Is this an innocent mistake by a possibly intoxicated intern? Or a purposeful, subtle message from Fox News to its employee, Sarah Palin, that she has literally become a joke?
This ruling was expected, but now Trump’s DOJ has a chance to appeal. As Barbara McQuade noted previously: “Each step delays the day of reckoning by many months.”
A federal judge on Tuesday denied the Justice Department’s effort to intervene in a defamation lawsuit brought against President Donald Trump by a longtime magazine columnist who has alleged he raped her, paving the way for the case to proceed.
The department had sought to substitute itself as defendant in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a move that likely would have ended the proceedings, since the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.
Biden is venturing into some reach states today
One week until Election Day, Joe Biden is going on offense, heading Tuesday to Georgia — which hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since 1992 — and pushing into other territory where President Donald Trump was once expected to easily repeat his wins from four years ago.
The Democratic presidential nominee planned to travel to Iowa, which Trump took by 10 points in 2016, later in the week. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, is heading to Arizona and Texas, where Republicans haven’t lost any statewide office since 1994 — the nation’s longest political winning streak.
The aggressive schedule is a sign of confidence by the Biden team, which is trying to stretch the electoral map and open up more paths to 270 electoral college votes. But after Democrats flirted with GOP territory in 2016, only to lose those states as well as their traditional Midwestern strongholds, Biden’s campaign is mindful of overreaching.
The former vice president will also visit in the coming days Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida.
From one conservative hero to another
Mitch McConnell’s work is done here
Tantalizingly close but not quite there for Democrats
An encouraging vaccine update
A Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca AZN 0.08% PLC showed a promising immune response and low levels of adverse reactions in the elderly and older adults, according to an interim analysis that the drugmaker said was encouraging.
The vaccine, now in late-stage human trials aimed at showing its efficacy and safety, is a front-runner in the global sprint for a shot to protect lives and jump-start economies hobbled by the pandemic. Trials in the U.K. could produce results before year-end, fueling hopes among scientists and government leaders that a vaccine might be available for high-risk groups here by early 2021.
The results showed positive outcomes for adults over 56, including the especially higher-risk age group of those 70 and older, and were based on analysis of previously conducted interim safety and immune-response data, AstraZeneca and Oxford said Monday.
Just what we need as COVID-19 cases surge: an understaffed HHS
At least 27 political appointees have exited the embattled Health and Human Services department since the start of the Covid-19 crisis in February, according to a POLITICO review, and senior leaders are bracing for dozens more officials to depart swiftly if President Donald Trump loses re-election.
Such a wave of departures would leave only a shell staff shepherding the department through a uniquely challenging winter of coronavirus outbreaks and drug and vaccine authorizations until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, according to interviews with 17 current and former HHS officials, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.
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