THE BIG STORY

Trump said he underestimated how quickly the coronavirus would spread despite reports saying he knew

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.” Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said President Donald Trump told him about the coronavirus in a call in February. “It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. This stuff is deadly,” the president said, according to Woodward.

Woodward’s upcoming book describes a president who was fully aware of the potential danger Americans faced with the coronavirus and regarded it as a serious threat.

In the same time frame, Trump was repeatedly minimizing the danger to the American people during briefings, and comparing the coronavirus to the flu. Trump admitted so during a separate interview with Woodward. “I wanted to play it down,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

In a press conference Wednesday, Trump did not deny Woodward’s report but called it a “political hit job” before insisting he was trying to avoid showing a sense of panic.

“You didn’t really think it was going to be to the point where it was,” Trump told reporters.

Pool / Getty Images

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

California and Oregon residents describe apocalyptic landscapes as wildfires rage

For millions, yesterday was the day the sun didn’t rise.

Instead, smoke from a record-breaking spate of wildfires burning across the West Coast shrouded the sky, casting the region in an eerie orange-yellow glow.

Across the coast, from Washington state to nearly the Mexican border, firefighters desperately battled to contain the flames. In California alone, at least 32 major fires were burning as of Wednesday afternoon and more than 64,000 people were under an evacuation order.

People are scared, nervous of the glowing orange sky. Many say they've never seen anything like this. Here are their stories.

We’ve also collected photos that show the apocalyptic scenes of the wildfires. This one left me speechless:

Josh Edelson / Getty Images

SNAPSHOTS

Trump’s new list of Supreme Court nominees includes a judge who served in his White House and three Republican Senators. Trump is hoping to repeat his 2016 strategy of using the courts to motivate his base and win over skeptics.

Mizzou students say the school’s president is blocking them online for expressing concerns about COVID safety. Students at the University of Missouri say they were personally blocked by school President Mun Y. Choi on Twitter after complaining about COVID-19 precautions on campus.

A whistleblower has accused Department of Homeland Security officials of lying about border threats to support Trump’s false claims. In a rare whistleblower complaint, a senior staffer detailed efforts by top DHS officials to build a false narrative to support Trump's bogus claims about terrorists crossing the southern border.

A white professor who admitted to pretending to be Black during her career has resigned from George Washington University. Jessica Krug resigned from her teaching position Wednesday, a week after she admitted to pretending to be Black during her academic career.

THE LOST YEAR

At 24, Sarah is set to graduate college — but will she have a place in America?

It’s been six months since the pandemic was declared. All this week, we’ve been featuring six stories, about people from six different age groups, that tell us how the pandemic has changed us.

Today, it’s Sarah Faruqui’s turn. Sarah is a Pakistani woman from Hong Kong. The coronavirus, the Trump administration, and unrest back home have made displacement and uncertainty a near constant for her this year.

Sarah, like many college students, had a plan for her future. This December, she will graduate from Columbia, and then was planning on looking for work in New York while applying to law schools.

Instead, she now has to worry about whether she can even stay in the country. “No matter which direction I’m pulled, it’s kind of chaotic,” she told us.

Read how the pandemic forced uncertainty into Sarah’s life.

"LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER"

There’s a TikTok trend where people show how to protect someone’s drink from getting spiked

The new trend sees people making videos where they show creative ways of how to prevent a drink from getting spiked at a bar.

The videos are incredible, and as one TikToker notes, “I wanted to remind people that it’s not just a funny trend, that it’s an actual serious issue with dangerous consequences.”.

Take a step back to appreciate how courageous you've been this year,

Elamin