Donald Trump’s campaign manager has tested positive for Covid-19, dealing another blow to his reelection effort on a day that saw the president and the head of the Republican National Committee report contracting the disease as well. Bill Stepien received his diagnosis Friday evening and was experiencing what one senior campaign official described as “mild flu-like symptoms.” People familiar with the situation said the 42-year-old Stepien plans to quarantine until he recovers.

On a recent Thursday, a Twitter account purporting to be one Emily Zeng, a District 5 in-law unit resident, disseminated a snarky and cutting meme targeting District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston.  No surprise there: This Twitter account, established in May 2020, exists largely to take umbrage with this district’s homeless situation, its current supervisor, and disseminate homespun memes; Zeng’s Twitter profile describes her as “Meme girl … Meme-ing to get my outdoor living room back in SF D5.” What’s surprising is what came next — but not if you know how the Internet works. Within half an hour of Zeng’s midnight tweet, it was retweeted by around half a dozen other twitter accounts in what appeared to be a coordinated action. Within an hour, the meme was shared on the Facebook account of the new Moderate political group Vote and Change SF.  Zeng’s anti-Preston memes have been shared 16 times on Vote and Change SF’s Facebook group since Sept. 12. And, while the Twitter accounts incessantly retweeting her material are small, they are often picked up by larger accounts. All told, thousands of eyeballs are seeing this material. Considering Preston last year eked out a win over Vallie Brown by fewer than 200 votes, and considering those two are running against each other again, this is a real issue.  What doesn’t appear to be real, however, is Emily Zeng. 

Democrat Cal Cunningham said he is not dropping out of his race against North Carolina Republican incumbent Thom Tillis.

Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said some capitalists "are going to be the first" to be "shot in the revolution" in a tweet Wednesday. "Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution," he wrote. "I'll happily provide video commentary." Costolo was responding to a tweet in a thread about whether tech companies and business leaders should involve themselves in social justice issues.

Radiohead released Kid A 20 years ago today. It pointed a new direction for rock music – and mirrored radical Black art by imagining new spaces to live in amid a hostile world.

University of New Hampshire (UNH) Assistant Professor Craig Chapman has recently come under scrutiny for allegedly posing as a woman of color on Twitter under the name “The Science Femme”.

The ACLU filed suit to challenge the order.

"Content that wishes, hopes or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm, or fatal disease against an individual is against our rules."

The self-proclaimed 'stately homo of heavy metal' discusses his closeted life as a rock god and becoming an LGBTQ role model.

Ireland cannot trust an “erratic” and “dangerous” Boris Johnson on Brexit and needs to start pressuring Downing Street for a referendum on Irish unification, according to Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Féin. Johnson has forfeited credibility by unpicking the withdrawal agreement and cannot be believed when he says he wants a trade deal, said McDonald. “He’s the prime minister and perfidious Albion just got perfidiouser, if there’s such a word.” If Britain did not “honour a bargain fairly struck” it would face a backlash from Ireland’s allies in the EU and US, where congressional leaders could sink Downing Street’s hopes of a US trade deal, said McDonald. “If there is damage in Ireland, if there’s a hardening of the border – well, then all bets are off.”

A senior White House official said Friday that masks will still not be mandatory at the White House, describing facial coverings as “a personal choice,” despite overwhelming evidence that they help to stop the spread.

Death is not the most likely outcome, but it is far from unlikely. Based on age and sex alone, Trump is at high or very high risk for severe disease. Eight percent of COVID-19 patients ages 65 to 74 die from the disease. Those 75 to 84 are at far higher risk: 18 percent die. And men are significantly more likely to die of COVID-19 than women. Obesity is also predictive of a severe course. Compared with people in the “normal” BMI range, obese patients are 74 percent more likely to be admitted to an ICU and 48 percent more likely to die. (Despite the uncertainty about Trump’s precise BMI classification, his risk is demonstrably elevated.) The president’s doctors have assured the nation during his time in office that he is in good health and does not have chronic medical conditions. But we know that Trump’s lifestyle does not portend an optimized immune system. His sleep schedule is erratic, he does not exercise, and he subsists on fast food and declines vegetables. He is prone to angry outbursts. These lifestyle factors, taken together, are suggestive of impaired resiliency, and could leave him more susceptible to being laid low by the virus.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not recommend murder charges to the grand jury considering evidence against the police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, he said Tuesday amid growing criticism of his handling of the case. Cameron recommended that the grand jury indict one officer on charges of wanton endangerment for firing bullets that entered neighboring apartments, but said the other two officers, whose bullets struck Taylor, were “justified in their acts." “Our judgment is that the charge that we could prove at trial beyond reasonable doubt was for wanton endangerment,” Cameron said in an interview Tuesday with local television station WDRB.

An animal control officer in Massachusetts was called out for a situation that was a first for her city -- an emu on the loose. Haverhill Animal Control Officer Michelle Cannon responded alongside Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals police when an emu was spotted running loose through Haverhill on Wednesday morning.

Republican donors who attended President Donald Trump’s fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club are panicking after being around the commander in chief hours before he announced that he was infected with the coronavirus. GOP donors have been reaching out to Trump campaign and GOP officials for any guidance following the event, according to a person briefed on the matter. “The donors have been texting and calling. Freaking out,” the person with direct knowledge said. This person declined to be named as the conversations were deemed private.

Police are searching for the man wanted in a random and violent attack on actor Rick Moranis on the Upper West Side. Video shows the moment the man sucker-punched a 67-year-old actor in the head.

Rancher Don Schreiber remembers San Juan County in the 1950s, when its largest city, Farmington, was a company town. That company, El Paso Natural Gas, ran everything from the wells to the gas stations. It donated money to 4-H and the hospital; it pitched in to build Little League fields and the first nine holes of the local golf course. "El Paso was still one of the most destructive forces of industry in the history of the world," Schreiber said. "But [the people who ran it] fully participated in the community." Schreiber worked with his father, selling insurance for the oil and gas industry for 44 years. He's seen plenty of things change since the 1950s, including the names of the companies, from El Paso to Meridian Oil to Burlington Resources Oil and Gas to ConocoPhillips to Hilcorp, the firm that bought out ConocoPhillips—four-story Farmington office building and all – for $3 billion in 2017. "It's all the same assets," Schreiber said of the wells and pipelines that get bought and sold. "But every time the assets turn over, the new owner is less generous and further removed from the community." Hilcorp, for example, closed its local office "and moved every executive out within weeks," he said. "They wiped out the entire executive class of Farmington, shut the management headquarters down and moved all of that responsibility to Houston." (Hilcorp's public relations department did not respond to requests to comment for this story.)

Abolishing voter protections because they’ve successfully stopped discrimination, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in 2013, “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Despite Ginsburg’s now-famous warning, her five conservative colleagues took a wrecking ball to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act—but insisted that the damage was limited. The court’s 5–4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder nullified preclearance, a requirement that historically racist states secure approval from the federal government before changing their election laws. Now, the courts are primed to deal another, possibly fatal, blow to the landmark civil rights law. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “things have changed dramatically” in the South since the VRA’s passage in 1965, questioning the persistence of racial voter suppression. But the damage from Shelby County emerged immediately, and it has spiraled each year since. Jurisdictions previously covered by the now-defunct preclearance provision have closed at least 1,688 polling places and have purged voters at a rate 40 percent higher than that in other jurisdictions. Stringent, discriminatory voter ID laws have cropped up in these states too. It is no overstatement to say that the right to vote is under relentless assault in much of the United States today.

The ex-Fox News host and current Trump campaign staffer allegedly showed an assistant nude photos and tried to buy her silence.

Very cool.