Oregon, New Mexico order lockdowns as other states resist

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The governors of Oregon and New Mexico ordered near-lockdowns Friday in the most aggressive response yet to the latest wave of coronavirus infections shattering records across the U.S., even as many of their counterparts in other states show little appetite for reimposing the hard-line restrictions of last spring.

“We are in a life-or-death situation, and if we don’t act right now, we cannot preserve the lives, we can’t keep saving lives, and we will absolutely crush our current health care system and infrastructure,” Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said in imposing a two-week stay-at-home order.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered a two-week “freeze” starting Wednesday, under which all businesses will be required to close their offices to the public and mandate work-from-home “to the greatest extent possible.”

While most Oregon stores will remain open, gyms, museums, pools, movie theatres and zoos will be forced to close, and restaurants and bars will be limited to takeout. Social gatherings will be restricted to six people.

The Democratic governor warned that violators could face fines or arrest.

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EXPLAINER: Why AP called North Carolina for Trump

WHY AP CALLED NORTH CAROLINA FOR TRUMP

The Associated Press declared Donald Trump the winner in North Carolina on Friday after concluding there were not enough ballots left to be counted that would allow Joe Biden to overtake his lead.

Friday was the deadline for counties in North Carolina to certify their results. Following updates from most counties in the state, Trump was leading by about 73,690 votes, or 1.3 percentage points.

The AP on Saturday declared Biden had won the presidency. But a few individual contests, including North Carolina, remained too early to call.

Now that Trump has been declared the winner in North Carolina the only state yet to be called is Georgia, which is conducting a hand tally of the presidential race there. That’s because state law requires that one race be audited by hand to check that the machines counted the ballots accurately, and the secretary of state chose the presidential race because of its tight margin.

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Trump, still not conceding defeat, trumpets vaccine progress

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gliding over significant challenges still to come, President Donald Trump on Friday offered a rosy update on the race for a vaccine for the resurgent coronavirus as he delivered his first public remarks since his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden. He still did not concede the election.

Trump spoke from the the Rose Garden as the nation sets records for confirmed cases of COVID-19, and as hospitalizations near critical levels and fatalities climb to the highest levels since the spring. He said a vaccine would ship in “a matter of weeks” to vulnerable populations, though the Food and Drug Administration has not yet been asked to grant the necessary emergency approvals.

Public health experts worry that Trump’s refusal to take aggressive action on the pandemic or to co-ordinate with the Biden team during the final two months of his presidency will only worsen the effects of the virus and hinder the nation’s ability to swiftly distribute a vaccine next year.

As states impose new restrictions in the face of rising caseloads, Trump asked all Americans to remain “vigilant.” But he ruled out a nationwide “lockdown” and appeared to acknowledge that the decision won’t be his much longer.

“This administration will not be going to a lockdown,” he said. “Hopefully whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration it will be I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump distorts on vaccine, state distribution

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday wrongly claimed full credit for Pfizer Inc.’s announcement that its COVID-19 vaccine was robustly successful and suggested without evidence that a separate state review will cause a protracted delay for New York residents waiting for a vaccine.

A look at the statements, made during his first public remarks since his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden:

TRUMP: “As a result of Operation Warp Speed, Pfizer announced on Monday that its China virus vaccine was more than 90% effective. …Pfizer said it wasn’t part of Warp Speed, but that turned out to be an unfortunate misrepresentation.”

THE FACTS: Not so much. Pfizer notably did not accept government money to develop, test or expand manufacturing capacity under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly find a vaccine and treatments for the disease sweeping the country.

In fact, Pfizer partnered with the vaccine’s original developer, Germany’s BioNTech, in March and the following month announced the first human study in Germany. The White House announced Operation Warp Speed in May.

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Democrats keep winning the popular vote. That worries them.

Democrats won the popular vote in this year’s presidential election yet again, marking seven out of eight straight presidential elections that the party has reached that milestone.

And, for some Democrats, that’s worrisome.

President-elect Joe Biden has so far won 50.8% of the vote compared to the 47.4% who voted for President Donald Trump, a 5 million vote advantage that is likely to grow as Democratic bastions like California and New York continue to count ballots. Biden’s 77.5 million votes to date are the most for any winning candidate, and Trump’s 72.3 million also set a high water mark for a losing one.

Experts predict Biden’s margin of victory will surpass former President Barack Obama’s 4 percentage point popular vote lead in 2012. Only Obama’s landslide 2008 victory — with a 7 percentage point margin in the popular vote — was larger in recent elections.

But what alarms many Democrats is a growing gap between their popular vote tallies and their political power. Democrats may be winning over more supporters, but as long as those votes are clustered on the coasts or in cities and suburbs, they won’t deliver the congressional victories the party needs to enact its policies.

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Republicans face court setbacks, Trump law firm steps down

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Republicans suffered setbacks to court challenges over the presidential election in three battleground states on Friday while a law firm that came under fire for its work for President Donald Trump’s campaign withdrew from a major Pennsylvania case.

The legal blows began when a federal appeals court rejected an effort to block about 9,300 mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day in Pennsylvania. The judges noted the “vast disruption” and “unprecedented challenges” facing the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic as they upheld the three-day extension.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith said the panel kept in mind “a proposition indisputable in our democratic process: that the lawfully cast vote of every citizen must count.”

The ruling involves a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to accept mail-in ballots through Friday, Nov. 6, citing the pandemic and concerns about postal service delays.

Republicans have also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the issue. However, there are not enough late-arriving ballots to change the results in Pennsylvania, given President-elect Joe Biden’s lead. The Democratic former vice-president won the state by about 60,000 votes out of about 6.8 million cast.

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Masked workers start presidential hand tally in Georgia

ATLANTA (AP) — Masked election workers in teams of two began counting ballots Friday in counties across Georgia, a hand tally of the presidential race that stems from an audit required by a new state law.

The law requires that one race be audited to check that new election machines counted the ballots accurately, not because of any suspected problems with the results. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger chose to audit the presidential race and said the tight margin — Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican President Donald Trump by roughly 14,000 votes — meant a full hand count was necessary.

Across the state, audit teams worked with batches of paper ballots, dividing them into piles for each candidate, before counting each pile by hand. Bipartisan panels were on hand to review certain ballots, including those where the auditors couldn’t agree on the voter’s intent and those with write-in candidates.

Monitors, appointed by local Democratic and Republican parties, were allowed to circulate among the auditing stations but could not touch ballots or record anything. News media and members of the public were also allowed to observe but were required to do so from a designated area.

In Cobb County, in Atlanta’s suburbs, several dozen audit teams sat at tables in a large room at an event centre in Marietta as they began counting absentee ballots. One auditor picked up a ballot, read the candidate’s name aloud and then passed it to the other auditor, who also said the name before placing the ballot in a tray marked with the candidate’s name.

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Progressives look to make early mark on Biden White House

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Leading progressives are pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to embrace their policy agenda even as more centrist Democrats argue such proposals prevented the party from retaking full control of Congress.

For now, much of the lobbying centres on who Biden should — or should not — appoint to key posts as he builds out the administration that will take office in January.

The left-leaning think-tank Progressive Change Institute partnered with more than 40 activist groups and on Friday released a detailed list of 400 progressive policy experts they want Biden to bring on. That follows a separate effort from more than half a dozen progressive groups this week that signed letters urging the president-elect against naming anyone with ties to major corporate interests to key Cabinet posts.

“Now is absolutely the moment to push Biden to do what’s necessary to meet the moment,” said David Segel, a former Rhode Island state representative and executive director of Demand Progress, which was among those signing the letters. “And that means a robust economic response, a robust health care response, a willingness to push back against concentrated corporate power that’s fomenting inequality. And he has a mandate to do all of that.”

The jockeying amounts to the opening round of what is likely to be a lengthy debate over the future of the Democratic Party. Some centrists have blamed losses in the House and a disappointing performance in the Senate on Republicans’ ability to paint Democrats as having moved too far to the left.

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Tropical Storm Iota forms, could follow Eta’s deadly path

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Just as the remnants of Eta finally blew out to sea on Friday, another storm formed that could follow its path of death and destruction into Central America this weekend.

Hurricane experts were closely watching the Caribbean, where Tropical Storm Iota formed Friday afternoon. Forecasters warned that Iota could power up quickly, to major hurricane strength, as it approaches Central America late Sunday or Monday, and wreak more havoc in a region where people are still grappling with the aftermath of Eta.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Iota could bring dangerous wind, storm surge and as much as 30 inches (76 centimetres) of rainfall to northern Nicaragua and Honduras. The storm was located about 350 miles (560 kilometres) south-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica and had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph). There were no coastal warnings or watches in effect as of Friday afternoon.

Iota is a record-setting 30th named storm of this year’s extraordinarily busy Atlantic hurricane season. Such activity has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing wetter, stronger and more destructive storms.

In terms of Eta, forecasters said its remnants would pick up forward speed in the next day or so as it pulls away from the Southeast seaboard. Eta also triggered flash flooding, water rescues and at least one bridge collapse in South Carolina, said Sandy LaCorte, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Greenville, South Carolina.

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With no flowers or fans, green jacket gives colour to Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The azaleas that give Augusta National its iconic pink palette have long since withered, leaving behind flowerless green bushes and trees turning autumnal browns and yellows. Gone, too, is the roar of the fans — they call them “patrons” — who line the fairways and greens hoping to see the next Masters champion. Delayed seven months because of the coronavirus pandemic and played in the fall for the first time, this year’s tournament may be quieter and more colorless than any previous edition in its 86-year history. But the prize is every bit as coveted: One of golf’s most prestigious titles, and the green jacket that goes along with it.