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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh (now), and Joan E Greve, Adam Gabbatt and Martin Belam (earlier)

Trump says he wants supreme court to 'end' Obamacare as final debate looms – as it happened

Summary

  • Donald Trump will face his Democratic rival Joe Biden at 9pm ET at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee for the second and final presidential debate. Joan E Greve and I will be providing live coverage and fact checks.
  • The Trump administration’s botched response to the pandemic has led to between 130,000 and 210,000 preventable deaths, according to a report from a team of disaster preparedness and public health experts.“The United States has turned a global crisis into a devastating tragedy,” read a report released Thursday by researchers at Columbia University.
  • Trump said he wants the supreme court to “end” Obamacare in his “60 Minutes” interview, which the president released early on Twitter today. Trump’s decision to preemptively share the interview before its planned Sunday broadcast seemed bizarre, given Joe Biden will now be able to bring up the president’s comments on Obamacare during tonight’s debate.
  • Trump’s chief of staff said the president tested negative for coronavirus on his flight to Nashville, where tonight’s debate will take place. Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus two days after the first presidential debate.
  • The Senate judiciary committee voted to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court, clearing the way for a chamber-wide vote next week. Democrats on the judiciary committee boycotted this morning’s vote, criticizing Barrett’s likely confirmation as a “sham” because it will come just days before the presidential election.
  • Another 787,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. The figure represented the lowest number of new weekly claims since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but economists warned that layoffs remain alarmingly high.
  • Biden said he would form a commission to study the US court system if he is elected. The news comes as the Democratic nominee has been pressed on whether he would “pack” the supreme court to offset conservatives’ 6-3 advantage if Barrett is confirmed.

Follow the presidential debates live here:

Updated

Donald Trump has invited Tony Bobulinski, who said he is a former business associate of Joe Biden’s son Hunter to the debate tonight. Four years ago, Trump pulled a similar. stunt when he invited accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to a debate with Hillary Clinton.

Bobulinski’s emails were a large part of a story New York Post earlier this month that claimed Hunter Biden had helped connect board members of a Ukrainian energy company with his father while Joe Biden was vice president. Other news outlets have not been able to verify the Post’s story, and dozens of senior intelligence officials have signed a letter saying the story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.

At tonight’s final presidential debate, each candidate will have his mic muted for two minutes while the other responds to the moderator’s questions.

How will it work?

A representative from the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) will control the mute button back stage, per the commission. A member of each campaign will monitor that individual.

More modifications since the last debate:

  • Anyone in the audience who refuses to wear a face mask will be removed
  • Only about 200 people will be allowed inside the arena – fewer than last time – to reduce the risk of Covid transmission

Updated

The US has today signed an anti-abortion declaration with a group of about 30 largely illiberal or authoritarian governments, after the failure of an effort to expand the conservative coalition.

The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion – and is part of a campaign by Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.

The “core supporters” of the declaration are Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda, and the 27 other signatories include Belarus (where security forces are currently trying to suppress a women-led protest movement), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya.

Most of the signatories are among the 20 worst countries to be a woman according to the Women, Peace and Security Index established by Georgetown University.

None of the top twenty countries on the Georgetown index – with the exception of the US (ranked 19th) – has signed the declaration.

The only other European signatory (apart from Belarus and Hungary) is Poland, where the constitutional court approved a near total ban on abortion on Thursday.

Trump will get a last chance to claw back Biden lead at final presidential debate

Donald Trump has his last chance to move the dial in the fast-approaching US presidential election on Thursday night, when he addresses a large nationwide audience at the final televised presidential debate.

Trump will face his Democratic rival Joe Biden at 9pm ET at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The candidates are expected to attract viewership in the tens of millions of Americans for their 90-minute encounter, giving the US president one last crack at shifting a race that has had him trailing the former vice-president for weeks.

NBC News and its moderator Kristen Welker will be hoping for a more civilized debate than the first, held three weeks ago, which collapsed into acrimony amid almost constant interruptions by Trump. In an attempt to prevent a repetition, the commission on presidential debates on Monday tweaked the format so that the candidates’ microphones are turned off while their opponent is speaking for the opening two minutes of each of six issue segments.

For the remainder of each of the 15-minute segments, discussion will be open between the two men.

Trump will be under pressure to soften his display compared with the first debate on 29 September, which was widely censured as bullying. Polls conducted after the debate suggested it damaged his already beleaguered standing in key battleground states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

But there were few indications that Trump intends to change tack in the final hours leading up to the Nashville debate. On Monday he denigrated Welker as a “radical left Democrat”, while his campaign has accused the debate commission of being biased towards Biden and objected to the six policy subjects that NBC News has chosen.

Here’s a preview of the stage for tonight’s presidential debate.

Bernie Sanders is vying to become labor secretary if Joe Biden wins the presidency, Politico reports.

The Vermont senator has been helping the Biden campaign and get out the vote. Politico reports:

“I can confirm he’s trying to figure out how to land that role or something like it,” said one person close to the Vermont senator. “He, personally, does have an interest in it.”

Sanders on Wednesday declined to confirm or deny that he’s putting his name forward for the position.

“Right now I am focused on seeing that Biden is elected president,” he told POLITICO. “That’s what my main focus is.”

Former Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said Sanders has not talked directly with anyone on the Biden campaign about a future role, but plans to push Biden, his former Senate colleague, to “include progressive voices” in both the transition and in a potential new administration.

Yet two other people close to Sanders, including one former aide, said the senator has expressed interest in being in the administration, should Biden win in November. Sanders has been making his push for the top job at the Labor Department in part by reaching out to allies on the transition team, one person familiar with the process said.

Robert Reich, a former Labor secretary in the Clinton administration, told the magazine that Sanders would be “terrific”.

Read the full story here.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalized after he helped Donald Trump prepare for the first presidential debate and attended a White House event where attendees eschewed masks, has made a guest appearance at Ohio’s coronavirus press conference.

Christie has been telling people to learn from his mistake. Yesterday, he wrote a Wall Street op-ed titled “I should have worn a mask”.

But the Trump ally did not goo as far as directly criticizing the president, who has overseen a faltering pandemic response. “Those who deny the scientific realities of the pandemic undermine conditions that allow for rapid and complete reopening,” he said in his op-ed.

Experts: 130,000-210,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US could have been avoided

The Trump administration’s botched response to the pandemic has led to between 130,000 and 210,000 preventable deaths, according to a report from a team of disaster preparedness and public health experts.

“The United States has turned a global crisis into a devastating tragedy,” read a report released Thursday by researchers at Columbia University. “We estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership.

The team calculated avoidable deaths by estimating how many people would have died in other nations, like Japan and South Korea, if they had the same population as the US, and comparing those figures to the US death rate.

“Many of the underlying factors amplifying the pandemic’s deadly impact have existed long before the novel coronavirus first arrived in Washington state on January 20th – a fractured healthcare system, inequitable access to care, and immense health, social and racial disparities among America’s most vulnerable groups,” the researchers noted. “Compounding this is an Administration that has publicly denigrated its own public health officials – and science more generally -- thereby hamstringing efforts by its vaunted public health service to curb the pandemic’s spread.”

Read the full report here.

Updated

Ahead of election day, Latinos are seeing not just more political ads but also plenty of disinformation.

Amy Yee reports for The Guardian:

Messages that paint Joe Biden as a socialist spreading among conservative Latinos from Cuba and Venezuela. Conspiracy theories on YouTube about Barack Obama in Spanish. Billboards and posters falsely claiming that voting by mail is illegal in Texas.

“We usually see this kind of information disorder in locations with a large Latinx population, such as Miami, Houston or Los Angeles,” said Daniel Acosta Ramos, an investigative researcher at the non-profit First Draft.

Disinformation as a means of causing confusion, doubt and fear around voting is nothing new during campaigns, but social media make it easier to generate and spread. Latinos in particular are targets because they are a critical voting bloc, especially in battlegrounds such as Florida, Arizona and Texas.

In Florida, 20% of eligible voters in 2018 were Hispanic, nearly double the share in 2000, according to Pew Research. In Arizona, Hispanics accounted for 24% of all eligible voters in 2018. Latinos are also politically diverse – for example, Cuban Americans tend to vote Republican, while Puerto Ricans lean Democrat – so dissuading voting in Latino communities, even subtly, could tip an election.

There are several types of digital voting disinformation, such as giving the wrong time, place or manner of voting, according to democracy watchdog Common Cause. And during Covid-19, when normal routines are disrupted, online disinformation tactics are “much more believable and have a greater impact today than any other election cycle”, said Jesse Littlewood, vice-president at Common Cause, in a webinar.

That has real-world effects. In Arizona, early voting began early this month and “there has already been the feeling of intimidation at the polls when Trump supporters show up at the same time,” said Hector Sanchez Barba, chief executive of Mi Familia Vota, the Latino civic engagement non-profit.

Instances of intimidating Latino voters are fueled by false but divisive disinformation that undocumented immigrants are voting illegally. There are also false narratives about vote rigging, conspiracy theories or intimidation, such as telling people immigration authorities will patrol polling stations.

Today so far

That’s it from me for now. I will be back tonight to cover the final presidential debate.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Trump said he wants the supreme court to “end” Obamacare in his “60 Minutes” interview, which the president released early on Twitter today. Trump’s decision to preemptively share the interview before its planned Sunday broadcast seemed bizarre, given Joe Biden will now be able to bring up the president’s comments on Obamacare during tonight’s debate.
  • Trump’s chief of staff said the president tested negative for coronavirus on his flight to Nashville, where tonight’s debate will take place. Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus two days after the first presidential debate.
  • The Senate judiciary committee voted to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court, clearing the way for a chamber-wide vote next week. Democrats on the judiciary committee boycotted this morning’s vote, criticizing Barrett’s likely confirmation as a “sham” because it will come just days before the presidential election.
  • Another 787,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. The figure represented the lowest number of new weekly claims since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but economists warned that layoffs remain alarmingly high.
  • Biden said he would form a commission to study the US court system if he is elected. The news comes as the Democratic nominee has been pressed on whether he would “pack” the supreme court to offset conservatives’ 6-3 advantage if Barrett is confirmed.

My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Snowden granted permanent residency in Russia, lawyer says

Edward Snowden’s lawyer said the whistleblower has been granted permanent residency in Russia, according to the AP.

The AP reports:

Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the U.S. after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs.

‘Today, Snowden was handed a residency permit for an unlimited period of time,’ his Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Russia’s state Tass news agency.

Kucherena told the Interfax news agency that the application was submitted in April, but because of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown restrictions, it took immigration authorities more time to consider it. Snowden was able to obtain permanent residency rights because of the changes in Russia’s immigration laws made in 2019, the lawyer said.

Trump said in August that he would consider a pardon for Snowden, despite previously criticizing the whistleblower as a “traitor.”

“There are many, many people — it seems to be a split decision — many people think that he should be somehow be treated differently and other people think he did very bad things,” Trump said at the time. “I’m going to take a very good look at it.”

In a possible preview of tonight’s debate, the Trump campaign just held a press call that was exclusively devoted to attacking Hunter Biden.

When reporters tried to press Trump adviser Richard Grenell on the president’s debate preparation, Grenell kept trying to steer the conversation back to Joe Biden’s son.

Grenell asked reporters whether they had written about Hunter Biden’s emails, prompting one reporter to note that she covers the Trump campaign, not the Biden campaign.

After the reporter continued to press Grenell, who is openly gay, he accused her of being homophobic.

The president is reportedly pushing for quick declassification of a document disputing the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.

Reuters reports:

U.S. President Donald Trump and his intelligence chief have pushed for quick declassification of a document disputing the 2017 intelligence community finding that Russia acted to help Trump get elected in 2016, three U.S. government officials familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

But their effort faces strong objections from inside the intelligence agencies, two officials said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. One reason for their opposition is the proximity of the Nov. 3 election.

The intelligence community has concluded Russia’s 2016 election interference was aimed at bolstering Trump’s chances of victory, a finding that was unanimously affirmed by the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee.

Intelligence officials have also said Russia is working to damage Joe Biden’s presidential bid in this year’s election.

Trump plans to bring one of Hunter Biden’s former business associates as a guest to tonight’s debate, according to reports.

The debate invitation to Tony Bobulinski is clearly meant to rattle Joe Biden, but it’s unclear whether it will be successful, given the Biden campaign has made clear the nominee is prepared to respond to attacks on his family.

Trump’s move was reminiscent of his decision to invite women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to his second debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The move was not successful then, as Hillary Clinton was widely considered to have “won” the debates, and it seems even less likely to be successful now, given Bobulinski is far less well-known than some of Bill Clinton’s accusers, such as Paula Jones.

Russia has hacked into state and local computer networks, intelligence officials say - report

Intelligence officials told the New York Times that Russia has hacked into state and local computer networks in recent days, providing clues about the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the US presidential election.

The Times reports:

While senior Trump administration officials said this week that Iran has been actively interfering in the presidential election, many intelligence officials said they remained far more concerned about Russia, which has in recent days hacked into state and local computer networks in breaches that could allow Moscow broader access to American voting infrastructure.

The discovery of the hacks came as American intelligence agencies, infiltrating Russian networks themselves, have pieced together details of what they believe are Russia’s plans to interfere in the presidential race in its final days or immediately after the election on Nov. 3.

Officials did not make clear what Russia planned to do, but they said its operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results, especially if the race is too close to call.

There is no evidence that the Russians have changed any vote tallies or voter registration information, officials said. They added that the Russian-backed hackers had penetrated the computer networks without taking further action, as they did in 2016. But American officials expect that if the presidential race is not called on election night, Russian groups could use their knowledge of local computer systems to deface websites, release nonpublic information or take similar steps that could sow chaos and doubts about the integrity of the results, according to American officials briefed on the intelligence.

Another national poll shows Joe Biden with a double-digit lead less than two weeks before Election Day.

According to the Quinnipiac University poll, Biden has a 10-point lead over Trump among US likely voters, 51%-41%.

The result is in line with other recent national polls. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, Biden currently has a 9.8-point lead in the presidential race.

The Quinnipiac poll also found Biden has a net-positive favorability rating among likely voters. While 44% of likely voters say they have an unfavorable opinion of Biden, 49% have a favorable opinion of the Democratic nominee.

In comparison, Trump has a net favorability rating of -15. While 40% of likely voters say they have a favorable opinion of the president, 55% say they have an unfavorable opinion of him.

Trump has arrived at Belmont University to conduct his walk-through of the debate venue.

Both presidential nominees will have the chance to walk through the debate site to get a sense of the space before tonight’s event.

According to the White House press pool, a number of bystanders holding signs were spotted during Trump’s drive from the airport to the debate venue. Most signs were pro-Trump.

A new poll shows Trump with only a small advantage in the traditionally conservative state of Kansas, which the president won by 20 points in 2016.

According to the New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump leads Joe Biden by 7 points among likely voters in Kansas, 48%-41%.

Republican Roger Marshall’s advantage in the Kansas Senate race is even smaller. The poll found Marshall leading Democrat Barbara Bollier by just 4 points, 46%-42%.

Trump will still likely win Kansas, but the fact that he has only a single-digit advantage in what should be a very safe state for him demonstrates how narrow the president’s path to victory has become.

And if Bollier can pull off a victory in the Senate race, it would substantially bolster Democrats’ hopes of seizing control of the chamber.

Trump tests negative for coronavirus before debate, Meadows says

Trump has arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, to participate in the final presidential debate tonight.

The president and the first lady walked off Air Force One without wearing masks and briefly greeted supporters waiting on the tarmac.

Chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters that Trump received a coronavirus test during the flight to Nashville.

“We tested him on the way here, and he tested negative,” Meadows told the White House press pool.

Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus just two days after the first presidential debate.

Updated

The Biden campaign has just announced that Lizzo will make a trip to Michigan tomorrow to campaign for the Democratic nominee.

“On Friday, October 23, Lizzo will travel to Detroit, Michigan to campaign for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” the Biden team said in a press release.

“In Detroit, Lizzo will speak at a volunteer canvass and encourage Michiganders to vote early. In Harper Woods, Lizzo will have a conversation with young people about early voting.”

The Grammy-winning artist has recently been using her social media and her public appearances to urge Americans to vote and make their voices heard.

View this post on Instagram

Hey YOU. Have you felt the same disconnect from this country? Have YOU felt like this nation is your house but not your home? It’s because we are on stolen land trying to live within laws written by white men FOR white men in 1787. I see YOU using your power of protest and your freedom of speech. I see YOU unlearning the narrow scope of our history and seeking the truth. ITS TIME TO USE YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE. WE NEED YOU. DID YOU KNOW? -Approximately four in ten (40%) of eligible voters didn’t turn out to vote in 2016 ?? IF YOU WANT TO VOTE BUT DONT KNOW WHERE TO START: Text LIZZOBEVOTING to 26797 to make sure you’re registered to vote, confirm your polling location, and get reminders for all your elections. #iamavoter

A post shared by Lizzo (@lizzobeeating) on

Joe Biden is en route to Nashville, Tennessee, for the final presidential debate tonight.

Before boarding his campaign plane, the Democratic nominee said of the president, “Hopefully he’s gonna play by the rules. Hopefully everybody’s been tested. Hopefully it’s all worked out.”

Trump announced he and the first lady had tested positive for coronavirus just two days after the first presidential debate.

It is rather extraordinary Trump chose to preemptively release an interview in which he makes clear that he hopes the supreme court dismantles the Affordable Care Act.

The president has avoided directly saying how he hopes the court will rule in the case, even though his administration has sided with states calling for the law to be scrapped in the lawsuit. Trump has also spent years attacking Obamacare and promising to repeal it.

But Trump’s decision to release his “60 Minutes” interview early will allow Joe Biden to criticize him over his comments at tonight’s debate, which would not have been possible if the president had waited for CBS News to air the interview on Sunday, as planned.

Trump is really not doing himself any favors with just 12 days to go until the election.

Trump says he wants supreme court to 'end' Obamacare

In his “60 Minutes” interview, Trump told correspondent Leslie Stahl that he hopes the supreme court dismantles the Affordable Care Act.

The supreme court is set to hear oral arguments in a case involving the ACA (also known as Obamacare) a week after the presidential election.

In the interview, released by the president before its planned Sunday broadcast, Stahl pressed Trump on his unrealized promises to release his healthcare plan.

“It is developed. It’s fully developed,” Trump said of his healthcare plan. “It’s going to be announced very soon.”

“When?” Stahl asked. “You say that over and over.”

“When we see what happens with Obamacare, which is not good,” Trump replied.

At the risk of stating the obvious, there is nothing preventing Trump from releasing his plan now. In spite of Republicans’ promises, Congress has failed to repeal and replace the ACA since Trump took office.

“I mean, we’ll see what happens,” Trump said of the supreme court case in his interview. “I hope that they end it. It’ll be so good if they end it.” He explained that it would be good if the law was dismantled because “we will come up with a plan.”

As Stahl pointed out, that conflicted with Trump’s claim moments earlier that the plan was already developed.

“We have large sections of it already done,” Trump said. “And we’ve already come up with plans.”

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Adam Gabbatt.

CBS News criticized the White House for releasing Trump’s “60 Minutes” interview before its broadcast, but the network made clear that it would still release the president’s interview on Sunday with the program’s “full, fair and contextual reporting.”

“The White House’s unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter 60 Minutes from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades,” CBS said in a statement.

The network also applauded “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl, who interviewed the president and Vice President Mike Pence.

“Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Lesley Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America, and we look forward to audiences seeing her third interview with President Trump and subsequent interview with Vice President Pence this weekend,” CBS said.

More than 5.8m people have already voted in Texas, according to the secretary of state – 65% of the total number of votes cast in the state in 2016.

About 8.97m people voted in Texas in the last presidential election, suggesting early voting is proving to be a success in the state.

The 5.8m figure includes both in-person and mail-in votes cast through October 21.

Texas has three weeks of early voting this election, compared to two weeks in 2016.

Early afternoon summary

It’s been a busy day so far and there’s a lot more US politics news to come this afternoon, before the final presidential debate, so stay tuned.

Here’s how the morning went:

  • In some sort of an attempt at a pre-emptive strike, Donald Trump moments ago posted on Facebook his interview with CBS 60 Minutes, which is due to broadcast this Sunday. The president’s action appears to be a tantrum in a thimble, however.
  • This is bigger news: the president’s Twitter account was hacked by a Dutch security researcher, who correctly guessed Trump’s password was maga2020!
  • Democratic vice-presidential nominee and California Senator Kamala Harris called the Senate hearings galloping along to a pre-election confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court are a “sham”.
  • In short order this morning the Senate judiciary committee voted to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court. The full Senate takes up her case tomorrow and she could be confirmed as early as Monday.
  • The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefit has fallen to its lowest level since the Covid-19 crisis began, the weekly statistics showed.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Oregon are at the highest risk of seeing increased activity by right-wing militia groups during and after the election, according to a new report from a nonprofit monitoring political violence in the United States.

The report also identifies the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Bois as the right-wing groups at “highest risk” of violence during and after the election, and the Three Percenters at “high” risk of violence.

The new analysis, from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED) and Militia Watch, is based on research monitoring the activities of more than 80 militias across the United States in recent months.

North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, California, and New Mexico are also at “moderate risk” of seeing heightened militia activity around the election, the analysts concluded.

While militia groups have been active in dozens states this year, the analysts concluded that the areas at heightened risk of militia activity would be places that:

-have seen substantial engagement in anti-coronavirus lockdown protests

-have seen militias active in organizing trainings or holding recruitment drives

-where militia members have cultivated personal relationships with police or where there has been a friendly attitude by law enforcement towards militia activity

-are places were militias might make claims about a ‘leftist coup’ during or after the election

-and, of course, are swing states

Trump posts 60 Minutes interview

Donald Trump has posted a video of his interview with CBS journalist Leslie Stahl, recorded for the news show 60 Minutes.

The president had threatened to post the video this week, after it was reported he had abruptly ended the 60 Minutes interview “because he was frustrated with Stahl’s line of questioning”.

The video was posted to Trump’s Facebook page at 11.20am, under the line: “Look at the bias, hatred and rudeness on behalf of 60 Minutes and CBS.”

Trump added: “Tonight’s [presidential debate] anchor, Kristen Welker, is far worse!”

Trump had apparently been upset by the tone of the interview. The start of the video shows Trump asking Stahl for “fairness”.

Stahl tells Trump he will get fairness. She asks: “You’re ok with some tough questions?”

Trump replies: “No I’m not.”

“You’re not ok with tough questions?” a laughing Stahl asks.

Trump says: “I want it to be fair. You don’t ask Biden tough questions.”

Joe Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 ahead of the presidential debate, CNN’s Sarah Mucha reported.

“Vice President Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected,” Biden’s campaign said.

Biden and Trump face each other in Nashville, Tennessee tonight, in the final debate.

Trump's Twitter was hacked by Dutch security researcher

Donald Trump’s Twitter account was hacked last week, after a Dutch researcher correctly guessed the president’s password: “maga2020!”.

Victor Gevers, a security expert, had access to Trump’s direct messages, could post tweets in his name and change his profile, de Volkskrant reported.

Gevers – who previously managed to log into Trump’s account in 2016 – gained access by guessing Trump’s password. Maga2020, a popular tag for Trump’s re-election campaign, was Gevers’ fifth attempt – and it worked.

“I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information,” Gevers told de Volkskrant.

Twitter said it had “seen no evidence to corroborate” Gevers’ claim.

Gevers said the ease with which he accessed Trump’s account suggested the president was not using basic security measures like two-step verification.

Gaining access to Trump’s Twitter, meant Gevers was suddenly able to connect with 87m people – the number of Trump’s followers – and according to de Volkskrant’s story, it sent him into a bit of a panic:

So, he tries to warn others. Trump’s campaign team, his family. He sends messages via Twitter asking if someone will call Trump’s attention to the fact that his Twitter account is not safe. He tags the CIA, the White House, the FBI, Twitter themselves. No response.

A day after he gained access, Gevers noticed that two-step verification had been activated on Trump’s account. Two days later, the Secret Service got in touch. According to de Volkskrant, they thanked him for bringing the security problem to their attention.

Remarkably, it wasn’t the first time Gevers has gained access to the president’s Twitter account. In 2016 he and two others guessed Trump’s password, and got into his account.

Back then Trump’s password was “yourefired”, according to Vrij Nederland.

A spokesman for Twitter said: “We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today. We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government.”

Updated

Donald Trump has lashed out at one of his favorite broadcasters, claiming Fox News’ polls are “FAKE”.

Trump is probably (he didn’t include a link) referring to a new Fox News poll which shows him behind Biden in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin – although Trump does have a narrow lead in Ohio.

Unfortunately for Trump, it’s not just the Fox News poll that has him struggling. RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump significantly behind Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump is also trailing – but much more narrowly – in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona.

Kamala Harris: supreme court nomination a 'sham'

Vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has responded to the approval of Amy Coney Barrett – calling the process a “sham” and warning it could have a devastating impact on healthcare:

Barrett will now face a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, and Harris is not the only one aggrieved.

Updated

“We did it. We did it,” Lindsey Graham announces of the Amy Coney Barrett vote.

“Judge Barrett is going to the floor.”

Graham hands over some time to his fellow Republican senators – Democrats having abstained from the hearing. Mike Lee, from Utah, is first up and emits some hot air about values or similar.

Here’s Lee in March 2019 using a photo of Ronald Reagan to argue against the climate change-combatting Green New Deal.

Senate judiciary committee approves Amy Coney Barrett

The Senate judiciary committee has voted to report the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the full Senate.

Democrats boycotted the hearing, meaning it was an unusual scene as the committee clerk collected verbal votes from the committee.

Large, poster-sized photos of Americans who could lose healthcare at the whim of a Supreme Court vote had been placed in each of the Democrats seats, but as their names were called, there was silence.

The Republicans present chirped out their “yay” votes, however, and the clerk announced:

“Mr Chairman, the votes are 12 yays, 10 no votes.”

That means there will be a full vote in the Senate on whether to confirm Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Updated

Vote on Amy Coney Barrett confirmation to begin

Lindsey Graham has kicked off the Senate judiciary committee vote on nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Democrats have boycotted the vote, which will decide whether Coney Barrett moves to the next stage of the process.

Graham, chair of judiciary committee, only briefly commented on the absence of Democrats, who are outraged that a judge could be voted onto the Supreme Court in the middle of an election.

“They [Democrats] made a choice not to participate,” Graham said. The South Carolina senator added that he thought Democrats had not gone “too far” in their questioning of Coney Barrett last week.

“It’s moments like this you can tell young conservative women there is a place at the table for you,” Graham said.

He said conservative women in America are “marginalized”.

“It’s ok to be a complete person and be on the Supreme Court it’s ok to be pro-life.”

This is Adam Gabbatt taking over from Martin Belam.

That’s it from me today, I’m handing over to Adam Gabbatt who will be with you shortly to take you through this morning’s committee vote over Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the US supreme court. You’ll be able to watch that right here – you may need to refresh the page for the video to appear. I’ll see you tomorrow…

Pelosi 'pretty soon ready to put pen to paper' with Mnuchin over coronavirus stimulus package

Nancy Pelosi has been on MSNBC this morning. She said that negotiations over a coronavirus stimulus deal were “on a good path” and that she and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin were “pretty soon ready to put pen to paper”.

Vice have published an investigation this morning which they say shows that the US eliminated nearly 21,000 election day polling locations for 2020. Cameron Joseph and Rob Arthur report:

Almost 21,000 Election Day polling places have been eliminated heading into the 2020 US election, a drastic dip in voting locations driven by a heavy shift to mail voting, coronavirus-related consolidations, cost-cutting measures, and voter suppression.

Vice obtained data from all 50 states and Washington, DC, on the number of physical polling locations they will have in place on November 3, and compared their numbers to how many sites they had in 2016 and 2012.

What emerged was a patchwork of cuts large and small across the country. Many states made these cuts as they were expanding mail voting — 23 states made it easier to vote by mail this year because of COVID. But the overall trend is clear: Most states are eliminating polling locations, a trend that could disproportionately impact poor, young and non-white voters.

Of the 45 states that weren’t using mail voting exclusively before the 2020 election, 40 of them have decreased the number of Election Day voting locations from 2016. Of those 40 states who made cuts, 35 are not sending mail ballots to everyone, and 19 require many voters to take it upon themselves to apply for a mail ballot application. The five states that refused to allow mail voting for most people all cut voting sites, including the emerging swing state of Texas.

Read more here: Vice – The US Eliminated Nearly 21,000 Election Day Polling Locations for 2020

Number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefit falls to lowest level since Covid crisis began

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefit has fallen to its lowest level since the Covid-19 crisis began.

Around 787,000 new ‘initial claims’ for jobless support were filed last week. That’s the smallest increase since March, when the US economy began to lock down.

The previous week’s total has been revised down too, to 842,000 from 898,000 (these are the seasonally-adjusted numbers).

The dip below 800,000 is good news but the number remains historically high. Before the pandemic struck the US was averaging about 200,000 unemployment claims per week.

This week’s number is particularly important because it overlaps with the Labor Department’s monthly survey of the jobs market. But that figure will not be released until 6 November, after the election.

Now, this is still an awful lot of people losing their jobs in a week - showing that the US labor market is still weak. But after months of elevated initial claims, the total has moved in the right direction.

The continuing claim total (those who have received at least two weeks of support), fell to 8.373m from 9.397m a week earlier. That could be due to people returning to the jobs market, or finding that their entitlement has now run out.

Updated

US Ice officers 'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'

US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.

Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.

According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.

Read more from Julian Borger here: US Ice officers ‘used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders’

Biden: I'll form 180 day national bipartisan commission on court reform

CBS have released this morning a preview clip of Joe Biden’s interview which they will transmit at the weekend. In it Biden is asked about ‘court packing’, a topic on which he has been persistently pressed since the Republicans began the nomination process to confirm Amy Coney Barrett. In the clip, the Democratic nominee says:

I’ll put together a national bipartisan commission of constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative. And I will ask them to over 180 days come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system, because it’s getting out of whack, the way which is being handled. And it’s not about court packing, there’s a number of other things that constitutional scholars have debated and I’d look to see what recommendations that commission might make.

Describing the issue as a ‘live ball’, Biden goes on to say:

The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations.

You can watch the clip here:

Incidentally, while on the subject of the courts, you’ll be able to watch a live feed of the latest session as Republicans attempt to seal Amy Coney Barrett’s seat on the US supreme court right here on the blog.

We had a live online panel discussion this week featuring our senior political reporters Daniel Strauss and Lauren Gambino and the Guardian’s US columnist Richard Wolffe discussing the US election. Jonathan Freedland was in the chair. If you missed it, then it is now available as a podcast.

The president is up and tweeting – his first couple of tweets were ‘Depression!’ and ‘Virginia!’. Amazing! He’s just returned to the theme of the CBS interview that he abruptly ended the taping of this week.

Describing it as a “vicious attempted ‘takeout’ interview”, he complains that he was frequently interrupted and is promising again to share the footage before the actual air date of the interview.

Trump will be taking part in the final televised debate today, where he can be reassured that thanks to new rules on mic muting, Joe Biden will not be able to interrupt or talk across him for at least two minutes during each of the topic segments.

Barack Obama issues video showing him voting by mail for Joe Biden

Barack Obama has just tweeted that he has voted by mail, along with an instructional video about how to vote.

“Generally I don’t share my ballot,” says the former president, “In this case though I think you all know, I’m voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

In an attempt to demystify the voting by mail process, he also urges the American public to vote ‘back and front’ on their ballots.

The presidential election gets all the attention. But in fact, oftentimes, you’re going to have a bunch of local races to vote. You may find that some of these local races you don’t know what they mean. You don’t know who might be the most qualified. A lot of times, what you can do, is find some news source or information source that you trust, or an organisation in your community that reflects your views or cares about your issues. A lot of times they’ll give you a voter guide, and they can tell you, you know, here are the various candidates and what they stand for, so that you’re informed when you’re actually filling out the rest of your ballot. Even a former president of the United States, sometimes finds this really handy.

Obama also lays on the line what he sees is at stake during the 2020 election, saying that voting is “part of our responsibility as a democracy”.

This is what’s going to end up making it easier for us to get health care to people. This is what’s going to end up allowing us to solve big problems like climate change and reform of our criminal justice system. It’s not a lot. And you saw how long it took. So make sure that you are exercising your power in this election.

He also adds that the voting pack includes instructions for how to peel the “I voted” sticker that comes with it. “I didn’t really actually have to read” jokes Obama.

The video release was carefully co-ordinated with the Biden campaign, with the nominee sharing the video almost immediately after.

Updated

CNN have a piece this morning looking at how the two major parties are preparing their respective armies of ‘poll watchers’ for election day.

Republicans and Democrats are signing up tens of thousands of people to be poll watchers across the country, in an effort to act as the backbone for the campaigns’ sprawling legal operations, keeping a close eye for any anomalies.

Through meetings and virtual trainings, each party is meticulously training their poll watchers to document, record and quickly pass along any important incidents they witness to their respective legal teams, which could later be used as evidence in legal disputes.

There’s clearly a useful reason for having poll watchers, although the roll has been abused in the past – in 1981 a Republican ‘task force’ intimidated voters at the polls.

Poll watchers are expected to alert the campaigns quickly to problems like long lines, broken voter machines or problems with voter rolls – issues that are likely to pop up and often lead to quick legal action to allow polling places to stay open later than scheduled. They also can help campaigns’ get-out-the-vote operation by alerting them to areas where the number of voters is low.

However, this year there is a particular concern about the way that the president has been mobilising his support.

Democrats, have raised alarms at Trump’s rhetoric, saying at the first debate that his supporters should “go to the polls and watch very carefully.” Local election officials warned the comments sounded more like voter intimidation than just poll watching, and they’re bracing for potential conflict on election day. In many states, official poll watching operations are carefully regulated, including limiting the number of watchers per campaign, but those rules typically don’t go beyond a certain distance from the polls.

Read more here: CNN – How the campaigns are preparing to deploy thousands of poll watchers

Edward Snowden granted permanent residency rights by Russia – reports

The TASS news agency in Russia has cited Edward Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena saying that Russia has granted the US whistleblower permanent residency rights.

Snowden flew to Russia from Hong Kong in June 2013. At first, because his US passport had been cancelled, authorities compelled him to stay in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. After 39 days he was allowed to leave, and has since been relying on repeatedly extended temporary asylum to stay in the country.

There’s been quite the online reaction to the scenes of Rudy Giuliani in the new Borat movie. In the film the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.

It’s just one release in the run-up to the US election seeking to make a political impact. Charles Bramesco writes for us this morning asking can entertainment really affect an election?

The run-up to the presidential election has brought about an explosion of topical projects announcing themselves as a noble bulwark against the encroaching threat of another Trump term. And with them, the age-old debate over what any of this actually accomplishes has been reignited. Every time a film introduces itself as the one we need right now, it must first answer the question of whether a film is what we really need. As of late, the arguments have not been especially compelling.

Read more here: Borat v Trump – can entertainment really affect an election?

Washington Post: Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day

The Washington Post’s over-worked fact-checkers have written this morning that in the run-up to the election, Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day. You’ve got to feel for them…

As President Trump entered the final stretch of the election season, he began making more than 50 false or misleading claims a day. It’s only gotten worse — so much so that the Fact Checker team cannot keep up.

As of 27 August, the tally in our database that tracks every errant claim by the president stood at 22,247 claims in 1,316 days.

Note the date. That was when he gave his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination. We’ve been able to update the database only to that point as of today — so already we are eight weeks behind. (We maintain this database mostly in our spare time, in addition to our day jobs.)

In 2017, Trump’s first year as president, he averaged six claims a day. That jumped to 16 a day in 2018 and 22 in 2019. So far in 2020, the president has averaged 27 claims a day. At his current pace, the president will surely exceed 25,000 claims before Election Day. In fact, he probably crossed that threshold this week. But who knows when we will be able to confirm that.

Down in the polls, the president has amped up his rhetoric and often scheduled two or three rallies, interviews with friendly TV hosts and repeated press availabilities in a single day. That has left us swamped and exhausted as we plow through tens of thousands of presidential words a day.

They’ve now classified as many as 48 things as “Bottomless Pinocchios” – false claims that have been repeated twenty times or more.

Read more here: Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day

Here’s a little run-down of some of the things we can expect to see later today.

President Donald Trump heads from the White House at lunchtime to make his was to Nashville, Tennessee. He’ll have a roundtable with supporters at 4pm, and then at 9pm it’s the day’s main event: the TV debate with Joe Biden.

Vice president Mike Pence meanwhile is campaigning at ‘Make America Great Again; events in Waterford Township, Michigan. That will be at 12.35pm. He’ll then be at Fort Wayne, Indiana at 4.30pm for a second event.

Joe Biden’s only engagement today is the debate, while Kamala Harris will takes part in a ‘Women Mobilize for Biden’ virtual rally.

Up on Capitol Hill the Senate judiciary committee debates and votes on nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be a justice on the supreme court from 9am. Chuck Schumer and other Democrats will hold a press conference at around 10.15am following their boycott of the markup.

And Trump-Biden isn’t the only debate tonight. In Maine, in what is looking like a competitive race, Republican incumbent Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Sara Gideon take part in a debate ahead of the US Senate election. The last couple of polls in the race have given Gideon the edge.

Xochitl Oseguera writes for us today about the secret weapon being used to reach Latino voters – WhatsApp.

Every election season we are flooded with headlines that suggest Latinos do not vote, despite being the largest racial or ethnic minority voting in the US presidential election this November. This stereotype has led to Latino voters being lumped together as “unmotivated” and “unengaged”. This year, we are going to show that not only do we vote, but we organize, educate and fill in the gaps where many presidential candidates have fallen short in motivating our communities.

There are so many different cultures represented by the “Latinx” label, but one thing we all have in common is the undeniable power of the mamá. Debates happen and decisions are made at our mom’s dinner tables, and we have begun to turn this power into political engagement. To channel this energy, mom-led organizations like MamásConPoder are taking a new approach this year: WhatsApp.

This work is critical, since Latinx communities historically have gone overlooked and unengaged by political campaigns. The apathy from political candidates has been so blatant that ahead of the presidential primary in Texas – a critical state for candidates of both parties – a poll from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement showed that 75% of young Latinos in Texas had not heard from any presidential campaign in the six months before the survey.

This lack of engagement has been mirrored across the country and across political parties. This is unacceptable. We – mothers, organizers and community leaders – are fighting for the rights we all deserve and stepping in because we know from experience that if we don’t do it ourselves, no one else will.

Read more here: Xochitl Oseguera – Our secret weapon for reaching Latino voters? WhatsApp

Susan Page for USA Today gives us this assessment of what the candidates need to do at tonight’s debate. She says for Joe Biden it’s a much simpler task: don’t rock the boat. She quotes Alan Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor and author of ‘Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV.’

The debate will give Trump his last big platform for reaching the entire nation, not just his supporters or his acolytes in the conservative media, so there’s a lot riding on it for him. Biden’s chief task is to let Trump be Trump and, to the extent possible, get out of his way while he self-implodes.

But Page also points out that maybe there isn’t much chance of shifting the dial, because there isn’t much on offer to shift.

That’s another challenge for Trump. Views are so firmly entrenched that the pool of voters open to persuasion has nearly evaporated. In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released this week, just 5% of likely voters are undecided, and only 3% say there is even “a chance I will change my mind.”

Page reports that Trump strategists predict he will moderate his rhetoric in this final debate, but she notes:

There have been no signs of temperance by the presidentin recent days. He has aired grievances and picked a public fight with Anthony Fauci, someone who has higher favorable ratings than the president. Nor has Trump spent much time behind closed doors preparing for the debate, instead appearing at a series of combative rallies. He denounced anchor Kristen Welker, a White House correspondent for NBC, as “terrible” and a “radical Democrat.”

Twelve days before the balloting ends, no other tactic or event – not TV ads nor campaign rallies nor incendiary tweets – has so much potential to change this trajectory of the election. The president needs the debate to shake up a race that he otherwise seems headed toward losing.

Read more here: USA Today – Last chance for a long ball: Can Trump use the Nashville debate to shake up a race he’s losing to Biden?

Here’s another clip from Barack Obama’s campaign appearances yesterday.

Ahead of a drive-in rally for Joe Biden, during a discussion with black male community leaders, the former president praised young Black Lives Matter demonstrators, saying they gave him ‘optimism’.

At his Philadelphia campaign event, Obama emphasized the need for young voters to make it to the polls to ensure a better future for the country.

Kremlin says accusations it is interfering in US elections 'unfounded'

As sure as night follows day, Russia has followed Iran in responding to the FBI assertion that it was interfering with the US election.

The Kremlin has this morning denied the allegations, calling the accusations of hacking unfounded.

Years before anti-mask and reopening demonstrations, vaccine opponents were working on reinventing their image around a rallying cry of civil liberties and medical freedom. Now, boosted by the coronavirus pandemic and current political climate, their rebranding is appealing to a different subset of society invested in civil liberties and, some health officials say, undercutting public health efforts during a critical moment for vaccines.

Beatrice Dupuy, part of the Associated Press’ news verification team, reports that a new analysis from several institutions has found that between 2009 to 2019, conversations around civil liberties in the anti-vaccine community had increased, with Facebook pages framing vaccines as an issue of values and civil rights.

Researchers reviewed over 200 Facebook pages supporting vaccine refusal for their paper published in the American Journal of Public Health this month. David A. Broniatowski, the paper’s lead author, said current protests against government lockdowns and masks took their pages directly from the anti-vaccine playbook.

“We could’ve seen it coming,” said Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “This was all happening right under our noses, and it’s continuing to happen.”

Anita Garcia has been protesting vaccines for years and recently took part in protests against the flu mandate in Massachusetts, where she is from. Garcia is a member of a Facebook group called “Massachusetts for Medical Freedom.”

She said that with the flu mandate demonstrations, she is seeing protesters turn out to object to what they consider government overreach. “All you can do is try to fight for your freedom,” Garcia said. “We are for medical freedom, bodily autonomy. Our bodies are ours, not for someone else to govern.”

Vaccines, though, save lives 2 to 3 million a year, according to World Health Organization estimates. And vaccines have all but eliminated from American life such childhood diseases as measles, which regularly infected 3 to 4 million people a year in the United States before a vaccine was developed.

Historically, the anti-vaccine community has been known for its concerns around vaccine safety and the long debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Broniatowski and researchers found, though, that civil liberties have emerged as a common narrative among vaccine refusal pages on Facebook, including those who also supported alternative medicine and conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

The rebranding to emphasize liberties is allowing vaccine opponents to exploit American reactions to the pandemic, said Dorit Reiss, a University of California Hastings law professor who specializes in policy issues related to vaccines.

“I do think we are seeing an increase in people in support of them just because more people are vulnerable, upset and distrustful,” Reiss said. “And the anti-vaccine movement knows exactly what to say.”

In May, a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 31 percent of Americans were unsure if they would get the Covid-19 vaccine once released.

“You can see the consequences to these groups sowing distrust around vaccines. And they really matter, and they are going to come out in this pandemic,” said Mark Dredze, associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and one of the paper’s authors.

Covid cases increase across US as upper midwest sees rapid rise

Jessica Glenza has the latest coronavirus news for us, reporting that Covid cases continue to increase across the US as the upper midwest sees a rapid rise.

Covid-19 cases are increasing across the United States and surging in the upper midwest, in what appears to be a third pandemic peak. In North Dakota, cases are increasing at a higher and faster rate per capita than in any other state throughout the pandemic so far.

Experts have long predicted cooler weather and pandemic fatigue would increase the spread of Covid-19 this fall. That now appears to be coming to pass, coupled with the longer and higher levels of death and disease the US has seen throughout the pandemic compared to peer countries.

“Everyone who knew anything about infectious disease and epidemiology predicted this six to eight months ago,” said Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, vice-provost for global initiatives at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Yes, it will surge in the fall, and the reason it will surge is because we are moving indoors,” said Emanuel. “Our surge is much higher than the surges in general,” he said, because the US has started, “from a higher baseline”.

Surges are especially pronounced in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, according to the Covid Tracking Project, but states from Wisconsin to Kentucky to Massachusetts are also seeing the curve bend upwards.

Last week, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, activated a field hospital on state fairgrounds to expand treatment capacity. Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, called increasing cases “grim” and said officials were now revisiting surge plans made last spring.

Read more here: Covid cases increase across US as upper midwest sees rapid rise

Here are the latest numbers in graphic form.

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Just a little more on that Iran situation, there’s a quick snap from Reuters that Iran has summoned the Swiss envoy to protest against what it called “baseless” FBI claims that Tehran has tried to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.

“Iran’s strong rejection of American officials’ repetitive, baseless and false claims was conveyed to the Swiss ambassador...As we have said before, it makes no difference for Iran who wins the US election,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told state TV.

Switzerland represents US interests in Iran because Washington and Tehran have no formal official diplomatic ties.

Donald Trump has his last chance to move the dial in the fast-approaching US presidential election when he addresses a large nationwide audience at the final televised presidential debate. The candidates are expected to attract viewership in the tens of millions of Americans for their 90-minute encounter, giving the US president one last crack at shifting a race that has had him trailing the former vice-president for weeks.

The commission on presidential debates on Monday tweaked the format so that the candidates’ microphones are turned off while their opponent is speaking for the opening two minutes of each of six issue segments. For the remainder of each of the 15-minute segments, discussion will be open.

Trump will be under pressure to soften his display compared with the first debate on 29 September, which was widely censured as bullying. Polls conducted after the debate suggested it damaged his already beleaguered standing in key battleground states.

But there were few indications that Trump intends to change tack. On Monday he denigrated moderator Kristen Welker as a “radical left Democrat”, while his campaign has accused the debate commission of being biased towards Biden and objected to the six policy subjects that NBC News has chosen.

They include three areas on which Trump’s record is especially vulnerable – race in America, Covid-19 and climate change – as well as national security, leadership and America’s families.

Trump has also been mired in his by now familiar angry denunciations of figures within his own administration and the media. Instead of making a closing argument to the American people, he has expended valuable political capital calling Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases official, a “disaster” and “idiot”, and storming out of an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes.

The final debate falls at an increasingly anxious time for the Trump re-election campaign. National polls give Biden a steady and clear advantage, such as an 8.5% lead in the Real Clear Politics tracker.

Read more from Ed Pilkington here: Trump gets last chance to claw back Biden lead at final presidential debate

Iran dismisses accusations it has tried to interfere with US election as 'absurd'

The Iranian mission to the United Nations has rejected reports that Tehran has been meddling in the upcoming presidential election. It dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and an attempt to undermine the poll, citing Donald Trump’s own attempts at calling the election “rigged”.

Spokesperson Alireza Miryousefi said:

Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country’s elections. The world has been witnessing the United States’ own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level. These accusations are nothing more than another scenario to undermine voter confidence and are absurd. Iran has no interest in interfering in the US election and no preference for the outcome. The United States must end its malign and dangerous accusations against Iran.

Illinois State Police investigating after Chicago police officer fatally shot Black teen passenger

Illinois State Police are investigating after a suburban Chicago police officer fatally shot a Black teenager who was a passenger in a vehicle that rolled in reverse toward an officer, report the Associated Press.

Officials haven’t identified the dead teen, nor the driver, a Waukegan woman in her 20s who was wounded during the shooting. She was hospitalized in serious condition.

The two were in a vehicle that fled a traffic stop late Tuesday, according to Waukegan police. It was spotted a short time later by an officer on patrol.

While the officer was approaching the vehicle, it began moving in reverse. Authorities said the officer, fearing for his safety, opened fire.

The Lake County coroner’s office has not yet released details on the wounds suffered by the dead teen. No weapon was found in the vehicle, police added.

Body camera and squad car video has been turned over to Illinois State Police, Waukegan police Commander Edgar Navarro said. State police will present its findings to the Lake County state’s attorney’s office.

Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim noted in a statement that it may be several weeks before the investigation is completed. “Once I have had the opportunity to review the entire investigation, I will make a determination regarding whether the officers violated any laws,” Nerheim said. “Should it be determined the officers violated a law, they will be criminally charged.”

Family members of the wounded woman, including her parents, gathered outside Waukegan police headquarters Wednesday afternoon. The woman’s mother said her daughter and the teenager hadn’t done anything to provoke the shooting.

During a news conference, Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham asked city residents to wait until all the facts are known before reacting to the incident.

China will make 'legitimate and necessary response' to US move to designate six Chinese media companies as 'foreign missions'

As you’d expect there’s been a response from China to news that the state department is designating the US operations of six more China-based media companies as foreign missions. Mike Pompeo announced the move, saying was aimed at pushing back against communist propaganda.

The state department named the newly designated publications as the Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, the Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, the Beijing Review, and the Economic Daily. It brought to 15 the number of Chinese media outlets listed in this way this year.

“They are also substantially owned, or effectively controlled by a foreign government,” Pompeo said.

“We are not placing any restrictions on what these outlets can publish in the United States; we simply want to ensure that American people, consumers of information can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself. Not the same thing.”

This morning Reuters report that a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the country will make “a legitimate and necessary response” to the US action.

The move amounts to “political oppression” and comes from a Cold War mentality, Zhao Lijian told a regular news conference in the Chinese capital.

Updated

Chuck Schumer was clearly in a combative mood overnight. As well as that appearance on the Rachel Maddow show, he tweeted out a campaign ad highlighting all the times that president Donald Trump has promised that he is going to produce a new healthcare plan for the US, saying “The election is less than two weeks away, so it’s probably about time for President Trump to lie again that he has a healthcare plan that will come out in two weeks.”

CNN Poll: Biden leads in Pennsylvania, Florida too close to call

Right, notwithstanding Mona Chalabi’s fine words of caution about polling, CNN are excited this morning about some new polling numbers. Neat segue, huh?

Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a lead in Pennsylvania and neither he nor President Donald Trump leads in the critical state of Florida, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS.

The polls, which completed fielding two weeks before Election Day, find sizable minorities of voters saying they have already voted, with those voters breaking heavily for Biden in both states. Those who have yet to cast their ballots, though, break in Trump’s favor, but not by as large a margin as Biden holds among those who have voted now.

In Florida, which has 29 electoral votes and is a critical battleground in the presidential race, 50% of likely voters say they back Biden, 46% Trump. The difference between the two is right at the poll’s margin of sampling error, meaning there is no clear leader in the survey.

The Pennsylvania results show Biden well ahead in the state, which holds 20 electoral votes, with 53% of likely voters behind him and 43% backing Trump.

Former president Barack Obama will be travelling to Miami on Saturday to campaign for Biden, that’s just a day after Trump also visits Florida for a ‘Make America Great Again’ rally in The Villages.

Read more here: CNN – Polls: Biden holds double-digit lead in Pennsylvania, while Florida is tight

It’s a question everybody is thinking about as election day approaches. The polls are showing a huge national lead for Joe Biden – but after the experience of 2016, can they be trusted?

While polls had correctly predicted Hillary Clinton’s majority in the popular vote, last time out they had catastrophically missed the bigger story: Trump had won in the key swing states to clinch the presidency via the electoral college.

In today’s edition of our award-winning Today in Focus podcast, US data editor Mona Chalabi casts a sceptical eye over the US polling industry.

She asks if those trends they missed in 2016 have now been properly accounted for? And should parts of the media be far more sceptical than they currently are about the scientific-sounding claims of the major polling sites?

Sen. Chuck Schumer was on the Rachel Maddow show last night, and here’s what he said about Republican plans today to push through a Senate judiciary committee vote on nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court.

He accused his Republican counterparts of “defiling” the Senate and described the process as “despicable”, saying that they are trying to rush through the nomination because “they don’t want the American people to know what Amy Coney Barrett stands for”.

He confirmed that Democrats will not attend the vote today.

The rules of the committee require two Democrats to be there to move a nominee out, and we do not want to provide the quorum. We do not want to participate. This process is the most rushed, the most illegitimate, the most hypocritical process of any Supreme Court nominee we have ever, ever seen. The Republicans just at will try to break the rules. They are so hell bent on rushing this nominee through. I think the reason is, the longer it takes, the more things are going to come out that show that Amy Coney Barrett is so far away from the American mainstream, in terms of what she believes on a woman’s right to choose, healthcare, labor rights, civil rights, gun gun safety LGBTQ rights, that they don’t want it out there very long.

You can watch the clip here:

Barack Obama delivered a stinging rebuke yesterday of president Donald Trump in a speech delivered in Philadelphia while campaigning for Joe Biden.

Obama criticised Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis as well as divisive behaviour including retweeting conspiracy theories that you wouldn’t tolerate from anyone “except from a crazy uncle”.

The former president also praised the positivity shown during the pandemic and recent Black Lives Matter movement . “We see that what is best is us is still there, but we’ve got to give it voice.”

Obama’s comments did not go unnoticed by the president. Later that day, at his rally, he said the former president underestimated him in 2016. “I think the only one, the only one more unhappy than crooked Hillary that night was Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said.

Less than two weeks from the election, Trump’s campaign took him to North Carolina, where he told supporters “I love this particular state, but I might not have come here so often. I’ve been all over your state, you better let me win”

Welcome to today’s live coverage of US politics, on what will be a busy day ahead of 3 November’s election.

  • The Senate judiciary committee will attempt to move Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the US supreme court to the next stage. Democrats are expected to boycott a vote scheduled for today.
  • Donald Trump and Joe Biden will hold the second, and final, presidential TV debate in Nashville. Mics will be muted for the first time, following Trump’s bellicose hectoring in the widely derided first debate.
  • Rudy Giuliani is facing questions after a compromising scene appeared in the new Borat film.
  • Former president Barack Obama was out campaigning for Biden yesterday, telling voters “What we do now these next 13 days will matter for decades to come”.
  • A Maryland man has been charged with making death threats against Biden and Harris.
  • The FBI has warned that Russia and Iran obtained US voter data in a bid to sow unrest before the election.
  • As of 2:25am EST this morning, the US had suffered 8,328,766 cases of coronavirus leading to 222,049 deaths. In the previous 24 hours, 62,735 new Covid cases and 1,124 new deaths were recorded.

I’m Martin Belam, and I’ll be with you for the next few hours – you can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

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