The Daily 202: Trump’s brief California visit highlights slow response to wildfires and inaction on climate change

The president is slated to land in Sacramento at 10:40 a.m. Pacific time. He will receive a briefing in McClellan Park on the wildfires that are devastating the region and speak at a ceremony recognizing the California National Guard. At 12:40 p.m., he is scheduled to be wheels up again for Phoenix.

Tens of thousands of people remain displaced from their homes in what is shaping up to be perhaps the worst wildfire season in American history. In California, more than 3.2 million acres have burned over the last three weeks. Three of the four largest wildfires in the state’s history are burning right now. In Washington state, more than 665,000 acres of land have burned and the skies over Seattle are choked with smoke. At least 24 have died in California and 10 have died in Oregon, including children. Dozens more people remain missing. The air quality in the Pacific Northwest ranks among the worst anywhere in the world.

Until tweeting for the first time about the fires on Friday night, Trump remained mostly silent about this catastrophe. The president mentioned briefly at the top of a news conference in late August that he had signed an emergency declaration to open up federal funding for California to fight the fires, and he approved a similar measure for Oregon on Thursday. 

In Nevada over the weekend, Trump blamed the fires on poor “forest management,” by which he means there has not being enough logging over the past few decades and that efforts to clear underbrush on federal land have been insufficient. During a previous wave of California fires, Trump spoke about the need for more “raking” in the forests. This is also the third year in a row that Trump threatened to withhold federal emergency funds for fighting California’s fires.

Scientists have said for years that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making annual fire seasons longer and more damaging. They have said these trends will only accelerate in the future. But Trump has dismissed man-made climate change as a “hoax” and has stocked his administration with like-minded skeptics of the scientific community’s consensus.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) agreed on Sunday that there has been “decades of mismanagement of our forests in this country,” but she said that does make climate change any less of a threat. “We need to do both,” Brown said on CBS.

A Sunday exchange on CNN’s “State of the Union” put in stark relief the degree to which these terrible fires are still not a presidential priority. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) accused Trump of negligence for his belated response to the fires and suggested that California, Oregon and Washington have been shortchanged because they are led by Democratic governors. “We need leadership that is equal across this country, instead of being partisan and divisive,” Garcetti said. He also criticized Trump for rejecting science. “Talk to a firefighter if you think that climate change isn’t real,” Garcetti said. “It seems like this administration are the last vestiges of the Flat Earth Society of this generation.”

The next guest on the program was senior presidential adviser Peter Navarro. CNN’s Jake Tapper began that interview by asking him to react to Garcetti’s comments. Navarro immediately pivoted: “One of the things I’d like to do before we get started is … I would really like to congratulate President Trump on being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

A populist member of Norway’s parliament nominated Trump last week, citing his efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but the prize committee usually receives more than 300 nominations each year.

Tapper tried to get the interview back on track by asking again about the fires. The anchor noted that Navarro co-authored a paper 20 years ago, when he was a professor at the University of California at Irvine that described climate change as “one of the most important environmental problems of our time.” Navarro demurred. “That’s not my expertise, Jake,” he answered. “And, really, I came here to talk about a lot of things. That was the last on my list.”

The host played a clip of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) speaking to reporters on Friday. “The debate is over around climate change,” Newsom said. “Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes. It’s not an intellectual debate. It’s not even debatable any longer. This is a climate damn emergency.”

Asked to respond, Navarro said he would rather discuss the revelations in “Rage,” Bob Woodward’s new book. “Let’s pray for the people of California right now, and once we put the fires out, let’s have that debate,” he added, referring to climate change.

Trump is slated to meet privately with Newsom during his layover in Sacramento, according to Newsom’s public schedule, but the two are not expected to be seen together in public. The Republican convention last month showcased footage from this spring of Newsom praising Trump’s initial response to the coronavirus, which Democrats complained was taken out of context. Newsom, who said he was trying to secure federal help for his state by flattering the president, was subsequently much more critical of Trump. Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, also happens to now be Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend.

Joe Biden will bracket Trump’s California visit with a speech focused on climate change. The Democratic presidential nominee will deliver remarks near his home in Wilmington, Del., around 1 p.m. Eastern time. “Vice President Biden will discuss the threat that extreme weather events pose to Americans everywhere, how they are both caused by and underscore the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis, and why we need to create good-paying, union jobs to build more resilient infrastructure,” Biden’s campaign said in a preview.

Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), is flying home for in-person meetings related to the fires. She will then travel to Las Vegas for campaign events on Tuesday afternoon. “Let’s be clear: these wildfires are a result of the climate crisis and we must take action that meets the needs of this moment,” Harris said in a statement issued Sunday afternoon after she had a conference call with the director of emergency services for the state.

Seven weeks from Election Day, Trump is trying to recast his record. In last Wednesday’s edition, I debunked his outlandish claim on the campaign trail in Florida that he is “the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt.”

In fact, earlier this summer, the Trump administration unveiled regulations attempting to declaw the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act. Helaine Olen explains in a column today that this is the foundation of almost all subsequent such legislation and regulation. “Weakening it will almost certainly make it harder to combat climate change,” she writes. “That said, Trump is just an accelerant, not the originator of our woes, environmental or otherwise.”

“The climate-related catastrophes seem all but endless,” Olen writes from Orange County, Calif., where it’s filthy gray outside at noon, the sun turns weirdly pink or gray at 4 p.m. and ash covers everything. “Last month, a derecho damaged or destroyed half the trees in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hurricane Laura caused billions of dollars in damage to the Louisiana coast and set off a fire at a chemical plant — a disaster within a disaster. And don’t forget the tropical storm that hit the New York City metropolitan area last month, leaving more than a million without power, some for more than a week. … It feels almost quaint to think back and remember how outraged so many of us were in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, when Trump delayed desperately needed aid for to hard-hit Puerto Rico for months and bizarrely tossed rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims when he finally bothered to visit the island.”

“Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states. But the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels,” the New York Times notes on today’s front page. “William Happer, a former senior White House adviser and a Princeton physicist who had gained notoriety in the scientific community for statements that carbon dioxide was beneficial to humanity, began an effort last year to ensure that the next National Climate Assessment did not include worst-case scenarios. Although Mr. Happer left the White House last year, that effort is continuing, according to three people familiar with the matter.”

The mountain of evidence that climate change is real keeps reaching new heights. A fresh study, for example, shows the Earth has not warmed this fast in tens of millions of years. Based on one of the most comprehensive reviews of the Earth’s climate history, Scientific American reports that a team of experts is warning that the planet could eventually warm to levels it has not reached in at least 34 million years: “The researchers, led by Thomas Westerhold of the University of Bremen in Germany, constructed datasets using chemical analyses of ancient sediments, drilled from the bottom of the ocean.” 

Trump’s presidency has been defined by a persistent effort to marginalize experts and devalue expertise, especially when it comes to science. That pattern continued over the weekend. The Trump administration has just tapped David Legates, an academic who has long questioned the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global warming, to help run the agency that produces much of the climate research funded by the U.S. government.

“Legates, a University of Delaware professor who was forced out of his role as that state’s climatologist because of his controversial views, has taken a senior leadership role at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow report. “The agency, which oversees weather forecasting, climate research and fisheries, has until now continued its climate research and communications activities unfettered by political influence. For that, NOAA stands in stark contrast to the Environmental Protection Agency and science agencies at the Interior Department, where the Trump administration has dismissed and sidelined climate scientists or altered their work before publication. The move to install Legates as the new deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction, a position that would report directly to acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs, is raising concerns in the science community that this could be a White House-orchestrated move to influence the agency’s scientific reports.”

Jane Lubchenco, a marine scientist at Oregon State University who served as President Barack Obama’s NOAA administrator during his first term, said Legates is far outside the scientific mainstream and could harm the agency’s work. “The juxtaposition of the apocalyptic wildfires and the announcement of David Legates’ appointment is mind-boggling,” she emailed. “Just at the time when we need continued truth from the nation’s lead climate agency, a climate denier is hired. This is a travesty.”

“Tropical Storm Sally is strengthening and forecast to become a powerful hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico,” Matthew Cappucci, Samenow and Freedman report. “When it slugs ashore Tuesday, the storm is expected to unleash a prolonged and dangerous assault from wind and water in southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. Sally may rapidly intensify to a Category 2 storm before landfall … Sally is a particularly dangerous threat because it is forecast to both slow and strengthen as it approaches land, potentially prolonging its surge over several tidal cycles and the period of excessive rainfall. Battering from high winds will also be extended.”

“Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building. The Democratic governor noted that Trump and his campaign were violating Nevada’s ban on gatherings of 50 people or more, tweeting that the president’s rally at Xtreme Manufacturing was ‘shameful, dangerous and irresponsible,’” Timothy Bella reports. “The indoor rally, which featured maskless supporters standing shoulder-to-shoulder inside the industrial facility, came as the United States surpasses 190,000 dead from the novel coronavirus. In Nevada, where Trump held multiple events over the weekend, there have been more than 73,500 cases and at least 1,570 deaths related to the virus. … 

“Sunday’s event was the president’s first indoor rally since a June gathering in Tulsa. A top local health official in the Oklahoma city later said that the rally and other large gatherings, including protests, ‘more than likely’ contributed to Tulsa County’s surge in coronavirus cases. … Herman Cain, the former pizza chain executive and presidential candidate, was hospitalized with covid-19 less than two weeks after attending the Tulsa rally, which featured several thousand people, most of whom did not wear masks. Cain later died of the virus on July 30 at the age of 74. … Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, likened the decision to hold the Henderson rally to ‘negligent homicide.’ … 

“Kathleen Richards, a spokeswoman for the city of Henderson, told reporters that the city had issued verbal and written warnings to Xtreme Manufacturing about social-distancing restrictions and threatened the company with a citation and the loss of its business license. … Don Ahern, the owner of the venue, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the state had fined him nearly $11,000 last month for failing to follow the state’s covid-19 policies after he held a Trump campaign event and beauty pageant attended by hundreds of people at the Ahern Hotel on the Strip.”

• During his 70-minute speech, Trump called Sisolak a “political hack,” adding: “If the governor comes after you, which he shouldn’t be doing, I’ll be with you all the way.”
• Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh rejected criticism: “If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the President of the United States,” he said in a statement.
• “Relatively few in the crowd wore masks, with one clear exception: Those in the stands directly behind Trump, whose images would end up on TV, were mandated to wear face coverings,” the AP reports. “Trump mused on mandatory prison sentences for flag burning, praised various UFC fighters in attendance and appeared to endorse extradjudicial killings for those who target police officers.”
• Biden leads Trump by three points in Arizona and nine points in Minnesota, according to new CBS News polling. 
• A Fox News mid-August poll shows Biden ahead nationally by five points. 
• Colorado won a temporary restraining order blocking the U.S. Postal Service from sending voters in the state a postcard about mail-in voting after its top election official said the information in the mailer was misleading. (WSJ)
• In 2016, Mormons rejected Trump. Now, the president is going all-out to change their minds in an effort that could make or break his hopes in Arizona and Nevada. Biden’s campaign is also targeting the group in the two states, sensing an unlikely opening for a Democrat. (Politico)

“We’re gonna win four more years in the White House,” Trump said in Nevada. “And then, after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably – based on the way we were treated – we are probably entitled to another four after that.” 

“Recent polls showing Trump’s inroads with Latinos have set off a fresh round of frustration and finger-pointing among Democrats, confirming problems some say have simmered for months. Many Latino activists and officials said Biden is now playing catch-up, particularly in the pivotal state of Florida, where he will campaign Tuesday — the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month — for the first time as the presidential nominee,” Sean Sullivan reports. “Reaching out to Latino voters will be a key focus on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the trip. Biden’s campaign said he will be in Tampa and Kissimmee, two areas with large Puerto Rican populations. … 

“The Democratic anxiety extends to Arizona, which the party hopes to turn blue for the first time in 24 years, as well as Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia — all states where the Latino vote is important. Adding to Biden’s challenge in Florida, a must-win state for Trump, is the complexity of the Hispanic population, where the president is popular among conservative Cuban Americans … Critics, including some close Biden allies, are frustrated that the Democratic nominee has not given a major speech on Latino issues … ‘The campaign understands that this is a priority, but at the same time there needs to be a little bit more support shown,’ said Julián Castro, the only Latino who ran in the Democratic presidential primary.” 

Mike Bloomberg will spend at least $100 million in Florida to help Biden. The former Democratic presidential candidate made the decision to focus his final election spending on Florida last week, after news reports Trump had considered spending as much as $100 million of his own money in the final weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg’s advisers said. (Michael Scherer)

Bernie Sanders is also concerned Biden is running a lackluster campaign and mostly ignoring the left. “Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) is privately expressing concerns about Biden’s presidential campaign, according to three people with knowledge of the conversations, and is urging Biden’s team to intensify its focus on pocketbook issues and appeals to liberal voters,” Sullivan reports. “[Sanders] has told associates that Biden is at serious risk of coming up short in the November election if he continues his vaguer, more centrist approach … The senator has identified several specific changes he’d like to see, saying Biden should talk more about health care and about his economic plans, and should campaign more with figures popular among young liberals, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).” 

“The sheriff expressed optimism Sunday that the deputies would recover after being shot Saturday night as they sat in their patrol vehicle in Compton. A video released by authorities shows a person walk up to a parked police car, fire a gun into the passenger-side window and then run away,” Miranda Green, Felicia Sonmez and Hannah Knowles report. “Trump, who has campaigned on ‘law and order,’ called for a forceful response. ‘Animals that must be hit hard!’ he said. Later Sunday morning, Trump tweeted of the officers: ‘If they die, fast trial death penalty for the killer. Only way to stop this!’ At a roundtable in Nevada, the president spoke of stiffer penalties for violence, saying that if a suspect is apprehended, ‘we are going to get much faster with our courts and we have to get much tougher with our sentencing.’ Biden also condemned the cold-blooded shooting’ in a tweet … ‘Acts of lawlessness and violence directed against police officers are unacceptable, outrageous, and entirely counterproductive to the pursuit of greater peace and justice in America — as are the actions of those who cheer such attacks on’ Biden said. ‘Those who perpetrate these crimes must be brought to justice, and, if convicted, face the full brunt of the law.’” 

• L.A. deputies tackled, arrested and charged a reporter for the local NPR affiliate. Then they made multiple false claims about Josie Huang, undercut by video recordings and eyewitness accounts. Huang’s phone continued recording during her arrest, capturing her telling officers they were hurting her and yelling she is a journalist. (Tim Elfrink)
• Oracle emerged as a surprise victor in wooing TikTok – but with a catch. “TikTok recently put forward a proposal to the U.S. government that would allow its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to retain ownership but outsource cloud management of the data. One of the people said that TikTok chose Oracle as its U.S. ‘technology partner’ Sunday afternoon and that the companies brokered the deal in an attempt to satisfy regulator concerns,” Rachel Lerman, Ellen Nakashima and Jay Greene report.
• The Biden campaign has created a legal war room with two former solicitors general and hundreds of lawyers in preparation for a protracted fight over election results. (NYT)

“Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have sought to change, delay and prevent the release of reports about the coronavirus by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because they were viewed as undermining Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control,” Lena Sun reports. “Michael Caputo, the top HHS spokesman, said in an interview Saturday that he and one of his advisers have been seeking greater scrutiny of the CDC’s weekly scientific dispatches, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, for the past 3½ months. The adviser, Paul Alexander, has sent repeated emails to the CDC seeking changes and demanding that the reports be halted until he could make edits. The emails, first reported late Friday by Politico, describe the CDC documents, widely known as the MMWR, as being ‘hit pieces on the administration.’ Caputo confirmed the authenticity of the emails. …

“MMWRs are written by career experts for scientists and public health specialists and are considered among the most authoritative public health reports because they provide evidence-based information on a range of health topics. The reports are independent scientific publications that undergo rigorous vetting, often with multiple drafts to check data and methodology. … One CDC report that drew particular scrutiny was on hydroxychloroquine. The MMWR urged clinicians to follow long-accepted prescribing guidelines for the malaria drug. Trump favored the drug as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. … The report [was] delayed for weeks. … In another instance, a report about the spread of the coronavirus at a Georgia sleep-away camp was also delayed … to avoid being released around the same time Trump was calling for schools to reopen in person. … The interference by HHS political appointees in the MMWR process has infuriated career scientists, who have been frustrated for months over the inability to allow scientists to fully share and explain information.” 

• Covid-19 infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else. South Dakota had a 17 percent positivity rate last week. Still, the GOP governors of both states eschew mask requirements. (AP)
• “Covid-19 cases were growing by 5% or more, based on a weekly average to smooth out daily reporting, in 11 states as of Sunday,” CNBC reports. “The states were Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Wisconsin hit a record high in its average of daily new cases, reporting 1,353 new infections, a roughly 32% increase from a week ago … Kansas and Montana both hit record highs for new deaths.”

“The state has overlooked thousands of cases, only to report them weeks after infection. It has made major adjustments to its case and death counts, defining them one way and then another, suddenly reporting figures for some counties that were vastly different from those posted by the local health department,” the New York Times reports. “Changes in the state’s figures have been large enough to affect national trends, and have sown confusion and distrust at a time when the state says it needs public support to avoid another surge … Public health officials and researchers place the blame for the state’s data problems on Texas’ antiquated data systems and a reliance on faxed test results, which limit the state’s ability to track every infection and death in many of its 254 counties.”

“The recommendation to resume human testing of the vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was made by an independent safety review committee and by the U.K. health regulator. Authorities made no further information available about the nature of the participant’s illness, citing privacy protections,” Carolyn Johnson reports. “‘Globally some 18,000 individuals have received study vaccines as part of the trial. In large trials such as this, it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety,’ the University of Oxford said in a statement. AstraZeneca released a statement that it was working with global health authorities to ‘be guided as to when other clinical trials can resume,’ including the 30,000-person trial in the United States that began in late August.” 

• Pfizer proposed expanding its vaccine trial to include more diversity. (CNN) 
• George Washington University’s clinical trial has met one early goal: getting Black and Latino people to join. (Frederick Kunkle)

“Federal regulators knew about serious safety problems in dozens of the nation’s meat plants that became deadly coronavirus hot spots this spring but took six months to take action, recently citing two plants and finally requiring changes to protect workers,” Kimberly Kindy reports. “The financial penalties for a Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota and a JBS plant in Colorado issued last week total about $29,000 — an amount critics said was so small that it would fail to serve as an incentive for the nation’s meatpackers to take social distancing and other measures to protect their employees. Meat plant workers, union leaders and worker safety groups are also outraged that the two plants, with some of the most severe outbreaks in the nation, were only cited for a total of three safety violations and that hundreds of other meat plants have faced no fines. The companies criticized federal regulators for taking so long to give them guidance on how to keep workers safe.

“At least 42,534 meatpacking workers have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in 494 meat plants, and at least 203 meatpacking workers have died since March … At the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., 1,294 have tested positive for the coronavirus and four have died. At the JBS USA plant in Greeley, Colo., 290 have tested positive and six have died. Smithfield last year had revenue of nearly $14 billion. JBS — the largest meatpacker in the world — had $51.7 billion in revenue. Both companies, which operate internationally, said that the citations are ‘without merit,’ that they will contest them and that they have already made safety improvements.”

• Testing for lead poisoning has plummeted because families are skipping or delaying pediatric appointments for their kids due to the pandemic. (Kaiser Health News)
• Dozens of workers at Reagan National Airport may have been exposed to the virus after attending services at an Alexandria church last month. (Lori Aratani)
• Europe should expect to see an increase in coronavirus-related fatalities this fall, the World Health Organization said. (Antonia Farzan)
• Five deaths have been linked to a Maine “superspreader” wedding that spawned more than 160 infections, health officials said. At least four of the deaths occurred at a nursing home more than 200 miles away from where the August reception took place. A sibling of an employee at the nursing home attended the wedding. At least 28 people at the facility have since tested positive. (Farzan)
• Dentists are seeing a surge of new patients with teeth-grinding and jaw-clenching disorders caused by pandemic-related stress. (Emily Sohn)
• Stress over the pandemic is making OCD symptoms worse in some children, particularly those who are afraid of germs. (Elizabeth Landau)

“‘Ladies and gentlemen, here come the Ravens!’ the public address announcer blared at M&T Bank Stadium, despite the fact that there were no ladies or gentlemen in any of the 71,008 purple seats,” Adam Kilgore and Eric Adelson report. “Baltimore Ravens players sprinted through two rows of faux-marble pillars billowing smoke. Metallica’s ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ boomed, unaccompanied by the usual cacophony. When the music stopped, only players’ shouts and coaches’ exhortations pierced the silence. … The field was so quiet, Baltimore players said, that they could discern the Cleveland Browns’ plans by listening. … [Racial justice] demonstrations varied from team to team and even within sidelines. Some teams remained in their locker rooms. Others locked arms while standing. Indianapolis Coach Frank Reich knelt, a notable act for a head coach. … 

“FedEx Field looked post-apocalyptic Sunday morning before the Washington Football Team beat the Philadelphia Eagles. The parking lot, which had been thinning for years, was almost completely empty, the die-hards finally forced away. … Among home teams Sunday, only the Jacksonville Jaguars allowed fans, filling TIAA Bank Stadium to 25 percent of its capacity. No one was more grateful than Tyrone Harris. The onetime Olympic hopeful in the long jump sells game day beads outside the stadium — $3 for one and $5 for two — and he needs the money. Even a partial crowd for the Jaguars’ opener with the Indianapolis Colts was fine with Harris. … ‘Just the limited amount is a big help. It gives you some hope for something,’ Harris said.”

“In the past several years, a company linked to the billionaire, who also goes by Miles Kwok and Miles Guo, has given Bannon a consulting contract. Guo has also publicly pledged to donate $100 million to a Bannon-led charity. Most recently, the month before Bannon’s arrest, Guo announced that Bannon would serve as chairman of a new social media company he was launching. Bannon, in turn, has emerged as one of the biggest champions of Guo, who casts himself as an anti-communist dissident in dozens of fiery videos posted online,” Rosalind Helderman, Josh Dawsey, Gerry Shih and Matt Zapotosky report.

“There are now signs that federal investigators are scrutinizing Guo’s financial activities in the United States and GTV Media Group, a social media company that Guo said raised $300 million from investors … Some of those investors now say they think they were defrauded by the company and have been interviewed repeatedly by the FBI in recent months … A person close to [Bannon] said he [like Guo] views the allegations against GTV as being driven by the Chinese government, which he thinks sees the independent media enterprise as a threat. … The billionaire has been described as the target of a failed attempt to lobby the Trump administration to extradite him to China, a complex campaign that allegedly involved two prominent GOP fundraisers, a former member of the Fugees hip-hop group and a fugitive Malaysian financier.”

“The Iranian government is weighing an assassination attempt against the American ambassador to South Africa, U.S. intelligence reports say, according to a U.S. government official familiar with the issue and another official who has seen the intelligence,” per Politico. “If carried out, it could dramatically ratchet up already serious tensions between the U.S. and Iran and create enormous pressure on Trump to strike back — possibly in the middle of a tense election season. U.S. officials have been aware of a general threat against the ambassador, Lana Marks, since the spring … But the intelligence about the threat to the ambassador has become more specific in recent weeks. The Iranian embassy in Pretoria is involved in the plot, the U.S. government official said. … 

“Attacking Marks is one of several options U.S. officials believe Iran’s regime is considering for retaliation since the general, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in January. … Marks, 66, was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador last October. She’s known Trump for more than two decades and has been a member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Critics of Trump have derided her as a ‘handbag designer,’ but her supporters retort that she is a successful businesswoman — her eponymous handbags run as much as $40,000. … It’s possible the Iranians took her long friendship with Trump into consideration, the U.S. government official said. The Iranian government also operates clandestine networks in South Africa, the officials noted, and has had a foothold there for decades.”

“Mike Pompeo is quietly relaunching his extravagant, taxpayer-funded ‘Madison Dinners’ during the coronavirus pandemic, even as Congress scrutinizes his use of government resources to entertain CEOs, big-dollar Republican donors and television anchors,” NBC News reports. “[The dinners] had been on pause since March, when the country shut down because of the coronavirus. But now they’re back, with a dinner scheduled for Monday and at least three others on the calendar in September and October … It’s unclear what coronavirus precautions, if any, are being taken, particularly considering that the dinner will be indoors and guests presumably won’t be wearing masks while eating and drinking. A State Department official said guests had been encouraged to get COVID-19 tests before the dinner but was unsure whether that was mandatory.” 

“Pompeo’s wife wanted senior State Department staff to work during the week of Christmas to complete their personal holiday cards, requesting they keep the circle small because of the private nature of the assignment,” according to emails obtained by the Kansas City Star. “Susan Pompeo wrote to Toni Porter, a longtime confidante and aide to the secretary from his days as a Kansas congressman, asking who would be in the office that week to help with the cards. ‘I see that you are out of the office all next week,’ she wrote to Porter on Dec. 19, 2019, from a personal email account. ‘…I’m wondering if we are sending the last of our personal cards out, who will be there to help me.’ … Porter, a State Department employee who serves as an adviser to the secretary, forwarded the email to Lisa Kenna, executive secretary at the State Department and a career member of the Foreign Service. Kenna volunteered to assist the Pompeos. ‘I’d worry about asking others for personal things,’ Kenna wrote Porter.

“The exchange is the first publication of emails documenting the Pompeos directing State Department employees to conduct their personal business on government time, the topic of an ongoing inquiry by the State Department inspector general’s office. … In Porter’s testimony to the House, which published a transcript of the hearing on Friday, she described discomfort at being asked to handle the holiday cards for the Pompeos. … In addition to Pompeo, Porter said she receives orders from the secretary’s wife through a private email address.”

“In a 30-page court filing in Washington, former New York federal judge John Gleeson called Attorney General William P. Barr’s request to drop Flynn’s case a ‘corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,’” Spencer Hsu reports. “Gleeson’s filing set the stage for a potentially dramatic courtroom confrontation Sept. 29 with the Justice Department and Flynn’s defense over the fate of the highest-ranking Trump adviser to plead guilty in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Friday’s filings echo earlier arguments from Gleeson, who called the Justice Department’s attempt to undo Flynn’s conviction a politically motivated and ‘a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.’”

This award Trump claimed he received does not exist:

The president shared an image of a yard packed with Trump signs that was taken during the 2016 primaries:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Jerry Seinfeld met up in an iconic New York City comedy club: 

The Washington NFL team took a knee:

The Post’s Bob Woodward talked about his new book, “Rage,” during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night. Here are four of the most noteworthy moments:

Trump said no president has done more for veterans than him. “Late Night’s” Amber Ruffin agreed: