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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh , Lauren Aratani, Joan E Greve, Martin Belam and Tom McCarthy

US election 2020: confusion after court rules to separate Minnesota ballots that arrive late – as it happened

Joe Biden arrives at a drive-in campaign rally at Broward College in Coconut Creek, Florida.
Joe Biden arrives at a drive-in campaign rally at Broward College in Coconut Creek, Florida. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

My colleague Tom McCarthy will continue to bring live election updates. Follow along:

Summary

  • The new US economic report showed GDP rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September. The president and his allies celebrated the news, but the growth seems to be fueled by consumer spending among Americans fortunate enough to have had a stable income since March. The US economy is also still not as strong as it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Donald Trump and Joe Biden held dueling rallies in the key swing state of Florida today, with just five days to go until election day. A new set of polls show Biden building a small lead in Florida, which could eliminate any hope of a comeback victory for Trump. As Biden said at his drive-in rally in Broward county today, “If Florida goes blue, it’s over.”
  • Trump assured supporters that they would recover if they contracted coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 228,000 American lives. “You know the bottom line though? You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better,” Trump said at his Tampa rally. According to Johns Hopkins University, 994 Americans died of coronavirus yesterday alone.
  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “confident” Biden would win the election. “We are confident, we are calm, and we have prepared,” the Democratic speaker said at her weekly press conference. “I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday.”
  • More than 80 million Americans have their cast ballots, either by voting early in person or by submitting their absentee ballots, the US Elections Project says. Well before election day, the number of people who have voted so far amounts to 58% of the total turnout during the last presidential election in 2016.
  • A federal appeals court ruled that ballots in Minnesota received after election day to count should be set aside, and shouldn’t be counted. The ruling is likely to inject confusion and chaos into the elections – as Republicans continue their crusade to limit how and when Americans can vote, and whether those votes are counted.

God and the GOP: will conservative evangelicals stay loyal to Trump?

Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Minnesota tomorrow, which he is referring to as a “Make America Great Again Peaceful Protest” .

Trump and Biden, who held dueling events in Florida today, will be doing the same in Minnesota and Wisconsin tomorrow. At Trump’s campaign – which has drawn thousands of maskless supporters in recent days – he has consistently been working to downplay the coronavirus pandemic.

At a rally in Arizona yesterday, Trump mocked mask requirements in California, bizarrely claiming that the state requires diners to wear “a special mask.”

“You cannot, under any circumstances, take it off. You have to eat through the mask,” he said. “It’s a very complex mechanism. And they don’t realize, those germs, they go through it like nothing. They look at you with that contraption and they say, ‘That’s an easy one.’”

This claim is totally false – Californians are required to wear normal face masks, and both store-bought surgical masks and homemade fabric ones are permitted. At restaurants, they are allowed to remove their masks while eating and drinking.

The comments have become characteristic of Trump at his rallies – the president often offers to kiss every man and woman in attendance, claiming he is “immune” and cannot transmit Covid-19 after he survived the disease. He often complains about how the media focuses to much on the pandemic - and not enough on baseless accusations against Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

As the US coronavirus death toll ticks up, and the number of cases surge, Trump has continued to lag behind his opponent in polls. It is unclear that enough voters in swing states will buy into the alternate reality – and vote for him.

Updated

More on that Minnesota ruling on whether absentee ballots that arrive after election day will count:

A federal appeals court did not outright block the 7-day deadline extension to return mail-in ballots but ordered that ballots arriving after 3 November be segregated – in case they are invalidated in a final ruling.

The ordeal has injected more confusion into what has already been a chaotic election, as Americans adjust to voting amid a pandemic.

“Voters should no longer place their absentee ballots in the mail,” Minnesota’s secretary of state Steve Simon said. “It is too late for you, practically speaking, to get it back. Don’t risk it.”

Voting rights groups and elections officials in other states have echoed his advice. As Republicans continue to challenge when, how and whose votes are counted, voters are being encouraged to turn in ballots at official droop boxes, or vote in person.

Read more about Republicans’ attempts to suppress the vote:

On Fox News, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, claimed that the number of deaths is “almost nothing”. At least 1,049 new Covid-19 deaths were reported today, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Donald Trump, his family, and his supporters have continued to downplay the virus even as cases in the US, and deaths, have been trending up.

Trump Jr said he “went through the CDC data”. It’s unclear what he was looking at, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearly notes the devastating death toll.

Updated

Election officials in US battleground states are still fighting to limit the usage of ballot drop boxes, with only days left until 3 November.

A voter cast his ballot at the Summit County drop off box during Ohio’s early voting period.
A voter cast his ballot at the Summit County drop off box during Ohio’s early voting period. Photograph: David Maxwell/EPA

Jess Hardin reports:

In response to safety concerns spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and worries about potential mail delays, drop boxes are popping up all over the country – in many places for the first time. The largely secure voting method has long been available to voters in states like Colorado and Washington. But amid the partisan battles over access to the polls, election officials in battleground states are still fighting to limit their usage with only days left until 3 November.

Directives from Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, and Texas governor, Greg Abbott – both Republicans – limit drop boxes to one per county. In Harris county, Texas, home to Houston, that’s one box for 4.7 million people. For the 228,000 residents in more sparse Mahoning county, a single drop box could result in a lengthy trip to the board of elections. In stark contrast, for the 2.3 million residents of King county in greater Seattle, there are 73 24-hour drop boxes within easy reach of voters.

The ongoing litigation limiting the number of drop boxes has created confusion for voters in the middle of an election in which 46 million people have already voted by mail. But in many cases, officials are also seeing that voters’ increased anxiety about the safety of their ballots is matched by their determination.

“When they see it’s so much harder for them to cast their ballot, they react to that by saying, ‘I’ll show you,’” said the Harris county clerk, Chris Hollins.

Read more:

Joe Biden will campaign in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin Friday.

Both candidates have been making the rounds to swing states in a final push ahead of election day. In Florida Thursday, where polls have found Biden neck-and-neck with Trump, the former vice-president appealed to Latinos – a key demographic that could help deliver victories to Democrats.

He spoke directly to Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans: “President Trump can’t advance democracy and human rights for the Cuban people or the Venezuelan people, for that matter, when he has praised so many autocrats around the world,” he said.

As he has done throughout the campaign, Biden also pitched himself as a leader who could pull the US out of the coronavirus crisis. While his opponent held a packed rally, drawing thousands of unmasked supporters, Biden has stuck to smaller pandemic-safe events and drive-ins.

Supporters gather near the stage to see Joe Biden speak during a drive-in rally at the Florida State Fairgrounds.
Supporters gather near the stage to see Joe Biden speak during a drive-in rally at the Florida State Fairgrounds. Photograph: Luis Santana/AP

Updated

Could the 2020 US election be decided by the supreme court?

Probably not. The most likely scenario is that American voters alone will decide the election.

For all its flaws and added complications this year from the coronavirus pandemic, the US elections system has basic features to ensure a high correlation between the vote that is cast and the result that is announced.

It is highly decentralized, with thousands of jurisdictions staffed by members of each major party, all using different technologies and independently reporting results, which can be reviewed or recounted, with both sides and the media watching out for irregularities before, during and after election day. It might take awhile, and the tragic story of disenfranchisement in the United States continues, but elections officials have vowed to deliver an accurate count.

Sometimes, however, US elections are very close, and in an era of nihilistic partisanship, court fights during elections are becoming increasingly common. Such disputes might land with increasing frequency before the supreme court.

It is extremely rare for a presidential election to land before the supreme court. In 1876, five justices sat on a commission that decided the 1876 race for Rutherford B Hayes over Samuel Tilden.

In the modern era, it has happened just once, in 2000, after the Florida state supreme court ordered a recount in a razor-thin race that the Republican secretary of state said George W Bush had won. Republicans challenged the recount order and the case went to the supreme court, which sustained the challenge and stopped the recount.

Read more:

Federal appeals court orders mail-in ballots that arrive after election day be segregated

A federal appeals court ruled that ballots in Minnesota received after election day to count should be set aside, and shouldn’t be counted.

Voters were told for months that ballots postmarked by 3 November would count if received by the 10th, and this latest ruling has added confusion to a chaotic election where Republicans have been making a last-minute push to limit how many votes count, and how they’re counted.

The decision could have significant implications in swing-state Minnesota.

Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator of Minnesota, told voters to not mail in their ballots after the ruling. “Because of LAST MINUTE ruling, Minnesota DO NOT put ballots in mail any more,” Klobuchar wrote on Twitter. “Vote in-person or take mail-in ballot directly to ballot box.”

Updated

More than 80 million Americans have already voted

More than 80 million Americans have their cast ballots, either by voting early in person, or by submitting their absentee ballots, the US Elections Project says.

Well before election day, the number of people who have voted so far amounts to 58% of the total turnout during the last presidential election in 2016. At this pace, the US could set a record for the voter participation rate in more than a century.

More Democrats have chosen to vote early, whereas Republicans – who have historically voted by mail in large numbers – this year are expected to turn out to vote in person on election day, having been put off by Donald Trump’s false claims that absentee voting is prone to fraud.

Ian Marshall of Kent, Ohio casts his ballot at a ballot drop box during Ohio’s early voting period.
Ian Marshall of Kent, Ohio, casts his ballot at a ballot drop box during Ohio’s early voting period. Photograph: David Maxwell/EPA

Updated

Your absentee ballot never showed up. Now what?

Sarah Fielding reports:

Voting during a contentious presidential election and a pandemic is more than a little overwhelming. Like many Americans, you may have designed a plan to vote by absentee ballot months ago, when 3 November felt a lifetime away, and no one knew how election day would look. Maybe you were unsure of where you would be, geographically speaking, and voting by mail felt like the safest option. If you’re like me, when the time came to request your absentee ballot, you submitted your information and waited for the ballot to arrive in the mail, but it never did.

I requested my absentee ballot for New York on 14 September. Two weeks later, the status on my ballot tracker read “out for delivery” but no ballot ever arrived. One of my roommates requested her Pennsylvania absentee ballot on 5 October and it has reportedly been on the way since 19 October. Last week, the Queer Eye star and Texas resident Jonathan Van Ness shared on Instagram that his absentee ballot was marked out for delivery weeks before but never arrived, and the election board couldn’t locate it.

Read more about why that’s happening, and what to do:

Joe Biden’s drive-in rally in Tampa, Florida seems to have been cut short due to a torrential downpour.

The Democratic candidate spoke about taxes and criticized his opponent’s comments about military veterans. “Folks, of all the things Donald Trump has said, nothing has bothered me more than what he has said to those who serve in uniform,” Biden said.

Both candidates have been chasing votes in swing-state Florida, holding back-to-back events in Tampa.

Updated

A fake “intelligence” document circulating the internet laid the groundwork for the unsubstantiated Hunter Biden conspiracy theories that Republicans have been pushing all month, NBC reports.

From NBC:

One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, a fake “intelligence” document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China.

The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.

The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.

One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.

Despite the document’s questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing, its claims that Hunter Biden has a problematic connection to the Communist Party of China have been used by people who oppose the Chinese government, as well as by far-right influencers, to baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.

The fake intelligence document, however, preceded the leak by months, and it helped lay the groundwork among right-wing media for what would become a failed October surprise: a viral pile-on of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.

Read more here.

The polls point to a Biden victory but can they be trusted this time?

For months, activists and Democratic party officials have been telling Joe Biden supporters that the only answer to the question “Can we trust the polls?” is to go out and vote for Biden, and then get others to do the same.

“The polls are a mirage,” one organizer told the Guardian last month.

For partisans on either side of the presidential election, “Go vote” remains the only sound advice. Tens of millions of people have acted on that advice and cast their ballots early in record numbers. Others are preparing to vote in person on Tuesday.

After the dust has settled on the election, there will be plenty of time to analyze whether the state-level polling delivered a better picture of the race this year than it did in 2016, political organizers say.

But one thing is certain: the polls at the end of the 2020 presidential race are telling a very different story from the polls at the end of the 2016 race, and it’s a rosier picture for Biden than it was for Clinton.

Read more:


Updated

Citing “civil unrest”, Walmart has removed all guns and ammunition from its sales floors in all stores that sell firearms, according to the Wall Street Journal. Half of the chain’s 4,700 stores sell firearms.

“We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers,” a company spokesman told the Journal.

In a separate letter to store managers, the company said the move is “due to the current unrest in isolated areas of the country and out of an abundance of caution”.

It is unclear how long firearms will be off the sales floor, but customers can still view and purchase firearms upon request.

I’m signing off and handing the blog over to my Guardian colleague Maanvi Singh. Stay tuned for more live updates.

Seventeen attendees of Donald Trump’s rally in Tampa, Florida today had to be taken to the hospital for intense heat, according to NBC News.

Hundreds of supporters, many not wearing masks, attended the packed rally in 87-degree heat. At one point during the rally, a fire truck sprayed water onto the crowd in an attempt to cool down attendees, NBC reported. Many of the supporters had been waiting for hours to hear Trump speak.

This is the second hiccup the Trump campaign has experienced at its rallies this week. In Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday night, hundreds of Trump supporters were stuck in freezing weather waiting for buses that were supposed to take them out of the airfield where the rally was held. Seven people were taken to the hospital that night suffering varying conditions.

Joe Biden slammed Wednesday’s rally as being “an image that captured President Trump’s whole approach in this crisis”.

Biden is holding his own drive-in rally in Tampa tonight, albeit in cooler weather.

Supporters at Donald Trump’s rally in Tampa, Florida Thursday afternoon
Supporters at Donald Trump’s rally in Tampa, Florida Thursday afternoon Photograph: Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Updated

Senator David Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, pulled out of what would have been his final debate against his Democratic rival, Jon Ossoff, on Sunday.

The two candidates debated last night in Savannah, where Ossoff grilled Perdue on his response to the Covid-19 pandemic and voting record. A clip from the debate Ossoff tweeted this morning went viral. The clip shows Ossoff confronting Perdue for saying that Covid-19 is no worse than the flu and that cases would go down.

In a Tweet, Ossoff said that Perdue pulled out of the debate because “millions saw that Perdue had no answers when I called him out on his record of blatant corruption, widespread disease and economic devastation.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Perdue has told reporters that the senator will be joining Donald Trump at a rally in Rome, Georgia instead of “listening to Jon Ossoff lie to the people of Georgia”.

Georgia has not elected a Democratic senator since 2000, but the race between Ossoff and Perdue is looking as close as it has ever gotten. Democrats are paying particular attention to contested races with incumbent Republicans as the party eyes a majority in the Senate.

Elizabeth Warren is vying for a treasury secretary position – a crucial role in navigating the Covid-19 pandemic’s recession – in a Joe Biden administration, according to a new report from Politico.

While the senator and former Democratic presidential candidate has not confirmed interest herself, three Democratic officials in her inner circle said she will make her case for the spot if Biden wins next week.

As the Politico report notes, Warren as treasury secretary would likely be praised by fellow progressives but draw opposition from Wall Street and moderate Democrats who see her stance as too far left.

Here’s more from Politico:

While Warren has frequently been mentioned as a candidate for Treasury and she has developed a relationship with Biden as an economic adviser since ending her own presidential bid last spring, there has been uncertainty about her ambitions. She could stay in her safe Senate seat and still be a prominent national political voice.

But Warren allies say that the job is appealing because it is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to enact some of the “big structural change” she talked about during the presidential primary, rather than just pressuring Cabinet officials from her Senate perch. Much of her life’s work has revolved around the intricate rules and levers of power in the executive branch.

Warren also sees an opportunity amid the economic crisis wrought by Covid-19 to rectify what she thinks were mistakes in the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession — namely, not doing enough to change the underlying systemic problems or focus on the most vulnerable.

A new Times/Siena College poll found Joe Biden holding a 3% lead over Donald Trump in North Carolina, one of the key swing states.

The poll indicated that Biden’s lead in the state is driven by greater support among women, voters under 45 and African-American voters. Trump won the state over Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 4%.

According to the poll, Cal Cunningham, a Democrat running against Republican senator Thom Tillis, also has a 3% lead over his opponent. This is despite Cunningham’s campaign dealing with controversy over sexual text he sent to a strategist on his campaign who is not his wife. Each seat that Democrats take from Republican incumbents brings the party closer to breaking the majority the party has in the chamber.

Of the voters who answered the survey, 64% said that they have already voted. Over 3.8 million voters in the states have already casted their ballots, according to the US Elections Project, reaching over 80% of the total votes cast in the state for the 2016 presidential election.

Updated

This is Lauren Aratani taking over for Joan E Greve. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin posted his response to an open letter House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to him today on the coronavirus stimulus package.

In her letter, Pelosi said that she is still waiting for the Trump administration to agree to Democrats’ Covid-19 testing and contact-tracing strategy. She also included a list of other things for which she is still waiting for a response, including funding for state and local government and funding for schools.

“The American people are suffering, and they want us to come to an agreement to save lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy as soon as possible,” Pelosi wrote.

Mnuchin tweeted out his own letter this afternoon, saying that Pelosi’s “all or none approach is hurting hard-working Americans who need help now”. The letter included Mnuchin’s rebuttal to Pelosi’s criticism, attempting to outline the ways that the administration has tried to “reach a serious bipartisan compromise”.

Negotiations over a new coronavirus stimulus package have boiled down to the Trump administration, with Mnuchin as the main conduit, and Pelosi. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said in the last few weeks that a new stimulus package won’t be seen until after the election, particularly because Republican senators have been focused on confirming justice Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.

As negotiations continue to falter, the most important programs of the first stimulus package have since expired, including additional unemployment insurance and a program that gave loans to small businesses.

Updated

That’s it from me today. My Guardian colleague, Lauren Aratani, will take over the blog for the next couple of hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The new US economic report showed GDP rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September. The president and his allies celebrated the news, but the growth seems to be fueled by consumer spending among Americans fortunate enough to have had a stable income since March. The US economy is also still not as strong as it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Donald Trump and Joe Biden held dueling rallies in the key swing state of Florida today, with just five days to go until election day. A new set of polls show Biden building a small lead in Florida, which could eliminate any hope of a comeback victory for Trump. As Biden said at his drive-in rally in Broward county today, “If Florida goes blue, it’s over.”
  • Trump assured supporters that they would recover if they contracted coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 228,000 American lives. “You know the bottom line though? You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better,” Trump said at his Tampa rally. According to Johns Hopkins University, 994 Americans died of coronavirus yesterday alone.
  • Trump postponed his North Carolina rally until Monday due to inclement weather. The president and the fist lady are still traveling to Fort Bragg tonight to visit with service members.
  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “confident” Biden would win the election. “We are confident, we are calm, and we have prepared,” the Democratic speaker said at her weekly press conference. “I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday.”

Lauren will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Two new Florida polls show Joe Biden has built a small lead in the crucial swing state, which Donald Trump won by 1 point in 2016.

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, Biden leads Trump by 3 points among likely voters in Florida, 45%-42%. That lead is just outside the survey’s 2.7-point margin of error.

A separate Monmouth University poll found Biden has a 4- to 6-point lead among Florida’s likely voters, depending on the level of voter turnout. The survey has a margin of error of 4.4 points.

Florida is key to both nominees’ strategies, which is evidenced by the fact that Trump and Biden both held rallies in the state today, with just five days left until election day.

But Florida is slightly more important to Trump, given the president has virtually no path to victory unless he can win his home state again. If Biden loses Florida, he could still potentially cobble together an electoral college win if he can carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

However, Biden has made clear he would like to win Florida to seal a definitive victory in the presidential race.

As the Democratic nominee said at his drive-in rally in Broward county today, “If Florida goes blue, it’s over.”

The Biden campaign said a flight crew member on a support plane for Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, has tested positive for coronavirus.

“Earlier today, as part of our routine COVID-19 testing program, we learned that a non-staff flight crew member that travelled on a support plane for Doug Emhoff tested positive for COVID-19,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.

Dillon said the campaign learned through contact tracing that two members of Emhoff’s support staff had also tested positive for the virus and are thus required to quarantine for two weeks.

“Mr. Emhoff was not on the plane with this individual. He was not in close contact with this individual, and did not even have passing contact with them at any point. Therefore he is not required to quarantine,” Dillon said.

Harris was required to cancel a weekend of campaign travel earlier this month after a crew member on her plane and one of her senior staffers tested positive for coronavirus. The vice-presidential nominee has since tested negative multiple times.

Donald and Melania Trump are still going to North Carolina to visit with service members at Fort Bragg.

The president’s campaign rally tonight in Fayetteville, North Carolina, has been postponed until Monday due to inclement weather.

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has resigned from the Intercept, accusing the editors of the website he co-founded of attempting to censor him over an article critical of Joe Biden.

The Guardian reports:

Greenwald, who was a vital part of the Guardian US team that broke the Edward Snowden whistleblower story in 2013, released a statement online that blasted the editors of the Intercept as being in hock to Biden and the Democratic party.

‘The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression,’ he wrote in a lengthy resignation post.

Greenwald is a vocal critic of the US media and American politics, with an abrasive style that has won him many admirers as well as a legion of critics. Recently, he has been especially critical of media coverage of the Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 US election and has been criticized by some left-wing commentators for appearing on right wing Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show.

The Trump campaign has postponed the president’s North Carolina rally tonight due to inclement weather.

“Because of a wind advisory issued with gusts reaching 50 miles per hour and other weather conditions, the outdoor Fayetteville, NC, rally has been postponed until Monday,” the campaign said in a statement.

The rally was supposed to be Trump’s second campaign event of the day, after his Tampa rally, which just wrapped up.

The campaign’s announcement comes amid news that at least two people who attended Trump’s rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, last week have tested positive for coronavirus.

Updated

Trump's 'bottom line' on coronavirus: 'You’re going to get better'

At his Tampa rally, Donald Trump assured Americans that they would absolutely recover from coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 225,000 lives in the US.

The president reflected on people around the world expressing frustration with coronavirus restrictions, which have recently intensified in several countries as cases surge.

“You know the bottom line though? You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better,” Trump said. “If I can get better, anybody can get better, and I got better fast.”

As a reminder, the president received some of the best possible medical treatment in the world from the doctors at Walter Reed when he was hospitalized with coronavirus earlier this month.

And according to Johns Hopkins University, 994 Americans died of coronavirus yesterday alone. The total US coronavirus death toll now stands at 228,194.

Updated

Joe Biden has now concluded his speech at a drive-in rally in Broward county, Florida.

In his speech, the Democratic nominee argued Donald Trump and his administration are “the worst possible standard bearers for democracy” in Cuba and other countries with autocratic leaders.

“President Trump can’t advance democracy and human rights for the Cuban people, for the Venezuelan people, when he has embraced so many autocrats around the world,” Biden said.

Cuban Americans make up a key voting bloc in Florida, and a new NBC News/Marist poll of the state showed Trump leads among Cuban American voters in Florida, 71% to 23%.

Biden is headed to his second event of the day, a drive-in rally in Tampa, where Trump is speaking now.

Updated

Multiple attendees of Donald Trump’s Tampa rally passed out due to the intense heat, as a truck blasted water at the crowd.

The Tampa event comes two days after seven people who attended Trump’s rally in Omaha, Nebraska, were hospitalized due to exposure to near-freezing temperatures.

Thousands of Omaha rally attendees were stranded in the cold for hours as they waited for Trump campaign buses, which were stuck in traffic.

Biden holds drive-in rally in Broward county

Joe Biden has taken the stage to address supporters at a drive-in rally in Broward county, Florida.

“This election is the most important one you’ve ever voted in,” Biden told the crowd. He emphasized the swing state’s key role in the election, saying, “The heart and soul of this country’s at stake right here in Florida.”

Biden also pushed back against Donald Trump’s claims that the Democrat would shut down the country if he wins the election.

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

That line was met with “applause” (in the form of car honks) from the crowd in Coconut Creek.

The striking difference between Trump’s rally – a large outdoor event with no social distancing – and Biden’s rally – a drive-in event where supporters were urged to stay near their cars – was quite striking.

Updated

Donald Trump also expressed boredom with economic statistics during his Tampa rally, even as his allies tout the country’s newly reported GDP growth.

Addressing the number of jobless claims in the country, Trump said, “This is boring, but it’s really good.”

The president also said he has received calls from some of his allies, including former presidential candidates, urging him to focus more on the economy and less on attacks against Hunter Biden.

After Trump mentioned Joe Biden’s son, the crowd broke out into chants of “Lock him up!”

Trump said of his Republican allies, “They’re calling me up, ‘Sir, you shouldn’t be speaking about Hunter. You shouldn’t be saying bad things about Biden because nobody cares.’ I disagree. Maybe that’s why I’m here, and they’re not.”

The president said advisers have urged him to talk more about the economic achievements of his administration. “I mean how many times can I say it? I’ll say it five or six times during the speech, 33.1,” Trump said, referring to the country’s annualized GDP growth.

Updated

During his Tampa rally, Donald Trump spent a significant amount of time attacking Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official who has endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential bid.

Taylor revealed yesterday that he was the author of a scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed criticizing Trump’s leadership.

Trump attacked Taylor as a “low-life” who engaged in “treasonous” activities.

“He should be prosecuted,” the president said. “Are you listening to me back in Washington? He should be prosecuted along with the New York Times.”

As a reminder, it is five days until election day, and Trump is about 9 points down in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Updated

Taking the mic at his Tampa rally, Donald Trump promised his supporters that he would not shut the country down as coronavirus cases surge in dozens of states.

“Joe Biden’s plan is to deliver punishing lockdowns, he’s going to lock you down,” Trump said.

Biden has said he does not believe it will be necessary to lock down the country in order to get coronavirus under control.

“I’m running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics,” Trump said of Biden, who is consistently leading in national polls by an average of about 9 points.

Trump holds rally in Tampa

Donald Trump has taken the stage for his rally in Tampa, Florida, where Joe Biden will also be holding a drive-in rally later today.

The first lady joined the president for his Tampa rally, and she was the first to speak at the event.

“A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a better America,” Melania Trump said, denouncing the “hate, negativity and fear” of the media.

The first lady made her first in-person appearance on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania earlier this week. She canceled a previous trip to Pennsylvania due to her lingering coronavirus symptoms.

Joe Biden and his granddaughter, Natalie, have arrived in Florida for the Democrat’s two rallies today in Broward county and Tampa.

Donald Trump is also holding a rally in Tampa this afternoon, as polls show the two nominees running neck and neck in the swing state.

Joe Biden will also travel to the swing states of Iowa and Wisconsin tomorrow, in addition to Minnesota, making Friday his busiest day of campaign travel since becoming the Democratic nominee.

The Biden campaign just announced the Democrat will head to Minnesota tomorrow, four days before election day.

“On Friday, October 30, Joe Biden will travel to Minnesota to discuss bringing Americans together to address the crises facing the country and winning the battle for the soul of the nation,” the campaign said in a press release.

The campaign said Biden will speak at a drive-in rally in St. Paul tomorrow afternoon.

Hillary Clinton narrowly carried Minnesota in 2016, and Donald Trump has set his sights on flipping the state, but recent polls have shown Biden ahead there by an average of 8 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Biden’s trip may also be aimed at bolstering the chances of victory for Senator Tina Smith, who remains locked in a close race with former Republican congressman Jason Lewis.

Updated

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Donald Trump and Joe Biden are both campaigning in the key swing state of Florida today, with just five days to go until election day. A new NBC News/Marist poll found Biden has a 4-point advantage among likely voters in Florida, a lead that falls within the survey’s margin of error, representing a virtual tie.
  • The new US economic report showed GDP rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September. The president and his allies celebrated the news, but the growth seems to be fueled by consumer spending among Americans fortunate enough to have had a stable income since March. The US economy is also still not as strong as it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “confident” Biden would win the election. “We are confident, we are calm, and we have prepared,” the Democratic speaker said at her weekly press conference. “I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday.”

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

Joe Biden will soon hold a drive-in rally in Broward county, Florida, as a new NBC News/Marist poll shows a virtual tie in the swing state.

Before the Democratic nominee’s arrival, the rally organizers reminded attendees to remain near their vehicles during the event.

The Biden campaign has been sharply restricting attendance at its events to mitigate concerns about the potential spread of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been consistently holding large outdoor rallies with no social distancing and infrequent mask usage.

Anyone in any doubt about Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred candidate in the US presidential election need only visit his personal Twitter account.

Right at the top, behind the headshot of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a banner photo of him with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, their eyes fixed on each other.

“You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu told his ally during a Washington visit this year. “Frankly, though we’ve had some great, outstanding friends in these halls, it’s not even close.”

That list includes Barack Obama, whose famously icy relationship with Netanyahu extends by proxy to his vice-president and Trump’s 2020 rival, Joe Biden.

Four more years of Trump could be hugely advantageous for the Israeli leader, particularly if Washington can convince more Arab states to establish open ties with Israel with few or no concessions to the Palestinians.

Federal agents arrested two accused neo-Nazis in Michigan, just three weeks after the FBI charged 14 people in connection to a plot to kidnap Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The Detroit News reports:

A team of FBI agents arrested a 25-year-old man in Bad Axe and a 35-year-old man in Taylor, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Both were arrested on state charges and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is expected later Thursday to announce the investigation.

Whitmer addressed the kidnapping plot in an Atlantic piece published earlier this week, in which she accused Trump of inciting violence against women leaders.

Whitmer wrote:

Every time the president ramps up this violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way. This is no coincidence, and the president knows it. He is sowing division and putting leaders, especially women leaders, at risk. And all because he thinks it will help his reelection.

In a new digital ad, Joe Biden pledged to create a task force to reunite migrant children and parents who were separated as a result of Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.

The ad’s narrator says, “On his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents.”

The ad also quotes Biden’s impassioned words from the final presidential debate about the separated migrant children.

“Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of the sets of those parents, and those kids are alone,” Biden said at the debate. “Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal. It’s criminal.”

The federal government revealed in a court filing last week that it has not been able to reach the parents of 545 children who were separated from their families at the US-Mexican border.

Kamala Harris is going to the key swing state of Florida on Saturday, as Joe Biden and Barack Obama hold a rally together in Michigan.

Biden is holding two events in Florida today as well, and Obama spoke to voters at a drive-in rally in Orlando on Tuesday.

The Biden campaign’s focus on Florida underscores the pivotal role that the state will play in determining the winner of the presidential election.

According to the FiveThirtyEight average of recent polls, Biden has a 2.1-point advantage in Florida, a state that Trump won by 1 point in 2016.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has now concluded her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.

Before wrapping up, the Democratic speaker said she was open to a lame-duck deal on a coronavirus relief bill with Trump.

“We want to have as clean a slate as possible going into January,” Pelosi said, echoing her previous comments that she is “confident” Biden will win the presidential election.

Earlier today, senior White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow accused Pelosi of “stringing us along” on negotiations over a relief package.

“Why would we be talking to them if we didn’t want a bill?” Pelosi said in response.

Updated

House speaker Nancy Pelosi mocked Trump’s closing message to women voters in the final days before election day.

Pelosi noted that nearly 1 million America women left the workplace last month, as the coronavirus pandemic upended families’ caregiving options for children and elderly loved ones.

“And what’s the president’s message to women? We’re getting your husbands back to work,” Pelosi said.

“Well, factually, it isn’t even true. But in addition to that, what decade is he living in? What century is he living in? So completely removed from the realties of life. And that has caused death.”

During his Tuesday rally in Lansing, Michigan, Trump spoke directly to suburban women, saying, “I’m also getting your husbands — they want to get back to work, right? They want to get back to work. We’re getting your husbands back to work.”

Recent polls have shown suburban women voters, who helped flip the House for Democrats in 2018, moving sharply toward Biden.

Pelosi: 'I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected'

House speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill, as she continues negotiations with the White House over a coronavirus relief bill.

Nancy Pelosi holds a news conference at the Capitol.
Nancy Pelosi holds a news conference at the Capitol. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

The Democratic speaker opened her press conference by expressing confidence about the election, which is just five days away.

“We are confident, we are calm, and we have prepared,” Pelosi said. “We are ready.”

She added, “I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday.”

Pelosi emphasized Congress had to be prepared to take the country “down a different path” in terms of pandemic response if Biden is indeed elected.

“While we don’t want to be over-confident or assume anything, we have to be ready for how we’re going to go down a different path,” Pelosi said.

White evangelicals made up a key part of Trump’s base in 2016, and the president is counting on that demographic turning out for him in massive numbers again to secure reelection.

The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone traveled to the key battleground state of North Carolina to see if Trump’s religious base is showing signs of crumbling:

Biden reacts to GDP numbers: 'We are in a deep hole'

Biden has weighed in on today’s economic report, and the Democratic nominee sounded much less enthusiastic than the president.

“This report underscores three inescapable truths about Donald Trump’s economy: we are in a deep hole and President Trump’s failure to act has meant that Q3 growth wasn’t nearly enough to get us out of; the recovery is slowing if not stalling; and the recovery that is happening is helping those at the top, but leaving tens of millions of working families and small businesses behind,” Biden said in a statement.

“Yes, GDP rose last quarter, but visits to food banks haven’t slowed, and poverty has grown,” Biden added. “Today’s report is not a victory for these families. American families need meaningful help, not misleading hype.”

The president and his allies jumped at the chance to tout the country’s GDP growth, even though the US economy is still not as strong as it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden said, “Success in a Biden-Harris Administration will not be measured just by the stock market or GDP growth, but by the extent to which growth is raising the pay, dignity, and economic security of our working families—especially those who have for far too long been left behind.”

Before Biden left for Florida, his campaign announced he had again tested negative for coronavirus last night.

The Biden campaign has been providing regular updates on the nominee’s coronavirus tests since Trump tested positive earlier this month.

In contrast, the president has still refused to provide a definitive answer on when he last tested negative before developing coronavirus symptoms.

Biden is en route to the crucial swing state of Florida, where he will hold two drive-in rallies today in Broward county and Tampa.

The Democratic nominee is traveling with his granddaughter, Natalie, to Florida, as state polls show Biden locked in a tight race with Trump.

According to a new NBC News/Marist poll, Biden has a 4-point lead over Trump among Florida’s likely voters, 51%-47%. That lead is within the survey’s margin of error, representing a virtual tie.

The president will also hold a campaign event in Florida this afternoon, before heading to North Carolina for a rally.

Biden’s trip to the state comes two days after Barack Obama held a drive-in rally in Orlando, where he criticized Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage,” Obama said of Trump on Tuesday.

Trump is touting the new GDP numbers to make a case for his reelection, as polls show him trailing Biden nationally and in key battleground states.

“GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close. Next year will be FANTASTIC!!!” Trump said in a new tweet. “However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all. So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.”

But as the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe noted, much of the country’s economic growth has been fueled by consumer spending from those who have been lucky enough to maintain the same income since March.

And it’s worth noting that the US economy is still worse off than it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hackers stole $2.3 million from the Wisconsin Republican party’s account meant to help reelect Trump in the key battleground state, according to the Associated Press.

The AP reports:

The party noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22 and contacted the FBI on Friday, said Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt.

Hitt said the FBI is investigating. FBI spokesman Leonard Peace did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

‘There’s no doubt RPW is now at a disadvantage with that money being gone,’ Hitt said. The party and campaign needs money late in the race to make quick decisions, he said.

Hitt said the hackers were able to manipulate invoices from four vendors who were being paid to send out direct mail for Trump’s reelection efforts and to provide pro-Trump material such as hats that could be handed out to supporters. Invoices were altered so when the party paid them, the money went to the hackers instead of the vendors, Hitt said.

Trump won Wisconsin by less than 1 point in 2016, and recent polls of the Midwestern state have shown Biden pulling ahead by an average of about 9 points.

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

Early voting update: We are five days from election day, and nearly 78 million Americans have already cast their ballots.

According to the US Elections Project, 77,890,285 Americans have already voted by mail or early in person, representing 56.5% of the country’s total 2016 turnout.

Texas still has the highest turnout of any US state in comparison to its 2016 turnout. As of today, 8,449,858 Texans have already voted, representing more than 94% of the state’s 2016 turnout.

Recent polls have shown Biden and Trump running neck and neck in Texas, previously considered a Republican stronghold, and Kamala Harris is headed to the Lone Star State tomorrow.

If you drop a ball from a very high window, you can expect a big bounce. The ball, however, has still been dropped.

Thursday’s release of the US’s gross domestic product (GDP) figures are Donald Trump’s last chance to claim he has been a great president for the economy before the election. And boy did he claim it.

Trump has long led Joe Biden in opinion polls on his handling of the economy. While that lead is slipping, the news may be enough to win him back votes he needs as he continues to trail in the polls.

But no matter what Trump says the headline GDP figures do not show an economy that has escaped the ravages of Covid-19. Rather they illustrate, once again, how unfair the US economy has become – especially for poor people, minorities, women and the young.

GDP shot up 33% on an annualized rate in the third quarter after dropping 31% in the second quarter. The percentage increase is on a smaller economy, and the economy is still 3.9% smaller than it was at the end of 2019. For comparison US GDP fell 4.3% from its peak at the end of 2007 to its trough in spring of 2009, what was then the largest decline in the postwar era. Never before have we seen such a huge slump in economic activity in such a short time nor such a surge back.

Much of the bounce has been fueled by consumer spending from those lucky enough to have been able to ride out the pandemic working from home and by the huge government stimulus package agreed in the early days of the pandemic.

Read more of our US business editor Dominic Rushe’s analysis here: For most Americans the crisis is far from over whatever the GDP numbers may say

Graeme Wearden has our live business blog at the moment, which is majoring on that US GDP figure news. The Trump campaign will be absolutely delighted with the numbers. He’s pointed out how remarkable this chart is:

US GDP
US GDP Photograph: BEA

There’s still a sobering bottom line, however…

Follow more reaction with Graeme over here…

The Christian Post this morning has offered op-ed space to both presidential campaigns. Joe Biden and Mike Pence have both bylined pieces, which are quite contrasting. Joe Biden speaks of his faith, and his intentions if he becomes president, in a piece headlined “The greatest commandment has guided my politics”

My Catholic faith drilled into me a core truth – that every person on earth is equal in rights and dignity, because we are all beloved children of God. We are all created “imago Dei” – beautifully, uniquely, in the image of God, with inherent worth. It is the same creed that is at the core of our American experiment and written into our founding documents – that we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights.

As a country, we have never been perfect nor free of prejudice. We’ve never fully lived up to those ideals, but we’ve never walked away from them. And, at our best, these are the values that have pushed us, time and again, as Dr. King said, to bend that great arc of the moral universe toward justice. As president, these are the principles that will shape all that I do, and my faith will continue to serve as my anchor, as it has my entire life.

This battle for the soul of our nation is why I’m running for president, and it’s why I’m asking for your vote. Who we are, what we stand for, and maybe most important, who we want to be as a nation are all at stake. Character is on the ballot. The character of our nation. The core values that define this nation are on the ballot. While I am running as a proud Democrat, I will serve as a president for all Americans.

We don’t always have to agree on everything, but our country has to find a way to come together – to overcome the spirit of division and the hateful words that have defined too much of our public life for the last four years. We all matter in the eyes of God, and it will take all of us to achieve the healing America so desperately needs.

Notably, Joe Biden does not mention Donald Trump by name. Pence’s tack is rather different, in his piece titled “President Trump is the best choice for Americans of faith”. It contains a series of attacks on Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris, especially over the issue of abortion.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support abortion-on-demand — even up to the moment of birth. They’ve called for historic increases in funding to Planned Parenthood, and even repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer funding of abortions. They even blocked the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have required medical care be provided to those who survived attempted abortions.

President Trump, on the other hand, has called on Congress to end late-term abortion once and for all, and recently signed an Executive Order protecting all babies born alive. And in perhaps my proudest moment as Vice President, I cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for a law that allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood — and President Trump signed the bill.

Pence is keen to stress the extent to which Trump has fulfilled his promises to the evangelical section of his base, but the vice president also used the piece to accuse Biden again of having a “radical left-wing agenda”

President Trump believes freedom of speech shouldn’t end at the front door of our churches and houses of worship — so he freed up the pulpits of America, and stopped enforcing the Johnson Amendment. President Trump also took steps to restore the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, teachers, and religious charities.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has said he will re-impose Obamacare mandates on religious institutions like the Little Sisters of the Poor, forcing them to violate the core tenets of their faith. It’s remarkable to think that Joe Biden would haul a group of Catholic nuns who have taken a lifetime vow of poverty and devoted their lives to serving the “least of these” back into court for the sake of his radical left-wing agenda.

Pence, who has headed up the coronavirus task force, speaks of the year 2020 being a “time of testing”, stating:

Over this past year, our nation has been through a time of testing. Now, we’re approaching a time for choosing, and the choice in this election has never been clearer. We must vote to protect the very foundation of our country. The American people know that the foundation of America is freedom, but the foundation of freedom is faith. Our freedoms are a gift from our Creator, and when we defend them, we make His work on earth our own. So when you consider your vote this year, remember this: in this election, people of faith have no greater champion than President Donald J. Trump.

You can read them both in full here:
Christian Post: Joe Biden – The greatest commandment has guided my politics

Christian Post: Mike Pence – President Trump is the best choice for Americans of faith

US economy bounces back but deeper trends hint at enduring woe

The US economy bounced sharply back from the record-setting slump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to government figures released on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a key talking point days before the election.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September.

But the numbers show the US still has a long way to go to escape the devastation wrought by Covid-19 and were boosted by extra unemployment payments, business loans and direct payments, none of which have been replenished for the fourth quarter.

The news comes just five days before the US election and is the last major economic release before polls close. Even before the figures were released the Trump campaign released ads boasting: “FASTEST GDP GROWTH IN HISTORY.”

Big issues remain for the economy, however. The unemployment rate, at 7.9%, is twice as high as it was in February before the pandemic struck the US.

A closer look at the numbers shows that the US’s economic woes are far from over. Thursday’s figures follow an equally historic slump in the second quarter. The US economy shrank by a revised annual rate of 31.4% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, as much of the country went into lockdown to control the virus.

Read our full report here: US economy bounces back but deeper trends hint at enduring woe

If, like me, you are a bit of a politics nerd, then you will enjoy this. Esquire this morning have published in in-depth behind the scenes look at how the Associated Press makes its decisions to ‘call’ election results for each state. It’s a cracking read from Kate Story.

Julie Pace has spent the last several weeks talking to journalists about their nightmares. She is the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, and the reporters in her care bring their Election Day fears to Pace. Woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat about mail-in ballots? Call Julie. Worried that President Trump will declare himself the winner before the votes are counted? Get Julie on the phone.

“I have spent a lot of time trying to game out and brainstorm with people all of the nightmare scenarios that everybody has,” she told me earlier this month. “I’ve become known in the bureau as the person to confess your nightmares to.”

Roger Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, sets out one set of grim risks over this specific election:

There is a danger that the media, or at least parts of the media, may call the election quickly, trying to be the first with a call for certain battleground states or for the overall election. And that could create a dynamic that whoever gets declared a winner, [Trump’s] supporters will think that’s the true result. And then you have the large number of mail-in ballots we have this time coming in later and producing a different result that will heighten the tensions over fraud and claims of fraud and make reaching widely accepted resolution and the election even more difficult. We think it’s a greater danger than in any presidential election since the South refused to accept the results of the election in 1860.

Stephen Ohlemacher, the AP’s election-decision editor, tells Story that their goal is accuracy at all costs.

We’re journalists. Everyone wants to be first. But being first is a far distant second priority to us than being accurate. We understand what’s going on in this country and we understand that folks may not have as much faith in our institutions as they once had. We are committed to making sure we provide accurate information to them on Election Night. If that means we have to wait, and if that means we’re not first, that’s perfectly okay.

Read more here: Esquire – How the Associated Press plans to determine the winner of this year’s election

Abené Clayton in Oakland has this for us about what is happening to Califormia’s felons as they are being released early from jail amid a pandemic.

When William Blackwell walked out of the gates of San Quentin state prison in mid-July, he had his priorities ironed out: see his family, get a new ID card, search for a job. But first, officials had told him, he’d have to quarantine and test negative for coronavirus twice.

For the first time in more than two decades, he stepped into the van shackle-free, his hands, waist and ankles unbound. Through the bars on the windows, he saw a landscape he hadn’t seen in over two decades.

At the motel, Blackwell said, the officers gave him two phone numbers: one to use to get meals delivered to his room and the other in case of emergency. When he dialed the emergency line to see who would be on the other end, Blackwell said, all he got was an automated message.

He was on his own with no one to report to, no idea where he would be living once his days in isolation were done and no instructions on how to get the coronavirus tests he needed to put his post-release plans in motion.

“CDCR dropped us off at the hotel and said ‘bye,’” Blackwell said, referring to California’s Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. “When I called parole, they had no clue what to do with me, they had no idea where I would get tested or who would do it.”

Read more here: Freed, then locked in: leaving a California prison amid a pandemic

“Never before in modern presidential politics has a candidate been so reliant on wide-scale efforts to depress the vote as Trump.”

That’s according to David Siders and Zach Montellaro on the Politico website this morning, where they have written about Trump’s 50% problem.

Donald Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. His approval rating, according to Gallup, has never hit 50 percent. He remains under 50 percent in national polling averages.

The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary attempts to limit the number of votes cast across the battleground state map — a massive campaign-within-a-campaign to maximize Trump’s chances of winning a contest in which he’s all but certain to earn less than 50 percent of the vote.

In Philadelphia, his campaign is videotaping voters as they return ballots. In Nevada, it’s suing to force elections officials in Nevada’s Democratic-heavy Clark County to more rigorously examine ballot signatures for discrepancies. The Trump campaign has sued to prevent the expanded use of ballot drop boxes in Ohio, sought to shoot down an attempt to expand absentee ballot access in New Hampshire and tried to intervene against a lawsuit brought by members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona which sought to allow ballots received from reservations after Election Day because of mail delays. And that’s just a few of its efforts.

“What we have seen this year which is completely unprecedented … is a concerted national Republican effort across the country in every one of the states that has had a legal battle to make it harder for citizens to vote,” said Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission who served as general counsel to Republican John McCain’s two presidential campaigns. “There just has been this unrelenting Republican attack on making it easier to vote.”

Read more here: Politico – Trump confronts his 50 percent problem

Tropical storm Zeta causes second death – nearly 2m left without power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia

A quick update here on the aftermath of tropical storm Zeta. Officials in Georgia now say that high winds have caused a second death in the South.

Associated Press report that Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office says a large oak tree uprooted and fell through the corner of a mobile home, killing a man in Acworth. Two other adults and a child were in the home at the time of the incident but weren’t injured. Acworth is about 32 miles (51 kilometers) north of Atlanta.

According to the website PowerOutage.us, about 1.8 million people have been left without electricity in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Georgia has the most with more than 800,000 in the dark.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio has issued a statement this morning about the unveiling of Miles Taylor as the man behind 2018’s “Anonymous” op-ed in the New York Times. Rubio is displeased, accusing the Times of “a grotesque failure of journalism”. He says:

It is often said that a lie can fly halfway around the world while the truth is just getting its boots on. A free and fair press is one of the strongest bulwarks our nation has against disinformation, but that press must be honest, thorough, and deserving.

In 2018, The New York Times published an opinion piece by a ‘senior official in the Trump administration.’ Granting anonymity, it said, was ‘an extraordinary step’ for the paper. Many Americans, logically, assumed the piece came from a senior official in the Trump administration. In fact, it came from a policy advisor at the Department of Homeland Security who, at the time of the opinion piece’s publication, was not even listed on the Department of Homeland Security’s website as a member of that agency’s leadership.

This is the type of click-bait outrage journalism that has caused so many Americans to become cynical about our nation’s institutions. As our enemies try to divide us, it is more important than ever to call out this type of reckless and irresponsible behavior. Portraying this opinion piece to the nation as the thoughts of a senior official in the Trump Administration was a grotesque failure of journalism. And, in undermining the faith our nation has in an objective press, it harmed our national security.

There’s more on the background here: Anonymous Trump critic revealed to be ex-homeland security chief of staff

Updated

California Rep. Eric Swalwell has hit on a novel way of trying to remind people how close the date of the election is – by comparing it to when the milk in your fridge is going to expire.

The mention of fridges immediately reminded me of this from earlier in the week – the New York Times’ baffling and surprisingly difficult quiz to see if you can tell whether someone supports Biden or Trump by looking in their fridge.

Read it here: New York Times – Quiz: Can You Tell a ‘Trump’ Fridge From a ‘Biden’ Fridge?

A little bit more news from Philadelphia which is already being seized upon by the Trump campaign, where authorities say they have found a van filled with explosives – although it is entirely unclear at the moment who it might belong to. Jon Haworth writes for ABC News:

The city of Philadelphia is on high alert Thursday after authorities discovered a van filled with explosives and other suspicious cargo – including propane tanks, torches and possibly sticks of dynamite – on Wednesday night following two nights of protests and unrest after the shooting death of a Black man by police in West Philadelphia on Monday afternoon.

It is unclear how authorities came to be aware of the vehicle containing the explosives or who the owner or operator of the vehicle is but the bomb squad is on the scene and investigating.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney announced in a virtual press conference on Wednesday night that an undetermined number of Pennsylvania National Guard troops will begin arriving in Philadelphia on Friday to assist police.

Steve Cortes, the Trump campaign’s senior advisor for strategy, has already commented on it, praising law enforcement.

Read more here: ABC News – Van full of explosives found in Philadelphia following week of social unrest: Police

Chinese and US military chiefs held talks on crisis communication this week, amid heightened tensions between the two military superpowers in the South China Sea, report Reuters.

The exchange came as US defence secretary Mark Esper toured Asia with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo where they had urged countries to cooperate with the United States to confront the security threats posed by China, a position China criticised earlier in the week as a Cold War mentality and zero-sum mindset.

Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian quoted Esper as saying the United States “has no intention of creating a military crisis with the Chinese.”

“We urge the US to walk the talk, keep its promise, and take measures to prevent provoking China military in the air and sea,” Wu said, adding that China will resolutely counter-strike if provoked.

Both militaries will exchange views via video conferencing on humanitarian aid in mid-November and on maritime security before the end of the year, Wu said.

Pompeo, meanwhile, has been tweeting this morning that he has had a successful day of meetings in Jakarta, boasting that “the US-Indonesia strategic partnership is strong and together we’ll make it stronger.”

Amie Parnes writes for the Hill this morning about how Barack Obama still manages to irk Donald Trump, in a week when the former president has been out on the campaign trail for Joe Biden and opening mocked the president, saying “He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage”. She writes:

Obama has traveled to the swing states of Pennsylvania and Florida to stump for his former vice president, to the apparent annoyance of Trump — who is zeroing in on his predecessor more than ever.

Trump criticized Fox News for airing an Obama speech from Florida on Tuesday, just the latest incident of him lashing out at Obama. Ex-Obama aides and other Democrats relish the antagonism, believing Obama is unnerving Trump.

“He has allowed Obama to get under his skin and is obsessed with the fact that his presidency pales in comparison to the prior one,” said Ben LaBolt, who served as a spokesman to Obama at the White House and on his presidential campaigns.

Political observers have long-seen the attacks as petty, attributing Trump’s actions to jealousy of his predecessor. Basil Smikle, who served as the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, says race is also involved.

“He has a racist, paternalistic view of Black people which makes him unable to accept Obama’s success and accolades, which is evident in everything from Trump’s promotion of birtherism to the dismantling of key Obama-era policies,” Smikle said.

Read more here: The Hill – Obama, Trump battle in new wrinkle for 2020 campaign

US immigration authorities have radically stepped up deportation flights to Haiti in the weeks before the election, raising concerns over returned migrants’ safety on their return home and the risks of spreading coronavirus in the impoverished Caribbean state.

Twelve flights to Haiti have been recorded so far in October, marking a steep increase from previous months when there were on average between one and two flights every four weeks.

Most of the Haitian migrants have been summarily expelled under a 1944 public health law, which lawyers and refugee rights advocates say is being abused by the Trump administration to sidestep its legal obligations to give migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum and other internationally guaranteed rights.

Some of the Haitians deported in recent weeks have been asylum seekers who had been taken from detention centres in what administration critics say is a rush to expel Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean ahead of the election. The Haitian flights coincide with the forced repatriation of scores of Cameroonian, Congolese and other African asylum – seekers, many of whom were flown out while they had legal cases pending.

“I believe that they are trying to deport as many people as possible prior to the elections,” said Guerline Jozef, the president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), an immigrant advocacy and support group. “Once they arrive back in Haiti, they are just left to fend for themselves.”

Jozef said some of the deported migrants had been fleeing the political and gang violence that has become widespread across Haiti in recent years, and would be risking their lives to return to their homes.

Read more of Julian’s report here: US steps up deportation of Haitians ahead of election, raising Covid fears

The Econmist has endorsed Joe Biden, saying Trump has 'desecrated' American values

The Economist has this morning published its presidential endorsement for the Democratic nominee in a leader titled: Why it has to be Biden

Their verdict on the president? They say Donald Trump has desecrated the values that make America a beacon to the world.

Tribal politics predated Mr Trump. The host of “The Apprentice” exploited it to take himself from the green room to the White House. Yet, whereas most recent presidents have seen toxic partisanship as bad for America, Mr Trump made it central to his office. He has never sought to represent the majority of Americans who did not vote for him.

All politicians prevaricate, but his administration has given America “alternative facts”. Nothing Mr Trump says can be believed—including his claims that Mr Biden is corrupt. Partisanship and lying undermine norms and institutions. This president calls for his opponents to be locked up; he uses the Department of Justice to conduct vendettas; he commutes the sentences of supporters convicted of serious crimes; he gives his family plum jobs in the White House. When a president casts doubt on the integrity of an election just because it might help him win, he undermines the democracy he has sworn to defend.

Look at Covid. Mr Trump had a chance to unite his country around a well organised response—and win re-election on the back of it, as other leaders have. Instead he saw Democratic governors as rivals or scapegoats. He muzzled and belittled America’s world-class institutions. He sneered at science. And, unable to see beyond his own re-election, he has continued to misrepresent the evident truth about the epidemic and its consequences.

They are under no illusions, though, about a Democratic victory being a quick fix.

Joe Biden is not a miracle cure for what ails America. But he is a good man who would restore steadiness and civility to the White House. He is equipped to begin the long, difficult task of putting a fractured country back together again. That is why, if we had a vote, it would go to Joe.

Read more here: The Economist – Why it has to be Biden

Maanvi Singh and Lauren Gambino in Phoenix have this latest look at the impact of coronavirus on the election in Arizona, one of the crucial states that helped Donald Trump build his electoral college coalition in 2016.

They report that a traumatized electorate is weighing the failures of Republican leaders to control the pandemic in the state, and across the US.

When Kristin Urquiza drafted an obituary for her father, Mark Urquiza, she didn’t imagine it would be all that controversial or notable.

“I was just being honest,” she said, when she wrote that her dad’s death from Covid-19 was “due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk”.

Her words – published by the Arizona Republic – were shared, retweeted, emailed and relayed across the country. Daughters, sons, parents, grandparents, friends mourning loved ones flooded her inbox.

Her father was a Trump supporter who had trusted the president, and believed it would be safe to go to a karaoke bar after Arizona’s stay-at-home order was lifted in May. Now, Urquiza has returned to Phoenix, the city where he lived and she grew up, to campaign for Trump’s opponent – and get out the vote. “I’ve been turning my pain into purpose,” she told the Guardian. “This is our chance to collectively come together and demand change.”

Read more here: ‘Turning pain into purpose’: why the Covid crisis is driving Arizonans to the polls

Fox News host Tucker Carlson yesterday appeared to get himself trapped in concentric rings of conspiracy theories, as he attempted to explain why he could not produce some documents he had promised about Joe Biden.

In a move which sparked hilarity on social media and comparison with the famous “the dog ate my homework” excuse beloved of errant schoolchildren, Carlson ended up saying that the only copy of the papers, which he claimed added to his claims surrounding Biden’s son, Hunter, had been lost.

In a segment delivered to camera, Carlson said:

On Monday we received a from a source, a collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family. We believe those documents are authentic, they’re real, and they’re damning … we texted a producer in New York and we asked him to send those documents to us in LA … he shipped those documents overnight to California with a large national carrier brand … But the Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened, and the contents were missing the documents had disappeared.

He goes on to say of the delivery company – which he failed to name – that:

They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it, they went through the office in New York where our producer dropped that package off, they combed their entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for. They went far and beyond. But they found nothing, those documents have vanished. As of tonight the company has no idea – and no working theory even – about what happened to this trove of materials documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign.

Carlson’s show has been one of the main conduits of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, both attempting to expand the narrative about his dealings in Ukraine and China, and castigating other media outlets for not paying enough attention to the recent claims made by the New York Post.

Carson’s story of the lost documents cut little ice on social media.

Updated

Sarah Fielding brings us this useful guide this morning if you find yourself in this predicament: Your absentee ballot never showed up. Now what?

Voting during a contentious presidential election and a pandemic is more than a little overwhelming. Like many Americans, you may have designed a plan to vote by absentee ballot months ago, when 3 November felt a lifetime away, and no one knew how election day would look. Maybe you were unsure of where you would be, geographically speaking, and voting by mail felt like the safest option. If you’re like me, when the time came to request your absentee ballot, you submitted your information and waited for the ballot to arrive in the mail, but it never did.

Read more here: Your absentee ballot never showed up. Now what?

I’m always a big fan of watching venerable news organisations take swipes at each other, and the Washington Post today has this delightfully waspish headline: The New York Times called ‘Anonymous’ op-ed author Miles Taylor a Trump ‘senior official.’ Was that accurate?

Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison write:

The mystery surrounding the identity of “Anonymous” — the unnamed “senior official in the Trump administration” who wrote a damning New York Times opinion piece and best-selling book criticizing the president — was resolved by the author’s self-reveal on Tuesday. But the lifting of veil only opened other questions:

Was it really accurate to describe the author as a “senior” official? Was the anonymity granted by his book publisher and the New York Times justified? And given his role in implementing one of the administration’s cruelest policies, was he really the righteous whistleblower he portrayed himself to be?

The phrase “senior official in the Trump administration” was crucial to lending his column and book gravitas. Some guessed that “Anonymous” might be a Cabinet official, a prominent top adviser like Kellyanne Conway or even Vice President Pence. The guessing game that surrounded “Anonymous” fueled interest in his column and book.

Did Taylor — who was a deputy chief of staff at DHS when the Times published his column — qualify as a “senior” official? He wasn’t promoted to chief of staff until six months after publication.

“I would not describe him as a senior administration official,” said Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary in the Clinton administration.

In his definition, “senior administration officials” are assistants to the president, Cabinet officials, and the principals and deputies in the national security apparatus. “That’s what I think of when I read that term, and that’s what I think a lot of other people think,” he added.

Read more here: Washington Post – The New York Times called ‘Anonymous’ op-ed author Miles Taylor a Trump ‘senior official.’ Was that accurate?

One fear is that we could enter a prolonged period of uncertainty after polls close on Tuesday, due to the closeness of the election and the extended vote counting times in some states. David Catanese and David Smiley at the Miami Herald today paint a very different possible scenario, laying out how Florida could prevent a drawn-out election — and deliver a decisive blow to Trump on the night.

Florida is famous for razor-thin voting margins, hanging chads and the Bush v. Gore dispute that still defines the modern day presidential election nightmare.

But in 2020, the swing state has the unique chance to produce a clear winner of its coveted 29 electoral votes on the night of Nov. 3 or early morning hours of Nov. 4 — potentially warding off a drawn-out contest between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden where a winner can’t be declared for days or even weeks.

Due to the state’s long experience administering mail-in ballots, ability to count them early and requirement that they must be received by the time polls close on Election Day, Florida is expected to report its tallies considerably faster than other battlegrounds.

And if Biden can swipe the all-important state from Trump’s column, it could provide the first signal that he’s well on his way to winning the White House.

“We’re going to know what the result is that same night, whether it’s by midnight or 1 or 2 in the morning,” Florida-based Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi said on former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s podcast. “That can help set the narrative and help prevent President Trump try and claim a delegitimized outcome if Biden can win Florida and win it conclusively.”

Read more here: Miami Herald – How Florida could prevent a drawn-out election — and deliver a decisive blow to Trump

The Economist have updated their modelling prediction of Tuesday’s election. They are now saying that Joe Biden has a 96% chance of winning the electoral college, and a more than 99% chance of winning the popular vote.

They put the possible range of Biden’s number of electoral college votes as between 254 to 418. That is a very wide range, because it presumably allows for the possibility that Biden will grab both Florida and Texas on the night, which delivers a whopping 65 electoral votes. Trump’s possible range is put between 120 and 284.

They explain their model as combining state and national polls with economic indicators to predict a range of outcomes. The midpoint is the estimate of the electoral-college vote for each party on election day – in this case a 356 to 182 win for the Democrats.

Their model also has the Democrats as virtually certain to retain control of the congress, and with a 75% of seizing control of the Senate, which would be a clean blue sweep.

Read more here: The Economist – Forecasting the US elections

President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden will both rally supporters on Thursday in the critical battleground state of Florida, campaigning in the same city hours apart and putting on full display their differing approaches to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic, writes James Oliphant for Reuters.

Opinion polls show Biden with a significant edge nationally, but his lead is tighter in battleground states. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed Trump had essentially moved into a tie with Biden in Florida, with 49% saying they would vote for Biden and 47% for the president.

With its 29 electoral votes, the state is a major prize in next Tuesday’s election. Trump will stage an outdoor rally in Tampa. Biden, in contrast, will hold a drive-in rally.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll in Florida, 48% of likely voters said Biden would be better at handling the pandemic, while 42% said Trump would be better. Some 52% said Trump would be better at managing the economy, against 41% for Biden.

More than 75 million people have cast early in-person and mail ballots, according to data compiled by the US Elections Project at the University of Florida. That is a record-setting pace and more than 53% of the total 2016 turnout.

Trump will likely be touting new government data on the nation’s gross domestic product during the third quarter which is expected later today. While the numbers are likely to show a record jump in growth as compared with the calamitous second quarter of the year, economists have cautioned that a recovery from the coronavirus hit is far from complete.

Federal agencies warn US healthcare system is facing an “increased and imminent” threat of cybercrime

Federal agencies have warned that the US healthcare system is facing an “increased and imminent” threat of cybercrime, and that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of extortion attempts designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of Covid-19 are spiking.

In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to US hospitals and healthcare providers”. The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services”.

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five US hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.

The offensive by a Russian-speaking criminal gang comes less than a week ahead of the election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit.

Read more here: US hospital systems facing ‘imminent’ threat of cyber attacks, FBI warns

Here’s an update on the progress of Zeta, which has weakened to a tropical storm as it barrels northeast after causing havoc along the coast. It had ripped through Louisiana and Mississippi, where storm-weary residents were advised to stay indoors overnight while officials assessed the havoc the storm had wrought.

The storm raged onshore Wednesday afternoon in the small village of Cocodrie in Louisiana as a strong Category 2 and then moved swiftly across the New Orleans area and into neighboring Mississippi, bringing with it both fierce winds and storm surge.

Joel Martinez, who until just recently lived in the lower apartment, makes a photo of Washington Garden’s Apartments after it collapsed from the winds brought by Hurricane Zeta.
Joel Martinez, who until just recently lived in the lower apartment, makes a photo of Washington Garden’s Apartments after it collapsed from the winds brought by Hurricane Zeta. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/Reuters

There was heavy rain at times but since the storm was so fast-moving, rain related flooding wasn’t as much of a concern, reports the Associated Press.

Waveland Mayor Mike Smith told WLOX-TV that his Mississippi Gulf Coast city, which was part of the area most heavily damaged by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina has maybe taken the worst hit since then from Zeta.

“We’re going to see a whole lot of damage in the morning,” Smith said. Among the many trees blown down was one that fell on Smith’s own house. “It was my next-door neighbor’s and he wanted to give it to me, apparently,” Smith said.

An election campaign sign sits in a tree as Hurricane Zeta sweeps through New Orleans, Louisiana.
An election campaign sign sits in a tree as Hurricane Zeta sweeps through New Orleans, Louisiana. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/Reuters

In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards was expected Thursday to tour the coastal regions hardest hit by the storm. During a radio interview Wednesday evening, Edwards said the wind had caused extensive structural damage. And as neighbors and church groups started reaching out to help those affected, he also highlighted the need to protect against the coronavirus at the same time.

“Offer the help but do it with a mask on,” he said.

If you want to keep tabs on where everyone is going to be today, here’s what you need to know.

President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at a ‘Make America Great Again’ event at 1:35 p.m in Tampa, Florida. At 5:15 p.m. the president and the first lady will participate in a troop engagement at Fort Bragg. At 6:30 the president then delivers remarks at another rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

At 2:10 CDT vice president Mike Pence will deliver remarks at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. At 5:00 p.m. PDT the vice president will deliver remarks at an event in Reno, Nevada.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden is traveling to Florida on Thursday to discuss bringing Americans together. In the afternoon the former vice president will deliver remarks at an event in Broward County. In the evening Biden will deliver remarks at a drive-in event in Tampa - just a few hours after Trump has visited.

The Democratic nominee for vice president, Kamala Harris, is participating in a Divine Nine mobilization event. Later in the day Harris will do a ‘Biden for president fundraiser’. Still later she will join a Fighting for a Living Wage rally hosted by Bernie Sanders.

Updated

We’ve got this from Andrew Lawrence today, who has been looking at how the sense of purpose around the 2020 presidential race has been shaped in no small part by a year of activism throughout US sports:

Black Lives Matter landed on NBA and WNBA courts and jerseys, and voter registration became the focus of recurring league PSAs. And when protests erupted again after Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake within an inch of his life three months later and the Milwaukee Bucks walked off of a play-off game and triggered a two-day sports blackout, one of the biggest concessions they won from their NBA partners was a pledge to convert some 20-odd league arenas into polling places in response to Donald Trump’s attempts to suppress and undermine in-person and mail-in balloting.

Last Saturday, on the first ever day of early voting in New York state, thousands of masked Manhattanites wrapped the streets and avenues around Madison Square Garden, with some waiting as long as five hours to cast their ballots. The scene was similar, if a bit more brisk, at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento and at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte. That a team owned by someone as famously apolitical as Michael Jordan could have a hand in this historic election turnout is a welcome twist. The kicker: he’s also written $2.5m-worth of checks to fight black voter suppression as part of a 10-year, $100m pledge to beat systemic racism

Read more here: Athletes and the US election: How a generation of stars got in the game

Republican and Democrat lawmakers grilled the CEOs of tech giants Twitter, Facebook and Google yesterday in a hearing about section 230, a federal law protecting internet companies from legal liability for content generated by its users. While Republicans focused on disinformation and the ‘censoring’ of Donald Trump, Democrats accused their rivals of politicising the hearing, while also questioning the mechanics of the platforms that promoted content they deemed divisive. Here’s your highlights…

For NBC News this morning Sahil Kapur has looked at how the two campaigns both targeted Arizona yesterday – and how different their messages were.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris held rallies 30 miles apart Wednesday, but voters could be forgiven for thinking they were running in two different universes.

In Trump’s world, the coronavirus crisis is exaggerated and the biggest danger to the country is a threat of socialism or communism, while top-of-mind issues include allegations of corruption by Joe Biden’s son Hunter and a “deep state” of government officials plotting against the president.

In the Biden-Harris world, the pandemic is an overarching issue that is crushing middle-class pocketbooks, health care access is threatened by an incompetent president and the country is on a knife’s edge between a return to normalcy and a march to authoritarianism.

Symbolic of the two attitudes, Trump’s rally featured supporters packing into a section of Phoenix Goodyear Airport, many of them elbow to elbow and maskless, while Harris held a drive-in event that was sparse and heavily socially distanced, with attendees covering their faces even when nobody was near them.

Read more here: NBC News – One battleground state, two rallies — and radically different versions of reality

Steven Greenhouse has been in Lordstown for us, speaking to Ohioans. Trump’s message of bringing back jobs resonated with workers there – but after GM announced it was shuttering its Lordstown plant, some questioned why they voted for him.

In July 2017, Trump spoke in Youngstown and told the crowd that on his way in from the airport, he had seen the carcasses of too many factories and mills. He bemoaned Ohio’s loss of manufacturing jobs, but then boldly assured the crowd: “They’re all coming back!” He next told his audience, many of them workers worried about plant closings: “Don’t move! Don’t sell your house!”

Laid-off GM Lordstown workers still rail about that speech. Many moved to other cities to find work; many lost money selling their homes. “Some of my hardest days of the last few years came when everybody left,” Trisha Amato told me. “They had to sell their houses.” Hundreds of longtime Lordstown workers moved to take jobs at GM plants in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas – all so that they could continue receiving good United Auto Workers (UAW) wages (around $30 an hour) and accrue additional years toward their pensions. Many in this diaspora make the four- to 10-hour drive back to the Mahoning Valley once or twice each month to visit their families.

Trump won Ohio by 8 points in 2016. Our election polls track currently gives him a narrow lead of just under 2 points in the state which has 18 electoral college votes.

Read more here: ‘I regret voting for him’: Ohioans hit by GM plant closure reflect on Trump

Key events so far…

I’m Martin Belam, taking over for Tom McCarthy, and I’ll be here with you for the next hours. You can ping me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

California representative Katie Porter, she of the lethal white board, tells MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that Donald Trump’s call for a Cinderella election – in which vote counting screeches to a halt at midnight on Tuesday and the country is left with a big orange pumpkin – is “ridiculous”.

Porter was declared the winner in an election that took nine days to count, she explains.

“President Trump here is just being ridiculous,” Porter said. “Elections are not officially decided on election night in virtually every case. There’s a process by which the secretary of state certifies the election result. On election night, I didn’t win, I didn’t lose. The votes were still being counted, and it took nine days of counting votes for me to be declared the winner...

“It was really really important to allow every validly cast vote to be counted accurately. I always remind my constituents that a slow count is a safe and secure count.”

“I woke up and I felt good,” Donald Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Arizona, slamming the side of his lectern as he described hospitalisation with the coronavirus. “I said, ‘Get me out of here’. Boom! Superman!”

As the US president mimed Clark Kent ripping up open his shirt to reveal the Man of Steel’s “S” logo, the crowd chanted: “Superman! Superman! Superman!” The rally ended with loudspeakers booming Y.M.C.A by Village People: “Young man, there’s no need to feel down …”

Seventy-four years old and clinically obese, Trump appears eager to prove his virility. He is fighting an election against a man who is even older – Joe Biden turns 78 next month. If Biden wins, he will eclipse Trump’s own record as the oldest person to be sworn in as president.

In Tucson this month.
In Tucson this month. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The statistics are counterintuitive in a society that can often seem obsessed with youth. Voters’ thirst for change did not prevent this election being contested by two septuagenarian white men. But it has fuelled debate over whether the mental and physical toll of old age could impair the decision-making of the person with the nuclear codes.

“I hope there’s an age limit,” Jimmy Carter, who at 96 is the longest lived US president in history, told an audience in Atlanta last year. “If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president. You have to be able to go from one subject to another and concentrate on each one adequately and then put them together in a comprehensive way.”

Read the full piece here:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to put top priority on passing the LGBTQ rights legislation known as the Equality Act, hoping to sign what would be a landmark civil rights law within 100 days, should he win Tuesday’s election, Reuters reports:

Biden, a leading voice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, also pledged in an interview with the Philadelphia Gay News to expand queer rights internationally by making equality a centerpiece of U.S. diplomacy if he assumes office in January.

Broward County, Florida.
Broward County, Florida. Photograph: Michele Eve Sandberg/REX/Shutterstock

Although he has championed the Equality Act before, his priority is significant, given the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic and a host of other executive orders and regulatory actions that would compete for attention in the early days of a Biden administration.

He outlined his agenda for LGBTQ rights in an email interview with Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, a nationally known advocate for gay rights since the 1970s.

“I will make enactment of the Equality Act a top legislative priority during my first 100 days - a priority that Donald Trump opposes,” Biden said of the Republican incumbent he is challenging.

In this public service announcement, former housing secretary Julían Castro warns how Republicans could try to take advantage of a “red mirage” on election night to try to declare victory before every vote is counted.

Republicans try to prevent people from voting every year, but this is the first time in memory that key party figures from Donald Trump to supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh have attempted to advance the outlandish and anti-constitutional idea that Americans’ votes don’t count if elections officials have not tabulated and announced them by midnight Tuesday.

The “red mirage” “sounds like a super-villain, and it’s just as insidious,” Castro says. “On election night, there’s a real possibility that the data will show Republicans leading early, before all the votes are counted. Then they can pretend something sinister’s going on when the counts change in Democrats’ favor.”

Voters should understand, Castro says, that the vote count will not be completed on election night, and that is normal. States are never done counting absentee ballots on election night. Three of the last five US presidential elections – in 2000, 2004 and 2016 – have not been called until after midnight. More mail-in ballots than usual are being cast this year because pandemic.

The profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Vanity Fair is not paywalled, depending on how many free Vanity Fair articles you’ve clicked this month:

LeBron James’ mother has voted, he tells former president Barack Obama in this video, part of James’ get-out-the-vote effort. His mother, Gloria James, lives at least part-time in Ohio, where the presidential race looks tight.

Philadelphia prosecutor warns Trump to keep 'goon squads' away

Philadelphia’s top prosecutor has warned Donald Trump not to call supporters out as protests continue in the city over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr.

“Keep your Proud Boys, goon squads, and uncertified ‘poll watchers’ out of our city, Mr. President,” writes district attorney Larry Krasner. “Break the law here, and I’ve got something for you.”

Philadelphia has a big job on its hands in counting the election, with as many as 350,000 mail-in ballots from the city, or more, to be counted inside the convention center downtown starting on the morning of election day.

The vote in Pennsylvania could be decided by the vote in Philadelphia, and the entire race in turn could come down to Pennsylvania. So the stakes are high.

Enough, go vote / Walter Wallace Jr RIP
Enough, go vote / Walter Wallace Jr RIP Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images

Officials have advised that the vote-counting effort in the city, which processed only about 6,000 absentee ballots in 2016, will not be completed on election night and will likely take days.

There are concerns that Trump and his surrogates will attempt to somehow prevent Philadelphia from counting every vote, drawing Krasner’s warning.

The Guardian’s Miranda Bryant reports on the situation in Philadelphia, where there is an overnight curfew:

Protests continued in Philadelphia as more details emerged on Wednesday about the police killing of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr after his family had called for medical assistance when he was having a mental health crisis.

Civil rights campaigners fiercely questioned the way police departments handle people suffering a mental health problem, not just in relation to the shooting of Wallace but across the US.

After the killing, hundreds took to the streets of the Pennsylvania city chanting Wallace’s name and demanding racial justice and equality. On Tuesday, peaceful protests were followed by clashes with police and some vandalism. More than 90 people have been arrested and about 50 police officers were injured in confrontations with protesters and vandals, authorities say.

Protests continued on Wednesday evening, ahead of a 9pm curfew.

Relatives of Wallace on Wednesday called for calm.

Read further:

Updated

The secretary of state of Vermont has written a letter to the clerk of the US supreme court to request that an error in a recent opinion by justice Brett Kavanaugh in a voting rights case be corrected.

Attempting to make the case that it was appropriate for the state of Wisconsin not to count mail-in ballots received after election day, Kavanaugh compared Wisconsin to Vermont, which “ha[s] decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Wrong, says Vermont.

Kavanaugh at his swearing-in in October 2018, two years before this embarrassing error.
Kavanaugh at his swearing-in in October 2018, two years before this embarrassing error. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

“We did make two significant changes to our ordinary election rules in response to the pandemic,” writes secretary of state Jim Condos, including mailing out ballots to active voters and allowing election officials to begin processing mail-in ballots early.

“Since the state of Wisconsin neither changed its ordinary election rules this year to mail each of its active registered voters a ballot nor authorized its local election officials to process ballots early, Vermont is not an accurate comparison for the assertion Justice Kavanaugh has made,” Condos continued.

“I respectfully ask that the record is corrected to reflect that.”

Updated

The footage out of the Georgia senate races only gets more amazing. Both US senate seats in Georgia are contested this year because one is a special election after a previous senator stepped down for health reasons.

It would be a major coup for Democrats to pick up a senate seat in Georgia. Joe Biden has been campaigning in the state recently to help the effort (and maybe pick up a little something for himself).

And both races are doozies. In one, the senator appointed by the Republican governor to fill the vacated seat, Kelly Loeffler, is trying to win statewide election for the first time – and struggling mightily. (That doesn’t mean the seat will go to a Democrat; it’s a three-way race and if no one hits 50% it goes to a runoff between the top two candidates.)

Here’s Loeffler handling a question about Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women by claiming that she is “not familiar” with the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump says “grab ’em by the pussy”:

In the other race, Democrat Jon Ossoff, who looks like he has a real shot, is trying to unseat incumbent David Perdue, who earlier this month mocked Kamala Harris’ name at a Donald Trump rally.

Here’s Ossoff flaying Perdue in a debate while Perdue tries to hide behind his tie:

If you would like to start your day – or continue it, or wind it down as the case may be, wherever in the world you’re located – with a large dose of politics and news, and politics news, out of the United States, the place to go is to the blog we’ve just buttoned up, written most recently by my colleague Lauren Aratani (@laurenaratani):

Hello and welcome to our round-the-clock coverage of the 2020 US election. Five days until election day now – and more than 70 million people, likely about half the total that will vote for a major party candidate, have cast ballots.

Both campaigns are packing in rallies in the final days, and on Wednesday they agreed on where to go: Arizona, a recently red state that Joe Biden has put in play. Donald Trump held a packed, maskless rally in Phoenix while the Biden campaign organized a drive-in event with Kamala Harris.

On Wednesday the death toll from Covid-19 topped 1,000 in the United States, with states reporting 1m tests, about 79,000 new cases, and 1,025 deaths, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Barack Obama will campaign with Biden in the battleground state of Michigan on Saturday, just three days before election day. It will be the first joint in-person campaign appearance of the two since Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination.

The US supreme court declined on Wednesday to block an agreement giving North Carolina voters more time to return their absentee ballots, the latest in a series on important rulings on mail-in ballots in key swing states. The decision was announced shortly after a similar decision on Wednesday in which the justices declined to halt an extension of the ballot receipt deadline in Pennsylvania, another key swing state.

Thanks for joining us today!

Updated

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