A Seattle police officer captured on video rolling his bicycle over the head of a protester who was laying in the street is now on administrative leave.
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Seattle police officer captured on video riding his bicycle over a protester’s head placed on leave
Tucker Carlson: Media messaging on riots ‘legitimately hurts the country’
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McEnany takes CNN to task over Kentucky attorney general remarks
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COVID-19 Statistics | Sept. 24, 2020
Daily COVID Report /
Today
COVID REPORT: Seventh Humboldt County Death Reported Today; Six New Cases Confirmed, Says Joint Information Center
Press release from the Humboldt County Joint Information Center:
A Humboldt County resident in their 60s has died after being diagnosed with COVID-19. This marks the seventh death related to COVID-19 in the county.
Humboldt County Health Officer Dr. Teresa Frankovich sent her condolences to the family. “My heart goes out to friends and family members who are mourning this loss,” she said.
Six new cases of COVID-19 were reported today, bringing to 496 the total number of county residents who have tested positive for the virus.
Today’s alert level stands at two or level yellow. Visit humboldtgov.org/dashboard to view the county’s Alert Level Assessment tool.
For the most recent COVID-19 information, visit cdc.gov or cdph.ca.gov. Local information is available at humboldtgov.org or during business hours by contacting covidinfo@co.humboldt.ca.us or calling 707-441-5000.
Humboldt County COVID-19 Data Dashboard: humboldtgov.org/dashboard,
Follow us on Facebook: @HumCoCOVID19,
Instagram: @HumCoCOVID19,
Twitter: @HumCoCOVID19, and
Humboldt Health Alert: humboldtgov.org/HumboldtHealthAlert###
Today
= historic data. All data from the Humboldt County Joint Information Center.
Cases
Case Updates
- 1 new death.
- 1 new recovered case.
- 3 cases under investigation were determined as being acquired through contact to another known case.
Testing
So Far
Cases
Acquisition
Testing
Demographics
As of Monday, Sept. 21
Age
Sex
Region
Feds open civil rights investigation into Kansas teen killed by police during wellness check
Federal authorities have opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal police shooting of a Kansas teenager who was backing out of the family’s garage when an officer — responding to a call for a wellness check — fired 13 times.
The FBI will “collect all available facts and evidence and will ensure that the investigation is conducted in a fair, thorough and impartial manner,” a spokeswoman told NBC News in a statement Thursday. The agency’s Kansas City, Missouri, field office is working with the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
The FBI did not comment further about the reason for and focus of the review, citing the ongoing investigation.
The killing of John Albers, 17, in January 2018 brought the national outcry over police use of excessive force to the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park.
After his death, Albers’ family sought answers for what led to the shooting and even for the name of the officer who killed him, which they quickly learned was a struggle because of the state’s restrictive public records laws, including for police documents.
A month after the shooting of Albers, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe announced an official investigation determined the officer, who said he feared for his life, was justified in his actions. At the time, Howe and Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez said the officer resigned from the police force before administrative action could be taken.
The name of the officer, Clayton Jenison, was only confirmed publicly by officials after an attorney for the Albers family uncovered it for a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 against the officer and the police department.
Albers’ mother, Sheila Albers, said she welcomes the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office investigation, and hopes it will “shed light on what Overland Park and our DA have been able to keep hidden.”
The opening of an investigation “highlights the failure of Overland Park and District Attorney Steve Howe to be transparent in their investigations and be accountable to their constituents,” she added.
Sean Reilly, a spokesman for the city of Overland Park, said officials will “fully cooperate … just as we cooperated with the investigations conducted by the Johnson County District Attorney’s office and the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards.”
Overland Park police did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
On the night Albers was killed, his family had gone out to dinner. Police were called to the home for a wellness check after a friend was concerned that Albers may have been intoxicated and feeling suicidal and had threatened to stab himself with a knife, according to Sheila Albers and the federal complaint filed by the family.
Dashcam videos and a neighbor’s security camera showed Jenison and another officer arriving at the home. They first spoke for a few minutes outside and did not knock on the front door or identify themselves. Eventually, the family’s garage door swung open, and Jenison unholstered his weapon and moved toward the door as the minivan, which Albers was driving, was about to reverse out.
It was then, as the minivan backed out slowly and in a straight line, that Jenison reacted, aiming his weapon and yelling, “Stop, stop, stop.” In a second, Jenison, who was standing to the right of the van, fired twice toward Albers; the family’s complaint contended that one or both of the bullets struck the teenager, “incapacitating him and rendering him unable to control the minivan.”
The car stopped but then speeded up in reverse, making a U-turn in the driveway and backing up. Jenison fired 11 more shots, and the minivan pulled forward, past another police car that had just approached, and coasted in neutral into the driveway of a home across the street.
A toxicology report indicated that Albers had not been under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Howe, in announcing his decision not to charge the officer in 2018, said “these are fluid and instantaneous decisions that a law enforcement officer must make, which makes the job so difficult.”
The family ended up settling with Overland Park in 2019 for $2.3 million, The Washington Post reported, although the city did not admit liability and said it settled to avoid the cost and length of the litigation.
But Sheila Albers has long questioned the police narrative that Jenison had no choice but to draw his weapon because he was in immediate danger.
In June, city officials confirmed that Jenison received $70,000 as part of a severance package when he agreed to resign, an amount paid despite the fact the prosecutor’s office cleared him of wrongdoing.
The city said the agreement was “in the best interest of the community” and could prevent Jenison from potentially fighting for reinstatement to the force because there was “no just cause to terminate” him and avoid a costly lawsuit. Officials also said Chief Donchez never communicated with Jenison about the agreement nor encouraged him to enter into it.
Efforts to reach Jenison were unsuccessful Thursday.
Sheila Albers said she’s hoping for more transparency out of the federal investigation after officials “disseminated a false narrative, cleared the officer of wrongdoing in record time and structured a severance payout to the officer that killed John.”
One More Thing
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Trump fights for military vote despite early missteps
The Trump campaign is counting on an aggressive ground game to help win over active-duty troops and veterans during the home stretch of the White House race, but with little room for error, Republican insiders fear a series of missteps and miscalculations may swing the highly coveted and Republican-leaning demographic toward Democratic rival Joseph R. Biden.
The former vice president has scored surprisingly well in surveys of U.S. troops and picked up the endorsement Thursday of nearly 500 national security figures, including 22 four-star retired officers.
But top Trump campaign officials say they are confident that men and women in uniform remain assets for the president. They dismiss recent polls that show service members moving away from Mr. Trump and toward Mr. Biden.
The campaign officials say the deciding factor will be the president’s track record: drawing down forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, securing pay raises for troops, instituting reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs and other steps.
Capturing those votes could prove vital in swing states such as Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida, home to some of the country’s largest active-duty and veteran populations.
But there are reasons to question the Trump campaign’s confidence. Even a modest dip in support for Mr. Trump could make all the difference in a tight race, and some political observers say the president made a mistake early in his administration that gave Democrats a golden opportunity to gain ground.
“A lot of folks don’t realize that the military mindset is rapidly moving to the political left, just like the Justice Department, State Department and other big government entities did a long time ago,” said J.D. Gordon, a former Trump campaign national security adviser and Pentagon spokesman. “I think the campaign is doing what it can, but it’s like pushing back against a rising tide or fighting gravity — only so much you can do.
“Making matters worse, it didn’t help that while the president energized ‘America First’ types during the 2016 campaign, he ended up staffing the Pentagon as if Hillary [Clinton] or Jeb [Bush] had won, stiffing the campaign and his ideological supporters in the process,” Mr. Gordon told The Washington Times. “The White House is trying to fix this now, but it’s a little late in the game. The damage is already done.”
Indeed, some of the president’s hand-picked top national security officials, most notably former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, have become his most outspoken critics. Their turnabouts could offer some ideological cover for military voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now feel differently.
Mr. Gordon and other analysts say the White House missed a chance to install officials who deeply believed in the president’s foreign policy agenda. Instead, daylight between Mr. Trump and Pentagon leaders may have trickled down the ranks.
Mr. Trump also has publicly clashed with military leaders on Middle East strategy, the handling of individual military justice cases and other issues. This summer, Defense Secretary Mark Esper broke with the president over plans to deploy active-duty troops to quell riots and unrest in major American cities.
Mr. Trump at times has leaned into tension with the Pentagon and appealed directly to the rank and file after going over the heads of officers he once called “my generals.”
“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference this month. “The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
A recent story in The Atlantic that claimed the president referred to fallen troops as “losers” and “suckers” has only deepened concerns that Mr. Trump may be alienating the military and could lose his once-considerable edge among service members.
The president has vehemently denied making those comments. A host of current and former officials who were with Mr. Trump in 2018 when he allegedly made the comments also have challenged the article.
Even before the story was published, a Military Times poll released late last month showed troubling signs for the president. In the survey, 41% of active-duty troops said they would vote for Mr. Biden, compared with just 37% for Mr. Trump.
The data showed a remarkable fall for the president. At the start of his tenure in January 2017, 46% of service members had a positive view of Mr. Trump. In the most recent survey, that number was just 38%.
Ending ‘endless wars’
Trump supporters dismiss that poll, and the campaign says other data tells a much different story. A recent Fox News survey showed 56% of military veterans support the president, compared with 40% for Mr. Biden. The Fox poll was conducted in early September, several days after the release of the article in The Atlantic.
Because that survey included veterans and the Military Times poll focused just on active-duty troops, campaign officials say, it offers more proof of solid support in military circles. They also point out that Mr. Trump captured the support of more than 60% of military veterans in his 2016 contest with Mrs. Clinton, according to most exit polling.
This time, they expect the president to fare even better, in large part because of considerable progress on his pledge to wind down “endless wars” in the Middle East and bring thousands of troops back home.
“Whether it be rebuilding the American military, brokering peace in the Middle East or bringing home our troops, the facts are undeniable: President Trump is the biggest advocate for our men and women in uniform and will always fight to defend them,” Ken Farnaso, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told The Times. He called the campaign’s Veterans for Trump “one of our strongest coalitions to date.”
Veterans for Trump and other military-related campaign outreach efforts have held events recently in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other key battleground states, and many more are planned during the home stretch of the race, officials said. The campaign also points to a recent Trump endorsement by 235 retired military officials.
“After years of neglect from the Obama-Biden administration, our service members and veterans have finally found a strong advocate in President Trump,” the campaign said in a statement announcing the endorsements.
The president also is expected to make his military and foreign policy record a centerpiece of his pitch during debates with Mr. Biden, particularly how he reduced the U.S. military presence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan during his first term without starting any foreign conflicts.
Critics say Mr. Trump has dispatched thousands of additional troops to bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East because of tensions with Iran. The Pentagon no longer releases exact counts, but deployments and redeployments to the region over the past two years seem to greatly outnumber the troops Mr. Trump has brought home.
Mr. Trump’s opponents intend to spend huge sums of money in the next month to appeal to veterans and to use military issues to sway crucial undecided voters.
In addition to left-leaning PACs such as VoteVets that are staunchly anti-Trump, groups such as The Lincoln Project, made up of current and former Republicans, are leaning hard into foreign policy, national security and the president’s relationship with the armed forces.
The Lincoln Project reportedly is launching a major ad buy in publications such as the Military Times and Stars and Stripes, both of which have huge readerships among service members, their families and veterans.
“It’s a complete disgrace that a commander in chief who dodged serving in Vietnam and denigrated POWs publicly has the audacity to disrespect the millions of brave men and women who volunteered for military service,” Fred Wellman, the Lincoln Project’s senior adviser for veterans affairs, told Politico this week.
⦁ Lauren Toms contributed to this report.
Supreme Court clears the way for federal execution Thursday night
The Supreme Court has denied a request to stop the federal execution of Christopher Vialva, scheduled for Thursday night in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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Donald Trump bets on trade while Joe Biden struggles for direction
President Trump was just three days into his tenure in 2017 when, with the stroke of a pen, he nixed America’s participation in the world’s biggest trade deal.
In canceling the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership and later rewriting the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mr. Trump has drafted a new script for negotiating trade deals.
He has ditched multilateral pacts that rely on a gaggle of nations getting on the same page and has wielded tariffs against friend and foe alike. He also has embraced a “protectionist” label instead of the Republican Party’s traditional affinity for free and open trade.
Mr. Trump is leaning into the issue ahead of Election Day, betting that his signature focus will help lock down Upper Midwest states that delivered a White House victory to him four years ago.
“I watched the jobs going out. I never saw anything so stupid in my life,” he told supporters in Dayton, Ohio, this week. “I watched the worst trade deals, and we’ve reversed many of them, almost all of them now, but we’ve reversed them.”
Joseph R. Biden, who supported NAFTA and the TPP, is still trying to find his footing as the Democratic nominee. He has been forced to acknowledge that the North American pact signed by Mr. Trump is superior to the original, though he says House Democrats deserve the credit for negotiating a better deal.
He has proposed a series of ideas to recapture voters who flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden wants a 10% tax on companies that move production overseas and then try to sell products in the U.S.
“If your big corporate strategy is to boost your shareholders’ profits and your CEO’s bonuses by moving jobs out of America, we’re going to make sure you not only pay full U.S. taxes on those profits, we’re going to add an extra 10% offshoring penalty surtax to your bill,” Mr. Biden told Michigan workers on Sept. 9.
He also rolled out a 10% tax credit for companies that revitalize closing or closed factories or bring production or overseas jobs back to the U.S.
He wants to tighten “Buy American” rules. He says too many products are stamped “Made in America,” even if barely 51% of their materials are made domestically, and that it’s too easy for federal agencies to waive the rules when they procure goods.
“These are things that are meant to appeal to Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio, places that have a lot of manufacturing and union jobs,” said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Mr. Biden has signaled his desire to work more closely with other nations as Mr. Trump uses sharp elbows with friendly partners to get the terms he wants.
“I would just say an important difference between Biden and Trump, when the smoke clears, is that Biden wants to work with the allies,” Ms. Lovely said.
A survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs finds both parties adopting the views of their respective standard-bearers. Democrats have taken an “internationalist” view, and Republicans favor a nationalist approach to trade.
“The differences between the two candidates are glaring, reinforced by respective partisan preferences among the wider public,” the surveyors said. “In November, voters will not only decide who will become the next U.S. president, but also they will help determine the path U.S. foreign policy takes — either working in partnership with the international community or moving toward a greater degree of national self-reliance.”
The Trump administration is eyeing a series of deals in a second term. He is interested in negotiating with the United Kingdom, once it sorts out Brexit, and Kenya, which is looking to engage.
The president left the door open to a major deal with the European Union despite his well-documented friction with the bloc.
“He’s going to go where he sees the most economic benefit,” said James Carafano, a vice president for foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Mr. Trump says Mr. Biden has forfeited the issue of trade by supporting NAFTA, which has been blamed for job losses in the Rust Belt and heartland.
He predicts the Democratic nominee would be too soft on China and doesn’t have the fire in his belly to fight for U.S. interests. He also says the former vice president alienated voters who preferred Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont during the Democratic primary contests.
“A lot of the Bernie people vote for us because Bernie’s right about one thing: trade,” Mr. Trump told North Carolina supporters this month.
Few polls ask voters about international trade directly. Instead, voters give Mr. Trump an edge on the economy generally and a nod to Mr. Biden on foreign policy.
A majority of Americans disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of foreign trade in 2018 and 2019, but the president moved above water by January, when he notched the back-to-back deals during an impeachment inquiry, according to Gallup.
It’s been a bumpy road for Mr. Trump since then. The COVID-19 pandemic has shrouded some of his achievements, and China isn’t living up to the purchasing requirements of a phase one trade deal.
Mr. Trump is walking a tightrope on trade with Beijing by trumpeting recent purchases of corn and other farm products while accusing the communist government of letting COVID-19 spread around the world.
“China is now paying us billions and billions of dollars, but you know, I view it differently now. I view China much differently now after the plague came in,” Mr. Trump told the crowd in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Mr. Trump also upset brewers and other industries by slapping tariffs on Canadian aluminum mere weeks after the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement went into effect. He said the Canadians were flooding the U.S. market with aluminum, though experts said the uptick was a natural byproduct of market trends related to COVID-19.
He backed off in mid-September, before Canada could retaliate, after determining that trade in non-alloyed, unwrought aluminum is likely to normalize in the last four months of the year.
Mr. Biden is hammering Mr. Trump over the loss of manufacturing jobs during his tenure and the trade war with China that hurt farmers, forcing Mr. Trump to seek billions of dollars in bailout funds over the past two years.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle for Mr. Trump will be getting voters to care about trade, which has been his signature issue alongside immigration. The USMCA just took effect, so its impact is unclear, and COVID-19 hamstrung the initial stage of the China deal and dimmed hopes for phase two.
“Trade is not the be-all, end-all of the American economy, so deficits and trade deals aren’t something that touches the average American the way a tax cut does or a significant decline in employment does,” Mr. Carafano said.
Still, the issue keeps coming up with less than six weeks until Election Day.
The former vice president has been forced to explain why the Obama administration was unable to renegotiate NAFTA from 2009 to 2017.
He told CNN’s Jake Tapper this month that the Republican-led Congress wouldn’t agree with the Obama administration’s push to update the deal.
Experts say Mr. Biden’s argument might be a tough sell.
“‘I couldn’t get it done but the other guy did,’” Mr. Carafano said. “That’s not a great reason to vote for you.”
FDA issues warning on ‘Benadryl Challenge,’ a rumored viral trend
The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning Thursday about the dangers of the “Benadryl Challenge,” a rumored TikTok stunt that involves ingesting high doses of the allergy medication to induce hallucinations.
“We are aware of news reports of teenagers ending up in emergency rooms or dying after participating in the ‘Benadryl Challenge’ encouraged in videos posted on the social media application TikTok,” the FDA warning says.
However, there has been little evidence on TikTok of a widespread challenge, and the platform disabled both the “Benadryl” and “BenadrylChallenge” hashtags in order to prevent copycats.
While there have been several local news reports about teens involved with the challenge, NBC News has not confirmed these reports.
The FDA said in the warning that is “investigating these reports and conducting a review to determine if additional cases have been reported. We will update the public once we have completed our review or have more information to share.”
The agency also said that it has contacted TikTok and “strongly urged them to remove the videos from their platform and to be vigilant to remove additional videos that may be posted.”
Taking higher than recommended doses of diphenhydramine, sold as Benadryl, can lead to serious heart problems, seizures, coma or even death, according to the FDA. Parents should store diphenhydramine away from children, and the agency recommends locking up all medicines to prevent accidental poisonings by children and misuse by teens.
In a statement provided to NBC News, Johnson & Johnson, which makes Benadryl, said, in part, “This online ‘challenge’ is extremely concerning, dangerous and should be stopped immediately.”
“As soon as we became aware of this dangerous trend, we contacted social media platforms to have the content removed,” the statement continued. “We are continuing to monitor and work with safety teams at the various social media platforms to remove dangerous content.”
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