Trump restarting campaign with White House, Florida events

WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking to shove his campaign back on track, President Donald Trump and his team laid out an aggressive return to political activities, including a big White House event on Saturday and a rally in Florida on Monday, a week after his hospitalization for a virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans.

As questions linger about his health — and Democratic opponent Joe Biden steps up his own campaigning — Trump planned to leave the Washington area for the first time since he was hospitalized. He is also increasing his radio and TV appearances with conservative interviewers, hoping to make up for lost time with just over three weeks until Election Day and millions already voting.

The president has not been seen in public — other than in White House-produced videos — since his return days ago from the military hospital where he received experimental treatments for the coronavirus.

Two weeks after his Rose Garden event that has been labeled a “superspreader” for the virus, Trump is planning to convene another large crowd outside the White House on Saturday for what his administration calls “a peaceful protest for law & order.” More than two dozen people linked to the White House have contracted COVID-19 since the president's Sept. 26 event announcing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court.

Trump will address the Saturday group, expected to be at least several hundred supporters, from the White House balcony. All attendees are required to bring masks or will be provided with them, and also will be given temperature checks and asked to fill out a brief questionnaire. Attendees will be strongly encouraged to follow CDC guidelines, which include mask-wearing and social distancing.

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Florida GOP fights to animate Trump's base without president

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — Nearly 300 Republicans packed shoulder-to-shoulder maskless and sweating inside a Holiday Inn conference room this week in the heart of the Florida Panhandle to see their party's biggest political stars not named President Donald Trump.

With Trump grounded in Washington, they chanted and cheered as the governor, the self-described “Trumpiest” Florida congressman and the president's eldest son shared anti-Democratic conspiracy theories, attacked the media and warned that Joe Biden “is a puppet for the radical left.”

While energetic, the crowd was a far cry from the tens of thousands drawn to the president's past rallies in this deep-red bastion of Trumpism, where the president's dominant performance four years ago helped deliver Florida, and with it, the White House.

“I’d like to see President Trump. Don Jr. is fine,” said Rick Scott, a 64-year-old retired construction manager who joined the modest crowd in Panama City Beach on the shores of the Gulf Coast. “This place couldn’t hold all the people if the president showed up."

There is no question Trump will win the Florida Panhandle this fall. But more than that, he needs to run up the score to exceed his 2016 performance, when he won some counties by 40 and 50 points, to make up for weakness among older voters and suburbanites elsewhere in the state. With the election less than four weeks away, that task has become exponentially more difficult with the president infected by a virus that has killed 210,000 Americans on his watch.

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Specter of election chaos raises questions on military role

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a question Americans are unaccustomed to considering in a presidential election campaign: Could voting, vote-counting or the post-vote reaction become so chaotic that the U.S. military would intervene?

The answer is yes, but only in an extreme case. There is normally no need for the military to play any role in an election. The Constitution keeps the military in a narrow lane — defending the United States from external enemies. Civil order is left largely to civilian police. But there is an obscure law, the Insurrection Act, that theoretically could thrust the active-duty military into a police-like role. And governors have the ability to use the National Guard in state emergencies if needed.

The potential use of troops, either active duty or National Guard, at the polls or in post-election unrest has been discussed by governors and military leaders. The possibilities arise as President Donald Trump asserts without evidence that mail-in balloting will create election fraud and suggests that he might not accept an election loss. Stationing troops at polling places on Election Day — even if just to protect citizens as they vote — raises worries about voter intimidation.

Here are some questions and answers about possible military involvement in the election:

WHY WOULDN'T THE MILITARY GET INVOLVED?

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Lesson not learned: Europe unprepared as 2nd virus wave hits

ROME (AP) — 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 500-meter (yard) 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.

“I have to say clearly that the situation is not good," the Czech interior minister, Jan Hamacek, acknowledged this week.

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A senior warning sign for Trump: 'Go Biden' cry at Villages

THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — Sara Branscom’s golf cart whizzed down the smooth asphalt path that winds through The Villages, the nation’s largest retirement community, an expanse of beautiful homes, shops and entertainment venues that bills itself as “Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.”

Branscom’s cart was festooned with two American flags that flapped in the warm afternoon breeze. A line of oncoming carts bedecked with balloons and patriotic streamers chugged past while honking. Branscom jabbed her left foot on the horn pedal, then gave a thumbs-up.

“This gets you rejuvenated and ready for the next month or so, so we can do this and win. It gives you hope,” the 60-year-old retiree said.

Then she let out a whoop and two surprising words: “Go Biden!”

It’s not a cry that might be expected to resound in The Villages, and it’s certainly not one that is encouraging to President Donald Trump. Older voters helped propel him to the White House — the Pew Research Center estimates Trump led among voters 65 and older by 9 percentage points in 2016 — and his campaign hoped they would be a bulwark to cement a second term.

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Anti-government groups shift focus from Washington to states

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — The alleged foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor is a jarring example of how the anti-government movement in the U.S. has become an internet-driven hodgepodge of conspiracy theorists who have redirected their rage from Washington toward state capitols.

That's in contrast to the self-styled “militia” movement that took shape in the 1990s — loosely connected groups whose primary target was the federal government, which they considered a tyrannical force bent on seizing guns and imposing a socialist “new world order.”

Deadly standoffs between FBI agents and extremists at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, stoked those groups' anger. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people, were reported to have met with Michigan paramilitary activists.

Public revulsion over that massacre damaged the movement, which largely faded from public view. But recent protests over racial injustice, the coronavirus and other turmoil during the Trump administration have fueled a resurgence, with paramilitary groups blending into a mishmash of far-right factions that spread their messages on websites and social media.

In many ways, their focus is unchanged, including contempt for authority, reverence for the Second Amendment and backwoods military-style training exercises.

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White House ups virus aid offer, resumes talks with Pelosi

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is boosting its offer in up-and-down COVID-19 aid talks Friday in hopes of an agreement before Election Day, even as President Donald Trump's most powerful GOP ally in the Senate said Congress is unlikely to deliver relief by then.

Trump on Friday took to Twitter to declare: “Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” A top economic adviser said the Trump team was upping its offer in advance of a Friday conversation between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The two spoke for more than 30 minutes Friday afternoon, said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

A GOP aide familiar with the new offer said it is about $1.8 trillion, with a key state and local fiscal relief component moving from $250 billion to at least $300 billion. The White House says its most recent prior offer was about $1.6 trillion. The aide requested anonymity because the negotiations are private.

“I would like to see a bigger stimulus package than either the Democrats or Republicans are offering," Trump said on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Friday. Earlier this week, Trump lambasted Democrats for their demands on an aid bill.

Pelosi's most recent public offer was about $2.2 trillion, though that included a business tax increase that Republicans won't go for.

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Five things to know about court nominee Amy Coney Barrett

WASHINGTON (AP) — Confirmation hearings begin Monday for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. If confirmed, the 48-year-old appeals court judge would fill the seat of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month.

Ginsburg's replacement by Barrett, a conservative, would shift the balance on the court significantly right, from 5-4 in favor of conservatives to 6-3. Here are 5 things to know about her:

EDUCATION:

Barrett was born in Louisiana and attended Rhodes College, a liberal arts school in Memphis, Tennessee, as an undergraduate. She went to law school in Indiana, at Notre Dame, on a full scholarship. She'd be the only justice on the current court not to have attended either Harvard or Yale for law school.

Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame for 15 years before Trump nominated her to become a federal appeals court judge in 2017.

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With whipping winds, Delta drenches Louisiana, Mississippi

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — Ripping tarps from already damaged roofs and scattering debris piled by roadsides, Delta inflicted a new round of destruction on Louisiana as it struck communities still reeling after Hurricane Laura took a similar path just six weeks earlier.

Delta hit as a Category 2 hurricane, with top winds of 100 mph (155 kph) but rapidly grew weaker. By Saturday morning, it dwindled to a tropical storm with 45 mph (75 kph) winds. Still, forecasters warned of danger from storm surge and flash floods across much of southwestern Louisiana and parts of neighboring Texas. Mississippi also got its fair share of rain overnight.

Delta made landfall Friday evening near the coastal town of Creole — a distance of only about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from where Laura struck land in August, killing 27 people in Louisiana. The earlier storm damaged nearly every home and building in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Piles of moldy mattresses, sawed-up trees and other debris still lined the streets.

Mayor Nic Hunter said tarps were flying off homes across the city.

“I’m in a building right now with a tarp on it and just the sound of the tarp flapping on the building sounds like someone pounding with a sledgehammer on top of the building,“ Hunter said as he rode out the storm downtown. ”It’s pretty intense.”

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Armenia, Azerbaijan agree on cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh

MOSCOW (AP) — With Russia's mediation, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting Saturday following two weeks of heavy fighting that marked the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist region in more than a quarter-century.

The countries' foreign ministers said in a statement that the truce is intended to exchange prisoners and recover the dead, adding that specific details will be agreed on later. Minutes after it entered force at noon (0800 GMT), Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of breaching the cease-fire with new attacks. The claims couldn't be independently verified.

The announcement of the truce followed 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who read the statement. It stipulated that the cease-fire should pave the way for talks on settling the conflict.

If the truce holds, it would mark a major diplomatic coup for Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but also cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan.

The latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began Sept. 27 and left hundreds of people dead in the biggest escalation of the decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since a separatist war there ended in 1994. The region lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.