In continuing fallout from the coronavirus spreading throughout the league, the NFL has announced the postponement of three games that were scheduled for this week, the Associated Press reports.

The Buffalo Bills at Tennessee Titans game has been moved from Sunday to Tuesday night.  Sunday’s Denver Broncos at New England Patriots game will move to Monday night.  Both the Titans and the Patriots have had players and/or staff who tested positive for the coronavirus in the last ten days.

The Kansas City Chiefs game at Buffalo, originally scheduled for next Thursday will be rescheduled because the Chiefs have had players test positive.

• Hillary’s emails are still a thing Trump is running on, four years later [1].

• The third debate of 1960 presidential campaign between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was “virtual”. Kennedy was in New York, Nixon in Los Angeles, and they were joined by video link [2].

• Tucker Carlson reportedly went the entire hour of his Thursday night show without once mentioning the failed MAGA terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer [3].

• The Hill still sucks [4].

• Without putting the cart too much in front of the horse, National Zero is contemplating what a post-Trump 2021 would look like – specifically with regard to our coverage. While there would be plenty of aftermath and fun schadenfreude going forward, the volume of stories that form the bread and butter of a center-left publication would drop precipitously. Plus you guys are already sick and fucking tired of being mad all the time. With that in mind, we’d love to hear your suggestions on new areas of coverage you’d like to see here.

AP: “The chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates says it is not reconsidering shifting the second debate from virtual back to in-person, despite a request from President Donald Trump’s team. Frank Fahrenkopf told The Associated Press late Thursday that the nonpartisan group’s decision was not going to be reversed. That means the second debate is probably not going to happen at all. The commission decided to make the Oct. 15 debate virtual after Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Fahrenkopf says that the group wanted to ‘protect the health and safety of all involved’ and that the decision was guided by the advice of the Cleveland Clinic, its heath partner for the 2020 debates.”

Great honor to have the endorsement of the Governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced. As I have always said, Donald J. Trump is the best thing to ever happen to the people of Puerto Rico. The drug manufacturers are now coming back. Biden ended that program! @wandavazquezg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2020

We remember this, though:

“President Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, says the President will be medically cleared for `safe return to public engagements’ by Saturday, five full days before the originally scheduled debate in Miami on October 15. There is therefore no medical reason why the Commission on Presidential Debates should shift the debate to a virtual setting, postpone it, or otherwise alter it in any way. CPD Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf admits that they consulted with no one before unilaterally changing the format of a debate, well in advance of any knowledge of what the President’s condition would be on debate night. The commission must stop protecting Joe Biden from this in-person debate and allow the event to proceed as it was agreed to months ago. The American people can see through this obvious attempt to shield Biden from another shellacking like he got two weeks ago in Cleveland and the CPD must reverse course and let the debate proceed”

– Trump Campaign manager Bill Stepien statement Thursday evening.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, American support for President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus has hit an all-time low, demonstrating an increasing lack of confidence in Trump and his Administration.

Taken Tuesday through Thursday of this week, the poll shows just 37% of American adults have confidence in Trump’s leadership during the pandemic, with 59% disapproving of his management.  The net 22-percentage point disapproval is the largest gap since the pandemic started in January.

The net disapproval has doubled since a poll, taken September 30th through October 1st, was taken, which showed Trump with a net negative 11 point disapproval.

Since then, Trump and his third wife have been diagnosed with coronavirus, as have multiple members of Trump’s White House staff and guests at a Rose Garden event to introduce Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee.

CBS News: “Hurricane Delta, now a Category 3 storm, is growing more powerful and threatening to hit Louisiana as early as Friday afternoon. Residents are preparing for the storm by filling sandbags and boarding up windows for the sixth time in the last several months. The hurricane on Wednesday barreled through the Mexican resort areas of Cozumel and Cancun, where the storm caused some streets to collapse and knocked out power to 266,000 customers.”

“As of Thursday afternoon, the hurricane was located about 345 miles south of Cameron, Louisiana, with 115 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said. ‘It is very clear that Southwest Louisiana is going to get more of a punch from this than we would like to see, for sure, because we’re still trying to recover from Hurricane Laura,’ Governor John Bel Edwards said Thursday.”

A former Texas police officer became one of the few members of a police force charged with murder for killing a man while on duty, as the Texas Rangers charged former Wolfe City officer Shaun Lucas, the Washington Post reports.

Witnesses say 31-year-old Jonathan Price was breaking up a fight at a convenience store when Lucas rolled onto the scene and shot Price.  Lucas claimed Price tried to take away his Taser, but witnesses contradicted the claim and Lucas’s own body cam footage did not support his claim.

The body cam showed Price approaching the officer as he arrived on the scene and extended his hand to shake hands.  Price also apologized for broken glass on the scene, saying that someone tried to “wrap him up.”

WXYZ Detroit: “Shortly after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addressed the public regarding an elaborate kidnapping plot thwarted by FBI and several other law enforcement agencies Wednesday night, the White House released a statement on behalf of President Trump, who was directly mentioned in Whitmer’s press conference. ‘President Trump has continually condemned white supremacists and all forms of hate,’ wrote White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany in a statement. ‘Governor Whitmer is sowing division by making these outlandish allegations. America stands united against hate and in support of our federal law enforcement who stopped this plot.'”

“Within a day of tweeting that he was calling off bipartisan talks for a coronavirus stimulus deal, President Trump phoned House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and indicated he was worried by the stock market reaction and wanted a “big deal” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, per two sources familiar with the call. Trump was spooked after seeing the instant drop in the stock market and intense backlash to his tweet, and he has since directed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to push for a more comprehensive relief bill before the election” – Axios.

The Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against Yale University for discriminating against Asian-American and white students in its admissions practice.

The suit claims that Yale has violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by illegally using race as a criteria for admission to the university, excluding qualified students because of their race.

“The complaint also alleges that Yale injures applicants and students because Yale’s race discrimination relies upon and reinforces damaging race-based stereotypes, including in particular such stereotypes against Yale’s racially-favored applicants. And, the complaint alleges that Yale engages in racial balancing by, among other things, keeping the annual percentage of African-American admitted applicants to within one percentage point of the previous year’s admitted class as reflected in U.S. Department of Education data. The complaint alleges similar racial balancing about Asian-American applicants,” the DoJ said in a statement.

AP: “President Donald Trump is increasingly at odds with Attorney General William Barr over the status of the Justice Department’s investigation into the origin of the Russia probe, with the president increasingly critical about a lack of arrests and Barr frustrated by Trump’s public pronouncements about the case, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump and his allies had high hopes for the investigation led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, betting it would expose what they see as wrongdoing when the FBI opened a case into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to sway the 2016 election.”

“But a year and a half into the investigation, and with less than one month until Election Day, there has been only one criminal case: a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering a government email about a former Trump campaign adviser who was a target of secret FBI surveillance. With time running out for pre-election action on the case, Trump is increasingly airing his dissatisfaction in tweets and television appearances. Barr, meanwhile, has privately expressed frustration over the public comments, according to a person familiar with his thinking.”

Perhaps unaware that the tweet undermined his whines that invoking the 25th Amendment is not actually a “coup,” President Trump retweeted a post from a reporter who actually understands the Constitution.

Trump has been retweeting people who have complained about a House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for a hearing on Trump’s fitness for office.  We’ve screenshotted it here in case Trump ultimately deleted it.

Vice President Mike Pence has canceled all events scheduled for Thursday night and Friday and is rushing back to Washington, DC, KRON-4 News reports.

No reason was given for Pence’s sudden schedule change.  Pence was scheduled to attend a rally in Peoria, Arizona Thursday night after campaigning in Arizona during the day, and on Friday, was slated to attend events in Indiana.

“Nobody’s sick. There’s no positive tests,” Pence’s Press Secretary Devin O’Malley wrote in a statement. “The VP is planning on travelling on Saturday and Monday. We’ll have more information on the vice president’s schedule next week soon.”

NBC News: “Facebook said Thursday that it has taken down hundreds of fake accounts created by a marketing company that worked with the young conservative group Turning Point USA to invade the comments sections of mainstream publishers and denigrate Democratic politicians. The marketing company, Rally Forge, worked on behalf of Turning Point USA to create 200 fake identities on Facebook and 76 on Instagram, as well as 55 Facebook pages, the social media giant said in a blog post.”

“Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said that Rally Forge’s ‘action on behalf of [Turning Point USA] was largely politically focused, directly around the election.’ The accounts lingered in comment sections of Facebook pages of mainstream news sources including The Washington Post, The New York Times and MSNBC, and attacked Joe Biden and left-leaning politicians while praising President Donald Trump. NBCUniversal is the parent company of MSNBC and NBC News. The identities ‘used stock profile photos and posed as right-leaning individuals from across the U.S.’ and their ‘sole activity on our platform was associated with this deceptive campaign,’ Facebook said.”

Not sure what’s more ridiculous:

-Defunding the police

or

-Invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office 26 days before the election.

The Democrats have lost their minds.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 8, 2020

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will hold a press conference tomorrow, Friday, October 9, at 10:15 a.m. E.T. in the Capitol Visitor Center to discuss the introduction of the Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office Act. The legislation will create the Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office, the body and process called for in the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to enable Congress to help ensure effective and uninterrupted leadership in the highest office in the Executive Branch of government” – House press pool bulletin.