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

US election: early voting could reportedly fuel highest turnout since 1908 – as it happened

Summary

  • New coronavirus cases continue to surge in dozens of US states. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the US recorded 71,671 new coronavirus cases yesterday, marking the highest single-day total since late July.
  • More than 52 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to the US Elections Project, putting the country on track for the highest turnout of any election since 1908.
  • Dr Anthony Fauci said Trump has not attended a White House coronavirus task force meeting in “several months”. The infectious disease expert also noted the task force’s meetings have become much less frequent, even as cases surge across the country.
  • Joe Biden laid out his proposed response to the coronavirus pandemic in a speech this afternoon. “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. The Democratic nominee sharply criticized Trump’s response to the pandemic, accusing the president of having “quit on America”.
  • The White House announced Israel and Sudan had agreed to normalize relations. The announcement comes a month after Israel signed deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations. “There are many, many more coming,” Trump said of the announcement. “This is one where there’s no blood in the sand.

Follow the Guardian’s global coronavirus updates:

Updated

Experts say that despite the snafus, the election is working without too many hiccups for most Americans.

Clara McMichael reports:

“There are no more problems now than we would expect to see in a major presidential election, with record high turnout, record enthusiasm to participate and oh, by the way, in the middle of a pandemic,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “So it’s remarkable that things have been going as relatively well as they have.”

Even so, many Americans are going to great lengths to vote in person. Mesha Winford, a cybersecurity analyst working in Virginia, said she will drive three and a half hours to vote in North Carolina. And voting is not the only thing she’s looking forward to – she’s been waiting to go to her favorite restaurant – she tweeted that she dreamt she was back home, eating “bbq, cole slaw, hush puppies, fried chicken gizzards and homemade lemonade”.

Winford will also see her 85-year-old father, who she last visited in March, afraid she could unwittingly expose him to Covid-19. Now she has a plan: she’ll take a Covid test first, and when she arrives, they’ll plan to see each other at a distance outside his house, or meet briefly at the polling station.

“It’s especially important to him,” Winford said. “Coming from that era, he couldn’t always vote in the African American demographic.” She added that “people’s lives depend on this election”.

Jenn Fralick, a traveling registered nurse based in Laredo, Texas, knows that firsthand. Fralick works in her hospital’s Covid-19 unit and during her overnight shift, she signs her name often, using a shorthand scribble to fill out forms. Although Fralick has worked since September along the border, she lives and votes in Jacksonville, Florida, a key battleground state this election.

The nurse said she uses three signature variations – sometimes spelling out her first name or sometimes just using her initials – and she doesn’t remember which version she used on her ballot. She’s heard that in some states, if the voter’s signatures don’t match, they’ll reject the ballot. She’s also concerned about postal service delays.

She requested an absentee ballot, but if it doesn’t arrive, she’ll fly home to vote.

“I’m watching people die, literally. I’m not only voting for myself, I’m voting for them,” Fralick said. “Those 220,000 lives that are gone and can’t vote.”

The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook will testify before the Senate judiciary committee on 17 November, the committee announced.

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will answer questions from the Republican-led committee on the “platforms’ censorship and suppression of New York Post articles” among other things. Trump and Republicans have been outraged by the platforms’ decision to limit the distribution of the Post articles, which alleged that a dubiously acquired laptop the outlet said belonged to Hunter Biden – Joe Biden’s son – contained documents that implicated the family in corruption. Multiple news outlets have failed to substantiate the allegations.

Republican senators initially threatened to subpoena the CEOs. With Democrats boycotting the hearing, Republicans voted to subpoena if the CEOs didn’t voluntarily agree to speak before the committee.

Updated

The United States on Friday was approaching a record for the number of new daily coronavirus cases, as a new study warned that the pandemic is set to cause half a million American deaths by February.

From Oliver Milman in New York and Joan E Greve in Washington and agencies:

Covid-19 is on course to ravage states across the nation throughout the coming winter and more than 511,000 lives could be lost by 28 February next year, modeling led by scientists from the University of Washington found.

This means that with cases surging in many states, particularly the upper midwest, what appears to be a third major peak of coronavirus infections in the US could lead to nearly 300,000 people dying in just the next four months.

In the latest ominous sign about the disease’s grip, the US recorded 71,671 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, the Associated Press reported, while the seven-day rolling average for cases surpassed 61,140, compared with 44,647 two weeks ago.

The record was reached on 22 July when the rolling average was 67,293 in the midst of a summer outbreak driven largely by surges of the virus in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, the agency reported.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that according to its own data tracker, the US hit an all-time daily high for new cases on Friday, with a total of more than 81,000.

Several states are setting records across the midwest and west for infections and hospitalizations, amid the autumn surge.

The Republican National Committee has tweeted a list of ways in which Donald Trump is “fighting for YOU!”. His second term priorities include establishing a permanent manned presence on the moon and sending the first manned mission to Mars.

Not on the list: ending the coronavirus pandemic.

The backlash was swift - and dark, and darkly funny:

‘Boogaloo Boi’ charged in fire of Minneapolis police precinct during George Floyd protest

A rightwing extremist boasted of driving from Texas to Minneapolis to help set fire to a police precinct during the George Floyd protests, federal prosecutors said.

US attorney Erica MacDonald said on Friday that she has charged Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old Texas resident, with traveling across state lines to participate in a riot. The charges are the latest example of far-right extremists attempting to use violence to escalate national protests against police brutality into an uprising against the government, and even full civil war.

The case also reveals the extent of the coordination between violent members of the nascent far-right “Boogaloo Bois” movement operating in different cities across the country.

According to the complaint, Hunter sent multiple private messages on Facebook bragging of his actions in Minneapolis on the night of 28 May and morning of 29 May, writing, “I set fire to that precinct with the Black community,” and, “My mom would call the FBI if she knew.”

Video shot that night shows a person later identified as Hunter firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic assault-style rifle on the 3rd precinct police station while people believed to be looters were inside. He then high-fived another person and shouted, “Justice for Floyd!” according to the complaint.

Later, he privately messaged Steven Carrillo, another alleged “Boogaloo Boi” in California, urging him to “go for police buildings”, according to the federal criminal complaint.

“I did better, lol,” Carrillo allegedly replied.

Hours before Carrillo sent that message, according to the complaint, federal prosecutors say Carrillo had driven to Oakland with an accomplice, and, as protesters were demonstrating blocks away, shot two officers guarding a federal courthouse in downtown Oakland, killing one, David Patrick Underwood.

Lou Dobbs, a Fox News anchor and Donald Trump loyalist, launched into a tirade against Lindsay Graham, the Republican of South Carolina who is fighting the toughest reelection race of his Senate career.

“I don’t know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsay Graham,” Dobbs said. Many voters in the state have been put off by Graham’s hypocrisy in rushing to appoint Trump supreme court nominee – after refusing to even consider Obama’s nominee. Moderates have also recoiled at Graham’s transformation from a centrist who fashioned himself as someone who could cut through partisan politics, to a Trumpian who has uncritically backed the president.

Dobbs has a different gripe: that Graham has yet to “get to the bottom of Obamagate” – a baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama plotted to bring down his successor. Graham has “betrayed President Trump at almost every turn” by not investigating the unsubstantiated allegations, Dobbs said. “Senator Graham needs to be tuned out in South Carolina.”

Updated

Speaking about Kamala Harris, Donald Trump told supporters “we’re not going to have a socialist ... especially a female socialist” in the White House.

Trump dances during a campaign rally at The Villages Polo Club in Florida.
Trump dances during a campaign rally at The Villages Polo Club in Florida. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Trump, who is losing support from women, earlier at the rally begged, “Please, please, suburban woman, you should love me.” He did note that he was “kidding”.

On Harris, he said: “We’re not going to have a socialist president, especially a female socialist president, we’re not gonna have it, we’re not gonna put up with it.”

Updated

Why Covid-19 is battering Black Chicagoans

Most of the city’s deaths are hyper-concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods.

Gloria Oladipo reports:

Phillip Thomas, a Black, 48-year-old Chicagoan, was a “great guy” according to his sister Angela McMiller. He was loved by his family and well-liked by his co-workers at Walmart, where he had worked for nine years.

“I didn’t know about how many friends he had until he passed away,” said Angela. Thomas, who was diabetic, died from Covid-19 this past March.

After being sick for two weeks and self-quarantining at the recommendation of his doctor, instead of being given an examination, Phillip was then rushed to the hospital, where he died the next day.

Naba’a Muhammad, 59, a writer and Chicago South Shore neighborhood resident, with a lung disease, also contracted coronavirus and was hospitalized.

But while he was fortunate to access the necessary care, he immediately noted health disparities facing other Black Chicagoans in his community.

“Here you have [Donald Trump] who’s got a helicopter flying him to a special wing of a hospital for help when Black people can’t even get an Uber to the emergency room or a Covid test,” he said, referring to the president’s world-class care at the Walter Reed national military medical center on the outskirts of Washington DC, after being diagnosed with coronavirus in early October.

In Chicago, Covid-19 is battering Black communities. Despite only accounting for 30% of the city’s population, Black people make up 60% of Covid cases there and have the highest mortality rate out of any racial or ethnic group.

Most Chicago Covid-19 deaths are hyper-concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods such as Austin on the West Side and Englewood and Auburn Gresham on the South Side.

“The racial and ethnic gaps we’re seeing of who gets the virus and who dies from it are not a surprise,” said Linda Rae Murray, a Chicago doctor, academic, social justice advocate and former president of the American Public Health Association as well as the former chief medical officer of the Cook county department of public health.

“They are a reflection of structural racism that exists in our society and inequities that are baked into our country.”

In Florida, Donald Trump told supporters he’ll do “five or six” rallies a day ahead of the election.

Lagging in national polls, the president has been keeping a busy schedule of rallies already. It’s unclear what effect this will have on voters, many of whom have already cast their ballots.

When Trump asked the crowd how many had voted “nearly ever hand” went up, reported NBC’s Shannon Pettypiece, who was at the event.

Wisconsin sees record number of early voters as Covid cases climb in state

Mario Koran reports:

Wisconsin, a state notoriously divided by politics, bucked national trends in April when it pressed forward with in-person midterm elections during the pandemic, despite objections of the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Faced with a sudden exodus of volunteer poll workers, Milwaukee consolidated 180 polling locations in five, resulting in hours-long wait times.

Having had six months to prepare for fall elections – stocking up on PPE, creating plans for cleaning, and finding enough volunteers to work the polls – experts and election officials expect a smoother process on 3 November. But the wave of coronavirus outbreaks that first walloped the nation’s coastal areas has now crashed on the midwest. Wisconsin cities made up seven out of 10 areas with the highest share of Covid cases relative to their populations, according to a New York Times analysis.

This week, when early voting stations opened for residents to submit absentee ballots in person, officials put their preparations to the test. According to the Wisconsin election commission, 1.1 million people had returned their ballots by mail or in person as of Thursday – a record number of early votes for the state. (Wisconsin calls in-person early voting ballots absentee.)

By 6.30am Tuesday, when an early voting location opened at Bay View library in Milwaukee, the parking had filled with cars and a line snaked around the corner of the building. It moved swiftly, and spirits seemed high, with cheers and fist-pumps from voters who left the library happy to have submitted their ballots in person.

“I didn’t want to wait in line on election day,” said Stephen Gribble, 46. “Without getting too political, I wanted to make sure I did my part to get a certain someone out of office. And I wanted to come in person to make sure it was done right.”

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The White House announced Israel and Sudan had agreed to normalize relations. The announcement comes a month after Israel signed deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations. “There are many, many more coming,” Trump said of the announcement. “This is one where there’s no blood in the sand.”
  • New coronavirus cases continue to surge in dozens of US states. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the US recorded 71,671 new coronavirus cases yesterday, marking the highest single-day total since late July.
  • Joe Biden laid out his proposed response to the coronavirus pandemic in a speech this afternoon. “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. The Democratic nominee sharply criticized Trump’s response to the pandemic, accusing the president of having “quit on America.”
  • Dr Anthony Fauci said Trump has not attended a White House coronavirus task force meeting in “several months.” The infectious disease expert also noted the task force’s meetings have become much less frequent, even as cases surge across the country.
  • More than 52 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to the US Elections Project, putting the country on track for the highest turnout of any election since 1908.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Trump has taken the stage at his rally in The Villages, Florida, and the president opened his remarks by criticizing Biden’s debate performance last night.

Donald Trump claps as he arrives for a campaign rally in The Villages, Florida.
Donald Trump claps as he arrives for a campaign rally in The Villages, Florida. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

“I think Joe Biden proved last night he’s not capable of being president of the United States,” Trump told the crowd.

Snap polls taken after the debate showed a majority of viewers believed Biden had the better performance last night.

Major breaking news: Republican congressman Clay Higgins has granted us a glimpse into the future by sharing one of his wife’s premonitions ... and things do not sound good, folks.

“My wife has the gift of premonition,” Higgins, a Republican of Louisiana, said in a tweet. “Last night she dreamed that Federal squads were in our home seizing guns, knives, ‘unauthorized foods’ and stored water. They said we had been ‘reported’. Becca awoke crying. What happened to our freedom? She asked. What indeed.”

It’s unclear what lesson to take from this tweet, except possibly that the Higgins family should stop watching dystopian movies before going to sleep.

But Higgins’ tweet did allow congressional reporters to share some of the premonitions they have been having recently:

The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn with reactions to the presidential debate’s segment on race relations in America:

Kevin Richardson, a member of the group of Black and Latino then-teenagers who became known as the Central Park Five, took to Instagram to remind undecided voters of the man Donald Trump was when he took out a full page ad in 1989 calling for their execution for a park rape and murder that they did not commit.

“If it was up to Trump’s idea of calling for the death penalty and putting a bounty over my brother’s and my (sic) head, we wouldn’t be here today,” Richardson wrote.

When pressed on his rhetoric and record on race, the president insisted to moderator Kristen Welker (a Black woman) that he was “the least racist person” in the room, despite it being “too dark” to see anyone.

Democratic rival Joe Biden then shot back at Trump, referencing the Central Park Five, as an example of the Republican president’s long history of racism.

The former Vice President also hit Trump for his campaign attacks on Mexican immigrants, his Muslim ban early in his presidency and for pandering to what Biden mistakenly called the “Poor Boys,” instead of Proud Boys.

Fellow member of the now-Exonerated Five, Korey Wise, commented on the post by thanking Biden for the shout out before reminding his followers to vote.

Trump is about to hold a rally in The Villages, Florida, and photos of the event showed few attendees wearing masks and virtually no social distancing for the outdoor event.

After CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins mentioned the inconsistent mask usage on air, the Trump campaign went after her for not wearing a mask during her segment.

Collins responded, “I’m up on a press riser, no one is within several feet of me and I put my mask (which is in my pocket) back on immediately after this hit. But get your retweets.”

The Trump campaign has just announced the president will hold rallies early next week in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (somewhat surprisingly) Nebraska.

Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1 point in 2016, and recent polls show Biden pulling several points ahead in the battleground states.

But the president is likely visiting Omaha, Nebraska, out of concern about the traditionally conservative state’s 2nd congressional district, which awards one electoral vote.

A New York Times/Siena College poll taken last month showed Biden with an 8-point lead among likely voters in NE-2, which Barack Obama won in 2008 but lost in 2012.

Coronavirus: half-a-million dead by February, study finds

The coronavirus pandemic is set to cause half a million deaths in the US by February with Covid-19 on course to ravage states across America throughout the coming winter, a new study has forecast.

More than 511,000 lives could be lost by 28 February next year, modeling led by scientists from the University of Washington found. This means that with cases surging in many states, particularly the upper midwest, what appears to be a third major peak of coronavirus infections in the US could lead to nearly 300,000 people dying in just the next four months.

The situation will be even more disastrous if states continue to ease off on measures designed to restrict the spread of the virus, such as the shuttering of certain businesses and social distancing edicts. If states wind down such protections, the death toll could top 1 million people in America by 28 February, the study found.

The Senate is now in recess until noon tomorrow, when debate will resume on Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer used procedural maneuvers to cause headaches for Republicans trying to advance Barrett’s nomination today, but the strategy was really just for show.

Despite Democratic objections, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has the votes to approve Barrett’s nomination, and she is expected to be confirmed on Monday.

Biden just concluded his remarks in Wilmington about the coronavirus pandemic and the US economy.

The Democratic nominee sought to directly contrast how he would respond to the pandemic and how Trump has responded thus far.

“Yes, Mr. President, I’ll listen to the scientists, and I’ll empower them,” Biden said.

Biden also once again criticized Trump for seeking to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a global pandemic.

“Overturning the ACA would mean people have to pay for the Covid-19 vaccine,” Biden said. “That’s wrong. Very, very wrong.”

After finishing his prepared remarks, Biden walked away from the podium without taking questions from reporters.

Biden: 'I’m going to shut down the virus,' not the country

Echoing his comments during last night’s debate, Biden said he would not shut down the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus,” Biden said in Wilmington.

Trump has warned Biden would force a nationwide lockdown if he becomes president, but the Democratic nominee has repeatedly said he does not believe that will be necessary to get the virus under control.

Updated

Joe Biden noted Trump said earlier this week that he did not see much room for improvement in his coronavirus response.

When asked by Sinclair’s Eric Bolling what he would change about his response to the pandemic, Trump replied, “Not much.”

The US has suffered a disproportionately high coronavirus death toll in comparison to other nations, with more than 223,000 Americans already killed by the virus.

Biden said of Trump’s comments, “If this is a success, what’s a failure look like?”

Biden delivers speech on coronavirus and the economy

Joe Biden has started speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is delivering remarks on the coronavirus pandemic and the US economy.

Joe Biden speaks about coronavirus at the Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Biden speaks about coronavirus at the Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Echoing his comments during last night’s debate, the Democratic nominee warned, “There is a dark winter ahead.”

Biden’s speech comes as the US has hit its highest single-day coronavirus case count since late July, reporting 71,671 new cases yesterday.

“This president still doesn’t have a plan,” Biden said. “He’s given up. He’s quit on you. He’s quit on America.”

Trump hasn't attended a coronavirus task force meeting 'in several months,' Fauci says

Dr Anthony Fauci said the White House coronavirus task force’s meetings have become less frequent, even as infections rise in dozens of US states.

The infectious disease expert also told MSNBC that it had been “several months” since Trump last attended a task force meeting.

According to Johns Hopkins University, 223,437 Americans have died of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

Fauci also expressed disapproval of today’s Oval Office meeting to announce the normalization of relations between Israel and Sudan, during which dozens of people were not wearing masks.

“The image is not optimal for people to see,” Fauci said. “Virtually everybody who’s in that room was tested that day to go into the Oval Office, but still the image of that is something that may give the wrong impression to people.”

Updated

Trump has left the White House for his two-day campaign blitz through four battleground states, with 11 days to go until Election Day.

Exiting the Oval Office moments ago, the president did not stop to take questions from reporters.

The president will hold two rallies in Florida today, and he will speak in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin tomorrow.

Florida in particular is considered absolutely crucial to Trump’s reelection prospects. Without Florida, the president has an extremely narrow (arguably non-existent) path to victory.

The FiveThirtyEight average of Florida polls currently has Biden up by 3.3 points.

The Guardian’s Jason Burke and Oliver Holmes report:

Israel and Sudan have agreed to work towards normalising relations in a deal brokered by the US that would make Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.

Donald Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Friday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Sudanese counterpart, Abdalla Hamdok, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional military council.

“The leaders agreed to the normalisation of relations between Sudan and Israel and to end the state of belligerence between their nations,” a joint statement by the three countries said.

However, it was not immediately clear whether Sudan’s transitional government has the authority to make such a deal. The country remains without a parliament and elections are due in 2022.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared an awkward moment as the president announced Israel and Sudan’s agreement to normalize relations.

Speaking to “Bibi” on the phone in the Oval Office earlier today, Trump tried to goad Netanyahu into attacking Joe Biden.

“Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?” Trump asked Netanyahu, referring to Biden by an insulting nickname. “You think he would have made this deal? Somehow, I don’t think so.”

But Netanyahu did not go along with Trump’s attack, instead saying, “Well, Mr President, one thing I can tell you, is, um, uh, we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America, and we appreciate what you have done enormously.”

Those comments could signal that even Trump’s allies do not like his chances of winning reelection.

The Senate has voted to enter into executive session to begin debate on the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

The 51-46 vote fell mostly along party lines, with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joining Democrats in opposition to advancing the nomination.

Collins and Murkowski had previously said they did not think a supreme court nominee should be considered until after the presidential election.

But the two defections were not enough to stop Republicans from moving forward with Barrett’s nomination.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has now filed cloture to cut off debate on Barrett’s nomination, setting up a key procedural vote for Sunday and a final confirmation vote for Monday.

Well, that was fast. The Senate’s closed session to privately consider the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett lasted all of about 20 minutes before Republicans voted to end the session.

Again, Democrats’ procedural moves are really just meant to frustrate Republicans, who have the votes to confirm Barrett on Monday.

As the minority party in the Senate, Democrats don’t have much power to slow down the confirmation process.

Senate enters rare 'closed session' over Barrett nomination

The Senate is now in a rare closed session to discuss the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, as Democrats lambaste Republicans’ decision to move forward with her confirmation less than two weeks before a presidential election.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said a closed session was necessary to “shut off the cameras, close the Senate, and talk face to face what this might mean for the country.”

Congressional reporters were escorted from the press gallery, and almost all staffers were asked to leave the chamber.

Republicans can end the closed session whenever they want with a simple majority vote, but this marks the first time in nearly 10 years that the Senate has entered a closed session.

Despite Democrats’ procedural maneuvering, Barrett will almost certainly still be confirmed to the supreme court in a nearly party-line vote on Monday.

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The White House announced Israel and Sudan had agreed to normalize relations. The announcement comes a month after Israel signed deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations. “There are many, many more coming,” Trump said of the announcement. “This is one where there’s no blood in the sand.”
  • More than 50 million Americans have already cast their ballots, putting the country on track for the highest turnout of any election since 1908.
  • New coronavirus cases continue to surge in dozens of US states. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the US recorded 71,671 new coronavirus cases yesterday, marking the highest single-day total since late July.

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

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged that hurdles remained in negotiations over the coronavirus relief bill.

“The speaker on a number of issues is still dug in,” Mnuchin said of House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Trump added, “I don’t think she wants the people to get the money before the election.”

Pelosi told MSNBC that Congress can pass a relief bill before Election Day if the president makes it a priority.

“We’ve put pen to paper. We’re writing the bill, and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve some of the differences,” the Democratic speaker said. “We could do that before the election — if the president wants to.”

Updated

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is forcing votes on routine Senate business to protest the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.

“We are not going to have business as usual,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell moved to start the debate on Barrett’s nomination.

But although Schumer’s tactics may cause some headaches for Republicans, it will not change the ultimate result of the Barrett vote. The conservative judge will almost certainly be confirmed on Monday.

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

Trump raised $26 million around last night’s debate, the president’s campaign and the Republican national committee just announced.

The Trump campaign described the fundraising total as “the re-election effort’s largest digital fundraising day ever.”

“In the final days of 2016 we saw a surge in online donations which preceded a rise in public polling, leading directly to victory,” Gary Coby, the Trump campaign’s digital director, said in a statement. “That surge is here again -- triple in size and a week earlier than in 2016!”

The Biden campaign has not yet announced its fundraising numbers from last night, but the Democrat has been massively outraising Trump in recent weeks, setting fundraising records in August and September that have erased the president’s cash advantage in the race.

Recent national polls also show Biden leading Trump by an average of 9.8 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

White House announces Israel-Sudan deal

More from the White House pool, where reporters have been summoned into the Oval Office to witness a call marking the normalisation of relations between Israel and Sudan, part of a Trump administration push for Middle East “wins” before the election:

Pool was called to the Oval where President Trump is on a speakerphone call with the leaders of Israel and Sudan, whom he said have made “peace”. [Jared] Kushner, [Mike] Pompeo, [Steven] Mnuchin, [Robert] O’Brien and several officials here. [Benjamin] Netanyahu was speaking as we entered.

The leader of Sudan, via speakerphone, thanked [Trump] for removing his country from the US list of terrorism state sponsors and said it would have a major economic impact. [Trump] notes that today’s deal follows recent Israeli agreements with Bahrain and the UAE.

Netanyahu: “We are expanding their circle of peace so rapidly with your leadership.”

Trump: “There are many, many more coming … This is one where there’s no blood in the sand.”

Also here: Avi Berkowitz, Brian Hook.

Pool reporter Michael Crowley adds a telling detail:

They and almost all Trump officials here are maskless. Perhaps 40-50 people in Oval right now.

McEnany: Trump 'quite happy' with debate

White House pool reporter Michael Crowley, of the New York Times, has a brief dispatch from a gaggle with press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, viz:

Topics included last night’s debate (“He is quite happy”), stimulus negotiations (Democrats are not “serious”), and safety of Trump rallies amid Covid. (“You have a right to go to a political rally in this country.”)

McEnany, who did not wear a mask, also said the president has not asked Attorney General William Barr to open an investigation into the Biden family. (“The media is really the avenue that should be doing that.”)

She would not elaborate on the official White House statement this morning on Sudan and whether normalisation with Israel could follow soon. (“I would just say stay tuned.”)

Of Barr and the dubious claims about the Biden family which are being pushed by Rudy Giuliani and parts of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire: McEnany said “the media is really the avenue that should be doing that”. Trump, on Tuesday, used the (Murdoch-owned) media to tell Barr to do it.

Regular readers will remember Louis DeJoy, Donald Trump’s postmaster general who is accused of seeking to hobble the US mail before an election in which postal voting has taken on an outsized role due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Such concerns may in part be fueling the boom in early in-person voting mentioned below, which is likely not to Republicans’ advantage. But in the meantime, here’s some light reading from CBS News:

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s former company landed a $5m highway-shipping contract last month with the United States Postal Service.

DeJoy continued to own a multimillion-dollar stake in XPO Logistics as of early October. The $5m deal is the first regular contract for a postal route that XPO Logistics has signed with the USPS in more than a year. XPO’s last highway contract with the USPS was in December and it was temporary. The one before that was in signed in July 2019.

XPO’s contract – to move mail for the next 18 months between Norfolk, Virginia, and Evansville, Indiana – has not been previously reported. The contract was negotiated in August and disclosed in mid-October as part of a quarterly update to a database of USPS suppliers.

The full CBS story is here.

Here, meanwhile, is a report about DeJoy at work from Sam Levine and Alvin Chang, of Guardian US:

And now for a semi-regular feature when I’m blogging, entitled Fun With Polls and basically just a read-off of the averages from fivethirtyeight.com but nonetheless it paints a picture, less than two weeks out from election day.

Herewith, the current scores on the doors in the battleground states, both the ones everyone always thinks of and some – Georgia, Iowa, Texas – which really shouldn’t be close but with this Republican in the White House, are:

  • Arizona: Biden +3.5
  • Florida: Biden +3.3
  • Georgia: Biden +0.9
  • Iowa: Biden +1.0
  • Michigan: Biden +7.5
  • Nevada: Biden +6.6
  • North Carolina: Biden +2.9
  • Ohio: Trump +1.0
  • Pennsylvania: Biden +6.2
  • Texas: Trump +0.5
  • Wisconsin: Biden +6.6

I’ve bolded up the two states where Trump is winning, just. There’s plenty to go yet and anything can happen, and polling can be wrong of course. But that really isn’t a good picture for a Republican president.

Also, seriously, he keeps going back to Texas. This is also from that Fox & Friends ranterview on Tuesday:

What you said about Texas, don’t worry about Texas. Texas is with us. [Democrats] want to take away your guns, your oil and your God. OK, that’s what they want. They want to take away your second amendment. They want to take away fracking and oil. They don’t care. They want to take it away they want to go to the Green New Deal. That’s not for Texas. Texas is not going to be losing the guns, and they’re not going to be losing their oil and they’re not going to be losing their religion or their God.

One means to say, he’s right – Texas isn’t going to lose its guns, its god and its oil anytime soon. But Trump might lose it.

Early voting could fuel highest turnout since 1908 – report

Following up the post below, Reuters has an eye-catching line about early voting and what it might say about turnout:

More than 50m Americans have cast ballots in the presidential election with 11 days to go, a pace that could lead to the highest turnout in more than a century, according to data from the US Elections Project.

The eye-popping figure is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as well as Americans’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000 people across the US.

Many states have expanded in-person early voting and mail-in ballots ahead of election day, 3 November, as a safer way to vote during the pandemic.

The high level of early voting has led Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who administers the US Elections Project, to predict a record turnout of about 150m, 65% of eligible voters, the highest since 1908.

In Texas, voting has already surpassed 70% of the total turnout in 2016.

On Friday, Trump will hold rallies in the battleground state of Florida, where opinion polls show a tight race and over 4m votes cast, approaching half the total four years ago. Biden will deliver a speech in his home state of Delaware on his plans for leading a recovery from the pandemic.

Of Michael McDonald and Texas, this episode of the Politics War Room podcast with Al Hunt and James Carville makes for fascinating listening.

Of Texas, the Hunt/Carville podcast and others make the point that the state is genuinely in play, even quite a likely Democratic gain, given current polling info.

I still think Trump had a tell about this in his otherwise predictably depressing 45-minute ranterview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, in that he kept coming back to Texas while ostensibly talking/ranting about other things, such as the Hunter Biden “scandal” and the supposed need for a special prosecutor:

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 and we were doing well in Texas. I mean, I just got to 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.

It’s safe to say Donald Trump will not face the kind of problems, when he votes in person in Florida on Saturday, as many Americans have in their attempts to vote early and make sure they have their say in the election.

Clara McMichael has filed this report for us, on the Americans who are traveling miles during a pandemic, just to be able to vote:

In mid-October, Sade Onadiji boarded a flight from Chicago to Houston, Texas, to cast her vote for Joe Biden. She had quarantined ahead of time and gotten a Covid test. On the plane, she Clorox-wiped her seat, wore gloves, and doubled up with a N95 mask and a face shield. When she arrived at her mother’s house, she wore a mask inside and stayed upstairs for a few days before getting another test. Then she, her mom and her brother voted together at the Smart Financial Centre.

Onadiji was born and raised in Texas and had always voted in the Houston suburbs. But this year, though she was pursuing her MBA at the University of Chicago, she decided it wasn’t the time to experiment with absentee voting. Onadiji was concerned because the state Republicans have a record of voter suppression – she pointed to Governor Gregg Abbott’s executive order that each county was only allowed a single ballot drop-off location. She went home to vote, even though it meant staying with her mother, a 64-year-old cancer survivor.

“I hate the thought that I could be exposing her or risking her health,” Onadiji said.

First lady Melania Trump has announced plans for Halloween celebrations at the White House.

This isn’t really very notable other than for the fact that “all guests (ages 2 years and over) are required to wear a face covering and practice social distancing during their visit to the White House complex”, as part of what the White House says are “extra precautions put in place by the Trump administration to help ensure the health and safety of all guests wishing to participate in this year’s spooky celebration”.

Such precautions have decidedly not been in place for the first lady’s husband’s political events at the White House, to the extent that the first lady and her husband both got the coronavirus after appearing in the Rose Garden with supreme court nominee Amy Comey Barrett and a lot of very happy conservatives on 26 September.

Just saying.

Also, it isn’t yet clear if Melania feels about Halloween and her job in celebrating it at the White House as she does about another joyous and festive occasion.

Short version: “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?”

Mitch McConnell faces questions over bruised hands

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill he had no health concerns, after questions were raised about pictures showing severe bruising on his hands and some bruising around his mouth.

McConnell’s hands spark health concern.
McConnell’s hands spark health concern. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Asked on Thursday if “there anything going on we should know about?”, the Republican said: “Of course not.” McConnell answered a follow-up question by saying he had no concerns, and did not answer a question about whether he was seeing a doctor.

No bruising was discernible on McConnell’s hands during his debate against Senate challenger Amy McGrath, in Lexington on 12 October.

McConnell, 78, is well-placed to beat McGrath, if in a tighter race than he would usually expect, for a seventh six-year term. By the end of it, he would be 84, going on 85. That would not be unusual in the Senate, a body where members often sit into their 80s and sometimes beyond.

The Republican has presided over the confirmation of huge numbers of federal judges nominated by Donald Trump, among them two supreme court justices and almost certainly a third, Amy Coney Barrett, who will receive a floor vote on Monday.

That he has done so after successfully stymying the Obama administration on judicial appointments – up to denying even a hearing to Merrick Garland, the nominee to replace Antonin Scalia, over 10 months in 2016 – makes McConnell something of a bogeyman to Democrats and progressives. Democrats are by most counts well-placed to retake the Senate on 3 November.

That all contributed to intense interest in the bruising on McConnell’s hands, and whether it might point to any health problems. McConnell has brushed off questions about his health before, for instance earlier this month when other senators, members of the White House staff and Donald Trump himself tested positive for the coronavirus.

“Have I ever been tested? Yes,” the majority leader said then. “But I’m not going to answer questions about when.”

Regarding McConnell’s hands, the fact-checking website Snopes produced a short article which confirmed the photos were real.

“Why McConnell’s hands exhibit purplish bruises and bandages has prompted much speculation,” the article said, “with guesses ranging from claims that the senator has contracted Covid-19 to the possibility that he has a vascular disease and/or is undergoing dialysis and is taking blood thinners.

“As neither McConnell nor any of his representatives have publicly commented on his condition, a definitive answer is not yet available.”

Morning… Martin Pengelly here, taking over from Martin Belam. More on Mike Pence voting – not the most dynamic subject in the world, in fact sounds like a deadpan title for a surreal painting of, I don’t know, a desiccated horse carcass with watches for eyes in a desert of maple syrup, but I’m a) tired, evidently and b) in possession of the VP pool reports and they do outline two contrasting reactions from other voters who exercised their democratic right in Indiana today:

Jeanne Barber, 69, Indianapolis, came to vote without realising Pence was voting.

Barber, who uses a motorised wheel chair, said she had to wait a few extra minutes to vote due to the hoopla but didn’t mind. She was waiting to go inside when Pence finished voting.

“I guess he has to vote somewhere,” she said. “I’m easy going now that I’m older. I would have been panicked or mad when I was younger.”

Barber said she’s undecided but leaning toward voting for Trump and Pence.

Marion county clerk Myla A Eldridge places a sticker on the jacket of Vice-President Mike Pence.
Marion county clerk Myla A Eldridge places a sticker on the jacket of Vice-President Mike Pence. Photograph: Bryan Woolston/Reuters

Chris Silkich of the Indianapolis Star, providing exemplary pool reporting, also spoke to someone younger, who was … less likely to vote for Trump and Pence:

Annie Gresh, 42, Noblesville, was among a handful of “handmaiden” protesters outside the city county building. They were dressed as, well, handmaidens. She wore a red handmaiden dress with a long skirt and a bonnet.

“We are so against this administration and we want to turn the tide,” she said. “Instead of a blue wave we want to see a blue tsunami.”

She said Pence should have voted by mail like President Trump.

“He could have done it by mail instead of holding up those people’s time. We are protesting the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and Vice President Pence’s Involvement with that.”

They had a Large banner that said: “Dear Indiana GOP your time is up. We’re coming for your seats. Sincerely – Indiana Nasty Women.”

Bernie Sanders has tweeted about Trump’s attitude to healthcare. Last night the president warned during the debate that Joe Biden wanted to bring in “socialized” healthcare to the US.

The Vermont senator observes that he didn’t hear Trump complaining when he “received the best socialized medicine in the world for free at a 100% government run hospital.”

And that is it from me, I’m handing across the Atlantic to Martin Pengelly. I will see you next week…

A woman in High Point, North Carolina, has been turned away from voting in November’s presidential election – because when she tried to vote early in person, she found out that she was recorded as dead.

CBS17, a news station that covers Raleigh, Durham and Fayetteville in North Carolina, report that, Maryann Leonard has voted in every election at the Deep River Recreation Center since moving to High Point almost four decades ago. This year, though, Maryann was not listed as a registered voter.

“When I went up to give the woman my information she looked up and said, ‘You’re ineligible to vote,’ and I said, ‘I can’t imagine why.’ She said, ‘Let me find out.’ Then she told me, ‘It says you’re dead,’” Maryann Leonard said.

Her husband Pat said “She was just flabbergasted by the fact that she was off the roll. “The thought of possible voter fraud popped into my mind”.

Although there is very little evidence of widespread voter fraud in the US, it is a spectre that has repeatedly been raised during the 2020 campaign by president Donald Trump.

Rather than fraud, it transpired that a clerical error had caused Maryann’s mix-up. A list of the deceased sent to the county had contained someone with a with a similar name and birthday to Maryann.

“It’s a warning to be cautious,” said Pat.

North Carolina is one of the most keenly contested swing states of November’s election. In 2016 Donald Trump won it for Republicans, beating Hillary Clinton by around 173,000 votes. Recent polls make it too close to call, varying between giving Joe Biden a three point lead and Trump a one point lead, all well within the margin of error.

Pat said that he and his wife look up their registration in advance next time, and encouraged others to do the same.

“You don’t want to go on election day and find out that you’re not eligible” Pat said.

Updated

Conservatives see Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation as key in bringing down the Affordable Care Act. Doctors and scientists warn it will destroy a major effort to help vulnerable and poor Americans. Benjamin Ryan reports:

In his State of the Union address in February 2019, Donald Trump vowed to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.

The brainchild of Dr Anthony Fauci and other top brass at the Department of Health and Human Services, the ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America has received for its debut year $267m in new federal spending, largely targeted at HIV transmission hotspots across the US.

The central aim of the Trump-backed plan is to improve access to antiretrovirals, given that successfully treating HIV with such medications eliminates transmission risk. For HIV-negative people, the plan promotes greater use of PrEP – a daily antiretroviral tablet that cuts the risk of HIV by more than 99% among gay and bisexual men, who are its predominant users and account for seven in 10 new infections.

Given antiretrovirals’ enormous cost, the ACA and its broadening of insurance access serves as backbone to the HIV plan, which seeks a 90% reduction by 2030 to the otherwise slowly declining or stagnant national HIV transmission rate of about 37,000 new cases annually.

“The plan is dead in the water if the ACA goes down,” said Amy Killelea, senior director of health systems and policy at Nastad, an HIV public policy non-profit.

Read more here: How Trump success in ending Obamacare will kill Fauci plan to conquer HIV

Here’s a little rundown on what we can expect to see for the rest of the day:

The president leaves the White House at 1.30pm. Donald Trump will be holding a campaign rally at The Villages in Florida at 4.30pm, then another in Pensacola, Florida at 8pm. Barack Obama will be campaigning for his opponent in the state tomorrow.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks this afternoon in Wilmington, Delaware on ‘his plans to beat Covid-19 and get the economy back on track’.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris travels to Atlanta, Georgia, and will also take part in virtual Biden for President finance events and an early vote launch mobilisation event.

Back in DC, the Senate expected to begin debate on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be the supreme court at 10am, with a vote most likely on Monday.

And vice president and the second lady Mike and Karen Pence have voted. Pence will visit Ohio and Pennsylvania today.

Updated

We’ve got an online event coming up next week. Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency on Tuesday 27 October, at 3pm EST - (that’s 7pm GMT if you are in London like me, providing I’ve also calculated the clock changes correctly).

You can find out more and book your tickets here.

Shane Goldmacher, in his list of key takeaways from last night for the New York Times, came to a similar conclusion as Scott Bixby and Asawin Suebsaeng at the Daily Beast – that Trump obsessed over details of conspiracies and allegations circulating in the right-wing online media that just mean little to the general American public.

Describing the president as getting “lost in a cul-de-sac of obscurity”, Goldmacher writes:

Trump debated at times as if the tens of millions of Americans tuning in were as intimately familiar with the internet outrages that burn bright across the right-wing media ecosystem as he is.

He made references to names and numbers and moments that almost surely zoomed over the heads of viewers, from an indirect swipe at the husband of the governor of Michigan to a jab at the Obama administration for “selling pillows and sheets” to Ukraine to attacks on the Biden family’s business dealings, most of which lacked almost any discernible context.

“They took over the submarine port. You remember that very well,” Trump said at one point to Biden. It did not appear Biden did.

Trump kept waving around noncontextualized references as if they were smoking guns, especially about Hunter Biden. “Now with what came out today it’s even worse,” Trump said. ”All of the emails. The emails, the horrible emails of the kind of money that you were raking in, you and your family.”

But the segment ended with nothing resembling a defining exchange.

It was a reminder of how different it is to run against Biden than Hillary Clinton. Four years ago, Trump had the benefit of decades of attacks on Clinton that had sunk in for voters. That is just not true of Biden.

Read more here: New York Times – Six takeaways from the final presidential debate

Tim Elfrink brings us this from the Washington Post – that a Republican standing for the Arkansas state senate tried to cover up that he had been expelled from school over wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit:

On Halloween night in 2000, students trick-or-treating inside a girls’ dormitory at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science were suddenly interrupted by three boys in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. The three figures, wearing white hoods, robes and patches on their chests, strode menacingly through the hall.

“I just remember being petrified to the point of tears,” Victoria Brown, who is Black and witnessed the incident, told the Arkansas Times this week.

One member of that group, Brown told the Times, was Charles Beckham III — a man who, 20 years later, is now a Republican challenger trying to oust a conservative Democrat from the Arkansas state Senate.

After flatly denying the allegations from Brown and four other former classmates who spoke with the Times earlier this week, Beckham, 37, apologized on Thursday when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette obtained and published court records showing that he was, in fact, booted out of school for wearing a KKK outfit.

Read more here: Washington Post – A GOP state Senate candidate was expelled from high school for wearing a KKK outfit on Halloween

For Scott Bixby and Asawin Suebsaeng at the Daily Beast, their analysis is that Donald Trump just couldn’t get himself away from territory that plays well with his ultra-core base and onto issues that might resonate more widely in the country. Joe Biden, their assessment suggests, tried to make his contributions more broadly about the American people. They write:

Trump’s inability to break out of the Fox News echo chamber that has engulfed his campaign seemed to prevent him from scoring the type of performance that would substantially shift the trajectory of the race.

The debate between Trump and Biden was set to be waged with both candidates protected by two plexiglass shields, but even after they were removed, Trump seemed to be encased in a plastic bubble—sheltering him not just from the coronavirus, but from political reality. Returning again and again to the latest thread in the vivid tapestry of conspiracy and innuendo about Biden’s surviving son, Trump was, at times, so caught in the lather of ultraconservative media that he seemed to lose sense of what polls show voters actually care about.

In the most illustrative moment of the night, Trump concluded a lengthy diatribe about Hunter Biden and Russian mayors and secret slush funds paying for the former vice president’s retirement, only for Biden to turn to the camera and say: “This isn’t about his family or mine. It’s about yours.”

A senior Biden aide said it wasn’t necessarily the high point of the evening. But it was “certainly right down the fairway for us.”

Read more here: Daily Beast – Trump needed a big break. His Fox News brain got in the way

Two very quick foreign policy snaps from Reuters just coming through. Firstly the US Embassy in Turkey says it is temporarily suspending visa services over “credible reports of potential terrorist attacks and kidnappings” against US citizens.

“The US Mission in Turkey has received credible reports of potential terrorist attacks and kidnappings against US citizens and foreign nationals in Istanbul, including against the US Consulate General, as well as potentially other locations in Turkey,” the embassy said.

Secondly, in a not unexpected move, Iran has blacklisted the US ambassador in Iraq and two other diplomats, following a similar move by the US against Iran’s envoy to Baghdad. Foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that US Ambassador to Iraq, Matthew Tueller, has “had a central role in coordinating terrorist acts in Iraq and beyond”.

Updated

CNN’s John Harwood makes this point about the post-debate polling which gave Joe Biden the edge on the night.

US recorded 71,671 new cases of coronavirus yesterday – the highest daily level since July

According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which we’ve been using as our source of US coronavirus figures, yesterday the United States recorded 71,671 new cases of coronavirus.

That is the highest single day’s total of new cases since 24 July. It is also only the sixth day on which the US has recorded more than 70,000 new cases since the pandemic began.

Last night the president again said that the country was turning the corner on Covid. The numbers don’t seem to back that up.

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Lisa Lerer writes for the New York Times politics newsletter that last night’s debate was a “strikingly normal political event in a very strange election year” – but was of not much use to the president. She writes:

Instead of getting a debate victory, Trump fought Joe Biden to a draw.

There were some improvements over his previous debate performance: Following the advice of his aides, Trump focused his attention on attacking Biden, and restraining his emotional outbursts and frustrations with the moderator.

While many of his arguments were littered with false and unsubstantiated claims, he drove a consistent message against Biden, casting him as a career politician who’s been ineffectual during his decades in Washington — “all talk and no action.”

And Trump delivered red meat to his conservative base, alleging that the former vice president used his position to enrich his family — an unsubstantiated argument peddled by Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies.

She also points out a key weakness of Trump’s positioning last night:

Amid all the attacks, Trump presented no clear vision to a country in the midst of a national crisis, failing to explain how he would use a second term.

Away from the election for a moment, one of the defining features on the west coast this summer has been the extensive wildfires. Vivian Ho has been in Happy Camp, California for us, looking at the aftermath the Karuk tribe.

The Slater fire raged through the ancestral heart of the Karuk tribe in the Klamath Mountains near the Oregon border on 8 September. The tribe, known for its deep knowledge of cultural burning and forest management, saw almost 200 homes in the community of 1,000 go up in flames.

In a historic fire season with million-acre gigafires and more than two dozen deaths, the destruction in Happy Camp barely broke through the long list of dire news stories making the headlines. But it has brought deep hardship for many who have long warned of fire seasons like this one.

Many who live in the Klamath Mountains were either unable to afford home insurance or unable to get it because companies are increasingly wary of insuring homeowners in some parts of the state amid intensifying wildfires. “I lost my insurance two years ago, after the Paradise fire,” said 60-year-old Happy Camp resident Flo Lopez. “I had a whole stack of denial letters from insurance companies, but I can’t prove that. Because those burned.”

More than a month after the fire and with residents still not allowed to return to their properties, the chance for this community with a native claim to California and a long history of tribal ecological fire management to rebuild to its full potential now seems more impossible than ever.

“We’re here because we choose to be here,” said Robert Perez, 34, who lost his ranch in the fire. “We have fresh water, our traditional knowledge, our culture, our ceremonies. It’s all right here and it’s where we want to be as people, right here raising our families. But a lot of these people are not going to have a choice but to relocate. It’s about to be wintertime and we are going to have all these homeless families with nowhere to go.”

Read more here: Fire tore through the Karuk tribe’s homeland. Many won’t be able to rebuild

Unsurprisingly Fox News were also in the president’s corner after the debate, something which has clearly exercised the writers at the Los Angeles Times, who’ve come out this morning with a takedown of the Fox analysis.

The debate showdown between President Trump and Joe Biden produced some sharp contrasts Thursday night, but none as drastic as the divide that emerged in the television world’s post-debate analysis — with Fox News delivering one worldview and most of the rest of the TV news ecosystem presenting a starkly different one.

Fox News commentators who immediately followed the debate suggested it was unlikely to sway many undecided voters. But their more moderate remarks were quickly washed away when Trump ally Sean Hannity delivered an hourlong beatdown against Biden, who the Fox star falsely insisted had been caught in “lie after lie after lie.”

Hannity devoted much of the rest of his program to a disquisition on unsubstantiated allegations about Biden’s son Hunter’s overseas contacts as an energy consultant.

It would be hard for the average viewer to believe that Hannity was watching the same debate as the commentators at rival CNN or NBC.

This is somewhat media navel-gazing I realise, but the bluntness of it appealed to me.

Read it here: Los Angeles Times – Fox News’ Hannity says his ally President Trump won the debate, but the host is an outlier

The editorial board at the Wall Street Journal is one outlet that seems to have been more impressed with the president last night than they were with his opponent – saying that at times Biden was “neither honest nor decent”. They write:

Trump was both better prepared and more disciplined than in the first debate, and if he loses on 3 Novemeber he will wish he had done that the first time. He offered the best defense we’ve heard him make of his coronavirus effort, focusing on the vaccines in development, his mobilization of resources in the spring, and the need to balance protection of the vulnerable with reopening the country.

Biden is his most demagogic when he addresses the virus, saying at one point that “anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President.” We’ve criticized Trump’s inconsistent and sometimes Panglossian rhetoric, but calling him responsible for every American death is neither honest nor decent. Biden’s “plan” on Covid is essentially Trump’s with more prudent rhetoric and a warning to wear a mask.

On the climate change crisis, the WSJ warned that “If you’re working in fossil fuels, or an industry that relies on them, Biden really is coming for your job.”

The Journal’s board also seem to be giving more credence to the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop than most other outlets. No other news organisation has yet had access to the laptop to corroborate the Post’s claims.

Joe Biden has said he never spoke with Hunter about his business interests, yet the emails and texts clearly show the opposite. Biden’s first response was to say Trump hasn’t released his tax returns and must be hiding something. Then he dismissed the story as Russian disinformation, for which there is no evidence. Biden and the campaign haven’t denied that the emails are genuine, or that Joe Biden met with Bobulinski.

The Biden braintrust probably figures that most of the press won’t pursue the story, and that he can ride it out without elaboration through election day. They may be right, though they have to hope no more contradictory evidence emerges.

Read more here: Wall Street Journal – Biden’s Character Campaign

Gloria Oladipo in Chicago reports for us today on the way that coronavirus is ripping through the Black community there, causing a great deal of grief and distress. Not just the virus itself – but the lack of care from the top.

“Here you have [Donald Trump] who’s got a helicopter flying him to a special wing of a hospital for help when Black people can’t even get an Uber to the emergency room or a Covid test,” said Naba’a Muhammad, 59, a writer and Chicago South Shore neighborhood resident.

In Chicago, Covid-19 is battering Black communities. Despite only accounting for 30% of the city’s population, Black people make up 60% of Covid cases there and have the highest mortality rate out of any racial or ethnic group.

“The racial and ethnic gaps we’re seeing of who gets the virus and who dies from it are not a surprise,” said Linda Rae Murray, a Chicago doctor, academic, social justice advocate and former president of the American Public Health Association as well as the former chief medical officer of the Cook county department of public health.

“They are a reflection of structural racism that exists in our society and inequities that are baked into our country.”

Read more here: ‘It’s like they’re waiting for us to die’: why Covid-19 is battering Black Chicagoans

The Atlantic made a very rare presidential endorsement yesterday, when it came out in favour of Joe Biden, saying “The president of the United States poses a threat to our collective existence.”

Writing about the debate for the magazine, David Frum said that what came across was that, in his view, Trump doesn’t care.

You’re losing. You’re losing bad. You’re out of money. Your ads are coming off the air in must-win states. Here it is, the last chance to speak to a big national audience—and for free, really the last opportunity to win back voters who have drifted away from you.

Trump behaved better at this second debate than at the first. The mute button was his good friend, and so was the pad of paper on which for the first 10 to 12 minutes he pretended to take notes whenever it was Biden’s turn to speak. The rules of debate two curbed him, restrained the spectacular bad behavior of debate one.

But Trump still arrived with only one plan: Attack and attack. Some of the attacks were wholly phony: Biden as the beneficiary of Chinese cash. Some of the attacks had a basis in reality: Incarceration of under-age border-crossers did begin under Barack Obama and Biden, not Trump. But none of them did what Trump so desperately needed to do: reach voters who suspect he doesn’t care about them at all. These have been difficult months. I feel it. I understand. He could not say it; he could not do it. He could only offer a false promise of vaccines before the end of the year, a promise he hastily retracted under pressure from the moderator for more specifics.

Read more here: The Atlantic – Trump doesn’t care

Maeve Reston and Stephen Collinson at CNN have offered this analysis of last night, saying that Trump failed to get the game-changing moment he wanted.

While much more subdued than his destructive performance in the first presidential debate, Trump’s remarks were still threaded with lies and occasional slashing personal attacks. At such a late stage of the presidential campaign, Trump entered the night looking for something that would help him catch up to Biden in key battleground states.

In order to win in 11 days, Trump needed to halt his precipitous slide among seniors and suburban women, while winning back some voters within his core constituency, non-college educated White voters, who have increasingly drifted to Biden – with even male voters becoming a new area of alarm for his advisers.

But while the President was more focused in his attacks on Biden as a tool of the radical left who would raise taxes, lead the country toward socialized medicine and kill energy sector jobs with his moves toward more renewable energy, he was still deeply defensive about his handling of the pandemic, failing to connect at a human level with voters who have lost loved ones. And when the debate moved to the topic of immigration, he was appallingly callous about the toll that his policies have taken on children who were separated from their parents at the border.

Read more here: CNN – Trump fails to get the game-changing moment he wanted in final debate with Joe Biden

The closing moments of the final presidential debate focused on climate change. Joe Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy while again disputing Donald Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not. ‘I know more about wind than you do,’ Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. ‘It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds’. Here’s a reminder of how that exchange played out.

Russia repeatedly tells us that they have no interest in interfering or commenting on the US election, and then continues to issue statements about it.

On a press conference call in Moscow this morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the Kremlin regretted that US election campaigns seem like competitions for candidates to show how much they dislike Russia. He added that it was up to American voters alone to pick a new president on 3 November.

Peskov also confirmed that Vladimir Putin did not watch last night’s debate, in case you were wondering about that.

With the new rules on mic muting at the second presidential debate, the two candidates were able to, on the whole, advance more substantive arguments on a range of topics than the insult-slinging the first debate degenerated into. Here are some of the key things each man said on the main themes raised in the debate

Coronavirus

Trump: We’re fighting it and we’re fighting it hard… We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away. I caught it. I learned a lot. We have to recover. We can’t close up our nation. We’re learning to live with it. We have no choice. We have a vaccine that’s coming, it’s ready, it’s going to be announced within weeks.

Biden: If you hear nothing else I say tonight hear this. Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of United States of America. This is the same fellow told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This is the same fellow who told you that, don’t worry, we’re going to end this by the summer. We’re about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan.

Environment

Trump: If you look at what he wants to do — if you look at his plan, his environmental plan — you know who developed it? AOC plus three. We are energy-independent. I know more about wind than you do. It is extremely expensive, kills all the birds, it’s very intermittent. Basically what he is saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry. Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma? Ohio?

Biden: I would transition from the oil industry, because the oil industry pollutes, significantly. We can capture emissions from the factory and capture the emissions from gas, we can do that. And we can do that by investing money. He takes everything out of context. But the point of it is, look, we have to move toward net-zero emissions.

Race and criminal justice

Trump: Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln – the possible exception – but the exception of Abraham Lincoln, nobody has done what I’ve done. The criminal justice reform bill, prison reform, opportunity zones, I took care of Black colleges and universities.

Biden: I never had to tell my daughter, if she’s pulled over, make sure she puts — for a traffic stop — put both hands on top of the wheel and don’t reach for the glove box, because someone may shoot you. But a Black parent, no matter how wealthy or how poor they are, has to teach their child: When you are walking down the street, don’t have a hoodie on when you go across the street. Making sure that you in fact, if you get pulled over, just ‘Yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ hands on top of the wheel. The fact of the matter is, there is institutional racism in America.

Healthcare

Trump: He wants socialized medicine. Bernie Sanders wants it. The Democrats want it. No matter how well you run the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), it’s no good. What we’d like to do is terminate it.

Biden: What I’m going to do is pass Obamacare with a public option. It will become Bidencare. If you qualify for Medicaid you and do not have the wherewithal in your state to get Medicaid, you automatically are enrolled, providing competition for insurance companies. Secondly, we’re going to make sure we reduce the premiums and reduce drug prices by making sure that there’s competition that does not exist now, by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with the insurance companies. He’s never come up with a plan.

Two very different closing arguments

Trump: I am cutting taxes, and he wants to raise everybody’s taxes, and he wants to put new regulations on everything. He will kill it. If he gets in, you will have a depression the likes of which you have never seen. Your 401(k)s will go to hell and it will be a very, very sad day for this country.

Biden: I [will] represent all of you, whether you voted for me or against me. And I’m going to make sure that you’re represented. I’m going to give you hope. What is on the ballot here is the character of this country. Decency, honor, respect, treating people with dignity, making that sure that everyone has an even chance. And I’m going to make sure you get that. You have not been getting it the last four years.

Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny have written for NBC News this morning about the vexed question for journalists on the extent to which they should be covering fringe conspiracy theories about the election.

One factor in the decision is that, compared to 2016, the stories seem to have crept way more into the official Republican campaign and American consciousness than the most extreme conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton ever did four years ago. They write:

Some of the same people who pushed a false conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that first emerged in 2016 are now targeting Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, with similar falsehoods. Their online posts are garnering astronomical numbers of shares on social media.

The fantastical rumors, which NBC News is declining to repeat verbatim, echo specific plot points central to “pizzagate,” a viral disinformation campaign that predates QAnon but also falsely alleges a vast conspiracy of child abuse.

There is an important difference, however. The pizzagate-style rumors in 2016 were largely confined to far-right message boards like 4chan and parts of Reddit. But the Hunter Biden iteration of the same conspiracy theory took off last weekend with the help of speculation from conservative TV hosts and members of Congress. Their theorizing can be traced back to a new website that has been promoted by president Donald Trump and his surrogates.

The path of the conspiracy theory highlights how once-obscure and fringe claims are now able to reach mainstream conservative media and even elected officials in the run-up to the 2020 election.

The disinformation campaign appears to have been successful in its goal of generating a smear against the former vice president’s son. According to Google Trends, “human trafficking” is now the third-most common related search term for “Hunter Biden” in the last year, after “laptop” and “New York Post,” which point to search interest around the unconfirmed allegations that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden contained evidence of crimes.

Collins and Zadrozny go on to say that conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden “began swirling before the New York Post article and can be traced to associates of former White House aide Steve Bannon”.

NBC News was moved yesterday to issue a strong statement of support for its reporter Brandy Zadrozny who herself was targeted in a segment on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson show. “Fox News has chosen to smear Brandy. In so doing they have shamefully encouraged harassment and worse,” the network said.

Read more here: NBC News – Inside the campaign to ‘pizzagate’ Hunter Biden

With a record amount of early and mail-in voting for a US presidential election already accounted for, it may have been too late for any debate performance to shift the dial. Amanda Holpuch in New York has been looking for us at one dial that – according to the polls, anyway – appears to have already shifted in Joe Biden’s favor. Nationally, the Democratic nominee has the largest lead among women in modern history.

In Pennsylvania on 13 October, Trump asked: “Suburban women, will you please like me?” On 17 October in Michigan, he implored: “I saved your suburbs – women – suburban women, you’re supposed to love Trump.” And the next day in Nevada, Trump begged: “Suburban women, please vote for me. I’m saving your house. I’m saving your community. I’m keeping your crime way down.”

These half-hearted pleas are about three years too late for voters like Becky, who lives in a suburb of Des Moines and asked for her last name not to be used because she was worried about being targeted for her opinions.

It didn’t take the 63-year-old long to regret her vote for Donald Trump, who she wanted out of office within weeks of him becoming president.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? What did we all do? What would’ve been so bad about Hillary?’” Becky said. “He’s so good with his lies. He made you believe she was hiding her emails, doing all these things she shouldn’t be doing.”

At this point, Becky can’t stand the president and laughed before calling him the antichrist. “That’s how badly I feel about him,” she said. “If we don’t get him out, we’re in a load of trouble here.”

Read more of Holpuch’s report here: ‘What did we all do?’ – why women who voted for Trump could decide the 2020 election

That is the the verdict of the New York Times fact-checkers on the debate this morning.

In their final debate, president Trump unleashed an unrelenting series of false, misleading and exaggerated statements as he sought to distort former vice president Biden’s record and positions and boost his own re-election hopes. The president once again relied heavily on well-worn talking points that have long been shown to be false.

Among Trump’s claims they ranked as false or misleading were

  • I was put through a phony witch hunt – false
  • We are rounding the turn on coronavirus – false
  • We have the best testing in the world by far — that is why we have so many cases – false
  • We have a vaccine that’s coming, it’s ready, it’s going to be announced within weeks – this lacks evidence
  • He wants to raise everybody’s taxes – false
  • He doesn’t come from Scranton – false
  • He called [the Black community] super predators, and he said it, super predators – false
  • China is paying. They are paying billions and billions of dollars – false
  • The [Trump Chinese] bank account was in 2013. That’s what it was. It was opened — it was closed in 2015, I believe – false
  • They want to take buildings down because they want to make bigger windows into smaller windows – false
  • We have the best carbon emission numbers that we’ve had in 35 years under this administration – misleading
  • We’re rebuilding it, and we’re doing record numbers. 11.4 million jobs in a short period of time – misleading
  • Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. It is filthy. The air is filthy – misleading

For Biden, they singled out these moments:

  • He has caused the deficit with China to go up, not down – false
  • Look at the states having a spike, they are the red states, the states in the Midwest, in the upper Midwest, that is where the spike is occurring significantly – exaggerated

Read it in full here: New York Times – Fact-checking the final presidential debate

Updated

Pompeo to meet foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in attempt to halt Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Another day, another diplomatic grumble from China about US behaviour. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news briefing this morning that the US is bullying countries to pick sides over their ties to China, but such efforts will not succeed,

The US is urging Sri Lanka to make “difficult but necessary choices” to secure its economic independence instead of choosing opaque practices, a senior state department official had said yesterday, in an apparent reference at China deepening its influence over the South Asian country.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, is now scheduled to meet the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in a new attempt to end nearly a month of bloodshed in Nagorno-Karabakh, during which Russian president Vladimir Putin said 5,000 people may have been killed.

NBC News had three experts grade the Trump and Biden performances last night, and to be honest it doesn’t make for comfortable reading for either camp. Biden got a higher grade than Trump from all three, but nobody was scored higher than a B+.

Mitchell McKinney, director of the political communication institute at the University of Missouri, said:

Biden was prepared for Trump’s attacks on him and his family and “didn’t get rattled,” McKinney said. Biden was able to project empathy, and he took an effective page out of the Obama playbook while declaring that he’d be a president of “not red states and blue states but the United States.” Most important, he was “able to avoid any major gaffes or blunders that would have had supporters wringing their hands,” McKinney said.

Susan Millsap, and communications professor, said:

It started better than the first one, but it slowly devolved a bit. The last 20 minutes or so, the interruptions were increasing again, and Trump was slowly turning it into a campaign speech. I was like, ‘Oh, no — don’t do it.’ Towards the end, Trump was back on his hyperbole and bombastic style.

Read more here: NBC News – Who won the Trump-Biden debate? Experts grade the candidates

Also published last night was a very strong op-ed from David Ignatius in the Washington Post, asking the blunt question of director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe: Can Trump’s spy chief be trusted?

The mission statement for the director of national intelligence stresses nonpartisan values: excellence, courage, respect and integrity. Regrettably, the performance of current DNI John Ratcliffe has often seemed to emphasize another metric — serving the political interests of the man who appointed him, President Trump.

Trump wants Ratcliffe’s help as Nov. 3 approaches. The president is desperately seeking a silver bullet to fire at former vice president Joe Biden — some nugget from the intelligence world that would justify Trump’s wild accusations of “hoaxes” and “criminals.” Sources tell me Trump has been raging inside the White House for Ratcliffe to deliver the goods.

Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman, is facing a moment of truth: Will he serve the intelligence community that he heads, protecting information that — in making a momentary splash for Trump — could disclose sources and methods and damage the country? Or will he join Trump in an assault on the very agencies he leads, treating them as part of an imaginary “deep state” that the president sees as his enemy?

Ignatius goes on to claim:

Intelligence officials have told me they fear Ratcliffe was appointed DNI for a simple reason: Trump wanted a loyal supporter in charge of the spy agencies as the country headed toward election day. That’s the kind of raw self-interest the country has come to expect from Trump, but we don’t often assess the consequences for the intelligence community.

Read more here: Washington Post – Can Trump’s spy chief be trusted?

Again, leaving the debate aside for a second, Molly O’Toole filed a report yesterday evening for the Los Angeles Times about the growing scandal of women at a Georgia immigration facility forced into “overly aggressive” or “medically unnecessary” surgery without their consent, including procedures that affect their ability to have children. A new report examines the cases of 19 women. She writes:

The 19 women were all patients of Dr. Mahendra Amin, the primary gynecologist for the Irwin County Detention Center, the report says. The records, including pathology and radiology reports, prescriptions, surgical impressions and consent forms, sworn declarations and telephone interviews, detail and support the women’s allegations of medical abuse by the doctor, according to the report.

The medical experts found an “alarming pattern” in which Amin allegedly subjected the women to unwarranted gynecological surgeries, in most cases performed without consent, according to the five-page report, which was submitted Thursday to members of Congress.

“Both Dr. Amin and the referring detention facility took advantage of the vulnerability of women in detention to pressure them to agree to overly aggressive, inappropriate, and unconsented medical care,” the report states.

One woman says she’s still not sure what Amin did in surgery, because she hasn’t subsequently been able to afford to go to the doctor to establish it. Dr. Amin strongly denies all of the allegations.

Read more about this worrying case here: Los Angeles Times – 19 women allege medical abuse in Georgia immigration detention

Politico this morning have a reaction piece to last night which is eye-catchingly headlined: “The debates, like everything else in 2020, were a dumpster fire”

American voters only got two presidential debates in the 2020 general election, and in a normal year this one would have been hotly anticipated and carefully picked over, as Donald Trump and Joe Biden jabbed at each other over money, immigration, racial justice and their support for the oil industry. But as of the start time, close to 50 million Americans had already voted, and polls are locked in as they’ve ever been—so perhaps the biggest question is whether it was possible for this debate to change anything at all. And after this bizarre debate season—a meltdown, a cancellation, a rogue fly and this almost shockingly orthodox interaction, with a mute button—is it time to change what we really expect from debates?

They’ve gone on to ask what they describe as ‘operatives, campaign analysts and other political insiders’ what they think about the whole debate process, and some of it is quite enlightening, including the observation that “Debates are supposed to be televised job interviews, not a form of reality TV” and just maybe “It’s fair to wonder whether debates have run their course”.

Read more here: Politico – The debates, Like Everything Else in 2020, Were a Dumpster Fire

Away from the debate a second, there’s a quick foreign policy snap here from Reuters. Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said today that Moscow and Washington were still not close to reaching an agreement over the New Start arms control treaty, the RIA news agency reported.

The two countries’ positions on the nuclear pact, which expires in February, appeared to have moved closer when Washington this week welcomed a Russian proposal to extend it if they agreed to freeze their stocks of nuclear warheads. It is the last remaining nuclear treaty between the two nations.

Richard Wolffe was very busy last night. As well as contributing to our podcast debate on the debate, he also had time to pen his own verdict.

Normal presidents get their third debate right. They flunk their first in a fit of presidential pique about standing on stage with their upstart rivals. They over-correct their second after a frantic period of long-delayed rehearsals. By the time the third comes along, they usually remember what got them elected in the first place. Donald Trump is not a normal president.

Wolffe goes on to observe:

Not to put too a fine point on his presidency, this might just be the fatal flaw in the entire Trump project: the cosmic chasm between Donald’s self-regard and the way the rest of the sentient universe sees him. Donald apparently sincerely believes he is an elite political athlete, while the majority of American voters keep telling pollsters that his gameplan isn’t working.

For some reason unknown to political strategists of all persuasions, Trump is closing this election by attacking 60 Minutes for being mean to him, and attacking Joe Biden’s son for business dealings with China. This in the week we all learned that Trump has a secret bank account in China, where he has paid more taxes to the People’s Republic than he has to his own country.

Read more here: Richard Wolffe – Donald Trump reverts to type in debate – and it isn’t ‘magnificently brilliant’

Post-debate polls and focus groups may have given Joe Biden the win, and plaudits may have gone to Kristen Welker, but there was only one winner as far as the Trump campaign was concerned. Trump’s comms chief Tim Murtaugh tweeted out a picture of the president “just before the debate victory” this morning.

Trump was also boasting about poll numbers handing victory to him, although in this case he was posting screenshots of self-selecting Twitter votes from conservative-leaning sources.

The little tick next to his name in the results on the screenshot suggests that the president had just voted for himself in the poll. Fair enough, he was hardly going to vote that the other guy had won, was he?

If you’d like to get your ears around something this morning, as soon as last night’s debate was over, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland sat down with his trans-Atlantic counterpart Richard Wolffe to discuss what had just gone down. You can listen to it here.

Kristen Welker succeeded where Chris Wallace failed in the first debate, and came out widely praised for the way that she handled the debate. Max Benwell reports:

Welker, 44, the only person of color chosen to moderate presidential debate this year, quickly earned plaudits as the event unfolded in a calmer and less chaotic manner than the first presidential debate in Cleveland. The winner of Thursday night’s debate was “obviously” Welker, tweeted New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie.

Wallace, whose own moderation was widely criticized after the first debate, was asked on air what he thought of the tenor of the final debate moderated by Welker. “First of all, I’m jealous,” he said.

Trump, who is trying to appeal to female voters as he trails Biden in national polling, also praised Welker after spending the days before the debate criticizing her.

“So far, I respect very much the way you’re handling this,” Trump said to Welker when she gave him time to respond to Biden at one point.

The praise came after Trump attacked her on Twitter over the weekend. She has “always been terrible and unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters”, he tweeted at the time.

Read more here: The ‘obvious’ winner of the final debate: moderator Kristen Welker

Racial injustice was another area where the two men clashed last night. Accusing Trump of being “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history”, Biden said that the president “pours fuel on every single racist fire. ... This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn.”

Trump asserted that “I am the least racist person in this room.”

The debate between them on the topic wasn’t entirely well received.

“Blackness and criminality are not the same,” Phillip Atiba Goff, a leading researcher on racial bias in policing, wrote on Twitter. “Would really love Black communities to be on the agenda outside of questions about punishment.”

And Gene Demby, the co-host of Code Switch, National Public Radio’s podcast on race and identity, wrote: “This conversation about race in the US with two rich, powerful septuagenarians is going about as well as anyone could have anticipated.”

Lois Beckett last night was keeping an eye for us on how viewers rated the performances of the two men in the debate. She writes:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was perceived as the winner of the final debate with Donald Trump on Thursday night, according to a CNN poll of debate viewers and a panel of undecided North Carolina voters.

The CNN poll found it was perceived as a slightly weaker Biden performance compared to the first, chaotic presidential debate last month, when 60% of viewers perceived the Democratic nominee as the winner, compared to 53% on Thursday night.

Participants in a CNN panel of undecided North Carolina voters said that Trump’s strength in the debate was his focus on the economy, while Biden’s strength was his emphasis on “unifying” Americans.

But there were mixed reviews for Biden in a panel assembled by the Los Angeles Times:

Words that the undecided voters in that panel used to describe Biden’s debate performance included: “vague”, “cognitively impaired”, “I don’t want to say senile, so I’ll say old”, “uncomfortable”, “grandfatherly”, “defensive”, and “ambiguous”.

Trump was described by the same group as “controlled”, “constrained”, “petulant” “reserved”, “surprisingly presidential”, and a “con artist”.

You can read more here: Biden the winner of final debate, TV viewers and undecided voters say

With over 223,000 Americans dead to date from the coronavirus pandemic, it was a significant topic in last night’s debate. While Donald Trump promised a vaccine would be available within weeks, Joe Biden questioned the veracity of his claims, citing the president’s previous predictions the pandemic would end by Easter.

Hello, and welcome to Friday’s live coverage of US politics. The debate is done, there’s 11 days to go. Will it have changed anybody’s minds?

Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October. You can find our more details and book tickets here.

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