White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has been on the airwaves this morning defending his father-in-law’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic from the White House. He also said that he hoped a bill could be agreed on more coronavirus economic relief, but that it may not happen before the election. Kushner also confirmed that the review of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of TikTok was happening right now. And a reminder that this is coming up shortly… The election may only be a couple of months away, but there’s still a final little bit of primary business to be conducted in Delaware today, as voters go to the polls – or at least wait for their mail-in ballots to be tallied, anyway. The state Department of Elections says that roughly 63,000 votes have already been returned by post of the more than 100,000 requested. There’s a couple of races to look out for – highlighted in this scene-setter from Katherine Tully-McManus at Roll Call. Firstly, can Sen. Chris Coons hold off a challenge from the left. Tully-McManus writes: Hoping to join a pool of younger progressive Democrats who have toppled established incumbents, 34-year-old Jessica Scarane is challenging Coons as he makes a bid for a second full term. Scarane is hoping to join the ranks of progressive Democrats such as New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman who defeated House Democratic incumbents in deep-blue districts in 2018 and earlier this year, respectively. Scarane has endorsements to match, including from Brand New Congress, The Sunrise Movement and 350 Action, groups that have supported other progressive challengers across the country. Her campaign platform includes support for universal health care, a reimagined criminal justice system and the Green New Deal. Republican voters in their Senate primary also have a choice between the traditional and new wings of the party. In this case 62 year old fiscal conservative Jim DeMartino is facing off against Lauren Witzke Witzke, 32, is among a new brand of Republicans, drawn to the GOP by Trump’s “America first” message. She has worked to differentiate herself from DeMartino with her online presence and has found a voice in hard-line conservative circles on Twitter and as a guest on One America News Network, a far-right channel. She has voiced support for the wide-ranging QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges a “deep-state” plot against Trump. Witzke says her life experience, including falling into opioid addiction and working for cartels before her recovery, make her qualified to tackle issues, including immigration, health care and the opioid epidemic, because she has seen each system personally. They both could be fascinating races. Read more here: Roll Call – What to watch in Delaware’s primaries this week If you’ve woken up to hazy skies again in the north-east of the US, then that too is being attributed to the climate emergency on the west coast. It is the result of smoke from the wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington state becoming caught in the jet streams and traveling across to the east coast. ABC News meteorologist Lee Goldberg said, for New York, “Even though we have a sunny and dry forecast coming up, don’t be surprised if it’s more of a milky sun, or filtered sun.” If, like me, you’ve had trouble comprehending just how big the areas being burned in the wildfires are, this from our interactive team might help. It places the size of the fire over an area you may be familiar with, like New York or London. Biden to target Latino voters in first campaign visit this year to Florida Later today Joe Biden will make his first campaign visit of the year to Florida. Opinion polls show a tight race against President Donald Trump amid signs of lagging support for Biden among the battleground state’s crucial Hispanic voters. Trump carried the state in 2016, and its vital 29 Electoral College votes, by just 1.2 percentage points. Trevor Hunnicutt and John Whitesides report for Reuters that with less than 50 days until the election now, the Biden campaign is trying to overcome concerns about enthusiasm among Florida Latinos. A recent NBC News/Marist poll showed the two White House contenders in a dead heat in Florida and Trump with a 4-point edge over Biden among the state’s Latinos - a group Hillary Clinton won by 27 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls. Other polls have shown Biden leading among state Hispanics, but still trailing Clinton’s support. “Clearly, there has been some hemorrhaging of Hispanic support going on, mainly Cuban Americans,” said Democratic state Senator Annette Taddeo, a Colombian American. “The Republicans have worked really, really hard, and they have been constantly present.” The steady drumbeat of Republican attacks on Biden as a socialist has also taken a toll, Florida Democrats said. The Republican convention last month featured a Cuban-born Florida businessman, Maximo Alvarez, who compared Biden’s agenda to the promises of Fidel Castro’s Communist rule. “We are seeing a massive disinformation campaign in Spanish aimed at our community calling Biden and Democrats socialists, and it is having an effect,” said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a Colombian-American Democratic strategist in south Florida. Florida, where Hispanics make up about 20% of the state electorate, is a linchpin in Trump’s re-election strategy. No Republican has won the presidency without Florida since Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Ahead of events on Tuesday in Tampa and Kissimmee, two Florida cities with heavy Puerto Rican populations, Biden said: “I am going to work like the devil to make sure I turn every Latino and Hispanic vote.” He will get some help from former Democratic primary rival Michael Bloomberg, who will spend $100 million on Biden’s behalf in Florida with a particular focus on Latino voters. Polls show Biden running ahead of Clinton’s level of 2016 support among seniors in Florida, another crucial voting bloc, and among white voters, giving him plenty of pathways to reach a majority, Democrats said. Israel-UAE-Bahrain due to sign peace accord at the White House at noon today There’s a big diplomatic set-piece due at the White House today, as Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Israel come together to sign the Abraham Accord on the south lawn at noon. President Trump will have bilateral meetings with representatives from each, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem reports for us: “We now have two historic peace agreements, with two Arab countries, which were established in one month,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday before departing for the United States. “We are at the threshold of a new era.” Israel has only previously made peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, and the US-brokered announcements have been seen as the materialisation of a growing closeness between Israel and some Arab states, in large part due to a shared enmity towards Iran. Israeli media speculated that other nations such as Morocco and Oman could also make deals. The aircraft on which Netanyahu flew to DC was painted with the word peace in Arabic, English and Hebrew. However, the recent agreements have also been dismissed as spectacle. Neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Netanyahu has been in some political trouble domestically, and even on the day he is due to sign the deals in Washington, there are protests against him being staged in Tel Aviv. You can read Oliver’s full report here: Netanyahu flies to Washington to sign deals as Israeli lockdown looms Hurricane Sally declared a Category 1 storm – NHC warns of "historic flooding" in Alabama and Florida Hurricane Sally is now a Category 1 storm, reports the Associated Press, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (137 kph). Despite this being a smaller hurricane than we’ve seen earlier this year, Stacy Stewart, a senior specialist with the National Hurricane Center, says portions of Alabama and the Florida panhandle could see “historic flooding.” Residents in these areas “need to understand there is going to be extremely heavy rainfall, like what they may have never seen before,” Stewart said. “You don’t have to have a very powerful hurricane like a Category 3 hurricane to get significant storm surge.” Some places could be inundated with 4 to 6 feet of water, and people can drown in the flooding, Stewart said. “If people live near rivers, small streams and creeks, they need to evacuate and go somewhere else,” he said. It seems an age away, but prior to Trump’s explosive comments about playing down the impact of the coronavirus on the nation being reported as Bob Woodward promoted his new book, the president was heavily invested and devoting a lot of Twitter energy to trying to deny that he had disparaged American military war dead during a 2018 visit to France. He returned to that theme at his Covid-19 restriction defying Nevada rally at the weekend, saying: They have some sleazebag reporter from a third-rate magazine having some source quoting me saying, I won’t even use the term, but saying bad things. … We had 25 people that were witnesses that are on the record already that have said that never took place. It never took place — what they said. This has prompted the Washington Post to fact-check his claim. They note: The White House has collected the names of 25 people who claim to refute Goldberg’s reporting [for The Atlantic] on the cemetery decision. Trump called them “witnesses,” but that’s wrong. Eleven people on the list were not with Trump. They are mostly current administration officials serving at the pleasure of the president or communications aides, and so can offer only bromides. Strikingly, two people who figure prominently in the article — then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. — have not commented. Their silence on this explosive story certainly is important in evaluating its accuracy. Both men would have the credibility to refute the story, so readers could consider their refusal to comment as some sort of confirmation. Read it here: Washington Post – Trump says there are 25 ‘witnesses’ disputing the Atlantic. Nope. Federal judge chastises government attorneys for failing to produce documents in US Census Bureau case The court battle over the US census in San Jose continued yesterday, with a federal judge chastising government attorneys for failing to produce documents that showed how the US Census Bureau made its decision to cut short by a month the head count of every US resident. The Associated Press report that US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose told government attorneys that they weren’t complying with her order to produce administrative records during a hearing in a lawsuit over whether the once-a-decade census will finish at the end of September or the end of October. The documents that government attorneys had produced so far were already publicly available, for the most part, she said. Koh said she was “very disappointed and surprised.” When Koh asked government attorneys whether they would ever be able to produce the documents before the end of the head count on 30 September, government attorney Brad Rosenberg said, “We are not in a position to make that kind of statement.” Government attorney Alexander Sverdlov said the attorneys had been hampered by trying to review more than 8,000 documents in a short amount of time. “We have been working around the clock on these issues,” Sverdlov said. Earlier this month, Koh issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Census Bureau from winding down 2020 census field operations. The temporary restraining order was requested by a coalition of cities, counties and civil rights groups that had sued the Census Bureau. They are demanding it restore its previous plan for finishing the census at the end of October, instead of using a revised plan to end operations at the end of September. The coalition had argued the earlier deadline would cause the Census Bureau to overlook minority communities in the census, leading to an inaccurate count. During Monday’s virtual hearing, Koh also expressed concern for residents displaced by wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. She asked the government attorneys to provide details on how the Census Bureau plans to continue counting households in disaster areas, noting she was in San Jose where there have been health warnings against going outside for almost a month because of wildfires. “Are you saying, ‘We are cutting our losses and we don’t care?’” Koh said. “What is the Census Bureau planning to do?” While on the subject of coronavirus, Christina Jewett has been reporting on the working conditions that medical staff have suffered during the Covid-19 outbreak, and how that has ultimately led to deaths. The California Nurses Association has filed complaints to Cal/Osha, the state’s workplace safety regulator. Similar concerns have swept across the US, according to interviews, a review of government workplace safety complaints and health facility inspection reports. Covid patients have been mixed in with others for a variety of reasons. Limited testing has meant some patients carrying the virus were identified only after they had already exposed others. In other cases, they had false-negative test results or their facility was dismissive of federal guidelines, which carry no force of law. As recently as July, a National Nurses United survey of more than 21,000 nurses found that 32% work in facilities that do not have dedicated Covid units. At that time, the coronavirus had reached all but 17 US counties, data collected by Johns Hopkins University shows. Federal work-safety officials have closed at least 30 complaints about patient mixing in hospitals nationwide without issuing a citation. They include a claim that a Michigan hospital kept patients who tested negative for the virus in the Covid unit in May. An upstate New York hospital also kept Covid patients in the same unit as those with no infection, according to a closed complaint to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. You can read it here: ‘Just a matter of time’: nurses die as US hospitals fail to contain Covid-19 Poll: Majority of Americans do not trust Trump comments on Covid vaccines As well as the climate emergency gripping both coasts, the country is still in the middle of a pandemic. NBC News have a poll this morning showing that: A majority of American adults (52%) don’t trust what president Donald Trump has said about a coronavirus vaccine. If you ask people who identify as Democrats, that number drops to a staggering 3%. The share of people who say they would get a government-approved vaccine has decreased. Just 39% of adults say they would, 23% say they wouldn’t and 36% percent say they aren’t sure. About a month ago, 44 percent of adults said they would get a government-approved vaccine. You can read more here: NBC News – Poll: Majority of adults don’t trust Trump’s comments on Covid-19 vaccine On the other side of the country, Gabrielle Canon has been in Oakland for us reporting on the wildfires, and here is the latest despatch: It was always going to be a hard year for California’s firefighters. Even before freak summer lightning storms lit up the state weeks earlier than expected and Covid-19 and the climate crisis became dueling calamities, fire crews were bracing for season of record-breaking infernos across the west. Now, fatigued first responders are facing fires that are burning hotter, faster, and more frequently than ever before – and it’s only expected to get worse as the season goes on. The strain is already starting to set in. “I have never seen something at this level,” said James Bowron, Oakland Fire Department’s battalion chief. In nearly three decades on the job, he has never witnessed this many fires burning at once. California saw a fierce and early start to its annual fire season. By the first week of September, a record 3.3m acres had already gone up in flames. That’s 26 times more than the area that had burned last year by this time. Firefighters are battling nearly 30 major blazes. Officials report that roughly 4,900 structures have been reduced to rubble and 24 people have lost their lives so far. More than 14,800 first responders are out fighting to contain the fires, according to state officials. Read it here: Firefighters pushed to the limits as unprecedented infernos rage across US west coast Hurricane Sally has been described as ‘powerful but plodding’ by the Associated Press this morning. Hurricane warnings have been replaced by a tropical storm warning from the Mouth of the Pearl River westward to Grand Isle, Louisiana, including in New Orleans, the National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm warning west of Grand Isle has been discontinued. Nevertheless, Sally, with winds of 85 mph, crept toward the northern Gulf Coast early Tuesday, with forecasters warning of potentially deadly storm surges, flash floods spurred by up to 2 feet (.61 meters) of rain and the possibility of tornadoes. Hurricane warnings had stretched from Grand Isle to Navarre, Florida, but forecasters while stressing “significant” uncertainty kept nudging the predicted track to the east. That eased fears in New Orleans, which once was in the storm’s crosshairs. But it prompted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare an emergency in the Panhandle’s westernmost counties, which were being pummeled by rain from Sally’s outer bands early Tuesday. The threat of heavy rain and storm surge was exacerbated by the storm’s slow movement. President Donald Trump issued emergency declarations for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Monday, and on Twitter urged residents to listen to state and local leaders. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought the presidential declaration after the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama, warned of the increasing likelihood of “dangerous and potentially historic flooding,” with waters rising as much as 9 feet (2.7 meters) above ground in parts of the Mobile metro area. Five cyclones are currently churning in the Atlantic Ocean for only second time in history. Here’s a reminder of two of the key moments from yesterday, with both Joe Biden and Donald Trump addressing the issues of the west coast’s fires and climate change. In his speech, the Democratic presidential candidate said: Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes. But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly. The president, meanwhile, was in California, where he told Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of California’s Natural Resources Agency, that the climate “will start getting cooler, you just watch”. Crowfoot responded: “I wish science agreed with you,” to which Trump retorted: “I don’t think science knows, actually.” Good morning, welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Tuesday. It was a busy day news-wise yesterday and there’s a lot in the diary for today too. Joe Biden called Donald Trump a ‘climate arsonist’ as the president denied climate science during his wildfire tour. Oregon wildfires kill at least 10 while 22 people are still missing, and west coast cities face the world’s worst air quality. Tropical Storm Sally is forecast to hit the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline, with a hurricane watch in effect from the Mississippi-Alabama border to the Alabama-Florida border. Five cyclones are churning in the Atlantic Ocean for only second time in history. There were 447 new coronavirus deaths and 36,836 new Covid-19 cases reported in the US yesterday. A whistleblower alleges that Ice detainees faced medical neglect and hysterectomies. Nurse Dawn Wooten says she was demoted and reprimanded when she spoke out about practices at Georgia detention center. Progressive Jess Scarane is trying to pull off an upset over incumbent Sen. Chris Coons in the Democratic Delaware primary. It’s a big day for diplomacy at the White House. Trump will have a series of bilateral meetings with Bahrain and UAE’s foreign ministers, and then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After those, at noon, the “Abraham Accords” signing ceremony will take place on the south lawn. There will be speeches, and then a working lunch. After that, Trump heads to Philadelphia to take part in an ABC News town hall event. That’s at 9pm ET. Biden will be campaigning in Florida. He will hold a roundtable with veterans in Tampa, and later attend a Hispanic Heritage Month event in Kissimmee. You can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com