>> told you. incredible. we will continue these inspirational stories all week on this show h.be sure to watch "champions for change," the one-hour special this saturday night hat 10:00 eastern right here on cnn. thank you so much for being with us today. we will see you back here tomorrow morning. i'm pope harlow. >> and i'm getting that game for my kids. >> yeah. >> "newsroom" with john king starts right now. hello, everybody. i'm john king in washington. thank you for sharing your day with us, and a busy news day it is. joe biden tonight answers voters as a cnn town hall and kamala harris spends the day campaigning in pennsylvania. the president this evening heads to battleground wisconsin for a late-night real. the president's recent events both on the trail and at the white house have the look of a different pre-coronavirus normal featuring few masks, even less social distancing. the president's new covid mantra, the country is rounding the corner. the data though is not that definitive, but listen to the president's attorney general william barr make clear there will be no return to the

shelter-at-home strategies we saw back during the spring spike. >> you know, putting a national lockdown stay-at-home orders is like house arrest. it's -- other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in american history. >> more on the attorney general and eye-opening words ahead. first though the president creating new coronavirus confusion and in a remarkable public debate with his own top scientist. consider just two of the big questions right now in american life. when can i get a vaccine? how can i stay safe until then? in congressional testimony the director for the centers of disease control dr. robert redfield says vaccines won't be widely available until sometime next year and he held up his own mask to make this point, masks, if everybody uses them, are better weapons against the virus than vaccines. pick a public health expert you trust. the odds are overwhelming they agree with dr. edfield, but the president of the united states

takes issue. >> i think he made a mistake when he said that. it's just incorrect information, and i called him, and he didn't tell me, and i think he got the message maybe confused. maybe it was stated incorrectly. we're ready to go immediately as the vaccine is announced, and it could be announced in october, could be announced a little bit after october, but once we go, we're ready. >> now, dr. redfield is hard lire alone. tension between the president and his own scientists is something we've seen for the past several months but the divide is sharper and more public than ever right now. the president questions the wisdom of masks, stages events with big crowds in close quarters. dr. redfield, dr. fauci, dr. birx say it is critical to wear a sk ma and they say, all three of them, it's critical to avoid large crowds. the president says we've already turned the corner. dr. ed field, dr. fauci and dr. birx instead see us at another coronavirus crossroads. let's take a look at the data.

decide who you want to believe here. this map turning again for the worse. this map has taken a turn for the worse in recent days. 23 states in red and orange. that means more new infections today than compared to a week ago, 23 states trending up right now. 21, the page holding steady and six states in green trending down and six states reporting fewer new infections now than a week ago but 23, five of them, 50% more infections this week than last week and 23 states trending in the wrong direction. the national positivity rate when people take coronavirus tests national lit number at 6% right now is a seven-day moving average. that's been pretty steady, right around 6%, 7% for quite some time nationally. state by state is where you get the different pick few, where you get the understanding of the complexity of the challenge. if you look at the positive rankings, these states up in new england and new york, the northeast, the ones that went through coronavirus early, they have done a remarkable job, look at the positivity rates quite low. more of a mixed picture, mississippi and alabama in the mid-teens, wisconsin in the

mid-teens and kansas and idaho, the highest states, highest positivity, not a rouse want to be leading. let's look at the case trend and here's the big question. where are we? where are we? we're halfway down from the summer peak. 20,000 cases, new infections today coming into the summer. up around 65 and close to 770,000 at the height of the paefnlg right now below 40,000 the last couple of days, but you can see a little uptick in that line. this has been a plateau, a little drop and mostly a plateau at around 40,000 since the end of july. a long time back. the experts tell you must shove this down, especially heading into the fall. instead a stubborn plateau, right around 40,000 cases. let's watch that play out as we go through the week. that trend map, again, the saddest graphic because this is life lost, a plattover around 1,000 pretty much from the middle of july into early september, a bit of a drop here, just below 1,000, still very painful but getting below down 1,000, a little trickle up the last couple of days can, 997 americans died yesterday from

coronavirus. can we shove that down under 1,000 and keep it there, a challenge for the days ahead. the states reporting the most deaths, new york, north carolina, california and texas. new york, new jersey and california, earliest hardest hit, and tecumseh and florida more part of summer surge coming up. the president says it's blue states, right? the president says it's blue states caution the problems with deaths in america and if you took them out we'd like great in the world. here's a different way to look at t.confirmed death per 100,000 residents, yes, the president is the right in the sense that new york is red and louisiana is red, they hit it early, both have democratic governors and massachusetts has a republican governor and new jersey and rhode island have democratic governors. the lighter red, dark pink, republican led states, ilnoil has a democratic governor and illinois, these are deaths per 1,000 resident did. the best way to look at it the this virus has hurt all of us regardless of political party. if you want to look at it this

way, the president views things politically sometimes. solid democratic 2020 states, yes, yes, those big blue states, including california and new york have had more deaths. the states president trump won in 2016 fast catching up. again, a rouse don't want to win, right, and we should look at this as all americans and the president likes to break it down right now, solid republican states down here, the larger more rural states like your dakotas it and kansas, fewer residents, fewer deaths, they are down here. if you look at the map right now, the scientists say we're at at low level will. the question is can you keep it there? >> if we do a really good job, we'll be at about 100,000 to-2-40,000 deaths and we're below that substantially and we'll see where that comes out and that would be if we did the good job. the nod not so good would be between 1.5 million,ry these numbers so well and 2.2 million,

that's quite a difference so we're down in this territory. and that's despite the fact that the blue states had tremendous death rates. if you take the blue states out, we're at a level thank ynching in the world would be at. we're real at a very low level. >> joining me now our chief political correspondent dana bash and professor of epidemiology at ucla. i want to start with you, professor, and the president's chart blaming blue states for the fact that we have a conversation in the united states about how many coronavirus deaths there are and the president says if you took those numbers off the chart we eastbound doing great. number one, we're all americans and, number two, democrats have died and republicans have died and independents have died and the president is trying to cherry pick data here to try to present a more positive case as we get closer to the election. >> john, you're absolutely right. this is not a political issue. it shouldn't be a political issue. we're talking about virus

transmission in a country where we have open borders. we need to be looking at this across the board and what we really need is a national strategy which we have not had in being cherry picking data, singling states out and only creates confusion and a blame game which is not what we need right now. we need national strategy. we need to be working very closely together, and we need to be doing everything we can right now to be pushing rates even further down. we saw the big spike that you showed over the summer. now we've just had labor day. we're running into the school season. we have universities where we're seeing cases start to really rise. we're seeing opportunities. coming to be the fall. we're seeing people going indoors and creating more opportunity to spread, and if we look to europe, if we look anywhere else in the world, we can see that there's a point where the virus goes down, when people are doing a good job and then it's going to spike right back up, so i think we need to stop thinking about the politics and start thinking about virus transmission and zeins. >> i appreciate that point and i

agree with you, but dane ark, president, and part of this is understandable in the sense that the election is now just a few weeks away. he's up for reelection and wants to put the best possible shade and there's a different between the best possible shade and facts and data. what's remarkable in the most recent days as the president has gotten more optimistic the scientists are going out of their way to counter him, dr. redfield, dr. fauci and dr. birx, among others, essentially my translation, don't listen to the president. >> we need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it's not going to be easy. >> in october and november and december there will be less vaccine available. >> exercise personal responsibility, especially wearing masks and avoiding crowds. >> face masks is more guaranteed to protect me against coade than when i take a covid vaccine. >> now, those are the experts. they all work for the president of the united states.

this is the president of the united states. >> we have round the final turn, and we have -- we're going to have vaccines very soon. >> beautiful what, a crowd this one is. and you've got thousands and thousands of people outside. >> i said to them, what's with the mask? he said i think i answered that question incorrectly. i think maybe he misunderstood it. >> it -- it is just a remarkable -- we've had this tension from the beginning, but experts, the scientists are going out of their way now to get themselves in public settings where they can say things that are directly contradictory to what the president is saying and what he is doing. >> absolutely. it's not an accident, and clearly the president wanted toe have that press conference in order to put his spin on things and to publicly contradict the head of the cdc the way he did yesterday. i thought it was very noteworthy that -- that robert redfield sent out in a tweet that

although he obviously believes and hopes that vaccines will be the most effective way to fight coronavirus once they are approved and able to be distributed, in the short term he doubled down on fact that masks are the best way to do it, and i get what you're saying about the understandable way that the president is trying to put the best -- his best face forward on how coronavirus is going, but what he has done from the jump except for maybe a couple of times where he has, you know, kind of leaned into the science over -- over the spring, for the most part he's trying to will it away as opposed to getting people behind him even when it comes to raw politics by showing leadership, that he is going to lead the country through this, and it could be tough but he is going to do it. he doesn't have that in him obviously, and it's not the way that he is approaching it even

now. >> right, and epidemiology is your business, you can't will away, tweet away or talk away a. especially a stubborn one like this one. you made the point earlier and i want you to expand. around a plateau somewhere around 40,000 infections a day and let's hope it's closer to 35,000 infections a day than 40,000 and that's still a high baseline as we go into this troublesome fall season. you mentioned europe. cases starting to go back up again. what is around the corner? what is does the science tell you, not the president, is around the corner? >> i want to amplify what you just said. what science says is if you give the virus an opportunity to spread, it will. we do not have herd immunity, and we do not have enough people -- we do not enough people who have immunity to the virus where we can all start to relax, we just don't, so i agree with dr. fauci, that what comes around the corner is we need to be hunkering down and doing everything that we can to be keeping these levels low. we're plateauing are but we're

platt growing at 100 miles per hour, we're not plateauing at a very low level and europe was and they are starting to spike so you can imagine what's around the corner. listen to the science, listen to all the scientists who are telling you we need to wear masks, social distance and hand hygiene. it's what we, have and even if we vice principal a vaccine it's not going to be 100% effective and, therefore, we still need to be using these measures, but even if a vaccine becomes available at some point in -- in the future, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of lives to save by wearing a mask, social distancing, hand hygiene. it works, and i want to make one more point is that another piece of data that's just come out showing that if you wear eyeglasses, it is possible there's some evidence that suggests that that also could provide some protection which just adds to this evidence, this very clear evidence that these kind of blunt measures preventing the virus from entering the mucus membranes makes a difference.

>> science matters. appreciate the reporting, insights and perspective very much. we'll continue this conversation, and the numbers will tell us, the president has said we've turned the final corners. the numbers will tell us in the days and weeks ahead. the republicans know coronavirus is the defining election issue and know that the president gets miserable grades for his handling of this pandemic, but don't think for a second that means gop lawmakers want to take issue with the president. our senior congressional correspondent manu raju. you ask and ask to try to get the republicans to talk. what should he do, what should he do better? what is he doing right? they don't like the story. >> the story of the trump presidency in a lot of ways here on capitol hill, the president gets engaged in controversies, self-inflicted controversies, offensive tweets, scandals. republicans often look the other way and hopes that the news cycle moves on and this is becoming more pronounced as we get closer to the election and as the fight for the battle over

the senate is red hot as well as the fight for the white house. republicans certainly don't want to be on the wrong side of the president's twitter finger, and the controversies have piled up in recent weeks whether it's the president suggesting that some of his voters in north carolina should go to the polls twice, whether it's the indoor rally that he held in las vegas on sunday to the alarm of the public health experts or whether it was his comments to bob woodward in which he said he intentionally played down the virus and essentially misled the american public about the gravity of this. when we try to get reaction from republican senators oftentimes it's met with -- it's not a big deal or a shrug or not a response at all. particularly republicans up for re-election. our colleague ted barrett asked kelly loeffler, the republican georgia senator about this, in a very difficult race back home. she said -- she was asked if she had concerns about the president lied to the american people, she said, no, it's fake news. the president's comments were on tape, of course.

arizona smart martha mcsally said you guys are awful when asked if it was a mistake for the president to mislead the public about the gravity of this threat and joanie ernst, republican senator told us not right now when we tried to ask three times over the last week to get a response. steve danes, republican senator from montana wished the questions would be asked to joe biden instead when i asked him specifically about the president saying privately to woodward that the flu is not as deadly -- the virus is five times deadlier than the flu and saying the opposite publically, and then you have some senators, john, who are trying to avoid answering questions, cory gardner for one, the colorado republican senator, taking those back staircases in the senate to avoid reporters, staying on the phone to avoid answering questions, but that's just the situation right now. republicans are hoping that they can maintain the majority, and they don't believe a fight with the president will do just that. john. >> they need the trump base.

fascinating, several of those senators you just showed you might not be here come next january. final weeks of the campaign. appreciate the important reporting are. coming up the president's old fixer says the attorney general appears to be his new fixer. we made usaa insurance for veterans like liz and mike. an army family who is always at the ready. so when they got a little surprise... two!? ...they didn't panic. they got a bigger car for their soon-to-be-bigger family. after shopping around for insurance, they called usaa - who helped find the right coverage for them and even some much-needed savings. that was the easy part. usaa insurance is made the way liz and mike need it- easy.

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the attorney general bill barr is, well, provocative. he equates coronavirus stay-at-homeowners to slavery. he rails against mail-in voting and says contrary to all the evidence mail-in voting opens the door to massive fraud and he made it clear he runs the doj show hand in the process, insulting, insulting the rank and file prosecutors.

>> name one successful organization or institution where the lowest level employees' decisions are seemed sacrosanct? they aren't. there aren't any. letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a montessori pre-school but it's no way to run a federal agency. >> cnn crime and justice correspondent shimon prokupecz is in new york and cnn's john harwood at the white house. shimon, you know the doj building very well there. have already been resignations under the attorney general, some morale issues under the attorney general. i suspect calling your career prosecutors essentially pre-schoolers not going to sit very well. >> yeah, and these are career prosecutors who in some cases, you know, what he's referring to here in the end is the entire mueller investigation, and he's doing everything he can, and since he's taken office to discredit the mueller investigation and discounting many of the junior prosecutors

and attacking the prosecutors who served on the mueller team, specifically at the roger stone investigation, and that trial and his feelings towards them because they spoke out. they resigned in protest over the fact that they felt bill barr was interfering in the sentencing of roger stone, so he -- here he is attacking them this. other prosecutors who are basically saying that they have no place to speak out if they see anything wrong, if they feel anything wrong is happening. these are lawyers. some of them career pollutors, some -- career prosecutors and some of them giving up big jobs at law firms to serve of the public interest and here he is attacking them, john. of course, yeah, this is going to have issues and will reverberate across the country. all u.s. attorneys' office whose prosecutors go in and investigate every day very complicate asked and difficult cases. >> and they don't go to montessori school, they don't,

at the u.s. department of justice. at least i know they don't see it that way. john harwood, we know that the attorney general is loyal to the president. we know that like the president he sort of frowns at this idea that you might want to stay at home or wear a mask or stay away from crowds to be safe, but there is no national lockdown order in place. there never has been. white house guidelines to the state but listen to the attorney general's take on covid restrictions. >> putting a national lockdown stay-at-home orders is like house arrest. it's -- it's -- other than slavery which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in american history. >> in the house, james clyburn who is the highest ranking black american in the house of representatives, a member of the democratic leadership essentially says to the attorney general how dare you. the. >> i think that that statement by mr. barr was the most ridiculous tone deaf god awful thing i've ever heard.

it's incredible that the chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to saving lives. >> smart perspective from mr. cliburn. bill barr has made it clear i run this show and i will say what i want. >> that's right, john, but i think when we listen to the extreme statements from bill barr we have to remember he has presented himself to the american people as a particular kind of zealot in resisting social change. he's a conservative christian, he gave a speech at notre dame last year where he said that people of faith were facing an onslaught from what he called militant secularists trying to destroy the traditional moral order. he lumped hiredcation, the media and all of that, and he's now aligned himself with president trump who has aligned himself with white conservative with christians who feel the same way as bill barr does.

so barr is lumping a ride away of adversaries into that group of militant secularists that he's battling so that includes public health authorities. barr complains that they closed down churches. it includes black lives matter protesters. he said they don't real recare about black lives. they have a broad political agenda. it includes those junior lawyers in the justice department, kwlus democratic matters like jenny durkan of seattle, the "new york times" reported that he's speculated or talked to his aides about potentially prosecuting her for how she handled protests in seattle. the striking thing about this is that there's no evidence that donald trump has strong political or religious beliefs of any kind, but bill barr has very strong beliefs. trump is an instrument for him in pursuing those beliefs, and he's doing it. >> john harwood and shimon prokupecz, appreciate the important reporting annin sights. the president's attacks on

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repeating a lie doesn't make

it true, but the president keeps trying because he wants to raise doubts about election intertellingity. the president tweeting today, quote, because of the new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots which will be sent to voters or wherever this year the november 3rd election result may never be accurately determined which is what some want. another election disaster yesterday. stop ballot madness, that from the president of the united states, and this, the big unsolicited ballot states should give it up now before it's too late and ask people to go to the polling booths and like always before vote. otherwise mayhem. solicited ballots are okay. joining me now who has to deal with someone on the state left, the michigan secretary of state who are meeting with the postmaster general louis dejoy about questioning of mail-in ballot. secretary of state, it's great to see you. i'm going to ask you to fact check the president there. is there some scam under way among the states and all these mail-in ballots, unsolicited ballot? will we never note results of

this election? >> no. in fact, john, good to sigh as well. in fact, we can say with certainty that the results of our elections will be an accurate refleskts will of the people this year and what we do know also, unfortunately, with certainty is that there will be escalating efforts from multipleage tolls try to sew seeds of doubts among all of our voters about the very truth and reality of the accuracy of results and we're prepared to counter that again with truth and trusted are information which what we as election officials do every day. >> part of your challenge is going to be if states are close and michigan likely would be close reminding people we can't certify the results, are won't be sure of the winner for several days because we're going to count the mail-in ballots that we have until we're done. the other challenging is to make sure that up until election day this runs efficiently which is the point of the meeting today with the postmaster general, mr. dejoy. there's a mailer that the u.s. postal service sent out that says here's the postal service to remind people it's important.

make a plan, vote ahead and you see it right there. look at it at first glance, that's nice. they are trying to get people to think about this, but a number of secretaries of states and attorneys general have been concerned about this because of the bullet points under dear postal customer, worried they might cause confusion because different states might do this different ways. >> that's exactly right. every state runs its own elections and has its own set of rules and to do one blanket mailer without even consulting with any secretaries of state about the content of that mailer was really a missed opportunity where they could have really helped us educate our voters. instead, they have created a little bit more confusion in many states and certainly didn't help advance the ball which is what we need to do right now in creating clarity for voters about the rules and options to vote in their particular state. >> senator peters, a democratic senator from your state, has been pushing this issue and asking for accountability from the postal service and says all 67 postal districts have seen a

delay in first class delivery. the postmaster general told congress a couple weeks back, look, we eastern making changes, we'll going to have hiccups and we'll get this right. what's the number one question with him in the context of elections and mail-in voting and timely delivery of ballots for people and the return of ballots to you? >> we need the postal level at the highest level to commit to work with election officials to make sure the bowls are met. we're six and a half weeks out of an historic momentous presidential election and we can't afford more missteps like this one. we immediate to be working together. we've had success on the local level, collaborating with the postal leaders in our state to redesign our envelopes and move things efficiently through the system but we need folks working at the national level as well in collaboration with us to ensure any additional record they do around the issue of voting by

mail and allowing the ballots to go efficiently through the system is done in coordination and conjunction with us who are the experts on elections in those particular states. >> we will keep in touch as we go through this, six and a half weeks, perhaps half a week after that as well. secretary benson, appreciate it very much. the nation's former top intelligence official sees things very differently from his one-time bon. darker dni dan coats says it's dangerous to question the integrity of the election system, something that president trump does every day. coates was frustrated as dni because the president didn't want to hear about russian election interference. in the op-ed coates calling on congress to create a new election watchdog group saying we must firmly unambiguously reassure all americans that their vote will count and matter and that the people's will will not be questioned and respected. i propose that congress create a new mechanism to accomplish this

purpose, create a supreme courtly bipartisan commission to oversee the eless. we'll see if republicans on the hill have anything positive to say about that idea. up next, joe biden hoping to win over ballot ground state voters in pennsylvania tonight with a town hall right here on cnn. when i was in high school, this was the theater i came to quite often. the support we've had over the last few months has been amazing. it's not just a work environment. everyone here is family. if you are ready to open your heart and your home, check us out. we thought for sure that we were done. and this town said: not today. ♪

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joe biden takes his turn with pennsylvania voters tonight right here on cnn. the democratic nominee is participating in a town hall in scranton, the town wherein he was born. president trump had a rocky time you might remember in an abc town hall in pens penalty other night. tonight's event comes as biden looks to press his advantage in key battleground states, an effort that includes this new ad focusing on the coronavirus and a convert. >> i voted for trump in '16, and i'll be the first to tell you i made a mistake. pandemic, it's been tough on everybody. you know, president trump, he's not responsible for this virus. nobody was going to be able to stop that, but he was totally negligent on how he informed the people. i mean, the guy -- the guy gets the blame for what's happening. >> joining us now to discuss the national political reporter for politico and laura, it is a great opportunity for the former

vice president, essentially a book end. president trump went the other night in pennsylvania. joe biden gets to go tonight. president trump had a problem answering questions about the coronavirus, answering questions about pre-existing conditions and health care. the biden campaign, this is part of seeing more of biden, a challenge for him tonight. >> right. so biden's role today is to reach those pennsylvania voters in the key swing state, as you mentioned, john, and they have been utilizing -- they have been contrasting biden and trump by talking a lot about coronavirus which we expect tonight. part of that is that new ad, but what biden has also started to do when he talks about coronavirus and talks about the way trump is handling coronavirus is making a referendum on trump's dishonesty, on what we know trump has done in terms of downplaying the virus but then with the most recent revelations from woodward's book saying he had always intended to do that

even though he knew the virus was dangerous from the beginning and more dangerous than news and i expect that's something that biden will hit on a lot. >> at this moment six and a half weeks to election day, some people starting to vote, no question, tight battleground states but also a clear advantage biden, if you look at the national poll and let's go but biden on top 49/46 inpolls. a state president has to win, wisconsin, a ten-point lead. biden in our current electoral map, if we wins wisconsin and loses nothing else on the electoral map he's president, minnesota, a big biden lead there. florida, close race, florida is always close, biden on top which means the president has to spend money and fight for it arizonas a, in a state that president trump won, biden has a slight advantage. the map looks good for the democrats right now and yet you do get, and this is inevitable, jitters, including one of the subtopics you've focused a lot of time on, a lot of people worried in florida, neve and

elsewhere that biden needs to do a better job with latinos. >> yeah. so even though biden is ahead in a lot of these battleground states, there appears to be some softness among that support, particularly along latino men and also the same thing carries over to black voters where there's black younger men who aren't exactly sold on biden just yet and so that presents a problem for the vice president especially as trump is -- the former vice president, especially as trump is trying to eat into those margins and, again, if the race contracts and even though biden looks very ahead right now, if it contracts in these key states with the remaining days left, then those margins are going to matter. biden's campaign has said that they consider latinos also a big opening for them in a state like pennsylvania. harris is there today as well and senator harris is going to be having an event with local latino leaders so they are trying to boost support there among the growing latino

population as well to make up for those margins in a tight race. >> some of it is being visible, and we see both biden and harris being more visible. not as active as the president and vice president yet but we'll see how it plays out in the final six weeks. appreciate the reporting and insights as alwayss always. come join is, joe biden, a special town hall live from scranton, pennsylvania. anderson cooper moderates tonight only here on cnn 8:00 p.m. eastern. don't want to miss that. up next, the house speaker nancy pelosi draws a line on coronavirus stimulus talks. first though, a nonprofit called young, black and lit is providing free blocks with black characters to help develop young african-american readers. here's this week's "impact your world." >> when a child sees themselves reflected in the books that they read and the books are a mirror to them, they feel valued. >> it wasn't something i really thought about until my niece came around, and it really kind of of saddened me that there

were book stores that she would walk into and not be able to feel seen. young, black and lit is a nonprofit organization base in the chicagoland area. our mission is to provide children's books to youth featuring black characters at no cost to the out or their families. >> since 2018, we've provided over 5,000 books to community centers, organizations, schools and directly to students' homes. >> it was just always a challenge finding the ones for his age. they introduced the program to the school. he was pretty excited about it. show them your favorite. >> other people say they can't do stuff, and then they prove them wrong. >> we try not to focus just on historical figures. i know we value their importance, but we also focus on some of the simple everyday life activity that you can go through but we have blitz around getting a haircut. >> and that's the best spider-man ever. his suit is better than all the

other suits and he has powers. >> he thinks -- you think it's spider-man? >> yes, i do. >> that's remarkable work. to learn more about it, go to cnn.com/impact. it was 1961 when nellie young lost her devoted husband.

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house speaker, notary puban,

and phil mattingly joins us on capitol hill. is she moving? >> reporter: no. but to underscore the reality of this moment, over the course of the last several days there's signs that as a veteran watcher of this institution and myself who's been up here for a long time you would think would be a signal that things are starting to kick into gear. the reality is they are not. right now democrats and republicans and the administration roughly separated by $1 trillion with democrats sticking firm to the idea they don't want on the top line to go anywhere below $2.2 trillion and that was something i was told this morning the speaker made clear to treasure secretary mnuchin last night so i asked her if that was the case today. >> we have come down, you know, i know some of you say why can't you compromise? we have compromised. we came down a trillion dollars.

we asked them to go up a trillion dollars but they went down. why can't we spend what it takes to shore up the middle class in our country? when we go into negotiation it is about the allocation of the resources but it's hard to see how we can go any lower when you have a greater need. >> reporter: there's a lot of talk about the top line, trillion dollars, democrats 2.2, was 3.4. to summarize what's going on, there's a fundamental and extraordinarily consequential difference in what either side believes is the scale of the problem to address. democrats believe they need to go very, very big. biggest stimulus package in history for this country. 2.2 would tie the largest stimulus package in history and republicans want a more targeted approach. they agree on the top loon ine lot of the specific issues but as long as they're so far apart

on the top line numbers they can't get into the weeds to figure out the allocations and stimulus checks, more money for small business, testing and tracing, education. all of these important,s at this moment in time a the fed chair says this will keep going and no solution here on capitol hill. >> i thought the fed chair's nudge might cause some movement but unnecessarily optimistic there i guess, unwisely optimistic. keep us up to date on that. up next, sally is a hurricane no more and still causing big problems across the south.

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top of the hour. hello to the viewers in the united states and around the world. thank you for sharing a very busy news day with us. a big day in the 2020 election. kamala harris in pennsylvania. the president holds a rally in wisconsin tonight and joe biden at a cnn town hall. more evidence the covid jobs recovery is uneven. 860,000 americans filed last week for first time benefits and an airline ceo at the white house to warn tens of thousands of furloughs could come soon without another