Barrett bats away tough Democratic confirmation probing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett batted away Democrats’ skeptical questions Tuesday on abortion, health care and a possible disputed-election fight over transferring presidential power, insisting in a long and lively confirmation hearing she would bring no personal agenda to the court but decide cases “as they come.”

The 48-year-old appellate court judge declared her conservative views with often colloquial language, but refused many specifics. She declined to say whether she would recuse herself from any election-related cases involving President Donald Trump, who nominated her to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and is pressing to have her confirmed before the the Nov. 3 election.

“Judges can’t just wake up one day and say I have an agenda — I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion, I hate abortion — and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world,” Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee during its second day of hearings.

“It’s not the law of Amy,” she said. “It’s the law of the American people.”

Barrett returned to a Capitol Hill mostly shut down by COVID-19 protocols, the mood quickly shifting to a more confrontational tone from opening day. She was grilled by Democrats strongly opposed to Trump’s nominee yet unable to stop her. Excited by the prospect of a judge aligned with the late Antonin Scalia, Trump's Republican allies are rushing ahead to install a 6-3 conservative court majority for years to come.

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Takeaways: Barrett is reticent as Dems focus on health care

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett faced her first day’s worth of questions Tuesday from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it was a calmer affair than other recent confirmation hearings that featured Democratic procedural delays and interruptions from protesters.

With public attendance limited by the coronavirus pandemic and Democrats staying focused on a health care message just three weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, the back and forth was serious, disciplined and mostly uninterrupted — save a few technical glitches from those participating virtually.

But similar to past hearings, Barrett avoided taking positions on a variety of subjects and rulings, saying it would be inappropriate to do so.

Takeaways from day two of the confirmation hearing:

DEMURRING ON HER VIEWS

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Trump, Biden zero in on swing states that are key to victory

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — With Election Day just three weeks away, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden concentrated Tuesday on battleground states both see as critical to clinching an Electoral College victory, tailoring their travel to best motivate voters who could cast potentially decisive ballots.

Biden went to Florida to court seniors, looking to deliver a knockout blow in a state Trump needs to win while trying to woo a group whose support for the president has slipped. And Trump visited Pennsylvania, arguably the most important state on the electoral map, unleashing fierce attacks on Biden's fitness for office in his opponent's backyard.

“He’s shot, folks. I hate to tell you, he’s shot," Trump told a big rally crowd in Johnstown, saying there was extra pressure on him to win because Biden was the worst presidential candidate of all time. “Can you imagine if you lose to a guy like this? It's unbelievable."

In his second rally since contracting the coronavirus, Trump spoke for more than an hour to a crowd of thousands packed in tightly and mostly maskless. Like the night before in Florida, Trump seemed healthy, and his rhetoric on the pandemic — including the dubious claim that it was mostly a thing of the past — changed little despite his own illness, except for his threat to kiss audience members to prove his immunity.

Trump made a local pitch, hammering home the claim that a Democratic administration could limit fracking in areas where the economy is heavily dependent on energy, despite Biden's proposal to only bar new leases on federal land, a fraction of U.S. fracking operations. And Trump, touting his elimination of a federal rule that would have brought more low-income housing to the suburbs, zeroed in on groups whose support he has struggled to retain, including female voters turned off by his rhetoric.

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Supreme Court halts census in latest twist of 2020 count

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the Trump administration can end census field operations early, in a blow to efforts to make sure minorities and hard-to-enumerate communities are properly counted in the crucial once-a-decade tally.

The decision was not a total loss for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to end the count early. They managed to get nearly two extra weeks of counting people as the case made its way through the courts.

However, the ruling increased the chances of the Trump administration retaining control of the process that decides how many congressional seats each state gets — and by extension how much voting power each state has.

The Supreme Court justices’ ruling came as the nation’s largest association of statisticians, and even the U.S. Census Bureau's own census takers and partners, have been raising questions about the quality of the data being gathered — numbers that are used to determine how much federal funding and how many congressional seats are allotted to states.

After the Supreme Court's decision, the Census Bureau said field operations would end on Thursday.

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More masks, less play: Europe tightens rules as virus surges

GENEVA (AP) — Governments across Europe are ratcheting up restrictions to try to beat back a resurgence of the coronavirus that has sent new confirmed infections on the continent to their highest weekly level since the start of the pandemic.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday there were more than 700,000 new COVID-19 cases reported in Europe last week, a jump of 34% from the previous week. Britain, France, Russia and Spain accounted for more than half of the new infections.

The increasing caseload is partly the result of more testing, but the U.N. health agency noted that deaths were also up 16% last week from the week before. Doctors are warning that while many of the new cases are in younger people, who tend to have milder symptoms, the virus could again start spreading widely among older people, resulting in more serious illnesses.

Italy and France are restricting parties and putting limits on restaurants and bars. The Netherlands went further and ordered the closing of all bars and restaurants, And to discourage partying at home, it banned the sale of alcohol after 8 p.m.

The Czech Republic is closing all schools until Nov. 2, while Latvia is ordering teenagers to switch to distance learning for a week. And Britain unveiled a three-tiered system for deciding what restrictions to impose, based on how severe the outbreak is in certain areas.

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Report: Social media influencers push voting misinformation

CHICAGO (AP) — Social media influencers, partisan news outlets and even President Donald Trump's son are driving the spread of online misinformation swirling around the U.S. vote, casting doubt on this year’s election and prematurely raising suspicions about the accuracy of its results.

Legitimate U.S. social media accounts are sharing false claims of voter fraud, misleading photos of ballots being dumped in the trash and stoking fears of violence at the polls on Election Day, according to new research from the Election Integrity Partnership, a group of some of the world’s top misinformation researchers.

In some cases, those social media accounts are using isolated or old stories and photos about voting mishaps to create widespread concern about the election system, said Kate Starbird, an associate professor of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington who is part of the research group.

“What’s happening right now is these incidents are being framed in misleading ways that exaggerate their impact on the election,” Starbird said.

In one example, a photo purporting to show stacks of ballots sitting in a dumpster made its way to social media from conservative news outlets before being retweeted on the Twitter account of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.

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Agent: Michigan, Virginia governors mentioned in kidnap plot

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Members of anti-government paramilitary groups implicated in an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor ahead of the November election because of her measures to slow the coronavirus also discussed abducting Virginia’s governor, an FBI agent testified Tuesday.

The disclosure came during a federal court hearing in Grand Rapids, where agent Richard Trask revealed new details about investigators’ use of confidential informants, undercover agents and encrypted communication to thwart the purported scheme to abduct Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

A judge ordered three of six men charged in the case held without bond until trial, delaying rulings on two defendants. Another was ordered returned to Michigan from Delaware.

“They discussed possible targets, taking a sitting governor, specifically issues with the governor of Michigan and Virginia based on the lockdown orders” they had issued to deal with the pandemic, Trask said, referring to a June 6 meeting in Dublin, Ohio, attended by roughly 15 members of anti-government groups from “four or five states." A criminal complaint said at least two of the defendants were among them.

It wasn’t immediately clear if talk of targeting Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, continued beyond the meeting. Nothing from the complaint or Trask’s testimony indicated that anyone had been charged with plotting against Northam.

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Possible safety issue spurs pause of COVID-19 antibody study

Independent monitors have paused enrollment in a study testing the COVID-19 antiviral drug remdesivir plus an experimental antibody therapy being developed by Eli Lilly that’s similar to a treatment President Donald Trump recently received.

Lilly confirmed Tuesday that the study had been paused “out of an abundance of caution” and said safety is its top concern. The company would not say more about what led to this step.

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsors the study, would not immediately comment.

Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help it be eliminated. The experimental drugs are concentrated versions of one or two specific antibodies that worked best against the coronavirus in lab and animal tests.

This study was testing a single antibody that Lilly is developing with the Canadian company AbCellera. Trump received an experimental two-antibody combo drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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'Two and a Half Men' star Conchata Ferrell dies at 77

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conchata Ferrell, who became known for her role as Berta the housekeeper on TV’s “Two and a Half Men” after a long career as a character actor on stage and in movies, including “Mystic Pizza” and ”Network," has died. She was 77.

Ferrell died Monday at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Los Angeles following cardiac arrest, according to publicist Cynthia Snyder.

Ferrell soldiered through more than a decade on “Two and a Half Men,” playing opposite Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer until Sheen was fired from the sitcom for erratic behavior that included publicly insulting producer Chuck Lorre.

The series, which debuted in 2003 on CBS, continued on the network with new star Ashton Kutcher until 2015. Ferrell was on board for the full run.

She was remembered by Cryer for the “joy she brought so many.”

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NASA's new moonshot rules: No fighting or littering, please

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moonshot rules: No fighting and littering. And no trespassing at historic lunar landmarks like Apollo 11′s Tranquility Base.

The space agency released a set of guidelines Tuesday for its Artemis moon-landing program, based on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and other agreements. So far, eight countries have signed these so-called Artemis Accords.

Founding members include the U.S., Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he expects more countries to join the effort to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024.

It promises to be the largest coalition for a human spaceflight program in history, according to Bridenstine, and is expected to pave the way for eventual Mars expeditions.

It's important not only to travel to the moon “with our astronauts, but that we bring with us our values," noted NASA's acting chief for international and interagency relations, Mike Gold.