The White House is sick

Donald Trump's physician says the president is no longer experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, but even if that's true, it doesn't mean illness no longer pervades the White House. At least nine White House employees have now tested positive for the virus, including senior adviser Stephen Miller, who got his result last night. Staffers are grappling with how to implement more safety measures without displeasing their still-medicated boss, who has been tweeting maniacally, lobbying to return to the Oval Office, and clamoring to get back on the campaign trail. —The Washington Post

• — Stimulus relief. Possibly realizing the huge political mistake he made yesterday by cutting off bipartisan talks for more coronavirus relief until after the election, Trump signaled on Twitter last night that he would support specific measures on stimulus checks, help for the airline industry, and small business loans. The tweets came after stocks nosedived when Trump pulled the plug on talks for a broader stimulus agreement. All three major stock indexes fell into negative territory after the announcement. —The Hill
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• — Debates. Vice President Mike Pence's team finally agreed to allow the Commission on Presidential Debates to erect a plexiglass barrier near Pence during his debate with Sen. Kamala Harris tonight in Salt Lake City. Pence's team was originally opposed to the barriers, calling them unnecessary. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden isn't the only one with concerns about the Oct. 15 presidential debate. The Republican mayor of Miami said Trump shouldn't come to his city if he is still testing positive with COVID-19. "I don't think it's safe, not for him and anybody else, anywhere or anyone he interacts with," said Mayor Francis Suarez. —Politico
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• — Vaccines. The White House yesterday finally approved tough new standards for coronavirus vaccines—but only after the Food and Drug Administration unilaterally published the guidelines on its website for outside vaccine advisers. The standards, which would be applied to an emergency use authorization for a vaccine, were proposed weeks ago, but the White House, worried that the criteria would delay authorization of a vaccine beyond the Nov. 3 election, decided to sit on the guidance. —The Washington Post

Hamblin: Trump's spin doctor

"[White House physician Sean] Conley has opted for complicity, becoming a mouthpiece for Trump's show of personal strength. Americans are left to speculate about Trump's health based on what they see in curated videos and press photos—none of which show him in a hospital gown or even in a medical setting. In another time and place, it may be fine to respect a president's privacy regarding medical issues that have no bearing on ability to govern. But downplaying Trump's case of COVID-19 in this unique moment has widespread consequences. The hundreds of millions of Americans who are still at risk of contracting this disease could have seen the realities of what it is like, and better understood the value of stopping the virus. Instead, they have been shown that the consequences of negligence are cinematic helicopter rides and a weekend spent wearing a suit in the hospital." —The Atlantic

Ed. Note: James Hamblin, MD, is a lecturer at Yale School of Public Health.

MORE: 'Morally reprehensible': Doctors react to Trump's tweet comparing COVID-19 to flu —NBC News

DOJ helped separate families

The Department of Homeland Security wasn't alone in separating thousands of migrant families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the U.S. The Justice Department's top officials were "a driving force" behind the Trump Administration's family separation policy, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael Horowitz, the department's inspector general.

• — "We need to take away children." Though former Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, he and other top law enforcement officials were not only aware that migrant families would be separated, but also encouraged the practice to deter future illegal immigration, according to Horowitz.
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• — Rod Rosenstein, former deputy attorney general, went even further. He informed five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico that it did not matter how young the children were, and that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
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• — The five prosecutors recoiled against the order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants, even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top DOJ officials they were "deeply concerned" about the children's welfare. But Sessions made it clear on a conference call: zero tolerance. —The New York Times

It's about time: Facebook bans QAnon

In one of the broadest rules Facebook has put in place in its history, the social media giant announced yesterday that it is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms. QAnon is the conspiracy theory that posits that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are members of a child-eating cabal that is being secretly taken down by President Trump. The change is an escalation of the policy Facebook created in August, which only removed QAnon accounts that discussed violence.

• — A company spokesperson said the enforcement, which started immediately, will "bring to parity what we've been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements," such as militia and terror groups that repeatedly call for violence.
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• — "We have to think about the QAnon networks as the rails upon which misinformation is driven," said Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. "Every account, event, and page are tracks where disinformation can be spread. So it is imperative that Facebook dismantle their infrastructure. Without Facebook, they are not rendered inert, but it will make it more difficult to quickly spread disinformation."
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• — With the complete ban, Facebook faces new hurdles to identifying accounts and enforcement. Reacting to the partial ban in August, QAnon groups and followers shifted tactics to evade moderation, dropping explicit references to Q, and "camouflaging" QAnon content under hashtags ostensibly about protecting children. —NBC News

Applebaum: Disinfo spreads like a virus

"I don't know what direction Trump's illness will take, I don't know whether it will persuade him to take the disease more or less seriously, and I don't know how it will affect his political fortunes. But in one sense, it is too late to matter, because Trump's super-spreading of disinformation has already changed America. ... Trump is literally, not metaphorically, the single most important reason so many Americans distrust information they receive about the disease. He is literally, not metaphorically, the reason so many Americans distrust our electoral system too. He is literally, not metaphorically, the reason so many Americans distrust one another." —The Atlantic

Ed. Note: Anne Applebaum is a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism."

MORE: Crisis for democracy —The Statesman

GOP loses vote-counting ruling in NJ

President Trump's campaign can't block New Jersey's plan to accept mail-in ballots lacking a postmark for as many as two days after Election Day, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp denied a request from the campaign and the Republican National Committee yesterday for a preliminary injunction against the voting measures, saying New Jersey's legislature was within its rights to set new voting rules during the coronavirus pandemic. —Bloomberg

• — Maine. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned away a last-ditch effort by the Maine Republican Party to stop ranked-choice voting from being used in the 2020 presidential contest. Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the request for the high court to intervene after the GOP sought to delay ranked-choice voting until state voters had the final say through a "People's Veto" referendum. So RCV is back on in Maine. —ABC News
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  — Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania State Police are investigating reports related to mailbox fishing theft over the past several weeks. Officers say those responsible are using a sticky substance to remove items, potentially including mail-in ballots, from mailboxes near Hazleton, in the northeastern part of the state. The U.S. Postal Service is warning against dropping mail into USPS collection boxes after postal workers' final pick-up of the day. —Newsweek
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• — Virginia. The voters of Virginia will decide in November how their state's electoral maps will be drawn. A ballot amendment would create a 16-member, bipartisan commission of legislators and citizens to draw the electoral maps, which the General Assembly currently controls. A yes vote would mean Virginia joins a growing number of states that have adopted similar commissions or other measures to block or hamper efforts to rig the system. —The Washington Post

Avlon: Biden's own Gettysburg address

"Critics may grouse that the promise of bipartisanship is 'naïve'—as [former Vice President Joe] Biden acknowledged—but this was just not a 'return to normalcy' speech. It contained a clear-eyed warning that America's democracy is in real and present danger, and noted the reckless uptick in talk of civil war from armed vigilante groups and White supremacists. But Biden takes faith in the fact that we have overcome these forces before and emerged stronger for the struggle, as long as we resolved to address the underlying conditions that led to the divisions." —CNN

MORE: Biden in Gettysburg speech invokes Lincoln, calls for unity —The Hill

Finding peace through art

It all started with one man. Earl Moore had been addicted to opioids for 15 years and was losing hope. Then one night in 2012, he met Doug Naselroad, a master luthier—an expert stringed-instrument maker. Moore begged him to take him on as an apprentice. Naselroad agreed. It brought Moore back to life. "To be able to do that and see beauty through dark places, is a gift he has and was able to show it to me," Moore says.

• — Moore's success inspired the creation of the Culture of Recovery arts program at The Appalachian Artisan Center in Hindman, Ky. The nonprofit already had pottery, luthiery, and blacksmithing studios, and in 2018, with a grant from ArtPlace America, started inviting people in recovery into their studios to work with mentors.
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• — Naselroad then felt that a natural extension of the program would be turning those skills into jobs. So last year, he made it happen. He opened the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company, which builds instruments and hires students trained at the Culture of Recovery program.
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• — "The guitars that are made here, the mandolins that are made here—each one of them has a piece of the life of these individuals in recovery made right into them," Naselroad says. "And so, in the end result, you have an instrument that's got a lot of life in it." —CNN

Trump tweets, "Right after I'm re-elected I am going to pass a huge stimulus bill for small-business and hardworking Americans." Will that be attached to the "Beautiful Healthcare Bill" he promised in the last election? How does he expect to pass legislation, when that is not the business of the executive branch? Why would anyone possibly believe anything Donald says? —Brian L., Florida

I live in Utah, where the vice-presidential debate will be held tonight. Our local news organizations are featuring stories about this event, so naturally, when Kamala Harris arrived over the weekend, it was a featured story on the main page of ksl.com.

I was frustrated by Vice President Mike Pence's comments a couple months ago implying that Utah would not be welcoming to Sen. Harris due to our "red" reputation. In an attempt to prove him wrong, I shared the article about Harris' arrival on Facebook. I soon had a neighborhood friend commenting about her concerns, asking me if my father (her high school classmate) knew I was a Democrat.

I did my best to stay friendly and explain that I'm actually registered as Republican, but have realized over the last four years that I'm more of a centrist and feel "politically homeless."

I live surrounded by a state culture that equates political affiliation with moral values, even though many local homes are displaying Trump 2020 flags that have vulgar language emblazoned across the bottom. I have remained registered as Republican due to Utah's closed Republican primaries and overwhelmingly Republican candidate choices—and I do support several of Utah's Republican leaders on certain issues, such as Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. John Curtis, but perhaps it is time to change my voter registration.

This isn't the first time I've been "accused" of being a Democrat or a "RINO." I have become more selective about what to post online because of the flood of negativity it can cause, but I just can't be silent about everything.

To be sure, we live in an era where the choice to be politically vocal is risky. I only hope that by speaking up, others might find the courage to question the status quo. —Carol N., Utah

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.