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

Coronavirus economic relief talks resume as McConnell reportedly offers resistance - as it happened

Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans that a deal on a coronavirus economic bill is ‘unlikely in the next three weeks’.
Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans that a deal on a coronavirus economic bill is ‘unlikely in the next three weeks’. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

Summary

  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin had another call about a coronavirus relief bill. After the call, Pelosi said the she is “closer” to reaching a deal with the White House, but she acknowledged earlier today that a relief bill may not be passed until after Election Day.
  • Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans that he has urged the White House not to push for a coronavirus relief deal before the election. According to multiple reports, the Senate majority leader expressed concern that a coronavirus relief deal could complicate the timing of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the supreme court. McConnell currently plans to hold a final vote on Barrett’s nomination next Monday.
  • The US has seen nearly 300,000 excess deaths since late January, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said 299,028 excess deaths occurred in the US between January 26 and October 3.
  • The justice department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search engine giant of unfairly stifling competition. Attorney general William Barr described the lawsuit as “a monumental case for the Department of Justice and, more importantly, for the American consumer.”
  • USA Today gave its first-ever presidential endorsement to Joe Biden. “Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos,” the newspaper’s editorial board said in the endorsement.
  • Melania Trump canceled her planned appearance at a Pennsylvania campaign rally tonight due to a lingering cough from coronavirus. The first lady’s chief of staff said she had canceled her travel plans out an abundance of caution about her lingering symptoms.
  • Trump’s financial documents revealed that the president has a bank account in China, per the latest installment in a New York Times series investigating the president’s tax records. Trump often derides his opponent as a China sympathizer, pointing to Hunter Biden’s dealings in China as evidence.
  • Lawyers said they were unable to reach the parents of 545 children separated at the border by the Trump administration. In a legal filing, they said about two-thirds of parents may have already been deported.

– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

Trump fundraiser pleads guilty to operating as an unregistered foreign agent

Elliott Broidy, a major fundraiser for Republicans and Trump has pleaded guilty to a rare charge of conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Broidy was charged with working on behalf of Malaysian and Chinese interests, accepting millions of dollars to lobby the Trump administration. Trump associates Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were also prosecuted based on their foreign lobbying.

“Elliott Broidy sought to lobby the highest levels of the U.S. government to drop one of the largest fraud and money laundering prosecutions ever brought and to deport a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, all the while concealing the foreign interests whose bidding he was doing,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers wrote in a statement.

A state appellate court has ordered California to half the population of San Quentin prison, where a devastating outbreak of Covid-19 has lead to at least 28 deaths.

The ruling would require the prison to transfer or release at least 1,700 people, Politico reports.

My colleague Abené Clayton reported on the outbreak at San Quentin earlier this year:

Lawyers said they're unable to reach the parents of hundreds of children separated at the border

Lawyers have been unable to locate the families of 545 children separated from their parents due to a Trump immigration policy. In a court filing today, a committee assigned to reunify families ripped apart by the policy has attempted to find the parents and guardians for 1,030 children – but have not been able to reach the families of 545.

About “two-thirds” of the parents may have been deported without their children, the filing said.

“Following a suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic, limited physical on-the-ground searches for separated parents has now resumed where possible to do so while protecting the health of personnel working with the steering committee and members of vulnerable communities in separated parents’ home countries,” the filing said.

In 2018, the Trump administration issued a “zero tolerance” policy that separated children from their families at the southern border. About 2,800 families separated under that policy, which was reversed under immense political pressure.

But the administration had begun separating families earlier as part of a pilot program – and many of the parents had been deported before a US judge mandated that they be reunited.

Updated

Paola Rosa-Aquino reports:

The prognosis for biodiversity on Earth is grim. According to a sobering report released by the United Nations last year, 1 million land and marine species across the globe are threatened with extinction – more than at any other period in human history.

According to a recent study, about 20% of the countries in the world risk ecosystem collapse due to the destruction of wildlife and their habitats, a result of human activity in tandem with a warming climate. The United States is the ninth most at risk.

Despite this desperate outlook, the Trump administration, as part of its aggressive rollback of regulations designed to protect the environment, has lifted protections for America’s animals. It has shrunk several national monuments and opened up a huge amount of federal land for oil and gas drilling, coalmining and other industrial activities – actions that conservationists warn could imperil species whose numbers are already dwindling and that are core to the health of our ecosystems.

Here we look at some of the animals most at risk from Trump’s rollbacks.

In the latest installment of their series on Trump’s financial records, reporters at the New York Times have found that the president has a bank account in China.

The Times reports:

President Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.

In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there.

Washington's crackdown on Google is the greatest threat yet to Big Tech

Kari Paul in San Francisco reports:

For decades, companies like Google have enjoyed exponential growth and an almost unobstructed rise to power. But the tide appears to be turning, as US lawmakers crack down on alleged monopolistic practices and public sentiment sours on the former wunderkinds of Silicon Valley.

Antitrust charges brought against Google on Tuesday by the US justice department mark the latest – and most significant – legal challenge yet for big tech.

Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, and a longtime critic of tech monopolies, calls the case “an incredibly important statement of intent”.

“By the time this ends I think we will see a radically different company and industry,” he said.

But the charges are also “just a start”, he said, and questions remain about exactly what laws will be created to regulate big tech, with partisan bias and a disorganized smattering of agencies investigating tech firms muddying the waters.

The charges filed against Google are not without controversy. The case was reportedly rushed through by Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, who pushed for it to be filed against the wishes of lawyers who wanted to take more time on the case. Doing so on the cusp of an election that may result in a change of administration “could be detrimental” to the long-term goal of reining in tech giants, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor.

“It is altogether messy,” he said. “It is not clear whether what comes out of it will be systematic and well-thought-through.”

The Department of Justice is just one entity racing to take action against Google. In September 2019, attorneys general in 50 US states and territories announced an investigation into both Google and Facebook over alleged “monopolistic behavior”. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has been separately investigating Amazon and Facebook to determine if they abused their massive market power. And in October, a major report detailing an investigation by the House judiciary committee concluded that big tech wielded “too much power” and was censoring political speech, spreading fake news and “killing” the engines of the American economy.

The investigations are made more complicated by the fact that opposition to big tech has become largely politicized, with Democrats mostly targeting companies for their monopoly power and Republicans accusing them of censoring conservative speech.

A new lawsuit filed by environmental and human rights groups in Oregon alleges that federal agencies’ use of chemical crowd control weapons in Portland, like CS gas, has created “potentially grave health and environmental hazards”, and that the use of such weapons should be subject to assessments of its environmental impact.

The complaint filed Tuesday by Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticide (NCAP), Willamette Riverkeeper, Cascadia Widlands, Neighbors for Clean Air (NCA), 350 Portland and the ACLU of Oregon names the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its acting secretary Chad Wolf as defendants.

It seeks remedies for what it calls “months of sustained, repeated, high-volume use of teargas and other chemical munitions” in response to demonstrations in Portland.

Updated

Donald Trump appears to be angry about his 60 Minutes interview – which he reportedly only taped for 45 minutes.

The president, who has been ramping up attacks on the media ahead of the election, is apparently displeased with how the interview was conducted and has taken to Twitter. To retaliate for what he characterized as a “FAKE and BIASED interview”, Trump is threatening to ... post the interview online “PRIOR TO AIRTIME!”

Updated

Two hundred million miles from Earth, NASA’s first asteroid-sampling spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has made contact with asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of space rocks.

If the mission is successful, scientists will be able to study the rocks to learn more about the solar system – including what it was like at the beginning, 4.5bn years ago.

No surprise here, but the Senate has defeated the $2.2tn stimulus bill that the House passed.

House Speaker Pelosi and the White House are continuing negotiations, but Senate leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans that a deal is “unlikely in the next three weeks”.

Electoral college explained: how Biden faces an uphill battle in the US election

Helena Robertson, Ashley Kirk and Frank Hulley-Jones report:

When Americans cast their ballots for the US president, they are actually voting for a representative of that candidate’s party known as an elector. There are 538 electors who then vote for the president on behalf of the people in their state.

Each state is assigned a certain number of these electoral votes, based on the number of congressional districts they have, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC is also assigned three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress. A majority of 270 of these votes is needed to win the presidency.

The process of nominating electors varies by state and by party, but is generally done one of two ways. Ahead of the election, political parties either choose electors at their national conventions, or they are voted for by the party’s central committee.

The electoral college nearly always operates with a winner-takes-all system, in which the candidate with the highest number of votes in a state claims all of that state’s electoral votes. For example, in 2016, Trump beat Clinton in Florida by a margin of just 2.2%, but that meant he claimed all 29 of Florida’s crucial electoral votes.

Such small margins in a handful of key swing states meant that, regardless of Clinton’s national vote lead, Trump was able to clinch victory in several swing states and therefore win more electoral college votes.

Biden could face the same hurdle in November, meaning he will need to focus his attention on a handful of battleground states to win the presidency.

President Barack Obama has taped a new ad supporting the Democratic challenger to senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.

“If you want a senator that will fight for criminal justice reform, lower college costs and to make health care affordable, you’ve got to vote for my friend Jaime Harrison,” Obama says in the video. “Now you have the power to make history again by sending Jaime Harrison to the US Senate.”

Graham, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, has been derided by his opponent for promising to never consider a supreme court nominee during an election year after blocking Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, and then fully reversing course to help rush Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett through.

He has been facing in the toughest reelection campaign of his senate career, with his opponent Harrison outraising him and garnering support from Democrats across the country.

In a fundraising email sent after the Obama ad launched, Graham wrote to supporters: “President Obama’s endorsement makes it absolutely clear that the Left is determined to defeat me and flip the Senate to blue.”

Updated

Pelosi’s chief of staff Drew Hammill has provided more updates about the speaker’s discussion with the treasury secretary. They spoke for 45 minutes, he said, and saw that “decisions could be reached and language could be exchanged, demonstrating that both sides are serious about finding a compromise”.

Both sides plan to meet again tomorrow, Hammill said.

Updated

Today so far

That’s it from me today. I’m handing over the blog to my west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin had another call about a coronavirus relief bill. After the call, Pelosi said the she is “closer” to reaching a deal with the White House, but she acknowledged earlier today that a relief bill may not be passed until after Election Day.
  • Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans that he has urged the White House not to push for a coronavirus relief deal before the election. According to multiple reports, the Senate majority leader expressed concern that a coronavirus relief deal could complicate the timing of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the supreme court. McConnell currently plans to hold a final vote on Barrett’s nomination next Monday.
  • The US has seen nearly 300,000 excess deaths since late January, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said 299,028 excess deaths occurred in the US between January 26 and October 3.
  • The justice department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search engine giant of unfairly stifling competition. Attorney general William Barr described the lawsuit as “a monumental case for the Department of Justice and, more importantly, for the American consumer.”
  • USA Today gave its first-ever presidential endorsement to Joe Biden. “Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos,” the newspaper’s editorial board said in the endorsement.
  • Melania Trump canceled her planned appearance at a Pennsylvania campaign rally tonight due to a lingering cough from coronavirus. The first lady’s chief of staff said she had canceled her travel plans out an abundance of caution about her lingering symptoms.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Pelosi: Democrats and White House are 'closer' to a deal on coronavirus relief

House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped she could reach a deal with the White House on a coronavirus relief bill by the end of the week.

Shortly after the speaker’s call with treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin this afternoon, Pelosi said the two sides were “closer” to an agreement on a relief package.

Asked whether she thought a deal could be reached by the end of the week, Pelosi said, “I hope so. That’s the plan. That’s what I would hope. That’s the hope, let me say that.”

But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans today that he has urged the White House not to move forward with a relief deal before Election Day.

McConnell expressed concern that a vote on a relief bill could complicate the timing of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the supreme court. The Senate leader currently plans to hold a final vote on Barrett’s confirmation next Monday.

Joe Biden received another negative coronavirus test result today, the Democrat’s campaign said.

“Vice-president Biden underwent PCR testing for Covid-19 today and Covid-19 was not detected,” the campaign said in a statement.

Biden has been regularly releasing the results of his coronavirus tests since Trump announced he tested positive earlier this month, shortly after the first presidential debate.

Meanwhile, the president still will not provide a clear answer on when he last tested negative for coronavirus.

Updated

According to CNN, Trump abruptly ended his 60 Minutes interview after 45 minutes and did not return for a planned “walk and talk” with the vice president.

The president’s interview, along with Joe Biden’s 60 Minutes interview, is set to air this Sunday. Biden sat down for his interview yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware.

Updated

Trump tweeted out a video of 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl without a mask in the White House after she interviewed the president for this Sunday’s show.

“Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come,” Trump said in the tweet.

Both Trump and Joe Biden have been interviewed for this Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes.

If his most recent tweet is any indication, the president may not have been too pleased with how his interview unfolded.

Updated

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republicans today that he has warned the White House not to make a deal on coronavirus relief before the election.

The Washington Post reports:

McConnell suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not negotiating in good faith with treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, and any deal they reach could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court next week.

In a Bloomberg interview on Tuesday, Pelosi adamantly denied that she was stringing the White House along and said she wouldn’t be negotiating with the White House if she didn’t want a deal.

But McConnell’s remarks, made in a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, show the raw political calculations that both parties are dealing with two weeks before the November 3 elections. McConnell’s comments were confirmed by two people familiar with them who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them.

Speaking to reporters today, McConnell pledged that he would put a coronavirus relief bill on the Senate floor for a vote if Pelosi and Mnuchin reach a deal.

But the Senate leader would not commit to a timeline for voting, simply saying he would put the bill on the floor “at some point”.

Meanwhile, Barrett’s final confirmation vote is expected to take place next Monday.

Updated

A White House spokesperson said the administration’s offer on the coronavirus relief bill is now up to $1.88tn.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has pushed for a $2.2tn package, but there are ongoing discussions between the speaker and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin about state and local funding in the bill, as well as language over liability.

Again, even if Pelosi and Mnuchin reach a deal on the bill, it’s unclear whether the legislation will be able to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

A number of Republican lawmakers have voiced serious skepticism about passing another massive relief bill, even though Trump is pushing for it.

Updated

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said he had a “long and serious” conversation with Dianne Feinstein, after the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee applauded chairman Lindsey Graham’s handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearings.

“I’ve had a long and serious talk with Senator Feinstein. That’s all I’m going to say about it right now,” Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Feinstein received severe criticism from progressives after she applauded Graham for overseeing “one of the best set of hearings that I have participated in”.

The comments sparked some calls for Feinstein to step down from her senior role on the committee.

“Americans — whose lives hang in the balance — deserve leadership that underscores how unprecedented, shameful and wrong this process is,” said Ilyse Hogue, the president of the abortion rights group NARAL, in a statement last week.

“The ranking member of the Senate judiciary committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, failed to make this clear and in fact offered an appearance of credibility to the proceedings that is wildly out of step with the American people.”

Updated

US has seen nearly 300,000 'excess deaths' since January, CDC says

The US has seen 299,028 excess deaths since January 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report.

“Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to Covid-19,” the CDC report says.

“The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons.”

Among adults aged 25–44 years, the “excess death” rate is up by an alarming 26.5% compared to recent years.

Among Hispanic Americans, the “excess death” rate is up by an even more shocking 53.6%.

“These results inform efforts to prevent mortality directly or indirectly associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, such as efforts to minimize disruptions to health care,” the CDC said.

“CDC continues to recommend the use of masks, frequent handwashing, and maintenance of social distancing to prevent Covid-19.”

Updated

The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports from Miami:

The Miami police department has admonished one of its officers for an “unacceptable” political display after he was photographed Tuesday inside a voting site in the city, in full uniform and wearing a Trump 2020 mask.

Officer Daniel Ubeda was captured in a cell phone image taken by Steve Simeonidis, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, at the Government Center polling site in downtown Miami on the second day of early voting in Florida.

“This is city-funded voter intimidation. Ubeda should be suspended immediately,” Simeonidis said in a tweet accompanying the photograph, pointing out that the officer was armed and inside the voting site. By 2pm Tuesday, the tweet had been shared more than 20,000 times.

In its own tweet, City of Miami police said it was investigating the incident.

“We are aware of the photograph being circulated of a Miami Police officer wearing a political mask in uniform,” the department said. “This behavior is unacceptable, a violation of departmental policy, and is being addressed immediately.”

It’s worth noting that Mitch McConnell said the Senate would consider a coronavirus relief bill “at some point” if a deal is reached between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.

That phrasing leaves it very unclear when the Senate would take up a coronavirus relief package if an agreement is reached.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV earlier today, Pelosi acknowledged that a bill may not be passed until after Election Day, depending on how the negotiations unfold.

McConnell says he will bring coronavirus relief bill up for Senate vote

Mitch McConnell said he would put a coronavirus relief bill on the Senate floor for a vote, if the White House and congressional Democrats can reach a deal on the package.

“If a presidentially-supported bill clears the House, at some point we’ll bring it to the floor,” the Senate majority leader told reporters moments ago.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin are expected to discuss the negotiations again in about a half an hour, and Pelosi has said she is “optimistic” about reaching an agreement.

However, a number of Republican lawmakers are very hesitant to approve another massive relief bill, so it’s still very unclear whether the bill negotiated by Pelosi and Mnuchin could pass the Senate.

Updated

Mitch McConnell confirmed the full Senate vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is expected to take place next Monday.

The Senate judiciary committee is scheduled to consider Barrett’s supreme court nomination on Thursday.

Given that Republicans control the Senate, Barrett is expected to be confirmed, albeit very narrowly.

Democrats have sharply criticized Republicans for planning a final vote on a lifetime appointment just days before the presidential election, but they have little power to change the schedule because they do not control the chamber.

Trump trashes Fauci…'s baseball abilities, again

With the World Series starting on Tuesday night in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump felt it was a perfect time to indulge in one of his favourite hobbies: trashing Dr Anthony Fauci’s baseball abilities.

“Look, he’s a nice guy,” said the president during an appearance on Fox and Friends, of his top public health expert. “He has got a really bad arm and not a good baseball thrower, but he’s a nice guy.”

The striking thing about Trump’s comment is that, for once, he’s right. America’s top infectious diseases expert has a horrible arm, as evidenced when he threw out the first pitch of the season in July.

The throw was consistent: it was both weak and off target. But then again Fauci is 79 years old and has other skills, such as leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under six presidents since 1984, so he’s forgiven.

Trump, naturally, claims he was a superb player. In 2010, he told MTV: “I was supposed to be a professional baseball player.” By 2015, the soon-to-be-president was saying he could have turned professional but “in those days you couldn’t even make any money being a great baseball player”.

Over at Slate, in an entertaining, meticulously researched deep dive, Leander Schaerlaeckens examined the president’s record in high school. His conclusion: “It seems like Trump was a solid defensive first baseman but a bad hitter.”

Keith Law, a senior baseball writer who was once a member of staff at the Toronto Blue Jays, was more withering. Looking at Trump’s .138 batting average in high school (for non-baseball fans, anything below .250 is underwhelming), Law told Schaerlaeckens: “You don’t hit .138 for some podunk, cold-weather high school playing the worst competition you could possibly imagine. You wouldn’t even get recruited for Division I baseball programs, let alone by pro teams. That’s totally unthinkable. It’s absolutely laughable.

“He hit .138 – he couldn’t fucking hit, that’s pretty clear.”

Kyle Cheney, a Politico reporter, offers an elegant distillation of the, uh, unorthodox way things often happen in Trumpworld, in this instance over the president’s declaration earlier this month that he had ordered the declassification of all documents in the Russia investigation.

Short version – he hadn’t.

Cheney version:

A new poll shows the presidential race tied in Georgia, a state that Trump won by 5 points in 2016.

According to the New York Times/Siena College survey, Trump and Joe Biden are each attracting the support of 45% of likely Georgia voters.

The state’s two Senate races, which could help determine control of the chamber, are similarly close.

In the regularly scheduled Senate race, Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican incumbent David Perdue are tied at 43%. Perdue led Ossoff by 4 points in the NYT/Siena poll taken last month.

The special Senate race is almost certainly headed to a runoff, as none of the top three candidates are anywhere near the 50% needed to avoid a runoff.

According to the poll, Democrat Raphael Warnock has the support of 33% of likely voters, while Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler is at 23%. Republican congressman Doug Collins is trailing behind at 17%. The top two finishers in the special election will advance to a January runoff.

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The justice department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search engine giant of unfairly stifling competition. Attorney general William Barr described the lawsuit as “a monumental case for the Department of Justice and, more importantly, for the American consumer.”
  • USA Today gave its first-ever presidential endorsement to Joe Biden. “Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos,” the newspaper’s editorial board said in the endorsement.
  • Melania Trump canceled her planned appearance at a Pennsylvania campaign rally due to a lingering cough from coronavirus. The first lady’s chief of staff said she had canceled her travel plans out an abundance of caution about her lingering symptoms.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin will speak at 3 m ET today to continue negotiations over a coronavirus relief bill.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Pelosi said she was “optimistic” about reaching a deal because the White House had “come a long way” toward an agreement.

The speaker said Democrats and the White House now have “a shared value” because they both want to “crush the virus.”

“Hopefully by the end of the day today we’ll know where we all are,” Pelosi said.

Today was supposed to be the deadline for the two sides to reach an agreement on the relief package, but Pelosi disputed that timing.

“It isn’t that this day was a day we would have a deal. It is a day we would have our terms on the table to be able to go to the next step,” Pelosi said.

The speaker acknowledged the bill may not be passed before Election Day, although Trump is eager for a deal.

First lady cancels campaign travel due to lingering cough from coronavirus - report

First lady Melania Trump, who was supposed to campaign alongside the president in Pennsylvania today, has reportedly canceled her travel because she is suffering from a lingering cough after testing positive for coronavirus.

“Mrs. Trump continues to feel better every day following her recovery from COVID-19, but with a lingering cough, and out of an abundance of caution, she will not be traveling today,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, told the AP.

The first lady tested positive for coronavirus earlier this month, and she later announced her 14-year-old son, Barron, tested positive as well but did not develop symptoms.

Melania Trump said in a statement last week, “I was very fortunate as my diagnosis came with minimal symptoms, though they hit me all at once and it seemed to be a roller coaster of symptoms in the days after. I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time.”

The Guardian’s Alvin Chang, Emily Holden, Oliver Milman and Noa Yachot report:

“I want crystal clean water and air.”

That’s what Donald Trump said in the first chaotic presidential debate with Joe Biden. But there is scant evidence of that desire in the actions of his administration, which has spent nearly four years systematically dismantling core environmental protections, some of which stretch back decades.

Experts agree that the climate crisis’s most destructive manifestations, on display in a particularly difficult year for the US, barely scratch the surface of the catastrophes to come. Yet the president appears unmoved by the enormous wildfires, devastating hurricanes, widespread water problems and persistent air pollution that disproportionately blights black and Latino communities.

His administration has scrapped climate regulations, rolled back clean water rules and loosened pollution standards. Protections for public land and threatened species have been shrunk while new oil pipelines and coal mining have been encouraged.

The legacy of these changes will stretch well beyond Trump’s presidency. Here is a list of some of the key rollbacks of the Trump era.

More than 4.6 million people have already voted in Texas, according to the US Elections Project.

As of today, 4,616,066 Texans have already voted by mail or early in person. That number represents more votes than Trump received in Texas in 2016, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report noted.

Recent polls show Trump and Joe Biden running neck and neck in Texas, which has long been considered a Republican stronghold.

According to the FiveThirtyEight average of Texas polls, the president has a 1.3-point advantage in the state.

CPD pushes back against Trump's attacks on debate moderator

The Commission on Presidential Debates has released a statement pushing back against Trump’s attacks on NBC News reporter Kristen Welker, who will moderate Thursday’s debate.

The CPD also rejected the Trump campaign’s request for the final debate to focus entirely on foreign policy, ignoring the topics already laid out by Welker.

“No debate in 2020 was ever designated by CPD as devoted to foreign or domestic policy,” the CPD said in a tweet. “The same was true in 2016, when President Trump participated in the CPD debates. The choice of topics is left entirely to the journalistic judgment of the moderators.”

The commission added in a separate tweet, “Kristen Welker announced her topics for 10/22 on 10/16. We agree with Jason Miller, who said on Fox that Kristen is ‘a journalist who’s very fair in her approach and I think that she’ll be a very good choice for this third debate.’”

Over the weekend, Trump attacked Welker as “terrible & unfair,” prompting other journalists to rush to Welker’s defense.

Attorney general William Barr described the Google antitrust case as “a monumental case for the Department of Justice and, more importantly, for the American consumer.”

“For years, there have been broad, bipartisan concerns about business practices leading to massive concentrations of economic power in our digital economy,” Barr said in a statement.

“This lack of competition harms users, advertisers, and small businesses in the form of fewer choices, reduced quality (including on metrics like privacy), higher advertising prices, and less innovation.”

The attorney general added, “The complaint filed today against Google is based on violations of the U.S. antitrust laws and is separate and distinct from concerns raised about content moderation and political censorship by online platforms.”

Conservative commentators and Trump allies have recently complained of “censorship” after Twitter and Facebook limited the reach of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s emails, which is reportedly being investigated as potentially part of a foreign influence operation.

Joe Biden has called a lid for in-person events today, although the Democratic nominee plans to participate in local media interviews later today.

Biden has been off the campaign trail in the past couple days as he prepares for the final presidential debate.

Trump has mocked Biden for his light campaigning schedule to focus on debate prep.

“They put the lid on it to -- every day you wake up, where’s Biden today?” the president said at his rally in Prescott, Arizona, yesterday.

“‘Sir, he’s lidded out.’ He’s lidded out. What does that mean? That means he’s going to stay in the basement all day,” Trump said.

The president reportedly engaged in very little debate prep before the first presidential debate, and his performance was widely criticized for being chaotic and light on substance.

In-person early voting began today in the swing state of Wisconsin, and voters in Milwaukee lined up outside one polling station before it opened to ensure their ballots were counted.

According to the US Elections Project, 863,006 voters have already cast their ballots in Wisconsin, which Trump won by less than 1 point in 2016. Recent polls show Joe Biden pulling ahead in the battleground state.

The Biden campaign has provided additional details on Barack Obama’s visit tomorrow to Philadelphia, where the former president will campaign for his former running mate.

Obama will “hold a drive-in car rally and encourage Pennsylvanians to make their plans to vote early,” the Biden campaign said.

It’s unclear when specifically the rally will take place, but it will be livestreamed.

Obama carried Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2012, but Trump won the state by less than 1 point in 2016. Recent polls have shown Biden pulling ahead in the state, where he was born.

The US justice department has officially filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google, with the government arguing the search engine giant has unfairly stifled competition.

The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe and Kari Paul have more details on the case:

The antitrust suit would be the most significant legal challenge to a major tech company in decades and comes as US authorities are increasingly critical of the business practices of the major tech companies.

The long awaited case ... will allege that Google unfairly acts as a gatekeeper to the web through a series of business agreements that effectively lock out competition.

Justice officials told the Wall Street Journal that the lawsuit would also challenge an arrangement in which Google’s search application is preloaded, and can’t be deleted, on mobile phones running its Android operating system.

Google dominates online search in the US, accounting for about 80% of search queries.

It is 14 days until the presidential election, and Trump is using his rapidly diminishing time before election day to try to win over voters in ... New York, California and Illinois.

“To the great people of New York, California, and Illinois, your states are way too highly taxed, big crime, people fleeing, and just about every other problem you can have. VOTE TRUMP, I will turn them around for you, FAST!” Trump said in a new tweet.

The three states are Democratic strongholds, and Hillary Clinton won all three by double digits in 2016.

Meanwhile, polls shows Trump trailing Joe Biden in states that the president narrowly won four years ago -- such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

CNN is releasing poll of polls averages of 10 states that Trump won in 2016, and currently, the president is only ahead in one of the 10 states, Texas.

CNN reports:

CNN Poll of Polls averages across 10 key battleground states suggest tight races heading into the final two weeks of the campaign in seven states and former Vice President Joe Biden ahead in the averages of the other three, all of which President Donald Trump won in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the averages suggest Biden holds the support of a majority of voters and a sizable advantage over Trump.

The Pennsylvania average shows Biden’s largest lead. The Democratic nominee averages 52% support to Trump’s 43% in polling conducted between September 20 and October 5. In both Wisconsin and Michigan, the averages show Biden with 51% support to 43% for Trump. Trump’s victory in each of these states in 2016 came via a margin of less than a percentage point. Except for 2016, all three states broke for the Democratic candidate in each presidential election since 1992.

In 2016, Trump carried all 10 states where CNN Poll of Polls averages are being released Tuesday: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. He is numerically ahead of Biden in the averages of current polling in just one of these states, Texas, where his support averages 49% to Biden’s 45%.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

We are just two weeks away from the presidential election -- and two days away from the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

According to the FiveThirtyEight national polling average, Biden has a 10.3-point advantage over Trump, leaving the president little time to make up substantial ground.

Complicating things even further for Trump is the fact that 31,677,305 Americans have already cast their ballots, according to the US Elections Project.

The Thursday debate may be Trump’s last chance to convince voters he deserves a second term.

It is Kamala Harris’ brithday today. Her social media team have just tweeted about it. The Democratic vice presidential nominee is celebrating turning 56 by taking part in a virtual Milwaukee rally to kick off the first day of in-person early voting in Wisconsin. She then joins virtual Biden for President finance events.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state where in-person voting starts today. Hawaii, Louisiana and Utah also open their polls. And it’s the deadline to apply for mail/absentee ballots in Maryland, Nevada and New Mexico.

And that is it from me, Martin Belam, today. Joan E Greve will be with you shortly…

US Justice Department expected to file antitrust lawsuit against Google – reports

Diane Bartz and David Shepardson from Reuters have this report, saying that the US Justice Department is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday for allegedly breaking the law in using its market power to fend off rivals. They write:

The lawsuit is expected to allege that Google broke the law in how it treated rivals in its internet search and advertising businesses, seeking to disadvantage them to keep its own search engine dominant and using that market power to sell more ads.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Coming just days before the presidential election, the filing’s timing could be seen as a political gesture since it fulfills a promise made by President Donald Trump to his supporters to hold certain companies to account for allegedly stifling conservative voices.

A federal lawsuit would mark a rare moment of agreement between the Trump administration and progressive Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted on 10 September, using the hash tag #BreakUpBigTech, that she wanted “swift, aggressive action.”

The lawsuit comes more than a year after the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission began antitrust investigations into four big tech companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Politico reports that the Trump campaign has not paid its legal bills in its case against Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice contestant who went to work in the White House, didn’t last long and published one of the more startling tell-all books about her experience, namely Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.

“Donald Trump’s campaign wants Omarosa Manigault Newman to pay up,” the website writes “… but it’s the Trump campaign that hasn’t paid its bills.

The delinquent $52,000 payment – revealed in a previously unreported letter dated 14 October and obtained by Politico – is just one example of how the Trump campaign is handling the flurry of legal actions it has taken to both protect the president and attack his enemies in the final weeks of the campaign.

In some instances, the campaign is pressing ahead. In others, it has let the cases go dormant. The through line, however, is that the campaign has started a lot of fights in court, yet is not close to resolving them with just two weeks left until Election Day.

The dispute is far from the only legal thread left dangling for the Trump campaign.

The campaign is helping fight accusations Trump harassed and sexually assaulted women. It’s helping keep documents about his business deals hidden. Other cases are proactive, such as attempts to enforce nondisclosure agreements and to punish media companies the campaign accuses of defamation. And it is responding to lawsuits from people who say they were assaulted at Trump events…

Taken together, the cases reflect the legal morass the Trump campaign will face, win or lose, after 3 November.

Of Omarosa’s book, meanwhile… as David Smith reported for us at the time, it’s the one in which she “claims Trump is a racist who has used the “N-word” repeatedly”.

Here’s what Lloyd Green made of it, back in the day:

Republican Senator Thom Tillis is in a tightly-fought Senate seat battle in North Carolina in November, where despite his involvement in a scandal over an extra-marital affair, Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham has a slight lead in the polls. Tillis has just put out a statement reacting to claims that there is a second undisclosed extra-marital affair involving Cunningham.

While the president continues his Fox News call, here’s a look from Niall Stanage at the Hill about Joe Biden’s more measured approach to campaigning, and whether that will be enough to get him over the line.

Biden comes under constant criticism from President Trump’s campaign for his low-wattage public schedule. Earlier, during the Democratic primary battle, left-wing critics contended he was uninspiring. In media circles, Biden’s center-left politics and old-school approach often get met with a collective shoulder-shrug.

Yet, for all that, the 77-year-old former vice president is on the cusp of what would be the ultimate validation. He is a significant distance ahead of Trump in national polls and has an edge in almost all the battleground states with just two weeks left until Election Day.

The jabs from the Trump campaign keep coming. On a Monday conference call with reporters, Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller accused Biden of “going into hiding” to avoid awkward questions.

But most Democrats feel there is no way to argue with success. And, if the polls are right, Biden is well on his way to ousting Trump. There is solid reasoning behind Biden’s approach. Trump is so prone to self-damaging controversies that there is no need for Biden to force his way to center-stage, they say. The tumult of the Trump presidency has left many voters hankering after a calmer, more low-key president.

Read more here: The Hill – Biden stays slow and steady in face of criticism

Trump’s Fox & Friends phone call is, as ever, meandering all over the place. He’s spoken about a coronavirus relief bill, and its a change of tack again from the president. Having previously suggested that Democratic house speaker Nancy Pelosi was not negotiating in good faith and asking for too much, he now appears to be trying to outbid her for the size of any stimulus package agreed.

US treasury secretary Mnuchin is in Israel at the minute, but there have been some hints over the last couple of days that enough of a top-line of an agreement has been reached that there may be progress. Trump has certainly now put additional pressure on the House Republicans.

On Fox, Trump tells Attorney General to act before election over Biden 'corruption' allegations

Donald Trump is currently calling in to Fox & Friends and has asked for attorney general William Barr to act over what the president claims is “major corruption” around the Joe Biden campaign.

Asked by the host “Will you appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this?”, Trump said:

The attorney general has to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody, this is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election, and by the way we’re doing very well, we’re gonna win the election, we’re doing very well. If you look at all of what’s happening and all of the people that come in and don’t come in, you take a look all around the country and with Texas early voting. Those are our votes. I mean I just got a report we’re doing great in Texas, but we’re doing great all over, but forget that, this has to be done early. So the attorney general has to act.

The Trump campaign has continued to push for further investigation into the controversial New York Post story which claims that emails on a laptop which belonged to Hunter Biden show evidence of corruption. The New York Post has yet to allow other news organisations to assess whether the emails or the laptop are genuine. The FBI have been examining it to assess whether it is part of a foreign disinformation campaign.

Trump, who according to one count has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims so far during his presidency, has also accused his opponent of lying.

One of the Senate races to watch in two weeks time is in Georgia, where incumbent Republican David Perdue is facing a challenge from Jon Ossoff.

Perdue made headlines last week when the Kamala Harris campaign team described his remarks as “incredibly racist” when he deliberately mocked the vice president nominee’s first name at an election rally. Salon is reporting that video footage from 2014 of another incident where Perdue is accused of, at the very least, being racially insensitive has emerged.

Read more here: Salon – GOP senator who mocked Kamala Harris once asked Black supporter about Perdue chicken and Herman Cain

Polls for the Georgia race over the last week have varied between showing challenger Ossoff up by six points, Perdue up by three points, and in figures released today, Perdue up by one point. It’s definitely in toss-up territory.

Ossoff this morning has posted a clip of himself from MSNBC addressing Perdue’s treatment of Kamala Harris.

A new poll shows that Americans have lost trust across the board in the people and institutions informing them about the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts conducted the study which finds that the percentage of people saying they trust Covid-19 information from their state or local governments, the news media, social media and their friends and family has dropped significantly compared to similar questions in April.

A large chunk of Americans say they find it hard to know if coronavirus information is accurate. Just 16% say they trust coronavirus information from President Donald Trump a great deal or quite a bit, down from 23% in April. 64% now say they trust Trump only a little or not at all on Covid. Only social media, at 72%, is less trusted.

Experts in health, science and political communication said they see three reasons for the drop in trust: fear, politics and the public watching science messily forming in real time.

It’s like seeing the sausage being made, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor. She said that Trump added to the confusion by hyping the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus, even as reputable scientists, mainstream media and studies call it unproven.

“The public now has multiple cues that say, ‘Gee, the science seems to be really confusing at this end. I’m not sure who to trust here,”’ Jamieson said.

“The fact that trust dropped in all categories, including health care providers and family and friends, speaks to a really worried society that doesn’t feel safe,” said David Ropeik, a retired Harvard instructor on risk communication.

The president will be calling in to Fox & Friends shortly. Enjoy!

Caitlin Owens and Naema Ahmed at Axios have a grim outlook on the latest coronavirus numbers in the US this morning. They write that the next wave of the coronavirus is gaining steam:

The percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive is rising across the country, including in states that are also seeing a spike in cases. High positivity rates indicate a worsening outbreak, and put together with the rise in cases and hospitalizations across the country, suggest that the US is in bad shape.

They point out that the wave is not concentrated in any one region this time. Iowa, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Idaho and Nevada are currently suffering from the highest average positive test rates.

Read more here: Axios – the next wave of the coronavirus is gaining steam

Ashley Dawson, professor of postcolonial studies at the City University of New York, writes for us this morning that Trump may try to steal the election, urging people to start preparing for that now:

Donald Trump has told us openly that he is planning to steal the election. In recent months he has explicitly declared that any election in which he does not win will have been rigged and illegitimate. He has claimed repeatedly and against all evidence that mail-in ballots are invalid.

There has been remarkably little discussion of how to stop Trump. In the face of open declarations of plans to overthrow the tattered remnants of democracy in this country, American exceptionalism seems to have lulled many people into a false sense of complacency that a coup cannot happen in the US. But a coup will have taken place if all votes are not counted and honored, and Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots suggests this is exactly the strategy he intends to pursue.

According to the civil rights activist George Lakey, planning to defeat a coup can actually help reduce the chances of attempts to overthrow democracy since plotters are likely to think again if they know the public is well prepared. In addition, power grabs tend to succeed or fail in a matter of weeks or months. Scholars have shown that opposition forces that did not prepare for a coup often lost valuable time building alliances and mobilizing for action subsequently. Advance preparation often made a decisive difference in defeating coup attempts.

Read more here: Ashley Dawson – Trump may try to steal the election. We need to start preparing for that now

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele endorses Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has written for NBC this morning explaining why he is voting for Joe Biden.

Steele has been a senior advisor to the Lincoln Project during this campaign. In the opinion piece, he says:

I was, and am, convinced that conservative principles, individual initiative, and free enterprise are the most effective means of empowering people to achieve the American Dream. Yet, I cannot support the nominee of my party.

Rather than binding up the nation’s wounds, Trump exacerbates division. Rather than standing up to the world’s dictators, Trump cravenly seeks the favor of thugs. Rather than fostering free enterprise, Trump embraces economic principles not only outdated in Lincoln’s time, but made even worse today by a leader who lost close to a billion dollars in a single year running a casino. Rather than seeking to build on the legacy of the Republican Party’s founders, of which Trump is surely ignorant, Trump has posited a single purpose for the GOP — the celebration of him.

Consequently, America has watched as the Republican Party stopped pursuing its animating principles of freedom and opportunity. It has given up its voice on things that mattered and instead bent the arc of the party towards the baser motives of one man, who is neither a Republican nor a conservative.

Read more here: Michael Steele – I’m a Republican voting for Joe Biden over Trump. Because I’m an American first

North Carolina is going to be tight on 3 November, if current polling is anything to go by. Gary Langer has written for ABC News this morning that the state is “all tied up”:

Coronavirus concerns lift Joe Biden in North Carolina while the state’s sizable evangelical and rural populations pull for Donald Trump, producing a dead-heat contest in a state that’s backed Democratic presidential candidates just twice in the last half century.

Biden has 49% support among likely voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll in the state, with 48% for Trump. The Senate race, potentially critical for control of the chamber, is similar, with 49% support for Democrat Cal Cunningham, despite revelations of an extramarital relationship, and 47% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis.

The presidential race differs from the contest nationally -- an ABC/Post poll last week found a 12-point Biden lead -- in large part given differing demographics. Most notably, evangelical white Protestants account for 31% of likely voters in North Carolina.

Read more here: With coronavirus concerns a factor, it’s all tied up in North Carolina: Poll

USA Today gives first ever presidential candidate endorsement to Joe Biden

Yet another publishing institution has been moved to break with its own tradition over this year’s election. Last time out, USA Today took sides for the first time, calling Republican nominee Donald Trump unfit for office, without offering an outright endorsement of Hillary Clinton. In 2020 they’ve gone a step further. For the first time since it was founded in 1982, USA Today has endorsed a candidate for president – Joe Biden.

In an editorial they say is partially aimed at “those who [have] settled on Trump but might be having last-minute doubts,” the editorial board writes:

Maybe you backed Trump the last time around because you hoped he’d shake things up in Washington or bring back blue-collar jobs. Maybe you liked his populist, anti-elitist message. Maybe you couldn’t stomach the idea of supporting a Democrat as polarizing as Clinton. Maybe you cast a ballot for a minor party candidate, or just stayed home.

Now, two weeks until election day, we suggest you consider a variation of the question Republican Ronald Reagan asked voters when he ran for president in 1980: Is America better off now than it was four years ago?

Beset by disease, economic suffering, a racial reckoning and natural disasters fueled by a changing climate, the nation is dangerously off course.

If this were a choice between two capable major party nominees who happened to have opposing ideas, we wouldn’t choose sides. Different voters have different concerns. But this is not a normal election, and these are not normal times. This year, character, competence and credibility are on the ballot. Given Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, so, too, is the future of America’s democracy.

Read more here: USA Today – Elect Joe Biden. Reject Donald Trump

A Joe Biden victory in the presidential election alone may not be enough for him to get his policy programme into action – the Democratic party also need to make gains in the Senate.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball this morning is suggesting that Iowa is one place that looks increasingly favourable for a Democrat gain – replacing North Carolina as the race likeliest to decide Senate control.

Incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst is looking increasingly like an underdog against her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. At the presidential level, Iowa is looking like a true toss-up, and Greenfield seems to be running at least even with — and often better than — Joe Biden in the state.

As of Monday, Greenfield’s average lead in the RealClearPolitics average was 4.8%, while Biden was up by a more meager 1.2%. Perhaps tellingly, most of that difference comes from Ernst underperforming Trump — her average polling share stands at 42.5%, compared to Trump’s 46.3%. So it makes sense that, despite his sagging national fortunes, Ernst generally is still trying to frame herself as a firm ally of the president.

Moving Iowa to the Leans Democratic category before North Carolina wasn’t something we’d have expected for much of this year. In April, the Crystal Ball identified a quartet of Senate races that we identified as the Democrats’ “Core Four” states to flip. Back then, it seemed that Democrats’ most feasible path to a bare 50-seat-plus-VP Senate majority ran through Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina. We now see Democrats as at least modest favorites in those first three states.

Read more here: Center For Politics – Iowa to leans Democratic, replaces North Carolina as the seat likeliest to be no. 50 for Democrats

Today is the day for our online discussion about the US election. It starts at 2pm EST, or if you are in the UK like me, it’s a 7pm BST kick-off.

It will be hosted by our columnist and podcast presenter Jonathan Freedland. Joining him will be a cast from our US team: senior political reporter Daniel Strauss, political correspondent Lauren Gambino and columnist Richard Wolffe.

There’s more details and tickets here.

Abené Clayton has been in Richmond, California for us looking at a report which states that 110,000 people in California have purchased a firearm in direct response to the coronavirus.

About 47,000 of the buyers were first-time gun owners. Buyers cited concerns over civil unrest, economic downturns, and the release of thousands from state prisons.

The surge has prompted concern that the rise in the number of people with little to no previous firearm experience will increase the risk of unintentional injuries, especially when children and teenagers are in the home.

“People are fearful of the unknowns with the election, protests, and Covid. But we need to talk about the risks associated with firearms being in the home,” said Brian Malte, executive director of Hope and Heal Fund, a gun violence prevention organization. “You can buy a firearm but that doesn’t mean you know how to handle it, which is critical.”

Experts also worry that a surge in ownership and gun purchases combined with hopelessness, fear and isolation due to the pandemic may lead to an increase in suicide deaths. Lead author Dr Nicole Kravtiz-Wirtz said she hoped that the statistics and implications laid out in the report can lead to a “mobilization for firearm injury prevention efforts”.

“We want to be proactive,” Kravitz-Wirtz told the Guardian. “We’ve seen prior spikes in gun sales following mass shootings and then upticks in firearm related death and injuries. We know enough from previous studies and evidence to know that we should uplift things like safe storage.”

Read more here: More than 100,000 Californians have bought a gun in response to Covid-19 crisis, report finds

New York Times poll gives Biden nine point national lead over Trump

Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin report for the New York Times on their latest New York Times/Siena College poll, and it does not make for happy reading for the Trump campaign. Nationally Joe Biden holds a nine point lead over the president. They write:

With just two weeks left in the campaign, Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Biden to manage the economy. On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Biden over Trump by modest or wide margins.

Over all, Biden is backed by 50 percent of likely voters, the poll showed, compared with 41 percent for Trump and 3 percent divided among other candidates.

Most of all, the survey makes clear that crucial constituencies are poised to reject Trump because they cannot abide his conduct, including 56 percent of women and 53 percent of white voters with college degrees who said they had a very unfavorable impression of Trump — an extraordinary level of antipathy toward an incumbent president.

The New York Times says the margin of error for the poll, which was conducted from 15 October to 18 October, was 3.4 percentage points.

Read it here: New York Times – Voters prefer Biden over Trump on almost all major issues, poll shows

Russia says ready to freeze total number of nuclear warheads for one year if US follows suit

A quick foreign policy snap from Reuters here. Russia has said it would be ready to freeze its total number of nuclear warheads if the United States did the same, in order to extend their New Start nuclear agreement by a year.

The New Start accord was signed in 2010 and is due to expire in February. It is the last treaty still standing which limits the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals.

The Trump administration last week rejected a Russian proposal to unconditionally extend the pact for one year, saying that any such proposal that did not envisage freezing all nuclear warheads was a “non-starter”.

A reminder that we had this useful guide yesterday to the crucial Senate races to look out for on 3 November.

Ashley Kirk, Tom McCarthy and Helena Robertson picked out for us the seven races up for grabs out of the 35 seats up for election in this cycle.

Al Gross commands a fishing boat as a narrator describes him prospecting for gold and killing a grizzly bear in self-defense in an advert meant to underscore a central theme of Gross’ US Senate campaign as an independent: that he knows Alaska.

“Out here,” he says as the boat rocks on the water, “if you can’t think for yourself, you won’t survive.”

Gross, a doctor running with Democratic support, is challenging Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in a state that has long been a Republican stronghold, outraising Sullivan and putting the incumbent on the defensive. Across the country, Republicans are nervous about Senate seats like Sullivan’s they once thought safe as Democrats hoping to retake the chamber try to tap into the party’s enthusiasm for ousting President Donald Trump.

Sullivan has sought to paint Gross, who said he would caucus with Democrats, as a liberal and someone who would empower an “anti-Alaska agenda.”

Sullivan said that includes limiting access to federal lands for development, cutting military spending and eliminating the potential for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an issue state political leaders have long supported but one that has become a flashpoint in the national climate crisis debate between Republicans and Democrats.

“I know these senators,” Sullivan said.

Oil has been Alaska’s economic lifeblood for decades. Production today is a fraction of what it once was. Gross, like Sullivan, supports drilling in the refuge. Gross said he supports renewable energy as a way to diversify Alaska’s economy but not the Green New Deal.

“If you think I have any intention of turning Alaska into a park, you’re wrong,” Gross said while wearing a camouflage jacket during a recent debate held via videoconference.

He has also been on the offensive against Trump’s handling of the pandemic, asking the president last night on Twitter to “stop the nonsense and do your job.”

Polling last week put Sullivan 8 points ahead of Gross, a big lead for the challenger to try and catch-up in the last couple of weeks of the campaign, but the fact that the race is considered competitive at all shows the extent to which Republican senators are under pressure across the whole of November’s election slate.

First UAE government delegation arrives in Israel as part of US-brokered deal

Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s Middle East envoy, has posted a video clip this morning from a historic flight taking a government delegation from the United Arab Emirates to Israel for the first time.

The move comes after the two countries normalised ties last month under a US-brokered accord. Reuters report that the Etihad Airways plane carrying the Emirati government officials from Abu Dhabi landed at Ben Gurion Airport with US dignitaries accompanying them,

They were due to be welcomed by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi and finance minister Israel Katz. The five-hour visit would be restricted to the airport near Tel Aviv, due to coronavirus concerns, Israeli organisers said.

The UAE and fellow Gulf state Bahrain in September became the first Arab states in a quarter of a century to sign deals to establish formal ties with Israel, a move that Washington and its allies have said would foster regional peace and stability – but which has been rejected by the Palestinians. The visit has already been described this morning as “shameful” by a Palestinian official.

Berkowitz and US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin are accompanying the Emirati delegation. They had on Sunday joined an Israeli delegation to Bahrain for a signing ceremony to formalise ties.

Israel and the UAE have already signed several commercial deals since mid-August, when they first announced they would establish full relations.
Israeli officials said the two sides were expected to sign a mutual visa-exemption agreement - Israel’s first with an Arab country.

Back to the coronavirus pandemic in the US for a minute, my colleague Lauren Aratani reports for us this morning that US colleges that welcomed students back likely led to a surge in Covid cases.

From late July through September, students from more than 2,400 colleges and universities went back to campus to participate in what has ultimately become an American experiment in how institutions of higher education can operate during a pandemic.

It has been a few weeks since the most dramatic effects of college reopening have been seen, and in the time since, research has started to show that inviting students back to college likely led to a rise in Covid-19 cases in the US.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has said that young adults ages 18 to 22 saw a 55% increase nationally in Covid-19 cases in August.

The picture that emerges in US education is a patchwork one, both of how universities are dealing with the crisis and how their students are reacting to it.

Data from the College Crisis Initiative, a research project out of Davidson College, and the Chronicle of Higher Education indicate that just over 300 campuses are closed for the fall semester. Most schools are doing some type of hybrid learning, holding some or most classes online and offering select classes in-person, meaning they welcomed at least some of their students back to campus at the end of the summer.

Read more here: US colleges that welcomed students back likely led to a surge in Covid cases

“If somebody held a gun to my head and said ‘tell me what it is to be a conservative and a Republican and an American today, I’d just say ‘shoot me, I have no idea’. There’s no coherent theory of government. There’s no moral center to it.”

Some harsh words on the modern Republican party from Stuart Stevens last night to CNN’s Jake Tapper. Stevens, who was a Republican strategist in the 2012 election and cautioned the party over Trump in 2016, did not hold back in the interview.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen in American politics a complete collapse of a party as the way the Republican Party has collapsed.”

He described it as being like “the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, where what the party said it was for, and what it was for, was just so disparate it collapsed.”

He went on to say “I spent decades working in this party and the only way I can look at it now is say burn it down. Just burn it down and start over”

Watch it here: CNN – Former GOP Strategist tells Jake Tapper: “Just burn it down and start over”

The constant background hum of tensions between the US and China over trade has continued today. Reuters report that China’s foreign ministry said some US politicians were “smearing” normal economic and trade cooperation. It comes after US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said Brazil and the United States needed to reduce their dependence on Chinese imports.

At a virtual summit on increased US-Brazil cooperation aimed at post-pandemic recovery yesterday, Pompeo underscored the importance of expanding bilateral economic ties, given what he called “enormous risk” stemming from China’s significant participation in their economies.

“To the extent we can find ways that we can increase the trade between our two countries, we can ... decrease each of our two nations’ dependence for critical items” coming from China, he said.

“Each of our two peoples will be more secure, and each of our two nations will be far more prosperous, whether that’s two or five or 10 years from now,” he added.

Zhao Lijian, spokesman with the foreign ministry, gave the Chinese response to that during a news briefing this morning.

If you fancy getting your ears around something this morning, Lauren Gambino, our political correspondent, is on our award-winning Today in Focus podcast discussing which states Biden will need to win to take the White House, and what Trump will need to do to retain the presidency

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom has been criticised by Republicans for politicising the issue of coronavirus vaccines after he announced yesterday that California won’t allow any distribution of coronavirus vaccines until they are reviewed by the state’s own panel of experts.

“Politicizing the efficacy of a vaccine is shameful,” Republican Sen. Melissa Melendez tweeted.

Newsom is “suggesting we can’t trust the FDA (but) of course, we’ll continue trusting the FDA for every other drug whose distribution doesn’t threaten his hold on power,” tweeted Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who has a court hearing this week challenging the governor’s authority to impose virus restrictions.

Vaccinations for the pandemic “will move at the speed of trust,” said Newsom, a Democrat, and the state wants its own independent review no matter who wins the presidential election next month.

“Of course we won’t take anyone’s word for it,” Newsom said as he named 11 doctors and scientists to review any rollout of vaccines by the federal government or vaccine developers. The board members hail from top California universities and medical providers, along with state and local public health officials.

The pledge raises the possibility that California residents might not receive a vaccine as distribution begins in other states, though, the Associated Press report, the governor said widespread vaccinations are unrealistic until sometime next year.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month appointed a similar independent task force.

Donald Trump attacked his top public health expert yesterday, using a call with campaign staff to deride Anthony Fauci as “a disaster” and to claim “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots” discussing ways to combat the coronavirus. Here’s an update on the latest coronavirus figures from across the US.

A coronavirus outbreak has killed 10 residents in a nursing home in a northwestern Kansas county that proportionally already had the nation’s largest increase in cases over two weeks, reports John Hanna for the Associated Press.

The health department in Norton County reported Monday night that all 62 residents and an unspecified number of employees at the Andbe Home in Norton had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The agency also said one Andbe Home resident was hospitalized, while the remaining 51 were being treated at the home.

“Steps are being taken to prevent any further outbreak, including quarantining residents in their rooms and not allowing outside visitors into the facility,” the county health department said in a statement Monday evening.

Kansas is seeing an average of more than 700 new confirmed and probable coronavirus cases a day, its largest numbers since the pandemic reached the state in early March.

But northwestern Kansas has been hit hard by coronavirus in recent weeks, and Norton County had the largest number of new cases per 100,000 residents of any county in the U.S. for the two weeks ending Sunday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, Gov. Laura Kelly and Wichita State University officials celebrated the opening of a new laboratory that can run 32,000 coronavirus testing specimens a week. Kansas has averaged about 29,000 tests a week over the past month, according to data from the state health department.

Kelly said the high-capacity lab will help the state identify coronavirus hot spots so that its residents can avoid them. “We can help provide certainty that our schools and our businesses can stay open safely,” Kelly said in a statement.

Good morning and welcome to Tuesday’s coverage of US politics, with just two weeks to go before the election. Here’s a catch-up on the latest…

  • Joe Biden criticized Trump for attacking Fauci, arguing Americans are “tired of your lies about this virus.” Biden said of Trump in a statement, “We need a leader to bring us together, put a plan in place, and beat this virus — but you have proven yourself yet again to be incapable of doing that.”
  • Trump had called Dr Anthony Fauci a “disaster” on a call with campaign staff. “People are tired of coronavirus,” the president said. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”
  • As of 10:25pm EST yesterday, the US had recorded 8.2m cases of coronavirus, causing 219,945 deaths. There were 48,210 daily new cases and 388 new fatalities.
  • The presidential debate commission adopted rules to mute microphones on Thursday. Candidates will be muted while the other has the floor and any interruptions will count toward their time, but rule changes have angered Trump camp, who have also complained about the topics selected.
  • Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said: “President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
  • The supreme court blocked Republican efforts to stop an absentee ballot deadline extension in Pennsylvania. The ruling will likely mean thousands more votes are counted in one of the most critical swing states in the election.
  • Early voting begins today in Hawaii, Louisiana, Utah and Wisconsin. It’s the deadline to apply for mail/absentee ballot in Maryland, Nevada and New Mexico.
  • Some Los Angeles ballots were damaged yesterday after suspected arson attack on official drop box.
  • The US removed Sudan from its terrorism blacklist in return for $335m.
  • We’re hosting an online discussion panel on the US election today at 2pm EST (that’s 7pm in the UK), featuring our senior political reporter Daniel Strauss, political correspondent Lauren Gambino, columnist Richard Wolffe, chaired by Jonathan Freedland. There’s more details and tickets here.

I’m Martin Belam and I’ll be with you for the early stint - you can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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