What A Day

Trump said yesterday he won't negotiate with Democrats on another Covid relief before the election. He sent a torrent of other tweets too, all while more people in D.C. continued to test positive, including Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller and General Mark Milley. Former South Carolina Democratic party chair Jaime Harrison is tied with Senator Lindsey Graham in a tight senate race according t...

Trump is now back in the White House after making a Trumpian and very public return, but doctors say he’s still not "out of the woods." Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tested positive along with two deputies in the communications department, but the White House’s contact tracing effort seems to be negligible at best.  The Supreme Court began its new term yesterday by rejecting an appeals case fro...

Amidst rosy reports about Trump's condition, we also learned that he received multiple drug treatments over the weekend including dexamethasone, which is typically reserved for patients with severe cases of coronavirus. We look at what his diagnosis, along with other positive cases among Senate Republicans, means for the country and the Supreme Court confirmation process. Following a negative test...

In a tweet overnight, President Trump said that he and the first lady had tested positive for the coronavirus. The news comes after a White House aid, Hope Hicks, tested positive. She had been traveling with the President in recent days, including to the debate on Tuesday. House Dems passed a new slimmed down relief package yesterday, but Republicans still say it’s too expensive. In the meantime,...

Former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy is running for Senate in Mississippi, hoping to be the first Democrat to represent the state in the Senate in over thirty years. He’s nearly tied with his opponent, incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde Smith, who’s previously joked about “public hangings” and held up the legacy of Confederate soldiers. We talk to him about his race, Trump’s refu...

The first presidential debate took place in Cleveland last night. It was an extremely bumpy ride, with Trump failing to condemn white supremacy and suggesting once again he might not accept the election results. We discuss the highlights and lowlights of a night that was almost all lowlights.  And in headlines: Kentucky’s AG to release grand jury proceedings from Breonna Taylor’s case, the UK and...

Tonight is the first of three debates between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump. The debate will cover six major topics, which include the economy, the pandemic, and the integrity of the election, but notably, not the environment. We discuss what else to expect and how this debate could affect the election.  Reports have revealed a strategy that the Trump campaigned allegedly used i...

The New York Times published a bombshell report on two decades of Trump’s taxes, showing he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and in 2017. Trump received massive refunds after reporting losses on his businesses, one of which is currently being reviewed by the IRS, and could cost him $100 million if it’s found to be illegitimate.  On Saturday, Trump formally announced Judge Amy Coney B...

While Trump is casually threatening to be an all out dictator, the economic crisis he continues not to solve continues. New unemployment data show the recovery is slowing down. We look at whether Congress is any closer to another relief package.  Next week Congress is expected to call in big tech CEOs for another big hearing, this time on Section 230 and the moderation of social media platforms. W...

Yesterday, the grand jury in Jefferson County, Kentucky announced that only one of the officers who shot at Breonna Taylor would be indicted… and that officer’s charges don’t have anything to do with Taylor’s killing. Last night following the decision, two police officers were shot in downtown Louisville. We spoke to Kentucky state representative Charles Booker hours after the decision about what...

America has passed the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths in the COVID-19 crisis, which was made far worse by Trump’s abjectly poor leadership. The FDA is expected to roll out new, more rigorous standards for approving the coronavirus vaccines following concerns that Trump would try to push out an unsafe drug.  As the election approaches, there have been a deluge of legal cases seeking to address ho...

Arizona Senator Martha McSally said she will support a Senate vote when Trump nominates a Supreme Court Justice, but she might not have a chance to participate if she loses her race against Democrat Mark Kelly in November. Since McSally is an appointed Senator instead of an elected one, she could be replaced by Kelly within the year if she loses. We take a look at the race, and what else is at sta...

Supreme Court Justice and gender equality pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87 on Friday. The immediate response online and elsewhere was a mix of grief, fear, gratitude and determination. Within 24 hours of her passing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump both said they would move forward to replace her, despite her dying wish as well as past precedent s...

Two pharma companies released information about their vaccine trials, including details on their timelines and specific metrics they’ll be using to assess efficacy in early data. It’s all part of a push to gain public trust. We explain what to expect, and when.  While Congress is still stalled on another relief bill, Republicans in the Senate are busy confirming federal judges nominated by Trump....

Concerns about whether the Biden campaign is doing enough to speak to Latinx voters have grown in recent days following polling that suggests weakness among this group, particularly in Florida. Political consultant and former Bernie Sanders advisor Chuck Rocha joins to discuss. The director of the CDC says that a vaccine for Covid-19 might not be available until the summer or fall of 2021. He also...

The city of Louisville, Kentucky has come to a $12 million settlement deal with the family of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police officers in her apartment six months ago. The agreement also includes several police reforms. We explain. Over 5 million acres have now been burned across the West. We discuss the poor air quality caused by the smoke, how it's measured, and the effects it...

Extreme weather continues in the US, with over 4.5 million acres burned across the West Coast and a Category 2 hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Scientists say two Antarctic glaciers are breaking off and could contribute to large-scale sea level rise, underscoring the need for aggressive environmental policy in the US and abroad.  Oracle is close to taking over TikTok’s US operations follo...

Wildfires raged on over the weekend in the West, with millions of acres burned, thousands displaced, and dozens of lives lost. Aside from fighting climate change, one of the most effective ways to manage these fires is regular controlled burns, which is something indigenous tribes were doing for centuries.  Two meat processing facilities were fined a measly total of $29,000 after government regula...

Viral videos of police brutality against Black people have generated outrage, protest, and sustained national attention this year. We talk to Bijan Stephen, a reporter at The Verge, about his latest project called “Capturing The Police,” which examines the impact these videos have on the people who film them. Another 884,000 people filed for unemployment last week, which is more than economists we...

Recorded interviews of Donald Trump by Bob Woodward show he understood the threat of coronavirus in February, while he insisted in public it would “disappear” and was no worse than the seasonal flu. Trump addressed these revelations at a press conference yesterday, confirming that he intentionally downplayed the virus because he’s a "cheerleader" for the country. Wildfires are continuing to burn a...

The Rochester, NY police chief and other high ranking officers all resigned or took demotions yesterday, following protests over the police killing of Daniel Prude. Prude’s case, along with other recent violent incidents, are leading some to propose alternatives to police intervention for mental health emergencies.  Republicans in the Senate are back in session with a new coronavirus relief bill,...

College students have returned to campuses, and so has coronavirus. Northeastern University suspended 11 students for partying, and will not refund them tens of thousands of dollars in tuition payments. At University of Kansas, students are striking and demanding that the university shut down the campus and give hazard pay to workers.  Extreme weather over the past few weeks has underscored the ne...

Joe Biden will visit Kenosha, Wisconsin later today, where he’ll meet with the family of Jacob Blake. We check in on the continued protests happening there, plus the protests that are continuing in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Trayford Pellerin was killed by police just two days before Blake’s shooting. The Trump administration said it’s not going to take part in a global effort to develop a COVID-...

The CDC and the Health Department are moving to ban evictions through December for people who can’t pay because of the pandemic. New York City caved to pressure from teachers unions who threatened to strike over school reopenings, pushing back the start of in-person to later this month. Legal battles over mail-in voting saw major developments in Texas, Iowa, and Georgia. An audit from the Inspecto...

Joe Biden spoke in Pennsylvania yesterday, where he condemned violence of any kind at recent protests. Trump spoke at the White House yesterday, where he declined to tamp down violence among his supporters and suggested instead that Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old Wisconsin shooter, had acted in self-defense.  Coronavirus outbreaks are continuing to pop up at colleges and universities in the US...