Trump said to be improving but next 48 hours 'critical'

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — President Donald Trump went through a “very concerning” period Friday and faces a “critical” next two days in his fight against COVID-19 at a military hospital, his chief of staff said Saturday — in contrast to a rosier assessment moments earlier by Trump doctors, who took pains not to reveal the president had received supplemental oxygen at the White House before his hospital admission.

Trump offered his own assessment Saturday evening in a video from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, saying he was beginning to feel better and hoped to “be back soon.”

Hours earlier, chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters outside the hospital, “We're still not on a clear path yet to a full recovery.”

The changing, and at times contradictory, accounts created a credibility crisis for the White House at a crucial moment, with the president’s health and the nation’s leadership on the line. With Trump expected to remain hospitalized several more days and the presidential election looming, his condition is being anxiously watched by Americans.

Moreover, the president's health represents a national security issue of paramount importance not only to the functions of the U.S. government but to countries around the world, friendly and otherwise.

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Colliding crises shake already chaotic campaign's last month

NEW YORK (AP) — The closing days of the presidential campaign were already dominated by the worst public health crisis in a century, millions of jobless Americans, a reckoning on civil rights, the death of a Supreme Court justice and uncertainty about President Donald Trump's willingness to accept the election outcome.

And that was before the president woke up in a military hospital on Saturday — the most powerful man in the world unable to escape a virus that has so far killed more than 200,000 Americans.

One month before Election Day and with ballots already being cast in some states, there are few parallels in American history to such a stunning collision of crises in the late stage of a campaign. But beneath the volatility, the broad contours of the 2020 contest are remarkably stable.

The election began as, and remains, a referendum on Trump’s turbulent presidency.

The Republican president has trailed Democratic challenger Joe Biden in polls for most of the year. Trump’s approval ratings barely budge, consistently ranking him as among the weakest first-term presidents in living history. And for five consecutive months, no more than roughly 3 in 10 voters have believed the nation is moving in the right direction.

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The Latest: Biden aides say COVID results will be released

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on coronavirus infections hitting President Donald Trump and others in his circle (all times EDT):

8:30 p.m.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is committing to releasing the results of all future COVID-19 tests the candidate takes.

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates repeated Saturday evening that the former vice president is tested “regularly.” But before President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis earlier this week Biden had not disclosed full details of his testing protocol or the results of each test.

Biden told reporters Saturday in Wilmington that he was not tested earlier in the day but would be tested Sunday morning. His campaign said he tested negative for COVID twice on Friday.

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Pence ordered borders closed after CDC experts refused

NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus, according to two former health officials. The action has so far caused nearly 150,000 children and adults to be expelled from the country.

The top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor who oversees these types of orders had refused to comply with a Trump administration directive saying there was no valid public health reason to issue it, according to three people with direct knowledge of the doctor’s refusal.

So Pence intervened in early March. The vice president, who had taken over the Trump administration’s response to the growing pandemic, called Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC’s director, and told him to use the agency’s special legal authority in a pandemic anyway.

Also on the phone call were Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. Redfield immediately ordered his senior staff to get it done, according to a former CDC official who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The CDC’s order covered the U.S. borders with both Mexico and Canada, but has mostly affected the thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants arriving at the southern border. Public health experts had urged the administration to focus on a national mask mandate, enforce social distancing and increase the number of contact tracers to track down people exposed to the virus.

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GOP seeks to call off Senate work, but not Barrett hearings

WASHINGTON (AP) — The coroniavirus reached further into Republican ranks on Saturday, forcing the Senate to call off lawmaking as a third GOP senator tested positive for COVID-19. Even so, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared he would push President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee toward confirmation in the shadow of the November election.

Trump and Senate Republicans had hoped the confirmation hearings of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s would make the final case to voters of the party’s commitment to remake the court with a muscular conservative majority. But the hospitalization of Trump, and the infection of a trio of GOP senators, shattered any notion of changing the subject entirely from the virus that’s killed more than 205,000 Americans.

So great was the threat posed by COVID-19 that McConnell called off floor proceedings but not Barrett’s hearings, slated to begin Oct. 12. The Kentucky Republican, who is battling to save the GOP majority and running for reelection himself, was not about to give them up.

“The Senate’s floor schedule will not interrupt the thorough, fair and historically supported confirmation process,” McConnell wrote Saturday. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who like McConnell is running for reelection, added that senators can attend the hearings remotely.

“Certainly,” McConnell said, “all Republican members of the committee will participate in these important hearings.”

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Trump's whirlwind week, disdain for masks, ended with COVID

WASHINGTON (AP) — The scene at the White House a week ago was one of normalcy in these most abnormal times: a crowd of revelers gathered in the Rose Garden, a band playing, the mingling of the elite, good cheer everywhere, handshakes and hugs left and right.

Now it’s a suspected petri dish of coronavirus infection, prominent among the numerous occasions over a week or more where President Donald Trump might have caught — or spread — the virus that has now landed him in the hospital

No one knows how, when or from whom Trump became infected. Nor is it established who, if anyone, has contracted the disease from him. But to retrace some of his steps over the last week is to see risk at multiple turns and an abundance of opportunity for infection.

This was the case day after day and right up until a few hours before his positive diagnosis, as he took a contingent to New Jersey for a fundraiser while knowing he'd been close to someone sick with COVID-19.

The result is that one of the most protected people on the planet is now hospitalized, battling a disease that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide, more than 200,000 of them in the United States.

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Of presidents and health, history replete with secrecy, lies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Throughout American history, an uncomfortable truth has been evident: Presidents have lied about their health.

In some cases, the issues were minor, in others quite grave. And sometimes it took decades for the public to learn the truth.

Now President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with the COVID-19 disease. The White House initially said he had “mild symptoms." By Friday evening, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. After a rosy press conference by the president's medical team, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Saturday that Trump had gone through a “very concerning” period Friday and that the next 48 hours would be critical in terms of his care.

Pandemics have cursed the presidencies of both Trump and Woodrow Wilson. Each played down the viruses that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Both presidents got sick — and each had to decide how much to tell the public.

Like many administrations before, Wilson's White House tried to keep his sickness secret.

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Trump's diagnosis shows US vulnerability to the coronavirus

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s startling COVID-19 diagnosis serves as a cruel reminder of the pervasive spread of the coronavirus and shows how tenuous of a grip the nation has on the crisis, health experts said.

With U.S. infections rising for several weeks, Trump became one of the tens of thousands of Americans who test positive each day. He went through a “very concerning” period Friday and the next 48 hours “will be critical" in his care, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Saturday.

That differed dramatically from the rosy assessment by Trump's staff and doctors, who took pains not to reveal the president had received supplemental oxygen at the White House before he went to a military hospital. Some of Trump's top advisers and allies also have tested positive recently.

“No one is entirely out of the virus’s reach, even those supposedly inside a protective bubble," said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

Eight months after the virus reached the United States, worrying signals mounted of what's ahead this fall. The NFL has postponed two games after players on three teams tested positive. Some hospitals in Wisconsin have run low on space, and experts warned of a likely surge in infections during the colder months ahead. Some economists say it could take as long as late 2023 for the job market to fully recover.

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Virus spreads on panel handling Supreme Court nomination

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have tested positive for the coronavirus, raising questions about the timing of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett and whether additional senators may have been exposed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the confirmation process was going “full steam ahead.”

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Utah Sen. Mike Lee both said Friday that they had tested positive for the virus. Both had attended a ceremony for Barrett at the White House on Sept. 25 with President Donald Trump, who announced Friday that he had tested positive and was later hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Lee, who did not wear a mask at the White House event, said he had “symptoms consistent with longtime allergies." Tillis, who did wear a mask during the public portion of the event, said he had no symptoms. Both said they would quarantine for 10 days — ending just before Barrett's confirmation hearings begin on Oct. 12.

The positive tests come as Senate Republicans are pushing to quickly confirm Barrett in the few weeks they have before the Nov. 3 election. There is little cushion in the schedule set out by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and McConnell, who want to put a third Trump nominee on the court immediately in case they lose any of their power in the election.

Democrats, many of whom have been critical of Barrett, seized on the virus announcements to call for a delay in the hearings.

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Winning filly: Swiss Skydiver beats Authentic in Preakness

BALTIMORE (AP) — Those hanging around the heavily restricted stakes barn at Pimlico Race Course this week joked around that Authentic would stare down filly Swiss Skydiver whenever she walked past.

“He got a good look at her today,” jockey Robby Albarado said.

Swiss Skydiver added one final memorable moment to cap off a topsy-turvy Triple Crown season, beating favored Authentic by a neck after a stretch duel in the Preakness Stakes run without fans Saturday. She became the sixth filly and first since Rachel Alexandra in 2009 to win the Preakness, which this year served as the third leg of the Triple Crown for the first time.

"She’s just such a special filly," said trainer Kenny McPeek, who won the Preakness for the first time for his second Triple Crown race victory. “Just a real honor to be around a horse like this.”

Jesus’ Team was a distant third at 40-1 and Art Collector fourth at 2-1. The 145th running of the Preakness at a mostly empty Pimlico came four weeks after the Kentucky Derby and 3 1/2 months since the Belmont as they were held out of order for the first time since the 1930s.