10 things you need to know today: October 9, 2020

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1. FBI foils alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer, spark 'civil war'
2. Trump says he won't participate in virtual debate
3. Hurricane Delta strengthens as it approaches Louisiana
4. Pelosi, Mnuchin revive effort to reach coronavirus relief deal
5. Trump's doctor says he can return to public events Saturday
6. Pelosi announces plan to discuss invoking 25th Amendment
7. Weekly jobless claims again exceed expectations
8. GOP fundraiser charged with illegal foreign lobbying
9. U.S. hits Iranian banks with new sanctions
10. World Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize

published 9 October 2020

1. FBI foils alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer, spark 'civil war'

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday charged six people with plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Seven others, members of the right-wing militia group Wolverine Watchmen, face state charges of targeting police and threatening to "instigate civil war." Investigators believe some of the defendants participated in armed protests against Whitmer's coronavirus lockdown, and planned to put her on "trial" for "treason." The alleged domestic terrorist plot included plans to overthrow state governments that the defendants "believe are violating the U.S. Constitution," according to a federal criminal complaint. Whitmer said President Trump had emboldened hate groups. Trump responded by saying she had done a "terrible job" and should reopen her state.

Next week's scheduled second presidential debate was left in limbo on Thursday after President Trump, who is fighting COVID-19, said he would not participate after the organizers said it would be held virtually as a precaution against coronavirus infections. "I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. "You sit behind a computer and do a debate, it's ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want." Trump was widely criticized for repeatedly interrupting his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, during the first of their three scheduled debates. Biden's campaign rejected a proposal from the Trump camp to push back the next two debates. "Trump's erratic behavior does not allow him to rewrite the calendar, and pick new dates of his choosing," said Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield.

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Louisiana braced for a possible direct hit by Hurricane Delta on Friday. It will be the 10th named storm to hit the U.S. this year, breaking a record set in 1916. The storm strengthened on Thursday as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico after striking the Yucatan Peninsula. Early Friday, Delta was a Category 3 storm with top sustained winds of 120 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters expect the storm to weaken slowly as it approaches the Gulf Coast. The storm is expected to make landfall near Creole, Louisiana. It could spawn tornadoes and drop up to 10 inches of rain as it heads inland. It also could flood some coastal areas with potentially life-threatening storm surge of up to 11 feet in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin resumed discussions of a new coronavirus relief package on Thursday, reviving hopes of a possible stimulus deal shortly after President Trump abruptly called off negotiations until after the election. Pelosi and Mnuchin talked for 40 minutes about the prospect of a "comprehensive bill," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill tweeted after the speaker rejected Trump's suggestion of stand-alone bills to help struggling airlines and sending checks to individual Americans. Early in the week, Pelosi and Mnuchin discussed an elusive fifth pandemic aid package, but they couldn't find a compromise between the GOP's $1.6 trillion proposal and the $2.2 trillion package House Democrats have approved.

White House physician Sean Conley said Thursday that President Trump could safely resume public events on Saturday after completing treatment for COVID-19. The announcement came just three days after Trump returned to the White House from Walter Reed Medical Center, where Trump was given the antiviral medication remdesivir, the steroid dexamethasone, and an experimental antibody cocktail. He also twice received supplemental oxygen. Conley said Trump was responding "extremely well" to treatment and "has remained stable and devoid of any indications to suggest progression of illness." Conley's announcement came exactly a week after Trump's diagnosis, although the White House has declined to say when he last tested negative for the coronavirus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday announced legislation seeking to create a commission to explore declaring President Trump unfit for office and relieving him of his duties under the 25th Amendment. Pelosi said Trump has been behaving erratically and appears to be in an "altered state," so he needs to disclose more information about his health since his COVID-19 diagnosis, which left him hospitalized over the weekend. He received several aggressive and experimental treatments, and was twice given supplemental oxygen before he was discharged Monday to continue recuperating at the White House. Pelosi said Trump should say when he last tested negative to determine when he first was infected and whether he followed the advice of his administration's medical experts on avoiding infecting others. "The public needs to know the health condition of the president," Pelosi said. Trump responded by tweeting that "Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation."

The number of Americans filing new jobless claims again came in higher than expected on Thursday. The Labor Department said 840,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims last week, a decline of 9,000 from the revised number from the previous week. This was higher than the 825,000 claims economists had been expecting. Continuing claims fell to 10.98 million, a decline of around a million. "The decline in continuing claims is welcome, but initial claims offer a better read on the real-time state of the labor market, and the downward trend has stalled, more or less," Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson told CNBC. The number of new applications for unemployment benefits also remains significantly higher than the weekly record prior to the coronavirus pandemic, which was 695,000.

Elliott Broidy, the former Republican National Committee deputy finance chair and one of President Trump's top fundraisers in 2016, has been charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The charges were filed last week, according to a federal court filing made public on Thursday. Broidy is accused of accepting $6 million from an unnamed foreign client and trying to get Trump administration officials to drop an investigation into Malaysian government corruption. Broidy also allegedly attempted to get a Chinese citizen extradited from the United States. Neither effort was successful. Broidy is expected to plead guilty. In April 2018, he stepped down from his RNC position after it was reported he had an affair with a Playboy model and paid her $1.6 million to stay quiet.

The Trump administration on Thursday imposed new sanctions against 18 Iranian banks, potentially locking Iran out of the global financial system and further damaging its already crumbling economy. The move came days before a United Nations arms embargo against Tehran is due to expire, and just three weeks before the U.S. presidential election. The Trump administration has tried unsuccessfully to get allies to penalize Iran for violating its landmark nuclear treaty, which President Trump has abandoned. "Our maximum economic pressure campaign will continue until Iran is willing to conclude a comprehensive negotiation that addresses the regime's malign behavior," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted that his country would "survive this latest of cruelties."

The United Nations' World Food Program has won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its "impressive" response to "a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world" due to the coronavirus pandemic, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, said on Friday. "Until the day we have a vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos," Reiss-Andersen said. On Thursday, the 2020 Nobel Prize for literature went to Louise Glück, the American poet, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." Glück, an English professor at Yale, published her first collection of poems, Firstborn, in 1968. Another collection, The Wild Iris (1992), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Glück also won the National Book Award in 2014.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.