Good morning.
In a flurry of tweets on Tuesday, Donald Trump announced he was calling off talks with Democrats on a new coronavirus aid package until after the election, despite cases rising sharply around the country – and in the immediate vicinity of the Oval Office.
The news came hours after the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, had warned that any failure by Washington to provide extra support for those hit by the pandemic could have “tragic” economic consequences. Democrats were outraged, with Nancy Pelosi accusing Trump of “putting himself first at the expense of the country”. And the markets were spooked, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 1.3% by the close of trading on Tuesday.
The president later appeared to backtrack slightly, tweeting that he was “ready to sign right now” a bill that would approve a fresh round of $1,200 stimulus checks to be sent out immediately.
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A subdued Trump tweeted a total of six times last Friday and Saturday combined, while he was hospitalised with Covid-19. On Tuesday evening, he tweeted more than 40 times in less than three hours.
The White House Covid cluster is still growing
Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy adviser, tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday. America’s most senior military leaders are in quarantine after coming into contact with the vice-commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Charles Ray, who has the virus. So are 13 staff at a Minneapolis restaurant, who catered for a party attended by the president last week.
As the White House coronavirus outbreak continues to spread through the administration, the West Wing is said to be like a “ghost town”, amid complaints that little effort has been made to track and trace potential contacts of Trump and his infected aides. The president himself has proclaimed he is “FEELING GREAT!” and insisted he will take part in the next planned presidential debate on 15 October. “As a public health example,” writes David Smith:
It has been described as irresponsible to the point of criminal, the exact opposite of what a medical professional would advise.
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Trump may be experiencing ‘VIP syndrome’, writes Jessica Glenza: a term for “the special treatment given by doctors to the wealthy, famous, powerful or politically connected,” which “does not always lead to the best medical outcomes.”
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A vaccine is unlikely to arrive before the election, despite the president’s efforts to curtail the normal approval process, after the FDA told vaccine developers it wanted at least two months of safety data before authorising any emergency use.
Mike Pence has his work cut out for him at the VP debate
As the nominal boss of the White House coronavirus taskforce, Mike Pence must defend not only Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also his own when he faces Kamala Harris on stage in Salt Lake City at Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate.
Pence repeatedly tested negative for the disease in recent days, leaving him safe to take the stage in Utah, where he will have to make his case against Harris, a former prosecutor whose US senate career has been punctuated by sharp cross-examinations of powerful men such as Brett Kavanaugh, Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions.
Adam Gabbatt explains everything you need to know beforehand about what could be the most consequential VP debate to date.
In other election news …
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Joe Biden calls for unity in Gettysburg speech: ‘Again we are a house divided’ – video
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Joe Biden chose to channel Abraham Lincoln in a speech at Gettysburg’s civil war battlefield, saying “once again we are a house divided”, as he urged unity in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. A new CNN national poll released on Tuesday put the Democrat 16 points ahead of Trump.
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Amy Coney Barrett lived at the home of a People of Praise founder while she was a law student, it has been revealed, raising new questions about the supreme court nominee’s links to the secretive Christian group.
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Governor Andrew Cuomo blames Donald Trump for thousands of deaths in New York at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, writing in his new book that the “negligent” federal response represented “the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl Harbor”.
Stat of the day
On Tuesday, there were 28 new coronavirus cases recorded in the whole of Washington DC, a city of more than 700,000 people. Meanwhile, writes Julian Borger, more than a dozen workers at a single DC address – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – have tested positive for the disease in recent days.
Don’t miss this
An investigation by an internal Justice Department watchdog into Trump’s family separation policy at the southern US border has found that the then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and other top DoJ officials were “a driving force” behind the separation of parents and their children, no matter how young.
Border prosecutors warned the White House they were “deeply concerned” for the children’s welfare, the New York Times reports. But Sessions told them: “We need to take away children.”
View from the right
For anti-abortion voters, the vice-presidential debate is crucial. Joe Biden, who was once anti-abortion himself, has avoided discussing the topic during the campaign, writes Jeanne Mancini in National Review. But it is clear where Kamala Harris stands on the issue.
Unlike Biden, who changed his position on abortion out of political expediency, Harris has used her positions to further the abortion industry.
Last Thing: Michelle Obama’s closing argument
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‘Racism, fear, division’: Michelle Obama attacks Trump in election plea – video
The former first lady has issued a lengthy video plea to Americans to vote for Joe Biden, criticising Trump for sowing “fear, division and chaos”, and specifically criticising the president’s failures over the coronavirus pandemic and his approach to racial injustice.
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