AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Trump, stricken by COVID-19, flown to military hospital

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stricken by COVID-19, a feverish and fatigued President Donald Trump was flown to a military hospital Friday night after being injected with an experimental drug combination in treatment at the White House.

In a day of whipsaw events, the president who has spent months downplaying the threat of the virus was forced to cancel all campaign events a month before the election as he fought a virus that has killed more than 205,000 Americans and is hitting others in his orbit as well.

The White House said Trump’s expected stay of “a few days” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was precautionary and that he would continue to work from the hospital’s presidential suite, which is equipped to allow him to keep up his official duties.

Trump walked out of the White House Friday evening wearing a mask and gave a thumbs-up to reporters but did not speak before boarding Marine One. Members of the aircrew, Secret Service agents and White House staff wore face coverings to protect themselves from the president onboard the helicopter.

In a video taped before leaving for Walter Reed, Trump said, “I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out.” He remained fully president, all authority intact.

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An abundance of risk, not caution, before Trump’s diagnosis

WASHINGTON (AP) — Standing well apart on the debate stage, President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden looked out at an odd sight — one section of the room dutifully in masks, the other section flagrantly without.

The mostly bare-faced contingent was made up of Trump’s VIP guests, who had flouted the rules by removing their masks once inside the hall despite the best efforts of the debate’s health advisers from the Cleveland Clinic to keep everyone safe. It was a conspicuous act of rebellion, reflecting divisions writ large across the country.

But what Trump calls the “invisible enemy” was spreading — before the debate, during it, after it, or some combination — and now it has spread to him.

No one knows how, when or from whom Trump became infected. Nor is it established who, if anyone, has contracted the disease from him. But to retrace some of his steps over the last week is to see risk at multiple turns and an abundance of opportunity for infection.

This was the case day after day and right up until a few hours before his positive diagnosis, as he took a contingent to New Jersey for a fundraiser with the White House knowing he’d been close to someone sick with COVID-19.

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Trump’s virus hospitalization rocks final stage of campaign

An election year already defined by a cascade of national crises descended further into chaos Friday, with President Donald Trump quarantined at a military hospital with the coronavirus after consistently playing down the threat.

Democratic challenger Joe Biden took down his attack ads and pressed a bipartisan message in battleground Michigan after he and his wife tested negative.

“This cannot be a partisan moment. It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation,” Biden declared at a speech in Grand Rapids, warning that the virus “is not going away automatically.”

While Biden vowed to continue his cautious approach to campaigning during the pandemic, the president’s diagnosis injected even greater uncertainty into an election already plagued by crises that have exploded under Trump’s watch: the pandemic, devastating economic fallout and sweeping civil unrest. With millions of Americans already voting, the country on Friday entered uncharted territory that threatened to rattle global markets and political debates around the world.

The development focuses the campaign right where Biden has put his emphasis for months — and where Republicans don’t want it: on Trump’s uneven response to a pandemic that has killed more than 205,000 people in the U.S. And for the short term, it’s grounded Trump under quarantine at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, denying him the large public rallies that fuel his campaign just a month before the election.

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Biden: Trump diagnosis is ‘bracing reminder’ of virus stakes

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Democrat Joe Biden offered sympathy to President Donald Trump over his coronavirus diagnosis Friday while casting the moment as a reminder of the worldwide health crisis that has hit the United States particularly hard.

Shortly after the White House announced Trump would spend “a few days” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the Biden campaign said it would take down its negative advertising. Biden said from the battleground state of Michigan that it cannot be a “partisan moment” and that Americans must “come together as a nation.”

Speaking from the parking lot of a union hall while wearing a mask, Biden said Trump’s diagnosis is a “bracing reminder to all of us that we have to take this virus seriously.”

“It’s not going away automatically,” Biden added.

One month before Election Day, Biden faces a unique moment in what has already been a chaotic presidential campaign. He must balance his opponent’s illness and its destabilizing effect on Washington while making a closing argument that the coronavirus is serious and requires stronger leadership in the White House.

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Misinformation spikes as Trump confirms COVID-19 diagnosis

CHICAGO (AP) — News Friday that President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 sparked an explosion of rumours, misinformation and conspiracy theories that in a matter of hours littered the social media feeds of many Americans.

Tweets shared thousands of times claimed Democrats might have somehow intentionally infected the president with the coronavirus during the debates. Others speculated in Facebook posts that maybe the president was faking his illness. And the news also ignited constant conjecture among QAnon followers, who peddle a baseless belief that Trump is a warrior against a secret network of government officials and celebrities that they falsely claim is running a child trafficking ring.

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis was swept into an online vortex of coronavirus misinformation and the falsehoods swirling around this polarizing election. Trump himself has driven much of that confusion and distrust on the campaign trail, from his presidential podium and his Twitter account, where he’s made wrong claims about widespread voter fraud or hawked unproven cures for the coronavirus, such as hydroxychloroquine.

“This is both a political crisis weeks before the election and also a health crisis; it’s a perfect storm,” said Alexandra Cirone, an assistant professor at Cornell University who studies the effect of misinformation on government.

Facebook said Friday that it immediately began monitoring misinformation around the president’s diagnosis and had started applying fact checks to some false posts.

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Grand jury audio details raid that killed Breonna Taylor

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Police said they knocked and announced themselves for a minute or more before bursting into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, but her boyfriend said he did not hear officers identify themselves, according to Kentucky grand jury recordings released Friday. In the hail of gunfire that ensued, the 26-year-old Black woman was killed.

The dramatic and sometimes conflicting accounts of the March 13 raid are key to a case that has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. When police came through the door using a battering ram, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired once. He acknowledges that he may not have heard police identify themselves because of where he was in the apartment. If he’d heard them, “it changes the whole situation because there’s nothing for us to be scared of.”

The fear and confusion that played out after midnight at Taylor’s Louisville home was detailed in 15 hours of audio recordings made public in a rare release. While the recordings added rich detail about what happened as police fired 32 shots in the last moments of Taylor’s life, nothing on them appeared to change the fundamental narrative that was previously made public.

The recordings also do not include any discussion of potential criminal action on the part of the officers who shot Taylor because Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron determined beforehand that they had acted in self-defence. As a result, he did not seek charges against police in her killing — a recommendation the grand jury followed.

Grand jury proceedings are typically kept secret, but a court ruled that they should be released after the jury’s decision last week angered many in Louisville and around the country and set off renewed protests. One of the jurors also sued to make the proceedings public. The material does not include juror deliberations or prosecutor recommendations and statements, none of which were recorded, according to Cameron’s office.

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Cavalier White House approach to COVID catches up to Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Masks were rarely spotted in the West Wing. Crowds of people gathered shoulder to shoulder on the White House South Lawn. And Air Force One streaked across the sky from one massive campaign rally to another.

With ready access to testing and the best public health minds at his disposal, President Donald Trump should have been the American safest from COVID-19. Instead, he flouted his own government’s guidelines and helped create a false sense of invulnerability in the White House, an approach that has now failed him as it did a nation where more than 200,000 people have died.

Marine One, the presidential helicopter, lifted off Friday to take Trump to a military hospital from the same White House lawn that less than a week earlier had been the site of his celebratory nomination of a new Supreme Court justice as he charged toward the November election.

Several people at the event, including a U.S. senator, have since tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump is now ensconsed at Walter Reed Medical Center after running a fever and feeling fatigued following his early-morning revelation that he had tested positive for the virus.

“He let the country down by disregarding the CDC, ignoring federal guidelines and acting like he was Superman,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “He did not just downplay the virus, he paraded around like a peacock, making fun of those who took it seriously.”

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Judge: Census violated order; demands mass text to workers

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge ordered the Census Bureau to text every 2020 census worker by Friday, letting them know the head count of every U.S. resident is continuing through the end of the month and not ending next week, as the agency previously had announced in violation of her court order.

The new order issued late Thursday by U.S. District Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, instructed the Census Bureau to send out a mass text saying an Oct. 5 target data for finishing the nation’s head count is not in effect and that people can still answer the questionnaire and census takers can still knock on doors through Oct. 31.

The judge also ordered Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham to file a declaration with the court by the start of next week confirming his agency was following a preliminary injunction she had issued last week.

Besides deciding how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, the census also determines how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed annually. Among other things, that spending includes highway funding and money for health care and education.

Judge Koh wrote in Thursday’s decision that the Census Bureau and Commerce Department, which oversees the agency, had violated her injunction “in several ways.” She threatened them with sanctions or contempt proceedings if they violated the injunction again.

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Trump gets experimental drug aimed at curbing severe illness

The experimental antibody drug given to President Donald Trump has been called one of the most promising approaches to preventing serious illness from a COVID-19 infection.

Its maker, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., said the company agreed to supply a single dose, given through an IV, for Trump at the request of his physician under “compassionate use” provisions, when an experimental medicine is provided on a case-by-case emergency basis, while studies of it continue.

The new drug is in late-stage testing and its safety and effectiveness are not yet known. No treatment has yet proved able to prevent serious illness after a coronavirus infection.

Trump was given the experimental drug at the White House on Friday before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he’ll be monitored, officials said. So far, Trump has had only mild symptoms, including fatigue.

Several physicians who treat COVID-19, including Dr. David Boulware at the University of Minnesota, had speculated that doctors might use the antibody drug, given that this approach has worked against other diseases in the past.

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From Trump’s taxes to virus: News moves at breakneck pace

NEW YORK (AP) — Remember the presidential debate? The revelation about how much President Donald Trump pays in taxes? The nomination of a new U.S. Supreme Court justice?

They all happened within the past week. Then, just as quickly, they receded into memory with the revelation Friday that Trump had tested positive for COVID-19. News, substantial news, is rushing by at the speed of light.

Memory more than full.

“I don’t know how many writers who were working on political melodramas have just deleted their files and opened up a bottle of Scotch,” said veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield.

Seventeen hours after the world learned of the president’s diagnosis, television pictures showed the president walking toward the Marine One helicopter, before it took off to take him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Minutes after, he tweeted out a video image thanking people for their concern.