President downplayed severity of virus to avoid ‘panic’
DHS whistleblower: I was told to stop providing intel on Russian interference
Biden speaks in Michigan: Trump betrayed the American people
Fauci calls pausing of vaccine trial ‘unfortunate’
Justice department seeks to defend Trump in defamation lawsuit
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‘I don’t want to create panic’: Trump defends coronavirus remarks he made to Bob Woodward – video
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5.05pm EDT17:05
Today so far
4.11pm EDT16:11
Trump says he ‘perhaps’ misled Americans about coronavirus
4.02pm EDT16:02
Trump on Woodward revelations: ‘I don’t want to create panic’
3.55pm EDT15:55
Trump releases list of potential supreme court nominees
2.55pm EDT14:55
DHS whistleblower: I was told to stop providing intel on Russian election interference
2.10pm EDT14:10
Biden: Trump’s Covid-19 response a ‘life and death betrayal of the American people’
1.45pm EDT13:45
Today so far
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5.37pm EDT17:37
A Trump administration official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been trying to prevent Dr Fauci from speaking publicly about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, Politico reports.
From Politico:
Emails obtained by POLITICO show Paul Alexander — a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs — instructing press officers and others at the National Institutes of Health about what Fauci should say during media interviews. The Trump adviser weighed in on Fauci’s planned responses to outlets including Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell.
Alexander’s lengthy messages, some sent as recently as this week, are couched as scientific arguments. But they often contradict mainstream science while promoting political positions taken by the Trump administration on hot-button issues ranging from the use of convalescent plasma to school reopening.
The emails add to evidence that the White House, and Trump appointees within HHS, are pushing health agencies to promote a political message instead of a scientific one.
“I continue to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even university students in a widespread manner…and I disagree with Dr. Fauci on this. Vehemently,” Alexander wrote in one Aug. 27 email, responding to a press-office summary of what Fauci intended to tell a Bloomberg reporter.
And on Tuesday, Alexander told Fauci’s press team that the scientist should not promote mask-wearing by children during an MSNBC interview.
“Can you ensure Dr. Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children,” Alexander wrote. “There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero,” he continued — adding without evidence that children take influenza home, but not the coronavirus.
In a statement attributed to Caputo, HHS said that Fauci is an important voice during the pandemic and that Alexander specializes in analyzing the work of other scientists.
5.30pm EDT17:30
Edward Helmore
The White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that AstraZeneca’s decision to pause global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine was “unfortunate” – but not an uncommon safety precaution in a vaccine development process.
The UK drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had voluntarily paused trials, including late-stage ones, after an unexplained illness in a participant.
The company said it was working to expedite a review of safety data by an independent committee to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline.
“This particular candidate from the AstraZeneca company had a serious adverse event, which means you put the rest of the enrollment of individual volunteers on hold until you can work out precisely what went on,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the top public health expert on the coronavirus, said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday morning.
“It’s really one of the safety valves that you have on clinical trials such as this, so it’s unfortunate that it happened,” Fauci added. “Hopefully, they’ll work it out and be able to proceed along with the remainder of the trial but you don’t know. They need to investigate it further.”
The vaccine, which AstraZeneca is developing with the University of Oxford, has been described by the World Health Organization as probably the world’s leading candidate and the most advanced in terms of development.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University school of public health said via Twitter that the significance of the interruption was unclear.
“We have no idea whether this is a big deal or not. Science is hard. This is why we have to let the trials play out. I remain optimistic we will have a vaccine found to be safe and effective in upcoming months,” he said, but cautioned: “Optimism isn’t evidence. Let’s let science drive this process.”
5.05pm EDT17:05
Today so far
That’s it from me on this very newsy Wednesday. My west coast colleague Maanvi Singh will take over for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Trump acknowledged in March that he was trying to downplay the threat of coronavirus, according to a new book from Bob Woodward. The president told the journalist earlier this year, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Trump also acknowledged coronavirus was “deadly” and airborne as early as February, while publicly saying the virus would “disappear”.
Reacting to Woodward’s book, Trump said he “perhaps” misled the country about coronavirus to avoid creating panic. When asked whether he had misled the American public, the president said this afternoon, “Well, I think if you said in order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so. The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.”
Biden accused Trump of betraying the country by downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic. Delivering a speech in Warren, Michigan, the Democratic nominee said, “He had the information. He knew how dangerous it was. He failed to do his job on purpose … It was a life and death betrayal of the American people.”
A senior DHS official claimed he was told to stop providing intelligence assessments of Russian election interference. In a new whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy, the former acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, said he was told an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation should be “held” because it “made the President look bad”. The House intelligence committee has called on Murphy to testify about the allegations later this month.
Trump released his list of potential future supreme court nominees. The list included three Republican senators: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. But Hawley and Cruz quickly signaled they did not plan to leave the Senate anytime soon.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Updated
at 5.12pm EDT
4.52pm EDT16:52
The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
A government watchdog group asked North Carolina officials to investigate a report that Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, pressured his employees in the private sector to donate to Republican candidates and then reimbursed them through his company. More
