three of his former colleagues restrained Floyd, among other reasons.
The video showed that Thao grew aggressive as he engaged with a growing number of bystanders, including a 17- and 9-year-old, who gathered out front of Cup Foods on Chicago Avenue at E. 38th St. to watch.
The Capital Times (Madison)
Kamala Harris was a 5-year-old in Madison
When California Sen. Kamala Harris came to Wisconsin to campaign for Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2018, she surprised folks with the news that Madison was her hometown. Or, to be more precise, one of her hometowns.
The senator was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, and she spent her first years there. She was the daughter of a remarkable pair of academics. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan — the child of a women’s rights advocate and a prominent civil servant from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu — arrived at the University of California-Berkeley in the early 1960s to pursue doctoral studies in nutrition and endocrinology. Her father, Donald Harris, a Jamaican immigrant, came to Berkeley at around the same time to pursue a doctorate in economics. […]
In 1968, Donald Harris accepted an appointment as an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, where he would teach until 1972. Shyamala Gopalan worked as a breast cancer researcher at the UW. And, as Harris told a small crowd at the June 2018 event for Baldwin, “I lived in Madison. My parents taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a brief moment in time and I was five years old and lived in Madison, Wisconsin. I was a native.”
Ars Technica
NSA and FBI warn that new Linux malware threatens national security
The FBI and NSA have issued a joint report warning that Russian state hackers are using a previously unknown piece of Linux malware to stealthily infiltrate sensitive networks, steal confidential information, and execute malicious commands.
In a report that’s unusual for the depth of technical detail from a government agency, officials said the Drovorub malware is a full-featured tool kit that was has gone undetected until recently. The malware connects to command and control servers operated by a hacking group that works for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency that has been tied to more than a decade of brazen and advanced campaigns, many of which have inflicted serious damage to national security.
“Information in this Cybersecurity Advisory is being disclosed publicly to assist National Security System owners and the public to counter the capabilities of the GRU, an organization which continues to threaten the United States and U.S. allies as part of its rogue behavior, including their interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election as described in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017),” officials from the agencies wrote.
FCC beats cities in court, helping carriers avoid $2 billion in local 5G fees
The Federal Communications Commission has defeated dozens of cities in court, with judges ruling that the FCC can preempt local fees and regulations imposed on wireless carriers deploying 5G networks. The ruling is good news for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
The FCC voted to preempt cities and towns in September 2018, saying the move would prevent local governments from charging wireless carriers about $2 billion worth of fees over five years related to deployment of wireless equipment such as small cells. That's less than 1 percent of the estimated $275 billion that the FCC said carriers would have to spend to deploy 5G small cells throughout the United States.