Biden hits Trump on economy in critical county
With the backdrop of a union facility in a key battleground county of Pennsylvania, Joe Biden on Saturday blistered President Donald Trump as only pretending to care about the working- class voters who helped flip the Rust Belt to the Republican column four years ago.
“Anyone who actually does an honest day’s work sees him and his promises for what they are,” Biden told a masked, socially distanced crowd at a training facility for plumbers and other tradespeople.
The Democratic challenger has hammered Trump on the economy in recent weeks, from sweeping indictments of how the president has downplayed the coronavirus and its economic fallout to a withering personal contrast between Biden’s middle- class upbringing with that of the multimillionaire’s son and self- proclaimed billionaire.
Nowhere could Biden’s arguments prove more decisive than in Erie County. Long a Democratic bastion, it was among the most populous counties in the nation to flip from the Democratic column to Republicans in 2016.
Trump outpaced Democrat Hillary Clinton by almost 12,000 votes, four years after President Barack Obama led Republican Mitt Romney by 19,000 votes. That accounted for a net 31,000- vote swing in a state that Trump won by about 44,000 votes. Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to carry Erie since President Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984 and the first GOP standard- bearer to win Pennsylvania since George Bush’s election in 1998.
COVID- 19 Europe unprepared as 2nd virus wave hits
Europe’s second wave of coronavirus infections has struck well before flu season even started, with intensive care wards filling up again and bars shutting down. Making matters worse, authorities say, is a widespread case of “COVID- fatigue.”
Record high daily infections in several eastern European countries and sharp rebounds in the hard- hit west have made clear that Europe never really crushed the COVID- 19 curve as hoped, after springtime lockdowns.
Spain this week declared a state of emergency for Madrid amid increasing tensions between local and national authorities over virus containment measures. Germany offered up soldiers to help with contact tracing in newly flaring hotspots. Italy mandated masks outdoors and warned that for the first time since the country became the European epicenter of the pandemic, the health system was facing “significant critical issues” as hospitals fill up.
The Czech Republic’s “Farewell Covid” party in June, when thousands of Prague residents dined outdoors at a long table across the Charles Bridge to celebrate their victory over the virus, seems painfully naive now that the country has the highest per- capita infection rate on the continent, at 398 per 100,000 residents.
MICHIGAN Men accused in plot on governor was at protests
Among the armed protesters who rallied at the Michigan Capitol against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown this past spring were some of the men now accused in stunning plots to kidnap her, storm the Capitol and start a “civil war.”
The revelation has sparked scrutiny of rallies that were organized by conservative groups opposed to the Democratic governor’s orders and egged on by President Donald Trump. It has also prompted renewed calls from Democrats for a gun ban in the building — an effort that so far has failed even after they reported feeling threatened by rifle- carrying protesters who entered the Statehouse.
At least one man accused of aiding in the surveillance of Whitmer’s home as part of the alleged scheme to kidnap her stood in the Senate gallery on April 30 as majority Republicans refused to extend an emergency declaration that was the underpinning of Whitmer’s stay- at- home and other restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID- 19 virus. “Several” of the 13 men arrested in the plots against the state government were seen at Capitol protests this year, the state attorney general’s office said.
A man whom the FBI identified in court papers as a leader in the alleged plot, Adam Fox, attended an “American Patriot” progun rights rally at the Capitol on June 18 to recruit members of anti- government paramilitary groups to attack the Statehouse, according to a federal complaint that cites a recording from a confidential informant.
“I’m not surprised — and anyone who is just hasn’t been paying attention,” Whitmer told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. There have been Republican lawmakers and at least one sheriff at the protests, she said, “who fraternize with these domestic terror groups, who egg them on, who encourage them, who use language that incites them. They too are complicit.”