10 things you need to know today: March 6, 2020

1. Warren suspends her presidential campaign

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) dropped out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday. Warren was the last top-tier woman in a field that once contained a record number of women candidates. She briefly became a frontrunner but then lost ground to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the battle for progressive voters focused on limiting the power of the wealthy and making government more responsive to the working class. Warren's departure set up essentially a two-man race between Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, disappointing voters who had hoped she would be the nation's first woman president. "One of the hardest parts of this," Warren said, "is all those little girls who are going to have to wait four more years."

The New York Times

2. Senate approves $8 billion coronavirus spending deal

The Senate on Thursday passed a more than $8 billion spending package for fighting coronavirus in a 96-1 vote, sending it to President Trump. The House had approved the bill a day earlier. The deal includes $2.2 billion to help local, state, and federal agencies prepare to respond with testing, infection control, and tracking contacts of people who test positive. The Senate vote capped a week of rushed negotiations to get the emergency funding, which exceeds what Trump requested, approved as the flu-like virus spreads globally. There have been nearly 200 cases in the U.S., and 13 deaths.

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The Hill

3. Coronavirus toll rises as more states declare emergencies

Public health officials confirmed at least 52 new coronavirus infections in the U.S. on Thursday, including the first cases recorded in Texas, Tennessee, and Maryland. More than 20 new cases were confirmed in King County, Washington, bringing the infection count there to 70 and the state's death toll to 12. California, Washington, Florida, and Hawaii have declared emergencies. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state's total had doubled to 22 cases after the federal government granted access to more laboratories to increase testing capacity. Cuomo warned the public to expect infection numbers to rise as more people are screened. "Those numbers are going to keep going up," Cuomo said.

Reuters The Washington Post

4. Trump says his impeachment 'damaged' Biden

President Trump said in a Fox News town hall on Thursday that his impeachment "damaged" former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. "They aimed at Trump and they took Biden down," Trump said at the event in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. During the impeachment, Trump was accused of withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Biden, then considered the Democratic frontrunner. Trump also questioned Biden's cognitive function, noting Biden had mistakenly said it was Thursday on Tuesday and recently told a crowd he was running for U.S. Senate instead of president. Biden surged into a delegate lead over former frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by winning 10 of 14 primaries on Tuesday.

Fox News

5. Judge calls Barr's Mueller-report rollout misleading

A federal judge on Thursday criticized Attorney General William Barr's handling of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, saying Barr "distorted" the findings when he first described them to the public. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, the D.C.-based judge overseeing a lawsuit brought by watchdog group EPIC and BuzzFeed News, ruled that he would review an unredacted version of Mueller's report to evaluate "inconsistencies" he saw between Barr's public statements last year about Mueller's findings and the partially redacted version released to the public. Walton said the discrepancies led him to "seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report" to help President Trump.

The Washington Post The New York Times

6. Stock futures drop, extending Thursday's big losses

U.S. stock index futures dropped by 1 percent early Friday, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 970 points, or 3.6 percent, on Thursday in the fourth straight rollercoaster day for Wall Street. Thursday's selloff came as the continuing spread of the flu-like coronavirus around the world, including in the U.S., fueled fears of painful economic fallout. The Dow Jones Industrial Average skidded all last week in its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, but jumped back up more than 1,000 points on Monday in its biggest one-day points gain ever. It then slid down 1,000 points the next day, then rebounded, and then flopped again on Thursday. The instability is likely to continue.

CNBC The Washington Post

7. Trump says he'll block funding for sanctuary cities

President Trump said Thursday that he would withhold money from so-called sanctuary cities and other jurisdictions. The announcement came after a federal court ruled that his administration had the authority to block the release of law enforcement funds to cities, counties, and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agencies. Leaders of sanctuary cities argue that cooperating with immigration authorities can discourage immigrants from coming forward to report crimes if they lack proper immigration papers. Although an appeals court in Manhattan ruled in February that the funding cuts are lawful, three other appeals courts have ruled against the administration, suggesting the issue will be decided by the Supreme Court.

Reuters

8. Biden surges to big lead in Florida poll

A poll of likely Florida Democratic primary voters released Thursday showed former Vice President Joe Biden in the lead, with 61 percent support compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 13 percent support. Florida is home of the fourth biggest chunk of delegates in the 2020 Democratic primary race, and is set to vote in its primary on March 17. Biden's backing is a dramatic increase from the 34 percent he received in late February, and seems to draw directly from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other moderate candidates' supporters. Sanders' support in Florida has meanwhile remained relatively flat throughout the race, the poll shows. Dave Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report, said the poll means "barring a seismic event, this race is pretty much over" and will end in Biden's favor.

Florida Politics

9. Economists expect jobs report to show another month of strong hiring

The February jobs report being released Friday is expected to show another month of strong hiring. Economists expect the Labor Department data to show that U.S. employers added about 175,000 nonfarm jobs last month, leaving unemployment at 3.6 percent, near a five-decade low. Analysts expect the report to show that wages rose by 0.3 percent, with a year-over-year increase of 3 percent. The figures will give a picture of where the economy was before the bulk of any economic fallout from the new coronavirus. The rapidly spreading outbreak of the flu-like virus "didn't really become a major scare until the last week of the month, so we may not see this weigh heavy on the February report," JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, told CNN Business.

CNN

10. Russia, Turkey agree to northwestern Syria cease-fire

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that they had reached a deal on a cease-fire in northwestern Syria. The agreement took effect at midnight, establishing a security corridor through Idlib province. Putin described the deal as a "good basis for ending the fighting in the Idlib de-escalation zone, put an end to suffering of civilian population, and contain a growing humanitarian crisis." The arrangement achieves Russia's goal of securing Syrian government control over key highways, while meeting Turkey's demand for a halt to Syrian President Bashar Assad's drive to take back the whole province, which includes the last opposition-controlled areas along Turkey's border.

The Associated Press