Trish Scalia, who attended the Rose Garden introduction of Amy Coney Barrett on September 26th that has become a superspreader event, has tested positive, CNN reports.

Trish Scalia attended with her husband, her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law, a Catholic priest from a suburban Virginia parish.  None wore masks at the event.  Trish Scalia’s symptoms are said to be mild.

The Rev. Paul Scalia of the St. James Catholic Church, wrote in the parish’s online bulletin that he apologized for jeopardizing the health of parishioners by not wearing a mask. 

Laura Ingraham took to her Fox “News” soapbox Tuesday night to make an unusual claim:  that the money Trump lost our economy by his incompetent response to the coronavirus is better than the the $700 billion loss we would’ve taken under Biden’s economic plan.  The chyron in her show was “Trump Saved Us From A $770 Billion Loss.”

It’s very creative math, given that in the second quarter of 2020 alone, the US lost 34% of GDP at an annualized rate.  That’s $2.15 trillion–yes, trillion with a “T.” 

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s plan to send 33 million Medicare beneficiaries a card that can be used to help pay for as much as $200 in prescription drug costs won’t be completed until after the election, according to a person familiar with the plan.” The cards will be mailed in phases, with some likely going out later in October but most not until after the Nov. 3 presidential election.”

“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is spending an estimated $20 million for administrative costs to print and send letters to Medicare beneficiaries informing them that they will be getting cards, the person said. Plans for the overall drug-discount program have been sent to the Office for Management and Budget, the person said. It is unclear if or when the office will approve the program, which could cost $8 billion, the person said. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Medicare designed for people 65 and older, is unable to say exactly when the cards will go out because the proposal is still at OMB. Beneficiaries will have two years to use the discount cards, the person said.”

pic.twitter.com/wJN4zv0y8O

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2020

With Senate republicans in disarray and the White House impotent to garner support, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he will present a “skinny” coronavirus relief bill when the Senate reconvenes next Monday, the Associated Press reports.

McConnell vowed that the bill will get a vote on the floor of the Senate in October, but the bill has absolutely no chance of passage due to opposition on both sides of the aisle.

The bill McConnell supports would only address a small fraction of the issues facing American in the age of coronavirus.  It’s a rehash of a bill rejected by the Senate and the White House in September, which didn’t provide aid to fiscally strapped state and local governments, extend federal unemployment supplemental payments and provide a $1,200 direct payment to Americans.

Former New York republican Congressman Chris Collins reported to the federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida for his 26-month prison sentence for making false statements to the FBI and securities fraud, Roll Call reports.

In an example of the wanton lawlessness spurred by the Trump Administration, Collins was convicted of using his position on a corporate board of directors to gain information that he and his family members used to game the stock market for personal profit.

While attending the White House Congressional Picnic in June 2017, Collins was filmed by news outlets and security cameras calling his son to sell shares of stock after he was notified that a highly touted drug had failed clinical trials, information that was not yet available to the public. 

Social media, particularly from the right wing, are propagating much of the false information and uncertainty being circulated about voting opportunities like early voting and mail-in ballots, according to the Election Integrity Partnership, a non-partisan group examining this year’s elections.

As the Associated Press reports, partisan media outlets, social media influencers and high-profile individuals like the president’s son have been disseminating false information to sow distrust in the process and confuse voters on where and when to vote.

Trump should run solely against Kamala Harris. Biden is a temporary distraction with high favorables. Forget Biden, focus on who is really in charge. Moderates hate Harris.

Run against Kamala.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 13, 2020

Business Insider: “Before his demotion this summer as President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale had planned for a stunning amount of money to arrive during the 2020 home stretch that would cover equally shocking spending but that would have left the re-election effort dead broke by the start of October, three Republicans close to the president’s campaign told Insider. Parscale had been banking on campaign donations to miraculously double in October by about $200 million more than other recent months, said one Republican close to the president.”

“The Republican said Trump’s new campaign team, led by Bill Stepien, had to rush to cancel the spending approved by Parscale to salvage the president’s bid for a second term. Trump and his chief adviser, son-in-law Jared Kushner, ultimately demoted Parscale in July and launched an internal investigation of spending under him which turned up big ticket items like a personal driver for Parscale, extensive Air Force One travel for campaign staff and more. But money has been tight since then, leaving no less than the president himself to attempt to beat back stories that his campaign is on the rocks and float that he would open up his own checkbook to keep it running.”

The Supreme Court put a hold on a lower court order that will allow the Trump Administration to halt the population count of the Census immediately, likely providing an undercount of the nation that will reverberate through federal programs for a decade, the Washington Post reports.

The Trump Administration appealed the lower court ruling that would have required them to continue field work, known as “door knocking,” to track people who have not responded to mailed questionnaires or online forms. 

Washington Post: “The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.”

“The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work, though people familiar with his findings say they would likely disappoint conservatives who have tried to paint the ‘unmasking’ of names — a common practice in government to help understand classified documents — as a political conspiracy.The president in recent days has pressed federal law enforcement to move against his political adversaries and complained that a different prosecutor tapped by Barr to investigate the FBI’s 2016 investigation of his campaign will not be issuing any public findings before the election.”

“Department of Homeland Security employees were told to report colleagues they suspected of sharing sensitive internal information, along with those who requested information that fell out of their day-to-day duties, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News. Randolph D. ‘Tex’ Alles, a senior DHS official, emailed all employees on Tuesday warning them to be careful handling “all classified, controlled unclassified, and draft information” and that unauthorized disclosures — whether deliberate or inadvertent — risked violating agency policy and potentially federal law.”

“Alles sent the email after ‘sensitive but unclassified’ information had been shared with ‘external entities.’ Alles did not specify that the ‘external entities’ were media outlets, but the Trump administration has repeatedly criticized leaks of internal documents and attempted to crack down on such disclosures” – BuzzFeed News.

SurveyUSA: “In an identical WRAL-TV poll 1 month ago, the candidates were tied, 47% each. Among all likely voters, Trump is down 2 points, Biden is up 3 points. But beneath the surface, there are more troubling indicators for the President. Among suburban men, Trump had led by 26 points, now trails by 5, a 31-point swing to Biden. Among self-described “working class” voters, Trump had led by 3, now trails by 7. In military households, Trump had led by 15 points, now runs even with Biden.”

“Many of the accounts used profile pictures of Black men taken from news reports or other sources. One of the fake accounts had, in the place of a profile photo, the words ‘black man photo’ — a hint of sloppiness by the network’s creators. ‘It’s asymmetrical warfare,’ said Linvill, lead researcher for the Clemson University Media Forensics Hub. ‘They don’t have to last long. And they are so cheap to produce that you can get a lot of traction without a whole lot of work. Thank you, Twitter.’ Linvill said he found some evidence of foreign origins of the network, with a few traces of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet appearing in online records of the accounts. One account previously tweeted to promote an escort service in Turkey, Linvill found.”

– Excerpt from a Washington Post report on fake Black Trump supporters being tracked on Twitter.

“Preliminary autopsy results confirmed the man struck by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s car died of trauma from a pedestrian being hit by a vehicle, officials announced Tuesday. Ravnsborg said in a September statement that he called 911 and searched a ditch with Hyde County Sheriff Mike Volek using a cell phone flashlight after he believed he hit a large animal around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 12. The two men missed the body of Joseph Boever, a 55-year-old man who was killed in the collision and found the next morning. The state’s Public Safety Cabinet Secretary Craig Price said Tuesday that early autopsy results from Ramsey County Minnesota confirmed Boever died of trauma consistent with a pedestrian motor vehicle crash” – NBC News.

Bloomberg Businessweek: “With polls since 2016 showing a pronounced senior swing from Trump to Biden, the flood of early votes—especially from non-regular voters—is a worrisome sign for Trump. While it doesn’t guarantee anything, as Democrats learned in 2016, it’s certainly not a positive indicator of a second term for the president. It’s probably why a Covid-stricken Trump, captive in the White House as he recuperated last week, felt compelled to shoot a video aimed at reassuring seniors.”

“‘We think of seniors as a very high-turnout group, so we don’t ordinarily think of them as turnout targets,’ says [Dem data firm TargetSmart CEO Tom] Bonier. ‘But there are plenty of seniors who have never voted before and are voting for the first time. We see that in the data, and we see it in Florida for sure.’ If the surge of senior voters, new and old, keeps up across the next three weeks, Trump’s hope of winning Florida—and reelection—could rapidly vanish on Nov. 3.”

Trump won West Virginia by a staggering 68% to Hillary’s 26% in 2016. Losing fully 2/3rds of his margin in the MAGAest state in the union is absolutely catastrophic.

Read the poll details here.

While President Trump touts that he’s completely cured and immune from the coronavirus–as assertion that medical professionals vehemently disagree with–Trump’s public schedule is again empty of any presidential duties today.

Trump has no public meetings or appointments scheduled.  He has no phone calls with world leaders slated.  He is not meeting with public health professionals to oversee the administration’s pandemic response.

The only item on his schedule is a rally in Pennsylvania tonight.