Firefighter battling blaze in California found dead

The cause of the death is under investigation, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

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Planned Black community in Georgia draws interest for a reality TV show

Last week, nearly two dozen families in Georgia made headlines for pooling money to purchase land in a Georgia town with a vision to build a safe-haven community for Black people. The news garnered widespread attention, including interest from big wigs in the entertainment sphere hoping to develop a reality TV show about the forthcoming community dreamed to be Freedom, Georgia, per TMZ. The group of 19 families, led by Ashley Scott and Renee Walters, bought 97 acres of land in Toomsboro, Georgia, a rural town of about 500 people, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, about two hours south of Atlanta.

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New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Only 22% of Americans think the 2020 presidential election will be 'free and fair'

Both Republicans and Democrats harbor grave and growing doubts about whether the upcoming election will accurately reflect the will of the people. 

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Southern California jolted by magnitude 4.5 earthquake, another worry after raging wildfires

In a region already reeling from wildfires and smoke-filled skies, a magnitude 4.6 earthquake jolted Southern California.

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Mail-in ballot law in Pennsylvania has driven out nearly a quarter of state's top election officials

The race in the battleground state is expected to be tight and top Pennsylvania elections officials have already said not to expect results on election night.

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U.S., Guyana to launch joint maritime patrols near disputed Venezuela border

The United States and Guyana will begin joint maritime patrols aimed at drug interdiction near the South American country's disputed border with crisis-stricken Venezuela, the U.S. secretary of state and Guyana's new president said on Friday. The agreement comes as U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp, as part of a consortium with Hess Corp and China's CNOOC Ltd, ramps up crude output from Guyana's massive offshore Stabroek block, a large portion of which is in waters claimed by Venezuela. "Greater security, greater capacity to understand your border space, what's happening inside your Exclusive Economic Zone - those are all things that give Guyana sovereignty," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a joint appearance with newly-installed Guyanese President Irfaan Ali.

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AOC’s challenger on the left’s plan for Biden

John Cummings, a 2020 Republican challenger to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joins ‘Fox & Friends.’

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Fauci says that Trump and Redfield were "both right" about vaccines

Trump has publicly contradicted the CDC director's timeline for vaccine distribution, saying that Redfield "made a mistake."

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With a battle looming, Biden will seek to link the Supreme Court vacancy to the future of health care.

By BY SHANE GOLDMACHER, KATIE GLUECK AND THOMAS KAPLAN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3ccbco0

Trump Supporters Disrupt Early Voting in Virginia

By BY NICK CORASANITI AND STEPHANIE SAUL from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3mBfaeD

Matthew Wolff Leads Bryson DeChambeau at U.S. Open as Power Paves the Way

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Social conservatives see a goal within reach, thanks to their bargain with Trump.

By BY JEREMY W. PETERS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2EhNev5

Trump Approves Deal Between Oracle and TikTok

By BY ANA SWANSON, DAVID MCCABE AND ERIN GRIFFITH from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2HhMc3i

Trump says he will nominate a woman to replace Ginsburg next week.

By BY MICHAEL CROWLEY from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2RH6Dsf

Tropical Storm Beta strengthens overnight

We'll enjoy some fantastic weather Saturday ahead of impacts from Tropical Storm Beta.

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Tropical Storm Wilfred could form in Gulf; Hurricane Teddy remains a major Category 4

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Court rulings in critical swing states make it easier to vote this November — but may delay results

A Michigan judge ruled Friday that if a mail-in ballot is postmarked by Nov. 2, the day before the election, election officials must count it if it arrives by the end of the day on Nov. 16.

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Rochester: Two killed and 14 wounded after mass shooting at party in New York state

Police say incident is ‘tragedy of epic proportions’

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Janusz Walus: Why far-right Polish football fans idolise a murderer in South Africa

Janusz Walus killed anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani in 1993, sparking fears of a racial civil war.

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Joe Biden's head-scratching pandemic performance

Each week, the Trump campaign says, its staff and volunteers knock on one million American doors. And each week, the Biden campaign knocks on zero.Democratic nominee Joe Biden's team has no plans to begin door-to-door canvassing because of COVID-19. "If you asked anybody off the record from the Biden campaign, I think they'd be like 'Yeah, we want to be on doors.' The reality is we still have a pandemic going on," Jason Henry, leader of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, told Politico. "Those conversations are still being had because we want to make sure we do this safely."That's a prudent and admirable desire. But deciding against door-knocking isn't safety. It's security theater, and it may well do the Biden campaign more harm than good."Security theater" is a term coined by Bruce Schneier, a tech security expert who lectures at Harvard, and its original context was the war on terror. As Schneier defines it, the phrase "refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security." Early in the pandemic, condemnation of Florida's decision to open its beaches was security theater, as outdoor transmission of COVID-19 is extremely unlikely with basic social distancing. A more classic example is the TSA. Most of its procedures — like body scans — do little to protect air travel from terrorism, but they make the public feel like something is being done.That feeling is nice, and politicians like to provide it in hope we'll will accord our votes to the source of our nice feelings. "The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders," Schneier explained a decade ago. "When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense."Declining to door knock because of COVID-19 doesn't make any sense. This is an activity easily done safely. It is usually outdoors, where risk of transmission is low. (Skipping apartment buildings with indoor hallways would be a reasonable precaution.) It can be performed in a mask, and it does not require participants to get within six feet of each other. The literature handoff can be done at a distance — a volunteer could place the paper on the ground for the voter to pick up instead of handing it to them directly — and thus is no riskier than receiving mail or the contactless literature drops the Biden campaign plans to start soon. The interactions are brief, a few minutes at most. In every way, this is a safe activity with a minimal risk of coronavirus transmission. Canceling door-to-door canvassing "for safety" is security theater, nothing more.It's also just bad campaign strategy. Studies show most campaign activities are remarkably useless, particularly in general elections at the federal level. Very few voters are persuadable. Campaigns spend enormous sums of money for incredibly little change in support or turnout. However, though the evidence is conflicting, door-knocking performs better than any other standard means of mass voter contact, particularly if the conversations are substantive and memorable. Canvassing can even be cheaper in terms of votes secured than methods like direct mail and phone banking. The Biden campaign says it's focusing on "conversations," and maybe phone calls and texts will prove as effective as canvassing, but that's quite a gamble — and a needless one.Intriguingly — though unsurprising given the hyperbolic, performative nature of campaigning — Biden's COVID-19 policy plan is generally not security theater, at least not indisputably so given basic agreement that the pandemic is real and should be mitigated. The promise to "[i]nvest in next-generation testing, including at-home tests and instant tests" is excellent, though the verb is wrong: The reason we don't have home testing is not scarcity of investment but excessive federal regulation.I might apply the security theater label to Biden's proposal to create "a Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt's War Production Board." I'm not sure how this differs from his suggestion of a "Supply Commander" or extant federal orders, and the proposal seems primarily designed to link Biden to a revered president past. I'd certainly apply the label to Biden's national mask mandate, not because masks don't work (they do) but because the mandate won't work. It's unlikely to survive legal challenge. Moreover, governors who haven't issued mask mandates would very possibly tell police in their state not to enforce Biden's order, particularly if a court case were already underway. The constitutional and enforcement realities turn a national mandate into security theater.Biden doesn't need these theatrics to model responsibility. He doesn't need to promise a probably impossible mandate or sacrifice door-to-door canvassing. His campaign already has a slew of other COVID-19 precautions, many very visible, that advertise his position well. Anyway, the first pledge in Biden's COVID-19 plan is that he'll "[l]isten to science." Well, science says brief, masked, no-contact, outdoor interactions are safe. Eschewing door-knocking is useless drama.More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment

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Tropical Storm Beta, currently standing still in the Gulf of Mexico, expected to hit Texas coast

As Pensacola copes with effects of Sally, three storms are active in an exceptionally busy Atlantic hurricane season.

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Trump Finally Admits Many Americans Won’t Get Vaccine Until April

President Trump on Friday said that the U.S. expects to have enough coronavirus vaccines for every American by April. “We’ll have manufactured at least 100 million vaccine doses before the end of the year and likely much more than that,” Trump said at an afternoon press conference. “Hundreds of millions of doses will be available every month, and we expect to have enough vaccines for every American by April. And again I’ll say that even at that later stage a delivery will go as fast it comes they can deliver.”Despite Trump saying “three vaccines are already in the final stage,” there is still no certainty when a safe and effective vaccine will indeed be approved for the American public. The Global Rush to Approve a COVID-19 Vaccine Keeps Getting CreepierThe claim from the president put him closer to the timeline the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testified to lawmakers about earlier this week. Trump challenged Dr. Robert Redfield's words during a tumultuous press conference Wednesday by claiming that his timeline on when a COVID-19 vaccine would be ready was “incorrect.” Redfield had told lawmakers earlier this week that he thought a vaccine wouldn’t be “generally available to the American public” until “late second quarter, third quarter of 2021.” Trump Claims Vaccine Will Be Ready by Fall, Says CDC Director Was ‘Confused’ That answer caught Trump’s ire as he described the leading medical official in his own administration as “confused,” and pushed a much more aggressive timeline for later this year, throwing out different potential months the vaccine could land. “When he said it, I believe he was confused… We’re ready to go as soon as the vaccine is approved,” Trump insisted Wednesday. “We’re not going to say ‘in six months,’ we’re going to start giving it to the general public.”When a reporter pressed Trump about his timeline given the April date he had just offered, the president deferred to Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist advising the president on the virus.  Atlas reiterated Trump’s point about having “over 100 million doses manufactured,” by the end of the year. People on the “prioritized list including high risk, including first responders, will have the ability to take the vaccine, no one’s being mandated to be vaccinated, at the latest in January.”“And as we said....there will be hundreds of millions of doses delivered for people to take it during the first quarter and so that by April every single American who wants to be vaccinated will have the ability to be vaccinated,” Atlas said. “It’s not a forced vaccination of course.” Atlas taking the question—rather than leading health officials who often spoke at the former White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings earlier in the pandemic like Dr. Deborah Birx or Dr. Anthony Fauci, was another sign of how much the public face of the White House response to the pandemic has changed. Neither Birx nor Fauci were in attendance in the briefing room Friday.-With additional reporting from Allison Quinn Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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Why the Arizona senate race could decide the future of the Supreme Court

Democrat win in Arizona could tip balance of nominee vote in lame-duck session

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