The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the decline of the Republic.
216,986 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S.
18 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION DAY
AP News
With a hug, Feinstein draws liberal critics at court hearing
It was the hug that may define — or doom — a long Senate career.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California embraced Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham at the close of confirmation hearings Thursday for … Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, publicly thanking the chairman for a job well done.
“This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” Feinstein said at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Calls for her ouster from Democratic leadership were swift, unequivocal and relentless.
Oakland, Portland sue over use of federal agents at protests
The cities of Oakland and Portland, Oregon have sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, alleging that the agencies are overstepping constitutional limits in their use of federal law enforcement officers to tamp down on protests.
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, cites the deployment of U.S. agents this summer to quell protests in Portland and alleges the U.S. Marshals Service unlawfully deputized dozens of local Portland police officers as federal agents despite objections from city officials. The federal deputations have meant protesters arrested by local police could face federal charges, which generally carry stiffer penalties.
Los Angeles Times
Democratic senators make final pitch to slow Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearing
[…] Democratic senators used a final day of hearings to press their case for why Judge Amy Coney Barrett is dangerous to Americans’ healthcare and personal rights.
Barrett was not present for Thursday’s proceedings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the agenda called for a number of experts to testify. But the committee members spent the morning in their first real back-and-forth debate over Barrett’s qualifications, her reticence to express views, and what Democrats see as a rushed, “sham” process.
“I recognize this goose is pretty much cooked,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who complained that Barrett would not commit to accepting the results of the upcoming presidential election. […]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking to reporters in his home state of Kentucky, said the full Senate vote on the Barrett nomination would take place as early as Oct. 23, and he said the body would remain in session until it was finished.
Trump’s immigration changes will affect California long after he’s gone
[…] Trump’s more than 400 executive actions to restrict immigration have had an outsized impact on the Golden State.
He has targeted the Silicon Valley-based tech industry by squeezing high-skilled foreign labor, and has restricted immigration based on family reunification even as he’s separated thousands of migrant families at the border.
He has attempted to repeal federal protections for “Dreamers,” young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children, and has sidestepped the Supreme Court’s rejection of his plans. California has more residents covered by those protections, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, than any other state. He has also ended Temporary Protected Status for refugees from El Salvador and other Central American countries, a disproportionate number of whom live in the state.
And his administration has discouraged thousands of other students, refugees, asylum seekers, workers, and entrepreneurs — many headed to California — from coming to the United States at all, most recently by using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification for largely closing the nation’s borders.
The Oregonian
Trump again keys in on death of Portland fugitive Michael Reinoehl
Donald Trump again Thursday publicly addressed the fatal police shooting of Portland fugitive Michael Reinoehl, a self-described antifascist accused of killing a right-wing Trump supporter.
He criticized Portland police for waiting days to arrest Reinoehl, who had been identified quickly on social media as the alleged gunman. He was found last month hiding out in an apartment in Lacey, Washington.
“We sent in the U.S. Marshals. It took 15 minutes it was over. Fifteen minutes, it was over. We got him," Trump said to applause in Greenville, North Carolina. "They knew who he was. They didn’t want to arrest him. Fifteen minutes, that ended.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The field hospital at State Fair Park in Milwaukee is open for COVID-19 patients
Wisconsin opened an alternative care facility at State Fair Park for COVID-19 patients Oct. 14, the day the state announced more than 1,000 patients were currently hospitalized with the virus, the highest number yet.
Staff at the hospital spent the day fielding calls from hospitals to organize the transfer of patients there, said Deb Standridge, chief executive of the facility.
The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients in the state has tripled in the last month.
The Wichita Eagle
Day 1 of early voting in Kansas is over. Here’s how it compares to previous years
On Day 1 of early voting Wednesday, Kansans returned more than triple the number of mail-in ballots sent in 2016, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
Officials reported 2,383 ballots sent back as of Wednesday. That’s three times the 771 after the first day of mail-in voting in 2016 and 423 in 2018.
The Secretary of State’s office explained in a subsequent Tweet that the ballots returned thus far are from military personnel and overseas citizens, who are sent ballots beginning 45 days prior to the election. […]
Democrats so far have had the highest mail-in ballot turnout. Officials reported that among ballots received, 1,261 were from those affiliated as Democrats, followed by Republicans (556), unaffiliated voters (549) and Libertarians (17).
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri virus hospitalizations hit record; Illinois reports biggest one-day jump in cases
The number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus in Missouri reached another record Thursday, and the seven-day average positivity rate was more than triple the benchmark suggested by the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, Illinois on Thursday reported a one-day high of 4,015 COVID-19 cases after processing nearly 67,000 tests.
In addition to the record hospitalizations, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services’ COVID-19 dashboard showed other alarming numbers, too: 1,875 new confirmed cases and 22 deaths. According to the dashboard, Missouri ranks fourth nationally in reported deaths over the past seven days, and eighth in the number of new cases. All told, Missouri has reported 150,554 confirmed cases and 2,442 deaths since the pandemic began.
Missouri's seven-day positivity rate was 17.9%. The national seven-day positivity rate was at 5.1%, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The WHO has set 5% as the benchmark.
After early census end, St. Louis officials worry count will miss thousands
Area officials, faced with the abrupt end of this year's census, said on Thursday they were worried thousands of the region's residents might not get counted.
Officials in Belleville, East St. Louis and St. Louis all said they feared an undercount after the U.S. Supreme Court OK'd a White House move to end the 2020 census more than two weeks earlier than expected.
"Every person counted represents $1,300 in programs and resources," said Charles Bryson, head of the St. Louis Complete Count Committee, a city group tasked with encouraging local participation. "That goes for food and nutrition programs, senior services, daycare service, schools. There are lots of programs funded by federal dollars, and we want to make sure they are covered."
Houston Chronicle
Harris County, Texas Republicans take drive-thru voting challenge to state Supreme Court
State and local Republicans have taken their challenge of drive-thru voting in Harris County to the Texas Supreme Court.
In separate petitions, the Texas and Harris County [Republicans] are asking the state’s highest court to limit drive-thru voting, which Clerk Christopher Hollins opened this year at 10 sites and made available to all voters.
The [Republicans] argues the new practice is a form of curbside voting, which only is allowed for people who are sick at the time, have a physical condition that requires personal assistance or are at risk of injured health if they venture inside a polling location.
An appeals court on Wednesday dismissed the Texas [Republicans]’s challenge. The three-justice panel said the party — and a Harris County voter that joined in — did not have standing to bring the lawsuit. The panel also said the plaintiffs did not explain why they waited until the night before early voting began to challenge the practice.
Harris County hits 100,000 ballots cast for third day in a row
More than 100,000 Harris County voters cast ballots Thursday, the third straight day of record-breaking early voting turnout.
The clerk’s office announced it hit the six-figure mark again on Twitter around 6:15 p.m. The county had achieved 100,000 early votes in a single day only once before 2020, on the final day of early voting in 2016.
The tally was 128,186 on Tuesday and 114,996 Wednesday. The clerk’s office said it also has received 44,000 mail ballots, bringing the total number cast so far to roughly 387,000, with more than two weeks of early voting remaining.
In 2016, the county tallied about 884,000 early votes and 101,000 mail ballots.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia law bars private militias, so why are they allowed to exist?
When Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Kelly Loeffler waded into the crowd at a rally in Ringgold last month, they were flanked by a heavily armed escort — the men and women of the Georgia III% Martyrs, a private militia. […]
Mary McCord of Georgetown University School of Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection said groups like the Martyrs exist across the nation despite state laws that ban private paramilitary groups.
In Georgia, a misdemeanor criminal statute that dates back to the 1950s bars private groups from forming “themselves together as a military unit or parade or demonstrate in public with firearms.”
Yet private militias operate freely Georgia. In August, several armed militia groups converged on the city of Stone Mountain, forming columns and facing off against left-wing counter-demonstrators throughout a tense, and at-times violent, afternoon that shut the city down for most of the day. In a troubling development, many in the left-wing group were armed with assault rifles or pistols as well, some under the banner of the Coalition of Armed Labor, a leftist answer to the far-right militias.
Loeffler’s husband gives $5.5M to boost her Senate campaign
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s wealthy husband is digging deep into his checkbook to help his wife’s November special election campaign.
Finance records released late Thursday show that Jeff Sprecher contributed $5.5 million to the pro-Loeffler Georgia United Victory PAC, a free-spending outside group formed in August to boost the Republican’s campaign.
Sprecher, who runs the Atlanta-based company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, doled out the vast sum in three separate contributions between Aug. 6 – days after the group was formed – and Sept. 2.
Miami Herald
36,000 immigrants in Florida won’t get their citizenship in time to vote, data shows
Up to 300,000 lawful permanent residents nationwide – about 36,000 of them in Florida – will be prevented from completing their naturalization process in time to vote in the upcoming November election, data shows.
The staggering government data – analyzed by by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Boundless Immigration, a non-partisan tech company that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship – shows that immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis slowed down naturalization applications, creating a record backlog in a time when naturalization applications have skyrocketed.
The desire to vote in November’s election, along with the fact that the administration will soon nearly double the naturalization application fee, has also pushed people to submit sooner than later, experts say.
Republicans slash Democrats’ voter advantage in Florida going into the election
Heading into the Nov. 3 election, Florida Republicans are as close to parity with Democrats among registered voters as they’ve been in half a century or more.
The Florida Division of Elections on Thursday posted the final numbers for 2020 voter registration in the nation’s biggest battleground state. Republicans now head into Election Day with 5,169,012 voters and Democrats with 5,303,254 — a difference of just 134,242. The deadline to register was Oct. 6. […]
The Trump campaign returned to traditional field work far earlier than Democrats, which the [Republicans] partly says contributed to its final numbers, described by Republicans as a historic achievement. A late surge in registration appears to have helped as well, given that state data showed Republicans trailing Democrats by 183,000 voters heading into September.
Bloomberg
Billionaire Robert Smith Admits He Cheated on Taxes for 15 Years
Billionaire Robert F. Smith has been hailed as a brilliant investor who built Vista Equity Partners into a private equity powerhouse and a generous philanthropist lauded for paying off the student debt of Morehouse College’s entire graduating class last year.
But federal prosecutors undercut that image on Thursday, saying Smith concealed income and evaded taxes for 15 years by using foreign trusts, corporations and bank accounts to cheat the Internal Revenue Service.
Smith, 57, avoided prosecution only by cooperating in a case against Robert Brockman, a Houston businessman accused Thursday of using a web of Caribbean entities to hide $2 billion in income in what prosecutors called the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual.
Tax Burden Equal to 70% Rate Crushes Americans Unable to Pay
Millions of low-income Americans are locked into poverty thanks to U.S. tax policy, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta researchers say.
About a quarter of lower-income workers effectively face marginal tax rates of more than 70% when adjusted for the loss of government benefits, a study led by Atlanta Fed Research Director David Altig found. That means for every $1,000 gained in income, $700 goes to the government in taxes or reduced spending. In some cases, there are no gains at all.
Poorer families may rely on Medicaid insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, housing vouchers and tax credits that are based on family incomes. Small increases in wages can bring big losses of benefits, reinforcing a negative cycle in which workers aren’t rewarded if they improve their skills or pay.
Mongabay
‘Luckiest people’: Encountering a newborn Sumatran rhino in the wild
In 2018, five Indonesian forest rangers had an experience that would make them the envy of conservationists everywhere: they met a newborn Sumatran rhino in the wild.
“They were on a regular patrol, and then they heard a piercing voice,” Rudi Putra, a biologist and chairman of the Leuser Conservation Forum (FKL) Board of Trustees, told Mongabay over the phone recently. “They didn’t immediately recognize whose voice it was until they saw the calf.”
The Leuser Ecosystem in the northern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is one of the last refuges of the critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis). The species’ global population is fewer than 80 individuals.
We’re not protecting enough of the right areas to save biodiversity: Study
The past decade began with promise, as nearly every country on the planet made commitments to protect large areas of land, safeguarding global biodiversity amid the ongoing sixth mass extinction.
But many countries have fallen short of these commitments, and area-based conservation efforts are not protecting biodiversity as planned, according to the new review “Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century” written by a team of researchers from 14 international institutions and published in the journal Nature.
The Washington Post
U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter.
The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and conversations.
Overloaded voter check-in system partly blamed for long early voting lines in Georgia
The high volume of voters who turned out in Georgia to cast their ballots early this week initially overloaded the computer system used to check them in at the polls, contributing to hours-long wait times, officials said.
In some places, voters waited up to 10 hours on Monday, the first day of a three-week in-person voting period. Some had arrived at polling locations before dawn. Lines curved through nearby streets even before early-voting centers opened their doors. Images and videos shared on social media showed long, winding and spaced-out queues.
With the record-breaking turnout, the Georgia secretary of state’s office said the computer system run by an outside vendor used to pull up voter profiles and check them in was overwhelmed.
The Guardian
'I love this country': US doctors head to New Zealand as cure for America's ills
When Dalilah Restrepo, then a New York-based physician, clicked on an email in 2018 asking if she was “looking for experiencing something abroad”, she was sceptical. “And then I opened it, and I was like … New Zealand? Gosh, that’s a bit drastic.”
Restrepo, who had been in private practice for “10 or 11 years”, was exhausted.
“The health system in the US is really toxic,” she said. Health disparities and “moral injury” had caused burnout among her peers, she said, and before the suggestion that she leave the States, she had thought of quitting her profession altogether.
In March 2019, Restrepo joined a growing number of medical professionals from the United States relocating to New Zealand.
Top Trump administration figures flout law banning partisan campaigning
On 24 August, Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, traveled to the battleground state of North Carolina for an official departmental event for food producers hurt by the pandemic. But Perdue’s speech to attendees also featured a campaign pep talk for Trump, who was there too.
At one point Perdue led a chant of “four more years” and called Trump a champion of “forgotten people”.
Perdue’s blurring of the lines between hosting an official Department of Agriculture meeting and a Trump rally, sparked a complaint to the federal Office of Special Counsel by the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) that charged he violated the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that bars most federal officials from using their government posts to engage in various kinds of political activity.
Reuters
Sweden boosts military spending, expands draft amid Russia tensions
Sweden will boost military spending by around 40% over the next five years and double the numbers conscripted into the armed forces as it looks to beef up its defence amid growing tensions with Russia, the government said on Thursday.
Sweden, which is not a member of NATO but enjoys close ties with the bloc, ran down its military after the end of the Cold War to save money.
“We have a situation where the Russian side is willing to use military means to achieve political goals,” Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters. “Based on that, we have a new geo-political security situation to deal with.”
Trump ex-fundraiser to plead guilty in 1MDB foreign lobbying case
A former fundraiser for … Donald Trump is expected to plead guilty next week to charges of illegally lobbying Trump to drop an investigation into a massive Malaysian embezzlement scandal, according to court documents filed Thursday.
The former fundraiser, Elliot Broidy, is due in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a hearing on a plea deal.
Court documents filed earlier this month showed Broidy was also charged with illegally lobbying to arrange the return of a mainland Chinese dissident living in the United States.
Deutsche Welle
Russia vows to 'respond in kind' to EU sanctions on Putin aides
EU sanctions against high-ranking Russian officials have come into effect, in response to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and for undermining peace in Libya. The Kremlin has vowed to retaliate in kind.
The European Union implemented sanctions on Thursday against six individuals and one organization over the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and violations of the UN arms embargo in Libya, the EU announced in a statement.
"The adopted restrictive measures consist of a travel ban to the EU and an asset freeze for individuals, and an asset freeze for the entity," the statement said.
Der Spiegel
Brexit Threatens to Become the Messiest of Messy Divorces
Britain will be leaving the EU common market at the end of the year and there are still important issues to be hammered out. Both sides could be facing a disaster in the form of huge traffic jams, job losses and rising prices. […]Recently, it looked as though the two sides would be able to at least agree on a rudimentary deal that would prevent customs and tariff quotas. Such an agreement could significantly limit the economic harm produced by the UK exit from the EU, particularly for the UK itself. In truth, though, that is rather cold comfort: Essentially, the only choice now remaining is between an ugly divorce and an extremely ugly divorce.
Significant damage has already been done. Since the British voted by a razor-thin margin to leave the European Union four years ago, trade between the UK and the EU has plunged. Prior to the Brexit vote, Britain was Germany's third-largest export market, but it has since dropped to fifth place. At the same time, British exports to the Continent have sunk by 17 percent in just the first seven months of this year relative to the same time period one year ago, a steeper drop than that seen by exports from Japan or the United States. Economists refer to the phenomenon as "decoupling."
The Atlantic
What the Rush to Confirm Amy Coney Barrett Is Really About
Nothing better explains the Republican rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court than the record crowds that thronged polling places for the first days of early voting this week in Georgia and Texas.
The historic number of Americans who stood in long lines to cast their ballot in cities from Atlanta to Houston symbolizes the diverse, urbanized Democratic coalition that will make it very difficult for the GOP to win majority support in elections through the 2020s. That hill will get only steeper as Millennials and Generation Z grow through the decade to become the largest generations in the electorate.
Every young conservative judge that the GOP has stacked onto the federal courts amounts to a sandbag against that rising demographic wave. Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Barrett—whom a slim majority of Republican senators appears determined to seat by Election Day—represent the capstone of that strategy. As the nation’s growing racial and religious diversity limits the GOP’s prospects, filling the courts with conservatives constitutes what the Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz calls “the right-wing firewall” against a country evolving electorally away from the party.
Consider the cantaloupe. It’s a decent melon. If you, like me, are the sort who constantly mixes them up, cantaloupes are the orange ones, and honeydews are green. If you, like me, are old enough to remember vacations, you might have had them along with their cousin, watermelon, at a hotel’s breakfast buffet. Those spreads are not as bad as you remember, especially when it’s hot out; add a couple of cold bagels and a pat of unmelted butter and it’s a party.
Maybe you want the cool, refreshing mildness of a melon cup at home. Unless there’s a good fruit stand nearby and cantaloupe is in season, that means taking a trip to the grocery store. Maybe you’ll stroll down aisles kept just cool enough to make the skin on your arms prickle. You’ll browse refrigerated produce shelves doused in cold water every so often. Then you’ll find it: the perfect cantaloupe. It’s round and rough, with no dimples or spots. When you thump it, there’s a satisfying, muffled thud. It’s a sweet one.
Consider how the cantaloupe got there. It likely took a long ride to the supermarket or the hotel kitchen in a truck cooled to just above freezing. Maybe, like many melons, it was planted, picked, and packed on a plantation in the town of Choluteca, in southern Honduras, before it began its careful ballet of climate control.
Vox
How the world’s biggest emitter could be carbon neutral by 2050
On the virtual stage of the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Xi Jinping made a bold commitment: China — the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — would strive to become carbon neutral by 2060.
Going carbon neutral means that China would use clean energy sources and capture or offset any remaining emissions. By removing the same amount of carbon it’s emitting into the atmosphere, it would achieve “net-zero” carbon emissions. […]
Now, a group of China’s top climate experts has come forward with a plan. In their study, released Monday, they suggest that China should peak its emissions over the next decade and then rapidly decrease them to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The researchers, who have the ear of China’s leaders, recommended that this path guide the country’s planning.
How to make this winter not totally suck, according to psychologists
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re probably dreading this winter. We know it’s going to be harder to socialize outdoors as the weather gets colder. We also know there’s probably going to be a surge in new Covid-19 infections. Many of us are feeling anxious about how we’re going to make it through the lonely, bleak months ahead.
I see a lot of people trying to cope with this anxiety by drumming up one-off solutions. Buy a fire pit! Better yet, buy a whole house! Those may be perfectly fine ideas, as far as they go — but I’d like to suggest a more effective way to think about reducing your suffering and increasing your happiness this winter.
Instead of thinking about the myriad negative feelings you want to avoid and the myriad things you can buy or do in service of that, think about a single organizing principle that is highly effective at generating positive feelings across the board: Shift your focus outward.
Ars Technica
Wisconsin blames Foxconn, says $3 billion factory deal is off
The state of Wisconsin was supposed to provide Foxconn with $3 billion in subsidies over the next few years to support the construction of a massive LCD display factory in the state. The deal was negotiated in 2017 by Gov. Scott Walker and announced by Donald Trump at a White House event. It was part of Trump's strategy to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
In a Monday letter, the state informed Foxconn that the company wouldn't get the first installment of the $3 billion because Foxconn wasn't holding up its end of the deal. Under Foxconn's 2017 agreement with the state, Foxconn would be eligible for the first round of subsidies if it hired at least 520 full-time employees to work on the LCD panel factory by the end of 2019. Foxconn claimed that it had cleared this bar by hiring 550 employees in the state. But Wisconsin found that Foxconn had only 281 employees who counted toward the requirement.
Foxconn was supposed to spend $3.3 billion on the project by the end of 2019. Instead, Foxconn had only spent around $300 million by the end of the year.
Putin touts second dubious approval of an unproven COVID-19 vaccine
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced the second dubious approval of a COVID-19 vaccine that has not been evaluated in clinical trials.
The vaccine, dubbed EpiVacCorona, is said to be a synthetic peptide-based vaccine, which uses fragments of the pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2 to spur protective immune responses in those vaccinated. It was developed by Vector State Virology and Biotechnology Center, a former Soviet bioweapons research lab.
Like the first Russian-approved vaccine, whether EpiVacCorona is actually safe and effective is completely unknown. In a televised news conference, Putin said that early trials involving 100 people were successful. But researchers have not published any safety or efficacy data from those trials. Russian health officials have said they are still reviewing the vaccine for “safety and quality” but declined to provide any additional information on the vaccine, data, or approval process.