Newsvally: October 2020

Friday, October 30, 2020

The flu shot lasts for about 6 months: Here's when it starts working and why it may get less effective as time goes on

The flu shot is effective for about six months. You should get it in October so it lasts through March and covers you through flu season.

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Michigan Senate candidate John James is proof all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk

OPINION: James is fashioning himself as a moderate who believes in bipartisanship. The problem is when it comes to the party of Trump, you can’t play it both sides. John James is a Black man who has a shot at becoming the next U.S. Senator from the great state of Michigan.

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The Electoral College can pick a president who got fewer votes. Here's why and how.

The 2020 presidential election again highlights one of the most confusing and controversial parts of the U.S. elections: The Electoral College.

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Kennedy cousin Skakel will not be retried in 1975 killing

A prosecutor said Friday that Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel will not face a second trial in the 1975 killing of Martha Moxley, an announcement that came 45 years to the day after the teenager was bludgeoned to death in her wealthy Connecticut neighborhood. The decision ended a rollercoaster drama that included claims others could be the killer, alleged confessions by Skakel, several books based on the case and conflicting rulings by the Connecticut Supreme Court, which first upheld Skakel's murder conviction but later overturned it. Skakel, 15 at the time of Moxley's death and now 60, served more than 11 years in prison before being freed in 2013.

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Las Vegas police charge driver after man pushed a cyclist to her death, fell out a minivan window, hit his head on a lamppost, and died at the scene

Rodrigo Cruz, 22, was the driver of the minivan involved in the two deaths, the Las Vegas police said.

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Facebook admits it 'improperly' blocked some political ads due to 'technical issues' as Joe Biden's campaign slams it for being 'wholly unprepared'

Facebook said no ads were blocked "because of any partisan consideration," as Biden's camp accused the company of offering "no clarity" on the issue.

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David Perdue: Georgia senator pulls out of final debate after 'brutal' takedown by Democrat goes viral

Video of debate where Democrat Jon Ossoff calls Republican incumbent a ‘crook’ has been viewed more than 11m times on Twitter

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The battle for Senate control looks more volatile than the presidential race

First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

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New top story on Hacker News: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light
31 by Reedx | 5 comments

New top story on Hacker News: Generating bingo cards with clojure.spec, Clojure/test.check, RDD and TDD

Generating bingo cards with clojure.spec, Clojure/test.check, RDD and TDD
8 by diggan | 0 comments

Democrats have dreamed of Texas going blue. An election forecaster just called the race a "toss up"

Early votes in the conservative stronghold of Texas have surpassed 90% of the state's total turnout in 2016

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Woman Beheaded in French Knife ‘Terror’ Attack at Church, 3 Dead

Three people have been killed—including one elderly woman and another person by decapitation—and several others injured in a suspected terror attack inside the Notre-Dame basilica in the French city of Nice. The knife-wielding assailant, who was wounded by police gunfire, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” several times, including while he was being detained, in what has come to be known as a battle cry for Islamic extremists in Europe.The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, wrote immediately after the killings that “everything suggests a terrorist attack,” and said the unnamed suspect had been arrested and taken to a hospital in the city. The Paris’ anti-terror prosecutors office said it has opened an investigation. Italian police said late Thursday that the killer is a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant who was smuggled to the Italian island of Lampedusa in September. After he completed the mandatory two-week COVID-19 quarantine, he left the migrant camp and made his way to France. Authorities have his details and fingerprints as part of the immigration process and are working with French police. “The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi told reporters at the scene. Although a motive has not been confirmed by officials, the mayor expressed his wish to “wipe out Islamo-fascism” from the country.French President Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency and ordered security to be strengthened at places of worship across the nation. On Wednesday night, Macron had put France back into lockdown because of its out-of-control resurgence in coronavirus cases. Hours after the attack, he visited the basilica and met with security and rescue personnel.The Nice slashings occurred on the same day that an assailant was shot dead by police near another French city, Avignon, after he reportedly waved a gun at officers, and also as a guard was reportedly attacked outside the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Local reports in the French Riviera city say the elderly woman and a man who died were attacked inside the heart of the Nice basilica. The BBC reports a woman who fled to a nearby cafe was stabbed many times and died at a hospital, and that a witness at the scene managed to set off an alarm on a “special protection system” set up by city officials. One eyewitness told the BBC: “We heard many people shouting in the street. We saw from the window that there were many, many policemen coming, and gunshots, many gunshots.”In July 2016, Nice was the scene of unthinkable carnage when an armed French delivery driver attacked a waterfront Bastille Day fireworks party with a truck, killing at 84 people, including 10 children. France has been under high alert for terrorist acts in recent weeks as 14 people suspected of murdering 12 Charlie Hebdo staffers, a female police officer, and four men in a Jewish supermarket in 2015 in retaliation for the publication of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad went on trial.As the courtroom proceedings opened, two people were stabbed near the publication’s old offices in Paris on Sept. 25 in what the French interior minister then declared was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism.”The Nice attack also comes less than two weeks after the beheading of middle-school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris after he had shown his students cartoons published by the satirical magazine.Estrosi said the two attacks were similar. “The methods match, without doubt, those used against the brave teacher in Conflans Sainte Honorine, Samuel Paty,” he said.Family of Moscow-Born Teen Who Beheaded Teacher Were from Chechnya Where Charlie Hebdo Cartoons Are DemonizedPresident Macron delivered the eulogy at Paty’s funeral, and said France would not abandon its right to free speech. “We will continue, Professor. We will defend the freedom that you taught so well and we will promote secularism, we will not renounce caricatures, drawings, even if others retreat,” Macron said. “We will continue the fight for freedom and the freedom of which you are now the face.”Macron’s comments have drawn sharp criticism in the Islamic world with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for a boycott of French goods. In response, Charlie Hebdo published a caricature of Erdogan in his underwear lifting a Muslim woman’s skirt on Wednesday, drawing scorn from Erdogan for what he referred to as a “a grave insult to my prophet.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Biden campaigns in Florida ahead of election

Joe Biden campaigned in Florida on Thursday.

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US sells oil seized from Iran to Venezuela for $40 million

The United States said Thursday that it had sold Iranian oil seized on its way to Venezuela for more than $40 million.

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"Someone's reading our texts": Tucker Carlson, UPS and the non-stolen Biden documents

Carlson implied he was the target of a deep-state plot when "damning" documents went missing. Then UPS found them

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2020 polls: Can Trump pull another 2016 upset? The data says no chance

The blue wave is coming - if you believe the polls

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Qatar government says invasive searches of women at airport 'illegal actions'

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Georgia Sen. Perdue won't attend final debate, after opponent Jon Ossoff called him a 'crook'

Instead of participating in a final debate with his Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, Georgia Sen. David Perdue (R) will spend his Sunday at a rally with President Trump.Perdue announced his change of plans on Thursday. In response, Ossoff tweeted, "At last night's debate, millions saw that Perdue had no answers when I called him out on his record of blatant corruption, widespread disease, and economic devastation. Shame on you, senator."Their Wednesday night debate in Savannah was heated, with Perdue claiming that out-of-state donors are giving money to Ossoff so he can enact "a radical socialist agenda." In turn, Ossoff brought up Perdue's stock trades in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, which came ahead of the economic downturn."Perhaps Sen. Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn't been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading," Ossoff said. "It's not just that you're a crook, senator, it's that you're attacking the health of the people that you represent."The latest Monmouth University poll of registered voters in Georgia was released on Wednesday, and shows Ossoff leading Perdue, 49 percent to 46 percent. There is a third-party candidate also on the ballot, and if no one receives a majority of the vote on Nov. 3, there will be a runoff election in January.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

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FBI Investigating Hunter Biden for Money Laundering: Report

The FBI opened an investigation into Hunter Biden and associates in 2019 on suspicion of money laundering, a Justice Department official told Sinclair Broadcasting.The criminal investigation is ongoing, the DOJ official said.The revelation comes after Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, came forward with a trove of documents regarding the Biden family's dealings with now-defunct Chinese energy firm CEFC. While Joe Biden has denied that he has ever spoken with Hunter regarding the latter's overseas business dealings, Bobulinski claims the former vice president is lying.> EXCLUSIVE: Tony Bobulinski tells @WeAreSinclair he was questioned by six @FBI agents, with counsel present, for five hours on October 23, listing him as a "material witness" in an ongoing investigation focused on Hunter Biden and his associates. His cell phones were examined. pic.twitter.com/5lPzRTREJN> > -- James Rosen (@JamesRosenTV) October 29, 2020Additionally, Bobulinski told Sinclair that he was interviewed by FBI agents for five hours last Friday and was listed as a "material witness" for the agency.The interview "was a very cooperative deep dive into all the facts across that time period" during which Bobulinski conducted business with members of the Biden family, Bobulinski said.The New York Post reported earlier this month that it was given materials purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop. While a subsequent Fox News report revealed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was subpoenaed by the FBI in connection with a money laundering investigation, the Thursday report by Sinclair marks the first confirmation that Hunter Biden himself is the subject of an ongoing criminal probe.The Biden campaign has not denied the veracity of any of the materials revealed by the Post or Bobulinski. However, the campaign has stated that "Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever."

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Republican Sen. Mike Lee said fact-checking labels placed by social media companies are a form of censorship

The comment was made in a Senate hearing where Republicans said Twitter, Facebook, and Google discriminate against conservatives on their platforms.

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Body-camera footage released of Wallace killing; family says officers were improperly trained

The footage from body-worn cameras that was taken as police responded to a call about Walter Wallace Jr. shows him emerging from a house with a knife as relatives shout at officers about his mental health condition, a lawyer for the man's family said Thursday.

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Leanza Cornett: Former Miss America, 49, dies from brain injury after fall

Former Miss Florida, Miss America and Disney performer had been in intensive care following a fall

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Trump administration lifts federal protections for gray wolf

The move gives states in the continuous United States the authority to manage their local wolf populations, including by allowing them to be hunted. It will mainly affect wolf populations in the upper Midwest, Colorado and Pacific Northwest because wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains were previously delisted. Wolves have never been federally protected in Alaska.

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Thursday, October 29, 2020

SCOTUS: N.C. ballots can be counted up to nine days after election

The Supreme Court will allow absentee ballots in North Carolina to be received and counted up to nine days after Election Day.

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Asteroid samples tucked into capsule for return to Earth

A NASA spacecraft tucked more than 2 pounds of asteroid samples into a capsule for return to Earth after losing some of its precious loot because of a jammed lid, scientists said Thursday. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do” to get the samples back safely, said lead scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. The spacecraft Osiris-Rex won't depart Bennu’s neighborhood until March at the earliest, when the asteroid and Earth are properly aligned.

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Mitch McConnell’s approval drops nationwide despite political win with Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination

Only 16 per cent of respondents say they felt better about Mr McConnell’s job performance

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Red coating contaminates SpaceX rockets, delays crew launch

SpaceX’s second astronaut flight is off until mid-November because red lacquer dripped into tiny vent holes in two rocket engines that now must be replaced. SpaceX and NASA officials announced the discovery of the potentially damaging contamination Wednesday. The clogged holes were found after the aborted launch of a GPS satellite on Oct. 2.

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North Korea says shooting death of South Korean man was self-defensive measure

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'The possibility of real-world harm is high': Experts warn of violence from QAnon around the election

Experts who study QAnon say they’ve observed an increase in calls for offline action among the movement’s followers, adding to the growing risk of postelection violence posed by a variety of extremist groups.

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Mother’s body decayed for years in home she shared with her adult children, TN cops say

Police found her skeleton buried under a pile of clothes on a bed

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New top story on Hacker News: Bizarre Design Choices in Zoom’s End-to-End Encryption

Bizarre Design Choices in Zoom’s End-to-End Encryption
44 by notRobot | 22 comments

New top story on Hacker News: The Corporatization of Nursing Homes

The Corporatization of Nursing Homes
10 by neonate | 1 comments

New top story on Hacker News: Glass viscosity calculations debunk the myth of flow in medieval windows (2017)

Glass viscosity calculations debunk the myth of flow in medieval windows (2017)
10 by aoki | 6 comments

New top story on Hacker News: The Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years (2004)

The Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years (2004)
15 by firebaze | 3 comments

New top story on Hacker News: Netflix raises monthly charges for U.S. subscribers

Netflix raises monthly charges for U.S. subscribers
60 by BigBalli | 78 comments

Greenwald resigns from The Intercept over Biden article

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald said Thursday he had resigned from The Intercept after the US investigative media outlet refused to publish his article critical of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

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‘White racist cops got my own dad’: Walter Wallace’s young son speaks out

An investigation has been opened into the police shooting of Walter Wallace who died in Philadelphia on Monday afternoon

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Major train derailment forces schools and businesses to evacuate in Texas community

A video shows the train derailing in front of drivers on a Texas highway.

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USPS admits delivery times are plummeting, says there's no "constitutional right" to timely delivery

USPS data shows that less than 70% of first-class mail arrived on time on Wednesday — and only 42% in Philadelphia

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Walmart is removing guns and ammo from shelves and display cases in all stores as a precaution amid 'civil unrest'

Guns and ammo will no longer be on display at Walmart but still be available for purchase upon request in stores where they are sold.

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'Safer than your local grocery store': How the Pentagon kept the virus at bay as the White House struggled

The contrast between the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the White House and the limited impact it has had on the health of the 25,000-strong Pentagon workforce, which has rigorously followed CDC guidelines, could not be more pronounced.

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About That ‘Uncoverable’ Biden Story

Journalists claim they can’t cover the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email scoop because the underlying evidence has yet to been verified. Also, they won’t look for any verifying evidence because there isn’t enough evidence.It’s quite the conundrum.Because other than the now-corroborated emails, the laptop, the on-the-record source who was a CEO of a Biden corporation, a trove of text messages and documents, and a lack of denials, the Hunter Biden email story reminds me of the “Russian collusion” story. Surely it deserves a modicum of scrutiny and follow-up.Anyone who watched Tony Bobulinski’s interview on Tucker Carlson’s show this week -- apparently it pulled over 5 million viewers -- was confronted with a seemingly credible character. Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden in 2017, and that the former vice president was intimately involved in the family business. Maybe someone will ask the candidate about this. Because Biden, widely seen as the frontrunner, has on numerous occasions emphatically denied any knowledge of what Hunter was doing. So even if he didn’t benefit from his son’s leveraging of the family name to strike deals with Chinese Communist energy interests, it is still newsworthy.Bobulinski alleges that during a meeting with Joe Biden’s brother, he asked how the former vice president gets away with this sort of thing: “I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying how are you guys getting away with this? Aren’t you concerned? He looked at me, and he laughed a little bit, and said ‘plausible deniability.’”Perhaps my favorite part of yesterday’s interview, though, was learning that Adam Schiff’s ugly and mendacious habit of smearing anyone he disagrees with as a Russian asset is what allegedly helped spur Bobulinski, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant, to come forward.Hunter’s ex-business partner, in fact, confronted Rob Walker, a Biden “family representative” about it.“If [Schiff] doesn’t come out, on record, I am providing the facts,” Bobulinski said in a recording.“Ah, Tony, you’re just going to bury all of us, man,” responded Walker, which sounds odd coming from someone charged with representing a supposedly completely innocent venture.To put all of this context as a journalistic matter, the week before the Post broke the Hunter Biden story, every major news network was reporting on surreptitiously taped conversation in which the First Lady was grousing about Christmas decorations.Indeed, these are just allegations. Some of them more compelling than others. We still know very little, for example, about potentially damaging emails that purport to show Biden helping his son while he was vice president — namely, by meeting with a Burisma energy executive on behalf of Hunter at the White House.In a strange way, the lack of coverage has perpetuated the story, not only through the Streisand effect, but because suppressing it -- the New York Post’s Twitter account is still frozen -- allows the imagination to run wild. While no conservative pundit has penned 8,000 words of Chait-style crackpottery pondering whether Joe has been Chinese asset since the 1980s, some have certainly jumped the gun.Does it matter? Yesterday, a number of journalists were retweeting an Axios interview in which Senator Ted Cruz, asked about the “Hunter Biden stuff,” said the story won’t move a single vote. Perhaps that’s true. It’s also irrelevant. The journalist’s job is to provide transparency, not to worry about elections or be society’s hall monitor.It is certain -- and, boy, am I sick of framing coverage in this way, but what can you do? -- that if a credible witness and former business partner of one of Donald Trump Jr.’s companies came forward to offer specific accusations and evidence that the president was profiting off of business dealings his shady son was striking with authoritarians, teams of investigative journalists would be descending on every tangential character as if they were a defunct Chinese bank account.And the assertion made by many reporters that journalistic ethics prohibit them from even mentioning these allegations is a new and concocted standard. There are thousands of allegations against Republicans reported without verification. Not one outlet had a problem referring to the recent Atlantic piece citing unnamed sources who claimed Trump belittled soldiers, even though the story came from one writer at a partisan outlet. Allegations by whistleblowers are covered all the time, whether they have been fully vetted or not. Major outlets were eager to amplify not only the uncorroborated accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, but a host of other very obviously dubious claims about Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.But much of the reticence about investigating the Hunter Biden story is in reaction to the fallout from the Hillary Clinton email scandal. No matter what evidence emerged, political media were never going to repeat 2016. One assumes even good reporters don’t want to be perceived as tipping the election (which speaks to the poor health of journalism).Lest we forget, as with this Biden story, the Clinton email scandal was newsworthy. There was, after all, an open FBI investigation into the frontrunning presidential candidate of the United States because of her reckless and potentially criminal behavior. It was Hillary who initially set up a secret server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide favor-trading related to her foundation, and sent unsecured classified documents through that illegal server, although she almost surely knew it threatened national security. As the New York Times reported at the time, the chance that her correspondences were being captured by foreign powers was extremely high. It was Hillary’s staff that destroyed evidence related to that server -- or as James Comey noted in his testimony, they “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Any government employees conducting themselves in a similar manner would have been sent to jail.I’m not in the habit of defending Comey, but he saved Clinton by letting her and her staff slide on richly deserved charges. The letter Comey sent to Congress informing them that the bureau had found a cache of new evidence relating to a criminal investigation was Clinton’s fault, not his. It was her top aide and confidant Huma Abedin who failed to inform the FBI about her laptop. And it was Abedin’s then-husband who used that computer to court teenage girls. Comey had an ethical obligation to inform Congress when he was apprised that new evidence had been found -- as he had promised to do under oath during his testimony. If he didn’t, and the story leaked, as it surely would have, the perception would have been that he was attempting to cover up the potential wrongdoing of one of the candidates.Or, in other words, he would have been doing exactly what most of the political media are engaged in right now.

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Supreme Court issues flurry of last-minute election orders

Wisconsin, no. That’s how the Supreme Court has answered questions in recent days about an extended timeline for receiving and counting ballots in those states. At first blush, the difference in the outcomes at the Supreme Court seems odd because the high court typically takes up issues to harmonize the rules across the country. A big asterisk: These cases are being dealt with on an emergency basis in which the court issues orders that either block or keep in place a lower-court ruling.

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Lindsey Graham Is Being Boosted by a Tea Party Group That Has Always Hated Him

It’s no secret that Sen. Lindsey Graham is in the fight of his political life in the closing days of his campaign to win reelection to the U.S. Senate.“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham begged on-air with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month, as his Democratic rival Jaime Harrison brought in a record-shattering $57 million in donations to unseat him. “Help me—they’re killing me money-wise. Help me.”But with ersatz ally President Donald Trump nowhere to be seen, a group that once despised Graham—and whose most prominent members have spent months propping up bizarre conspiracy theories, posting wildly racist content on social media, and undermining confidence public health guidelines in the midst of the pandemic—are coming to the rescue.The question is, does Graham want their help?“This is not a time for us to be squabbling over differences of opinion,” Pressley Stutts, chair of the Greenville Tea Party, said at an event on Wednesday afternoon, before introducing nearly a dozen grassroots conservative leaders “to stand tall” with Graham.“Sen. Graham is in the race of his life,” said Stutts, introducing conservative activists who lambasted Harrison—or “Harris,” as several of them called him—for being a “Marxist-Leninist” who would impose socialism on South Carolina.Sam Manley, a conservative podcaster, put the stakes of the race directly: “If you ever vote your way into socialism, you’ll have to shoot your way out.”This ringing endorsement for Graham’s re-election—which included Michael LaPierre, who tried to primary Graham this year—amounts to a cease-fire between the Palmetto State’s most well-known elected official and a coterie of some of his most dedicated trolls. During the Tea Party wave in 2010, Graham—once seen as one of the most mainstream members of the Republican Party—became one of the movement’s most loathed “RINOs,” or Republicans In Name Only. Leaders of the state’s Tea Party chapters attempted to recruit then-Gov. Mark Sanford to primary Graham after he voted to confirm Justice Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and one speaker at a Greenville Tea Party rally that year made accused Graham of “trying to sell out your own countrymen” to avoid being outed.For his part, Graham once relished his battles with the state’s most conservative activists, calling the inter-party skirmishes “more fun than any time I’ve been in politics,” but with polls showing Graham in a statistical dead heat with Harrison, the senator is scrambling to resolve those well-documented problems with voters who have largely moved from the Tea Party to Team MAGA—even though the group’s brand of politics couldn’t be less in sync with Graham’s own.Stutts, the group’s chair, is a longtime critic of vaccinations, and has publicly discouraged people from wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic and spread the conspiracy theory that billionaire Bill Gates is working to reduce the human population.Why Hasn’t Trump Come to Lindsey Graham’s Rescue?Stutts has even claimed in an April interview that a potential vaccine for COVID-19 could possibly “contain a microchip” for the government to track its citizens.“Even if it doesn’t contain a microchip, I could foresee the day, because right now you have to show your ID or your passport and here in South Carolina, we have to get that real ID just to fly commercially,” Stutts said on a conservative YouTube vlog at the time. “And I can see the point where they're going to say, okay, show me your vaccination papers next.”At one Greenville Tea Party event in 2018, Stutts even hosted a talk with Jennifer Smith, who described herself as a “naturopath,” who referenced the baseless theory that vaccines cause autism and said that she did not get her newborn son vaccinated for Hepatitus B because he was “not a promiscuous homosexual” or an IV drug user.Among the group’s other featured speakers at recent events include John Guandolo, the leader of a Dallas-based anti-Muslim group who was forced last year to pay $600,000 in a civil lawsuit for assaulting a county sheriff after the man confronted him about passing around hate literature at a meeting of the National Sheriffs’ Association.The group has also held protests against social distancing rules in South Carolina, which Graham has said are critical to stopping the spread of the virus, despite rising rates of infection in the state.“Tired of putting up with an onerous and inept government?” the group posted on Facebook in September. “Join us September 15th and let your voice be heard, too. Our legislators need to know that we've had enough! Show up. Stand up. Speak up! It's your family that has been negatively affected… ThugArmy mount up!!”Greenville Tea Party members and business partners have made even more extreme claims. Dan Harvell, a taxpayer advocate who spoke at Wednesday’s event and said that he was supporting Graham for the sake of “the traditional American values that we will have for our children,” has posted memes claiming that Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, slept her way to becoming San Francisco’s district attorney, and has called former first lady Michelle Obama a “race-baiter.”The Graham campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether he disavowed the support of the Greenville Tea Party and its members, and neither did the group. But state Democrats called the dynamic of Graham playing along with a group he once despised the latest in a long arc of allowances the senator has made under Trump.“This is yet another demonstration of the extreme lengths Sen. Graham is going to in order to save his flailing campaign,” said Manuel Bonder, coordinated campaign spokesperson for the South Carolina Democratic Party. “Instead of scrambling to consolidate his support amongst fringe conspiracy theorists who know he is a hypocrite, Sen. Graham should focus on leading South Carolina through this crisis and delivering the relief working families and businesses desperately need.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Trump retakes Iowa, gains in Florida in last Quinnipiac poll before election

President Trump has received a dose of good polling news days ahead of the election — but it may not be enough to turn the tide.In polls wrapping just a week before Election Day, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has posted no new gains in the swing states of Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac University survey out Thursday reveals. Meanwhile Trump's support has grown in Florida, Iowa, and Pennsylvania — and enough so in Florida and Iowa to be well in contention of winning.In Florida, Biden has 46 percent to Trump's 42 percent, the poll of likely voters showed. That's a 6-point loss for Biden and a 2-point gain for Trump from Quinnipiac's poll earlier this month, in which Biden posted a massive 11-point lead. Biden also lost 4 points in Iowa as Trump gained 2, enough to give the incumbent a narrow 47-46 lead. Biden meanwhile maintains a solid 51-44 point lead in Pennsylvania and a 48-43 lead in Ohio, where Trump slid 4 points since earlier this month.Analysts say a loss in Florida for Trump will likely cost him the whole election, but Biden has enough support in the Midwest to override a Florida slump. A CNN poll out late Wednesday — its last before election day — gives Biden a 12-point lead over Trump nationally, also a gain of 4 points for Trump from CNN's previous poll.Quinnipiac surveyed between 1,186 to 1,324 likely voters from Oct. 23–27 in each of the states, with margins of error between 2.7 and 2.9 percentage points.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

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Hackers breach Trump campaign website, threaten to release 'evidence' of crimes

The Trump campaign's website was briefly hacked late Tuesday, with the culprits posting a typo-riddled message on the site threatening to release "evidence" of the president's "criminal involvement" in a supposed scheme to sway next week's election. The hackers, whose identity was not immediately known, only managed to crack into the Trump website's "about" page. The rest of the website ...

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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Black Trump supporter: ‘A Black man has nothing to win in this race’

Karl Williams of Brooklyn believes that Black men have “nothing to win” in this year’s presidential race with either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden. “There’s no policy platform being presented that’s going to address any needs of Black men,” Williams, an investor who trades options, said in a video interview with Yahoo News. Despite this conviction, Williams, 34, plans to vote for Trump for a second time on Nov. 3. With one week left until the election, some experts say Black men are a key demographic who could shock the country on Election Day and vote for Trump in surprising numbers.

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Charlie Hebdo, whose cartoons sparked terror attacks in France, published a cutting caricature of Turkish President Erdogan amid his feud with Macron

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said French President Emmanuel Macron needed mental treatment after criticizing Islam and proposing regulations on it.

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Op-Ed: Time to prepare for an even more deadly pandemic

As lethal as the novel coronavirus has been, a novel influenza could be worse, transmitting even more easily and killing millions more people.

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Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims rally against France

About 10,000 Bangladeshis from an Islamist group marched through the nation's capital on Tuesday to denounce the display of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in France, while the group's leader urged Muslims around the world to boycott French products. The protesters from Islami Andolon Bangladesh, a group that advocates for the introduction of Islamic law in the Muslim-majority country, carried banners and placards reading “All Muslims of the world, unite” and “Boycott France."

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Zeta forecast to be a Cat 1 again as warnings issued from Louisiana to Florida Panhandle

Zeta weakened back into a tropical storm early Tuesday but is forecast to become a fast-moving Category 1 hurricane by the time it approaches the northern Gulf Coast Wednesday, prompting hurricane, storm surge and tropical storm warnings from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

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The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 just experienced their worst day since June

As COVID-19 cases climb in the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 just took a dive during their worst day in several months.The Dow on Wednesday fell 943 points as the S&P 500 dropped 3.5 percent, the worst day for each since June 11, CNBC reports. The Nasdaq Composite also had its worst day since early September, dropping 3.7 percent, according to CNN.Less than a week ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the Dow is "down nearly 9 percent since Sept. 2.," The Washington Post writes.This comes as the U.S. has been seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases, recently setting a record for most new infections reported in one day with over 83,000. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, this week warned that the U.S. is "getting worse and worse" and that "the numbers speak for themselves." More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

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Here's how former Vice President Joe Biden went from 'Middle-Class Joe' to millionaire

Joe Biden has earned millions from book royalties and speaking engagements — mostly following his vice presidency.

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Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis pushed for controversial casino after donations from gambling mogul

Pair of embattled Carolina senators changed their views after taking big bucks from casino interests and lobbyists

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Citing a burden on minority voters, US judge overrules Texas governor's exemption for masks at polls

The judge said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's exemption for masks at polling sites put a "discriminatory burden on Black and Latino voters.”

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FBI arrests five in U.S. accused of trying to coerce political dissenters to return to China

A note left on the door of one victim read, "If you are willing to go back to mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right."

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Erdogan vows legal response to Charlie Hebdo cartoon showing him lifting skirt of veiled woman

Anger at France deepened in Muslim-majority countries on Wednesday over a Charlie Hebdo cartoon showing Turkey’s president drinking beer while lifting the skirt of a woman wearing a hijab to reveal her naked buttocks. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president, described the cartoonists as “scoundrels” and accused the West of wanting to “relaunch the Crusades”. His office also vowed to take unspecified "legal and diplomatic actions" through the Turkish legal system. His row with France erupted after President Emmanuel Macron ordered a crackdown on Islamists this month, following the beheading of a teacher who showed his class Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Protesters in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu shouted: “Down with France. It insulted our prophet.”

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