Former DHS official: Trump wanted border wall spikes more damaging to human flesh My colleague Joan Greve wrote earlier about the former Trump Department of Homeland Security official who endorsed Joe Biden for president, saying that “What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying.” Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff to former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, announced his endorsement in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump. He also elaborated on some of his experiences in the administration in a Washington Post op-ed: One day in February 2019, when congressional leaders were waiting for an answer from the White House on a pending deal to avoid a second government shutdown, the president demanded a DHS phone briefing to discuss the color of the wall. He was particularly interested in the merits of using spray paint and how the steel structure should be coated. Episodes like this occurred almost weekly. Top DHS officials were regularly diverted from dealing with genuine security threats by the chore of responding to these inappropriate and often absurd executive requests, at all hours of the day and night. One morning it might be a demand to shut off congressionally appropriated funds to a foreign ally that had angered him, and that evening it might be a request to sharpen the spikes atop the border wall so they’d be more damaging to human flesh (“How much would that cost us?”). See Adam Serwer’s 2018 essay on the Trump administration: “The cruelty is the point.” Nurse practitioner discovers Iowa underreporting COVID cases on state website New from the Associated Press: A state agency says it is working to fix a data error on Iowa’s coronavirus website that lowers the number of new confirmed cases and therefore downplays the severity of the current outbreak, just as schools are deciding whether to reopen. The glitch means the Iowa Department of Public Health has inadvertently been reporting fewer new infections and a smaller percentage of daily positive tests than is truly the case, according to Dana Jones, an Iowa City nurse practitioner who uncovered the problem. It’s particularly significant because school districts are relying on state data to determine whether they will offer in-person instruction when school resumes in the coming days and weeks. “It’s just horrifying. We have no idea what’s going on, really,” said Jones. Report: University cancels in-person classes less than 2 hours before tuition deadline An independent weekly in North Carolina is highlighting an interesting detail about the abrupt cancellation of in-person classes at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the state’s flagship university, which had started on-campus instruction this month. A union that represents some of the university’s staff said in a statement responding to the sudden reversal that administration officials “gambled that they could contain a spread until tuition bills were locked in and lost miserably”, the News and Observer reported. The union had previously sued the university on behalf of housekeepers, professors and other staff, the paper reported. Fact-checking Trump’s claims about New Zealand’s “big surge” in coronavirus cases Donald Trump called out New Zealand for its recent Covid-19 outbreak today, saying the places the world hailed as a success story is now facing a “big surge” in cases. On Monday Auckland recorded 9 new cases of the virus, while the US recorded just under 42,000. More on Trump’s claims about New Zealand, versus the reality: Mario Koran California governor gives update on fire tornadoes, expected rolling blackouts As a record-setting heat wave descends on California, the state contends with wildfires that threaten to spiral out of control, rolling blackouts to protect against additional blazes and a pandemic whose toll continues to rise. Over the weekend, intense lightning storms and fire tornadoes struck areas across the state, igniting brush fires and prompting state regulators to warn of rolling blackouts just as many children resume distance learning and huge segments of the population work from home. “We failed to predict and plan for these shortages, and that’s unacceptable. I have taken responsibility as your governor to immediately address this issue, to move forward and ensure it simply never happens again,” Newsom said at Monday’s presser, adding that the state has launched an investigation into what went wrong with the energy forecast. Newsom said that parents who are worried about how the power outages will impact their children’s distance learning should know the situation is “very temporary”. Meantime, California coronavirus metrics show signs of improvement. Since 3 August, the state has added five new counties to the state’s monitoring list, based on health metrics that worry public health experts, which means 42 of the state’s 58 counties are now on notice. The San Diego metro area may be removed from the list tomorrow, Newsom said. Newsom said the state’s positivity rate for people who have been tested for Covid is at 6.5%, down from 7 weeks ago, and is “stabilizing” and “moving broadly in the right direction”. Admissions to hospitals and ICUs both declined over the past two weeks, by 21% and 16% respectively. Another politically charged Trump appointment at the Census bureau The Trump administration has made another rare political appointment to the census bureau, naming Ben Overholt, a statistician at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to be its deputy director for data. Donald Trump also recently instructed the bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census data used to determine how many US House seats each state gets, a move that is likely to be unconstitutional (the constitution says the census must count all “persons”). The bureau announced earlier this month it is shortening the time to respond to the census, a move that will likely result in an undercount of immigrant, poor and minority communities. Overholt’s appointment, first reported by NPR, comes at a time when the Bureau is under severe scrutiny and faces accusations of political interference. The Bureau is overwhelmingly staffed by career employees, and the Trump administration installed two political appointees earlier this year there that appear to have little qualification. Democrats in Congress have called for the removal of those employees. In 2017, Kris Kobach, an anti-immigrant politician from Kansas, attempted to get Overholt detailed to Trump’s voter fraud commission, noting Overholt had done an analysis for Kobach after seeing him on TV. Kobach told officials in Vice-President Mike Pence’s office he wanted the request to have Overholt detailed to the commission elevated to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Christy McCormick, a commissioner on the Election Assistance Commission, also praised Overholt in an email to Pence’s office: “When I was at DOJ, we had numerous conversations that make me pretty confident he is conservative (and Christian, too).” Overholt has served as a statistician at the EEOC since 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he worked in the voting section at the Justice Department for five years and served in the US army for nearly 14 years. He has a PhD and MS in Applied Statistics and Research Methods from the University of North Colorado. The Bureau said in a statement Overholt would ensure “2020 Census data products are of the highest quality”. Trump confirms he will give his GOP convention speech at the White House The Office of Special Counsel said last week that Trump could give the speech from the White House, but said there might be issues for White House employees involved in the event because of the Hatch Act, which sets limits on the political activities of federal employees while on the job. Trump has repeatedly ignored these legal limits. Better air circulation or doors that lock against a school shooter? Pick one. A reporter for New York magazine has an extremely grim anecdote from a conversation with a friend who is a teacher in the United States preparing to resume classroom instruction during a pandemic: Trump about to begin another airport speech, this one in Wisconsin The president is currently in an airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about to give yet another speech in the airport. (He previously spoke in airports in Minneapolis and Mankato, Minnesota, earlier today.) The White House pool reporter notes that, currently, “People are crowded into the hangar, cheering and waving signs. They are close and not all are wearing masks.” Major university cancels in-person classes after 130 cases of Covid-19 among students New from the Associated Press: a major university started in-person classes, then cancelled them after 130 confirmed coronavirus cases among students, including a cluster of cases at a fraternity house. North Carolina’s flagship university canceled in-person classes for undergraduates just a week into the fall semester Monday as the school and other campuses around the U.S. scrambled to deal with coronavirus clusters linked in some cases to student housing, off-campus parties and packed bars. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said it will switch to remote learning on Wednesday and make arrangements for students who want to leave campus housing. “We have emphasized that if we were faced with the need to change plans — take an off-ramp — we would not hesitate to do so, but we have not taken this decision lightly,” it said in a statement after reporting 130 confirmed infections among students and five among employees over the past week. UNC said the clusters were discovered in dorms, a fraternity house and other student housing. Read the full story. More than a dozen states expected to sue Trump administration over post office cuts Reuters has a new development in the intense battle to ensure America’s postal service has the resources it needs to deliver Americans’ ballots on time in this fall’s presidential election: More than a dozen states as early as this week are expected to sue the Trump administration over cuts at the United States Postal Service they say could delay mail-in ballots in the November elections, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said on Monday. Frosh said anywhere between 15 to 20 Democratic attorneys general are reviewing legal arguments, and he expects that the states involved will join in one, or possibly several, lawsuits. Full story here. Justice Department announces espionage charges against man who served in CIA decades ago This is Lois Beckett, picking up today’s live politics coverage from our West Coast office. The Justice Department announced that Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, a former CIA officer, was arrested on Aug. 14, on a charge that he conspired with a relative of his to communicate classified information to Chinese intelligence officials. Ma joined the CIA in 1982 and left the agency in 1989. He lated worked for an FBI field office as as contract linguist tasked with reviewing and translating Chinese language documents. The Los Angeles Times has additional details on the case: “Ma left the FBI in 2010. It is not clear why the FBI waited until January 2019 to conduct its sting operation,” the Times’ Del Quenten Wilber writes. “But the affidavit suggested the FBI had been tracking Ma’s activities for years, likely while he was still at the bureau.” The Los Angeles Times also noted than an alleged conspirator of Ma’s, his 85-year-old relative, also a former CIA officer, was not charged in the case because of a “debilitating cognitive disease.” Today so far I’m turning the blog over to my west coast colleague, Lois Beckett, for the next few hours, but I will be back for the start of the Democratic convention tonight. Here’s where the day stands so far: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy agreed to testify before the House oversight committee next Monday. The hearing is expected to be quite contentious, as Democratic members of the panel grill DeJoy on his handling of the US Postal Service in the final months before November’s presidential election. The House will vote on legislation regarding USPS on Saturday. House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that she would call members back into session to vote on congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s bill, which would prohibit changes to USPS operations before the election. A former senior member of the Trump administration endorsed Joe Biden in the presidential race. Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff to former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said in a video announcing his endorsement, “Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president.” The endorsement makes Taylor one of the most senior members of the Trump administration to publicly back Biden’s campaign. The Trump administration finalized its plan to allow oil drilling in the Arctic national wildlife refuge – which environment advocates call the nation’s “last great wilderness”. The Democratic convention will start in just a few hours. Tonight’s events will include speeches from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former first lady Michelle Obama. Lois will have more coming up, so stay tuned. Trump unsurprisingly attacked several prominent Democrats during his second mini-rally of the day in Minnesota. The president attacked Joe Biden as “the puppet of leftwing extremists” and sarcastically described vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a “beauty”. Trump also suggested (with no basis) that House speaker Nancy Pelosi does not love America. Former senior Trump administration official endorses Biden A former top member of the Trump administration has endorsed Joe Biden in the presidential election. Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff to former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, announced his endorsement in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump. “What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying,” Taylor says in the video. Taylor said Trump showed little interest in important matters of national security and sought to “exploit” the department of homeland security for his own personal gain. “Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president and even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m confident that he won’t make the same mistakes as this President.” The endorsement makes Taylor one of the most senior members of the Trump administration to publicly back Biden’s bid for the White House. Trump: economic crisis is "God testing me" During his second mini-rally of the day, Trump suggested that the country’s financial struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic are God’s way of testing him. “We built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and now I have to do it again,” Trump told a small crowd at an airport in Minnesota. The president went on to say, “You know what that is? That’s right. That’s God testing me.” Trump frequently claims that he built the strongest economy in history before the pandemic, but fact-checkers have found that assertion to be false. The president’s odd claim that the struggling economy is part of a divine test also seems to downplay the suffering of millions of Americans who remain unemployed because of the crisis. The Guardian’s Sam Levine has more analysis of that new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: Joe Biden’s supporters appear much more likely to vote by mail than Trump supporters. Nearly half of Biden supporters said they planned to vote by mail, while just 11% of Trump supporters did the same. That finding underscores how Trump’s attacks on vote by mail - including efforts to slow the mail and limit the use of drop boxes - could be more likely to harm Biden. Trump has already started sowing doubts about the election results, and the poll reflects a deep partisan divide in election confidence. 73% of Republicans said they are not confident mail-in ballots will be counted accurately, while 65% of Democrats said they were confident in the mail-in vote total. Those attitudes could come into play in the days after the election when state election officials are still counting ballots. Experts are worried that Trump could appear to be leading and claim victory on election night only as more ballots are counted in the days after the election. Trump said he has approved Iowa’s federal disaster declaration after last week’s devastating derecho. “Just approved (and fast) the FULL Emergency Declaration for the Great State of Iowa. They got hit hard by record setting winds,” the president said in a tweet. Trump also intends to visit Iowa tomorrow, a White House official told the Des Moines Register. The Register reports: The president will visit Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, a White House official confirmed to the Des Moines Register Monday afternoon. The president had originally floated the idea of making a ‘surprise’ visit to Iowa on Monday. ‘I want to see the people. I love the people of Iowa. They’ve been very loyal,’ Trump said. But, a few hours later, White House staff said they were unable to work it into his schedule, chief of staff Mark Meadows said Monday afternoon. Trump is visiting Minnesota and Wisconsin today to deliver remarks on jobs, providing some in-person counterprogramming to the Democratic virtual convention, which starts tonight. The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports: Ron Stroman, who stepped down as the second in command at the US Postal Service in June, said the agency needed to be more transparent about the reasoning for recent changes, which includes reports of mail-sorting machines being removed from post office facilities. “Recent actions like the removal of these machines aren’t necessarily out of line with USPS operations/processes, but what does raise cause for concern is the lack of transparency from USPS in communicating to stakeholders the reasoning behind, or the data to back up, these decisions—not to mention the speed with which the changes have been made in recent weeks,” he wrote in an email. Trump and Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, have said the measures are necessary to cut costs for the cash-strapped agency. But Stroman said USPS needed to be clearer about what justified the changes amid a pandemic and just months before a presidential election. “It could be legitimate, but it is hard to know for certain,” Stroman said of the changes. “While ideally USPS would be working in partnership with state and local election officials — as USPS historically did in the past — to ensure the integrity of the election, this is another reminder of why it’s so important for us to drive home the message to voters that the best way to ensure their mail in ballots are counted — regardless of any of these changes — is to request and send back their ballots as early as possible.”