WHAT'S BREWING
ROMNEY SLAMS GOP SENATE PROBE INTO HUNTER BIDEN Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) slammed a Republican-led Senate investigation involving Hunter Biden, saying it has the appearance of a “political exercise” intended to damage the candidacy of his father, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Congressional Republicans earlier this year launched two partisan investigations into the Obama administration and Hunter Biden. They’re expected to wrap up their work and release public reports on their findings before the Nov. 3 election. [HuffPost]
FIRE, FLOOD, SMOKE, CYCLONES: THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS EVERYWHERE In the last two weeks, wildfires fueled by extreme heat and drought have consumed a combined 5 million acres in California, Oregon and Washington, killing at least 33 people and displacing tens of thousands. Residents in cities coast to coast found themselves under hazy orange skies this week as smoke stretched for thousands of miles. Off the Atlantic coast, a record-tying five tropical cyclones swirled simultaneously on Tuesday ― the latest in an “extremely active” hurricane season. “Climate and ecological breakdown are impossible to ignore at this point,” Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist, told HuffPost. [HuffPost]
TRUMP CLAIMS COVID-19 VACCINE WILL BE READY BY OCTOBER Contradicting his own health officials and other experts, Trump claimed a COVID-19 vaccine would be available as soon as October. He also said that at least 100 million vaccine doses would be distributed in the U.S. by the end of the year. Hours earlier, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a Senate committee that first responders could have limited access to a vaccine in November or December, but it won't be “fully available to the American public” until at least “the second or third quarter” of 2021. [HuffPost]
LINCOLN PROJECT CO-FOUNDER NAMES TRUMP'S 'GREATEST LIE' IN AMERICAN HISTORY Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt says Trump’s admission that he knowingly downplayed the coronavirus threat early in the pandemic has no other parallel in the nation’s history. “Bob Woodward induced a confession of the greatest lie in American history, bar none,” Schmidt said on MSNBC. “It is a catastrophic leadership failure. But more than that, there’s no equivalent in the country’s history to it. It is the greatest malfeasance in the history of the United States.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP BLAMES BLUE STATES FOR COVID-19 DEATH TOLL Trump politicized the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans on Wednesday, placing the blame for the nation’s high death toll from coronavirus on “blue states.” “The blue states had tremendous death rates,” Trump said at a news conference. “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at, we’re really at a very low level.” There have been significant deaths from coronavirus in states across the country, regardless of their governors’ political affiliation. [HuffPost]
BARBADOS TO REMOVE QUEEN ELIZABETH AS HEAD OF STATE Barbados wants to remove Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as its head of state and become a republic, the Caribbean island nation’s government has said, reviving a plan mooted several times in the past. A former British colony that gained independence in 1966, Barbados has maintained a formal link with the British monarchy, as have some other countries that were once part of the British empire. “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” said Barbados Gov. General Sandra Mason, delivering a speech on behalf of the country’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley. [Reuters] |
