The storm is still producing heavy rain as it moves east.
August 28, 2020, 9:57 PM
• 6 min read
The death toll continued to increase in Louisiana and Texas on Friday as the Gulf Coast cleaned up a day after being walloped by Hurricane Laura.
When Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana this week as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds, it was the strongest storm to hit the state since 1856.
For all continental U.S. landfalling hurricanes, Laura tied for the fifth strongest to ever hit the U.S. Pressure wise, Laura was the fourth-strongest hurricane in U.S. history.
Laura, while not as destructive as many forecasted, reached wind gusts of 137 mph in Lake Charles, Louisiana, caused a storm surge of 9 feet in the state and dropped 10 inches of rain in some areas.
The death toll Friday afternoon stood at 14, according to The Associated Press. Ten of those deaths came in Louisiana. Eight of the deaths in the two states were attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning.
In a tragic outcome, four people were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, the Louisiana Department of Health posted in a statement on Twitter. Officials are considering the deaths storm related.
“The Louisiana Department of Health is sadly verifying an additional four storm-related deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning. We do not have other details at this time. This brings the total number of deaths to 10,” related to the storm, the tweet read.
Three men were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in a pool hall in Port Arthur, Texas, according to the AP.
The storm also produced four tornadoes.
Laura is still a tropical depression Friday morning, but is losing its tropical characteristics over Arkansas. However, the storm is still producing heavy rain and with the possibility of tornadoes.
As of Friday evening, 485,192 customers in Louisiana, 106,801 in Texas and 26,373 in Arkansas remain without power in Laura’s aftermath, according to poweroutage.us.
A flash flood watch has been issued for Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois, where some areas could see 3 to 5 inches of rain.
What’s left of Laura will move through Mid-Mississippi Valley and into Ohio Valley Friday evening, bringing gusty winds, a flash flooding threat and a threat for a few tornadoes.
Laura will combine with a cold front and will bring heavy rain and a threat for flash flooding to the Northeast Saturday from Philadelphia to New York City and into southern New England.
Remnants of Laura will bring up to 5 inches of rain to the Mid-South region and up to 3 inches in the Northeast this weekend.
Probably not, but there’s a long way to go until Election Day.
August 28, 2020, 4:54 PM
• 6 min read
The two virtual conventions are done, and now we are on to the intensity of the presidential campaign in the final two months between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden when neither candidate or party will again have the opportunity to keep the stage to themselves for any real length of time.
As I related in my column from a few days ago, Biden was able to do what the Democrats strategically set out to do: to both solidify positive perceptions of him and his leadership, which is significant, in a time of division and polarization.
In that same column, I suggested that the strategic imperative of Trump was to significantly alter the negative approval ratings of him by the American public. In 2004, when I was chief strategist for President Bush, our primary goal was to change Bush’s net negative approval rating which had been in place for three months or so to a positive net job approval rating. We knew that if we were in negative territory it would be difficult for Bush to win re-election. We were able to accomplish this over the course of the 2004 GOP national convention.
Though we won’t have national poll numbers for at least a few days to determine if Trump was able to do this, my expectation is that the 2020 GOP convention was not able to accomplish the goal of fundamentally changing Trump’s negative approval numbers. Why?
1. The perceptions of Trump have solidified in the last few years and changing them would require a disciplined effort where all messaging was constructed with this goal. The RNC planners and the president didn’t seem able to settle on any one strategy — they seemed to ping pong between various strategies throughout the convention. There were moments when they would try to soften his image, then this would be followed by vitriol aimed at the Democrats, followed by statements that Trump is the only thing standing in the way of coming Armageddon, to Trump’s own speech which didn’t have a real throughline.
2. One aspect of changing a president’s approval rating is to convince Americans that the country is headed in the right direction, leading Americans to feel better about Trump’s leadership. Prior to the RNC, nearly 70% of the public believed America was on the wrong track. And throughout the convention, speakers actually conveyed a sense that things are going wrong in America (they tried to blame the Democrats) and reiterated numerous negative news stories. This seems an unusual way to make Americans feel better about where things are in America today.
3. The RNC seemed to nearly completely ignore the reality of what is facing America in the midst of the convention. As deaths mount from COVID-19 each day, parents worry about their jobs and whether their kids can go to school safely. And with the racial unrest caused by lack of police reform and sports teams standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, there was a sense of the RNC pulling a “Wizard of Oz” — telling folks to pay no attention to what they were seeing with their own eyes.
4. On ABC, when I was asked what could Trump do in his speech to help himself, I laughed and said that what I am about to suggest is highly unlikely because it isn’t who Trump is and within moments he would likely do or say something in direct conflict with this, but I thought showing some humility and admitting mistakes would go a long way to improving perceptions of him. (I know, I know it would be like suggesting he ride down on a unicorn from the sky and get serenaded by seraphim and cherubim.) Of course, he didn’t come close to this in words, tone or style. In fact, his unethical use of the White House as a backdrop to his speech conveyed the exact opposite of humility.
This is my initial assessment of whether the goal of permanently fixing Trump’s approval problem is likely to have been achieved this week, but in the next week or so we will see from national polling data if it was accomplished. There is much time to go until Election Day and Trump could still win this race because in this disruptive moment in American history we all have seen events take over in an instant. For now, though, it seems the Democrats helped themselves and the Republicans didn’t over the last two weeks.
Matthew Dowd is the chief political analyst for ABC News. Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of ABC News.
President Donald Trump made several claims about U.S. immigration policy during his Republican National Convention speech Thursday night, continuing his long-time focus on the southern border. He also dived into exaggerations about Joe Biden’s immigration proposals.
Below ABC News fact checks what Trump said about the border wall and immigration during his acceptance speech at the RNC.
Trump says US has built 300 miles of border wall
“We have already built 300 miles of border wall — and we are adding 10 new miles every single week,” Trump said Thursday night. “The Wall will soon be complete, and it is working beyond our wildest expectations.”
Trump recently traveled to Yuma, Arizona, where he also touted the completion of the 300 miles. But it’s far from a complete fortification of the southwestern boundary line.
The Trump administration has overseen the construction of just over six miles of barrier where none previously existed, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, while the vast majority of those 300 miles Trump is referencing have replaced existing barriers with towering steel structures.
An additional 25 miles of barriers where none previously existed are layered farther from the borderline as a “secondary” layer, according to USACE.
Last month, a federal watchdog found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not have a “sound, well-documented” approach to planning border wall construction and failed to consider alternative measures that could have provided better security.
The Office of Inspector General review started when CBP was in the middle of determining how much the border wall might cost. Homeland Security officials have characterized the wall as the base-line measure from which they plan to attach additional surveillance technology while Trump himself has long touted the physical barrier as the key to stopping crime in the southwest.
But the report found CBP relied on just a single year’s worth of illegal border activity data to determine where extra security measures were most needed instead of relying on multi-year trends that could have painted a more fulsome picture of security needs.
The Department of Homeland Security rejected the OIG recommendations to start a new review process. Jim Crumpacker, a DHS official responsible for responding to oversight findings, said the report included “significantly flawed and inaccurate factual representations” and said the watchdog office did not properly define what it means to have “operational control” over the border.
While Trump continues to champion the wall as a success, smugglers have reportedly cut through new sections in San Diego. Commercially available power tools were used to cut through the steel beams last year, according to the Washington Post, allowing them to be pushed aside far enough for a person to fit through.
Separately, CBP recently put out a call for ideas to construct a floating “buoy barrier” to be deployed in the center of the Rio Grande or to extend the border fortifications into the Pacific Ocean.
Trump’s barriers are only the physical representations of immigration limits. The administration has fought to tighten entry restrictions on many types of people traveling from abroad, including those seeking green cards, temporary professional work visas and low-income migrants.
Trump says Biden will stop deportations of undocumented immigrants, implement ‘catch and release’
“The Biden/Bernie manifesto calls for suspending all removal of illegal aliens, implementing nationwide catch and release, and providing illegal aliens with free taxpayer-funded lawyers,” Trump said during his speech.
Trump is taking broad leaps and exaggerating Biden’s position when he talks about ending deportations and broadly releasing immigration offenders. However, his claims about the desire to boost funds for immigration lawyers ring partially true.
In a recent blog post on Biden’s “Agenda for the Latino Community,” one of the candidate’s expressed initiatives is to “establish funding to provide legal representation” for immigrants. Federal immigration courts are an administration adjudication arm of the executive branch where immigrant defendants facing deportation are not guaranteed a lawyer.
Biden’s plan involves bolstering the reach of legal aid groups, which work to support those attempting to make a case for humanitarian relief and refuge. Currently, much of the support for migrant legal aid comes through networks of nonprofit organizations with some government grant funding as well as pro-bono lawyers from private firms.
The Biden plan also calls for an expansion of paths to legal immigration that, in theory, would require more access to legal services. Trump seems to imply a negative impact of this but was not more specific.
“Humanitarian needs are best met through a network of organizations, such as faith-based shelters, non-governmental aid organizations, legal nonprofits, and refugee assistance agencies working together,” the Biden plan reads.
While nothing in Biden’s plan demands summary “catch and release,” as Trump describes, the Democratic candidate plans to further explore alternatives to the civil detention centers run through the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some of these programs are currently in place and involve ankle-monitored tracking when detainees are released on parole.
Biden’s immigration plan does not demand an end to deportations and it explicitly notes the former vice president’s commitment to “prioritizing” removals of individuals found to be a threat to national security.
As written in the Biden plan to reverse Trump’s immigration changes, “… the Obama-Biden administration took steps to prioritize enforcement resources on removing threats to national security and public safety, not families.”
Trump and his top allies have routinely framed their immigration approach as a battle against Democrats and “open borders” that would allow less desirable or unskilled people from overseas to move to the country.
In contrast to Trump’s own agenda and the characterization of his opponent’s, the Democratic Party Platform outlines steps to increase immigration legally and permanently for some.
“Our family, humanitarian, and diversity pathways have contributed immeasurably to the vibrancy and productivity of American society and should continue to be the centerpiece of our immigration system,” the platform statement reads.
Trump says special interests tried to stop ‘pro-American immigration’ policy
“In perhaps no area did the Washington special interests try harder to stop us than on my policy of pro-American immigration,” Trump said Thursday night.
It’s difficult to understand what “special interests” Trump’s talking about here. The primary challengers to his immigration policies are the human rights advocates and immigration lawyers working on behalf of the people they assist, many of whom are pursuing asylum.
These groups have challenged Trump’s attempts to shape the demographic profile of American immigrants into one that disproportionately favors highly educated and wealthy visa applicants.
The administration’s implementation of “extreme vetting” measures, expansions of the list of public benefits that could disqualify green card applicants and direct public pressure on states and localities to enforce federal law have created new hurdles for lower-income immigrant groups.
The Tesla CEO linked his company to the dramatic case on Twitter.
August 28, 2020, 5:22 PM
• 3 min read
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed via Twitter that an employee helped thwart a planned cyberattack at his Gigafactory in Nevada.
“Much appreciated. This was a serious attack,” Musk tweeted Thursday in response to a Teslarati report on the attempted malware hack.
Teslarati, a news site dedicated to updates from the electric car maker, first reported that a Gigafactory Nevada worker turned down a $1 million bribe to inserting malware on the carmaker’s networks. Instead, the unnamed worker helped authorities thwart the planned cybersecurity attack.
Teslarati referenced the recent arrest of Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, a Russian citizen who was accused of conspiring to commit a cyber crime, by the Department of Justice.
The DOJ redacted the name of the company Kriuchkov allegedly attempted to infiltrate in its statement on his arrest, but Musk’s tweet Thursday publicly linked Tesla to the dramatic case.
In a statement earlier this week, the DOJ said Kriuchkov was arrested for his “role in a conspiracy to recruit an employee of a company to introduce malicious software into the company’s computer network, extract data from the network, and extort ransom money from the company.”
Kriuchkov, who entered the U.S. on a tourist visa, was charged with one count of conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer. The DOJ said he allegedly contacted and met with an employee of the company he was attempting to infiltrate numerous times and promised to pay the employee, who was not named, $1 million after the malware was introduced.
It is not immediately clear if Kriuchkov has obtained an attorney. Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the incident.
On the final night of the Republican National Convention, as protesters massed outside the White House that was transformed into a grand political backdrop, President Donald Trump offered a sentiment the nation actually can unite behind.
“At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas,” the president said Thursday, in accepting the Republican nomination for a second time with a meandering and searing speech.
It would have been a jarring scene in any moment — bright lights and big “TRUMP-PENCE” signs on the South Lawn of the White House, as a giant political rally was held at the most famous residence in the United States.
The messaging, too, would be discordant in any time — descriptions of American rot and violence joined by urgent pleas to reelect the president.
But this is not just any moment. It’s a tense, angry, conflicted time, amid the biggest pandemic and most sudden economic collapse in a century, and unfolding reckonings around race and policing.
Multiple crises are metastasizing simultaneously — all during Trump’s presidency, of course. Speaking to upwards of 2,000 invited guests outside “the people’s house,” masks and social distancing were scant, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump offered a thorough and quite long recitation of achievements. The president used the biggest of stages to depict the biggest threats to prosperity and even “the American way of life” as coming … from his fellow Americans.
“Despite all of our greatness as a nation, everything we have achieved is now endangered,” the president said. “This election will decide whether we save the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”
Out came a searing new attack on his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden — including a wink-wink reference to “hugs and even kisses” he said Biden had given blue-collar workers over the years.
“Joe Biden is not a savior of America’s soul. He is the destroyer of America’s jobs, and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American greatness,” Trump said.
That question of greatness, though, is a delicate one — as evidenced by the sights and sounds dominating inside the country he leads. The aftermath of a Black man’s shooting by police in Wisconsin has jolted the nation, and the economy is struggling under the weight of a pandemic that continues to rage.
Trump used events that have happened during his time in office to make his case. He ignored events that are inconvenient to his narrative; he did not mention Jacob Blake’s name, but listed Kenosha, Wisconsin, as one of the “Democrat-run cities” suffering from “rioting, looting, arson and violence.”
Earlier in the day, in a TV interview, Biden made an obvious but potentially powerful counterpoint: “The problem we have right now is we’re in Donald Trump’s America.”
In Trump’s narration of current events, the country’s ills are virtually all reasons to retreat to partisan corners and fight. Speakers on the convention’s final night tallied carnage from America’s streets — yet built that into an argument for four more years.
“These continuous riots in Democratic cities give you a good view of the future under Biden,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said.
The president’s decision to have this kind of gathering at this time speaks to his views of his own power — and the removal of any guardrails that might have previously constrained his actions. It was, like so many other things Trump has done, something no other president would likely even have considered.
Trump chose to offer pageantry and fireworks to compete with protests, and celebration to counter uncertainty. His followers loved it and his opponents hated it. In other words, Trump was no doubt happy right where he was.
But the campaign argument from here is a somewhat awkward one, as encapsulated by a clunky turn of phrase favored by Vice President Mike Pence: “Make America great again, again.”
For all that Trump was shattering norms all week, he was doing something pretty basic that incumbents do. He used his convention to try to turn a referendum election into a choice, mainly by seeking to disqualify his opponent.
Biden is well-known, though, and generally better-liked than Trump himself. The issues Trump is seeking to recast and rewrite the history of include many that the American people have lived day in and day out for month.
Yes, Trump is digging in against his political enemies. But he’s also squaring up against powerful forces in his own America.
Kyle Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people during protests in Kenosha.
August 28, 2020, 3:48 PM
• 4 min read
Kyle Rittenhouse, the alleged Wisconsin gunman who is accused of opening fire during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake and of killing two people, did not appear for his first scheduled court appearance Friday.
The 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois, requested to waive his presence at the extradition hearing. His lawyer, however, did not waive the extradition to Wisconsin request during the short virtual court proceeding Friday morning, but asked for more time.
A hearing on the status of his extradition has now been set for Sept. 25.
Rittenhouse has been charged in Wisconsin with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, two counts of recklessly endangering safety and one count of possession of a dangerous weapon. He is currently being held in Lake County, Illinois.
The violence occurred late Tuesday night near a gas station in Kenosha, some 40 miles south of Milwaukee, amid a third night of protests over the police shooting of Blake. One of the victims in the deadly shooting was shot five times, including in the head, and the other was shot in the chest, according to a criminal complaint. A third gunshot victim was taken to the hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.
Rittenhouse surrendered to authorities in Antioch, Illinois, on Wednesday, local police said.
Social media accounts allegedly linked to Rittenhouse are part of the investigation, authorities have said. Those now-deactivated accounts contain references of support for President Donald Trump and support for Blue Lives Matter.
Trump’s reelection campaign issued a statement Wednesday night distancing itself from the alleged shooter.
“President Trump has repeatedly and consistently condemned all forms of violence and believes we must protect all Americans from chaos and lawlessness. This individual had nothing to do with our campaign and we fully support our fantastic law enforcement for their swift action in this case,” Trump 2020 campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said via the statement.
Moreover, social media video of Rittenhouse, who is white, passing police with his assault-style rifle shortly around the time of his shooting rampage has caused further outrage — especially as Blake was shot seven times in the back by police without possession of a gun.
ABC News’ Wil Steakin and Whitney Lloyd contributed to this report.
The war of words between a former pool attendant and Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki escalated on Friday morning as Giancarlo Granda claimed on “Good Morning America” that Falwell “enjoyed watching” him have sex with the former Liberty University president’s wife.
“He was aware from day one of our relationship and he did, in fact, watch,” Granda, 29, told George Stephanopoulos.
Granda contends that in the spring of 2012, Becki Falwell began to flirt with him at the Miami hotel where he worked and invited him to a hotel room for sex, telling him her husband liked to watch. He said he soon met Falwell — a leading voice in Christian conservative politics — for the first time.
“Jerry was laying on the bed,” Granda said. “He was drunk, and he was giggling.”
Granda said that the two men awkwardly discussed the parameters of the impending sexual encounter. He insisted that during that first encounter he reassured Falwell that if the older man became uncomfortable, he would leave,
“Hey,” he said he told Falwell anxiously, “if at any point you get jealous or you want me to back off, just let me know and I’ll walk out of here.”
Granda said Falwell reassured him, urging him to “go for it.”
“He enjoyed watching,” said Granda, who told ABC News that the sexual encounters continued “multiple times a year” until 2018 in hotels in Miami, New York and at the Falwells’ Virginia home.
Granda said that the Falwells told him during that first encounter that they had visited a Miami swingers’ club the previous night but that they weren’t comfortable.
“She mentioned that they were actually at a swinger’s club the night before but they said it wasn’t their thing … they wanted a more intimate session.”
Falwell and his wife have vigorously denied most of Granda’s charges. A spokesperson for the Falwells directed questions to Granda’s attorneys, who did not immediately respond to a list of emailed questions from ABC News.
Granda and the Falwells have been waging a very public battle over the details of a yearslong relationship that both parties acknowledge included a Miami real estate deal and sex between the young man and Becki Falwell — but diverge sharply on the length and the nature of the sexual relationship and the dissolution of the business deal.
Earlier this week, Falwell claimed in a statement that he wasn’t involved in what he described as a brief 2012 affair between Granda and his wife — and that he and his wife have long since reconciled.
On Monday, Reuters published an explosive interview with Granda, 29, in which he contended that his seven-year affair with Becki Fallwell began in 2012 – when he was 20 years old. He said that Jerry Falwell Jr. watched his wife’s sexual trysts with the younger man from the corner of the room or through video cameras. He provided text messages, screenshots and audio to corroborate his account, according to Reuters. Granda also provided one of the audio tapes to ABC News.
The report suggested the news organization had been working on the story for some time — and noted that Reuters had first presented its findings to the Falwells nearly a week earlier.
While the Falwells have claimed Granda is trying to extort them, he maintains that he is simply trying to dissolve their business partnership and sell his 25% stake in the venture.
“That’s false,” Granda said of the extortion claims. “That’s ridiculous. That’s just them trying to smear me.” He mocked the idea that “a 20-year-old” was “targeting and preying upon this power couple.”
To underscore his point that the Falwells once trusted him, Granda provided ABC News with a recommendation letter he contends that Falwell wrote for him to Georgetown University in 2018. In the letter, Falwell writes that Granda is “consistent … dependable” and operates “with the highest business and ethics standards.”
Granda also sought to qualify a previous statement he’d made accusing Falwell of sending him a compromising picture of a female Liberty University student — a photo that the Falwells insist was innocent fun.
He said he was having drinks with the couple at a Miami hotel when Jerry Falwell Jr. sent him the picture.
“I don’t know context of the photo … The point is why did he have that picture, why did he share it and why was he publicly joking with him.”
Granda denied any political motivations for coming forward now as election season is heating up — but said that he is being represented pro bono by a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, a campaign that is working to prevent Trump’s reelection. The adviser was brought on by Granda’s attorney, Aaron Resnick, he told ABC News producers.
‘Right from the beginning’
Falwell was the earliest and most potent voice in the Evangelical Christian community to endorse Trump’s bid for the White House, a fact the president has frequently acknowledged.
“Jerry Falwell Jr. just endorsed me — from Liberty University,” Trump told Stephanopoulos in a Jan. 31, 2016 interview, “… which is probably one of the reasons I went so high with the Evangelicals.”
At the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June 2019, Trump described Falwell, 58, as “a friend of mine [who] was with me right from the beginning.”
‘I was not involved’
Yet earlier this week that bond, forged over years, began to strain at a decisive moment for the president.
The first hints of impending trouble for the Falwells surfaced on Sunday — the eve of the Republican National Convention — when the Washington Examiner published a lengthy statement, dotted with Biblical quotes, from Jerry Falwell Jr.
Falwell’s statement reported that “more than eight years ago,” his wife Becki Falwell had what he described as a brief affair — “something in which I was not involved” — with an unidentified young man the couple had met and befriended and with whom they ultimately went into business.
He contended that the man involved had been threatening to go public about the relationship “to deliberately embarrass my wife, family, and Liberty University unless we agreed to pay him substantial monies.”
Falwell had already been on an indefinite leave of absence from his university duties since Aug. 7, after he posted and later deleted a photo on social media which showed him with his arm around the waist of his wife’s assistant. In the photo, both parties’ pants are partially unzipped, and Falwell refers to the drink in his hand as “a prop” in the photo’s caption. Falwell apologized for posting the photo and said “it was in good fun” from a costume party he attended.
Resignation
Late on Monday night, Falwell formally resigned from his position as university president and stepped down from the school’s board of directors.
Yet the mutual recriminations continued into Tuesday, as the nation prepared to hear key RNC speeches that evening from first lady Melania Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“We couldn’t take this torture anymore, so we went public with the story,” Becki Falwell, 53, told ABC News’ Kyra Phillips early Tuesday morning. “And Jerry resigned to protect the reputation of the university that he and his family spent their lives building.”
Falwell told Phillips that he considered himself more of a businessman than a spiritual leader.
“I was never called to be a pastor,” he said. “My calling was to use my legal and business expertise to make Liberty University the evangelical version of Notre Dame. Some of us are called to be preachers, that wasn’t mine. I was called to make Liberty University the greatest Christian university in the world and I couldn’t have done that as a preacher.”
By Tuesday evening, Granda was out with a new statement which charged that the Falwells had minimized their roles and responsibility for the relationship that appears to have developed.
“The Falwells would have you believe that I seduced Becki into an affair, without Jerry’s knowledge, and then spent the intervening 7 years trying to extort them,” Granda said in a statement released late Tuesday.
Granda contended that “the truth is, they approached me. She invited me to their hotel room. They offered me an equity partnership in a property venture. They brought me on multiple trips and vacations, including to their family farm in Virginia. And as recently as last year, participated in video calls where Mrs. Falwell was naked and Jerry was watching.”
Both sides described each other in dueling statements this week as “a predator” or “predators.”
ABC News’ Chris Francescani, Kyra Phillips, Chris Donovan, Alisha Davis, Claire Brinberg and Kaitlyn Folmer contributed to this report.
The company’s earnings report revealed changing consumer preferences.
August 28, 2020, 2:36 PM
• 3 min read
Gap, which owns brands including Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta, reported earning $130 million in face mask sales alone last quarter.
The company said it sold face masks to both consumers and businesses.
While overall net sales were down for the quarter due to pandemic-induced closures and changing consumer demands, the company did report a 95% increase in online net sales compared to the same time period last year.
“Our strong performance in the second quarter reflects the customer response to our brands, products and experiences, particularly as we’ve rapidly adapted to the changing environment,” CEO Sonia Syngal said in a statement announcing the quarterly earnings. “I’m confident that our purpose driven lifestyle brands, size and scale, and advantaged digital capabilities are helping us win now and position us for growth in the future.”
Despite the urging of U.S. medical officials that face masks will help stop the spread of COVID-19, masks have become a flash point of controversy amid the pandemic.
Still, large swaths of the U.S. have mandated face coverings in places where social distancing is not achievable, causing the demand for face masks to surge overnight. Amid the pandemic, face masks have also taken the fashion world by storm.
The seasoned department store announced that all 38 of its remaining stores will be shutting its doors on Thursday. Liquidation sales have also begun storewide and online.
“Lord & Taylor is Going Out of Business,” the company wrote in an Instagram post. “Shop today and save 20-40% off everything storewide! Buy One, Get One on kid’s apparel and swimwear for the entire family! Shop this Going Out of Business sale now while selection is best!”
“While we are still entertaining various opportunities, we believe it is prudent to simultaneously put the remainder of the stores into liquidation to maximize value of inventory for the estate while pursuing options for the company’s brands,” Ed Kremer, Lord & Taylor’s chief restructuring officer said in a statement.
Initially, the nation’s first department store announced plans last week to close 24 stores, while leaving 14 open. However, those plans quickly changed.
Following a huge hit to sales due to shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic, several other big-name brands such as J.Crew, Lucky Brand Jeans, Victoria’s Secret, JCPenny and several others have also announced closures and bankruptcies.
The seasoned department store announced that all 38 of its remaining stores will be shutting its doors on Thursday. Liquidation sales have also begun storewide and online.
“Lord & Taylor is Going Out of Business,” the company wrote in an Instagram post. “Shop today and save 20-40% off everything storewide! Buy One, Get One on kid’s apparel and swimwear for the entire family! Shop this Going Out of Business sale now while selection is best!”
“While we are still entertaining various opportunities, we believe it is prudent to simultaneously put the remainder of the stores into liquidation to maximize value of inventory for the estate while pursuing options for the company’s brands,” Ed Kremer, Lord & Taylor’s chief restructuring officer said in a statement.
Initially, the nation’s first department store announced plans last week to close 24 stores, while leaving 14 open. However, those plans quickly changed.
Following a huge hit to sales due to shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic, several other big-name brands such as J.Crew, Lucky Brand Jeans, Victoria’s Secret, JCPenny and several others have also announced closures and bankruptcies.
