Tuesday morning news - October 20, 2020

Pelosi, White House remain at odds on COVID relief » Democrats and the White House still aren’t ready to shake on a new COVID-19 relief package. 

On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today is the deadline to deliver another relief bill before the election. 

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Monday that President Trump has agreed to a $1.9 trillion price tag, moving closer to Democrats’ $2.2 trillion offer.

MEADOWS: And he’s willing to give some additional money in terms of direct payments. He’s willing to give some additional money in terms of PPP help to restaurants and hotels and small businesses.

But White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah said those provisions aren’t really the sticking point. 

FARAH: What we have concerns with and where the fault lines continue to lie is over state and local assistance, which is essentially asking for bailouts of states that have been mismanaged for years, mostly Democrat-run states, unrelated to the COVID crisis. 

Speaker Pelosi says those state and local funds are about providing resources for testing, contact tracing, supplies for healthcare workers, and other life-saving measures.

Many GOP lawmakers are skittish about adding trillions more to the deficit. Senate Republicans are pushing a streamlined $500 billion relief bill.

COVID-19 surging in Midwest » As coronavirus infections continue to accelerate in many parts of the world, the Midwest may be the latest hotspot in the United States. 

At a news conference Monday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said her city is now averaging about 500 new cases per day. 

LIGHTFOOT: This is the highest daily rate we’ve seen in Chicago since the tail end of the pandemic’s first wave back in May. 

Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana recently reported record one-day increases. 

A Wisconsin judge on Monday reimposed an order from Gov. Tony Evers’ administration limiting capacity at bars, restaurants, and other indoor venues to 25 percent. A different judge blocked the order last week in response to a legal challenge. 

The state has seen an alarming spike in new cases. It’s now averaging nearly 3,000 daily infections. That’s up from less than 700 in early September. Hospitalizations and deaths are also rising in Wisconsin. 

Ratcliffe: No evidence that Russia is behind Hunter Biden report » The U.S. Director of National Intelligence says claims that Russia is behind a recent report about Joe Biden and his son Hunter are not accurate. 

John Ratcliffe told Fox Business…

RATCLIFFE: In this case, with regard to Hunter Biden’s laptop being part of a Russian disinformation campaign and the intelligence community believing that or assessing that is simply not true. 

GOP lawmakers are calling for further investigation into emails allegedly found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. 

The New York Post recently reported on the unconfirmed emails, which it said showed corrupt dealings between the Bidens and a Ukrainian gas company. The Biden campaign denies the report. 

Twitter no longer blocking NY Post article, similar stories » And Twitter is no longer censoring tweets about the New York Post article on its platform. That after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said it was wrong to block links to the story. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Twitter initially blocked links to the story claiming it violated the company’s policy about sharing private or hacked information. 

But the company’s head of legal, policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, said it will no longer remove hacked material unless it’s directly shared by hackers or those working with them.

Gadde said it will instead label such tweets to—in her words—“provide context.” 

Republicans have blasted Twitter for censoring some tweets and accounts while selectively annotating other tweets with links to contradicting viewpoints. 

For example, Twitter has added links to some of President Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting. Those added links led users to web pages with opinions and information that counter his claims. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

World Series begins » The LA Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays will battle tonight in game one of the World Series. 

As with the last two rounds of the playoffs, the teams will play in a so-called bubble to guard against the coronavirus. They’ll play all games in the best-of-seven series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. 

But a little more than 10,000 fans will be in the stands. That’s about 25 percent of capacity. All fans will have to wear masks and socially distance. 

First pitch is scheduled for 8:09 p.m. Eastern Time.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. 

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