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The Guardian - US

World

Bryan Armen Graham in New York (now), Tim Hill and Martin Belam (earlier)

Obama hails Biden's 'decency and kindness' and takes swipe at Trump – as it happened

Obama and Biden together in Flint. Obama said: ‘Joe Biden tries to live the values we cherish: honesty, hard work, kindness, humility, responsibility, helping someone out.’ Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

12.44am GMT

Summary

We’re closing down the blog now but we’ll be back tomorrow morning for the latest from the campaign trail. Here’s what happened today:

Obama lends a hand as Biden and Trump launch final campaign blitz. America was on edge on Saturday as the candidates launched a final campaign blitz amid a surging pandemic, record early voting and gnawing uncertainty over when the outcome of the presidential election will be known
US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours. Daily caseload of 100,233 surpasses tally set in India last month
Early voting surges in Texas. In a stunning display of enthusiasm, more than 9.6m Texans have voted ahead of election day, surpassing the total number of votes cast four years ago.
Texas Democrats cancel event after campaign bus followed. Texas Democrats said they cancelled a campaign event for “public safety and security reasons”, after a group of Trump supporters driving trucks followed a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a highway outside of Austin.

12.35am GMT

Thousands of Donald Trump supporters appear to have been left out in the cold following his rally outside Pittsburgh tonight, according to CNN.

CNN’s DJ Judd shared a photo from outside Trump’s rally in Butler showing hordes of rallygoers waiting in near-freezing temperatures for shuttles to take them back to the designated parking areas.

Trump has finished and left, but there’s thousands of supporters who have been let loose into the night with no sign of the shuttles they’ve been told will take them back to parking. People are filling the street, blocking the road for ambulances and police. pic.twitter.com/uMgfvUZ4Jg
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) October 31, 2020

Judd said the temperature outside the venue at the time of his photos was 41F (5C).

It’s the second time in four days that transportation snarls have left Trump rally attendees stranded after an event.

On Tuesday, seven people were hospitalized after supporters at a late-night Trump rally at an Omaha airport remained at the site waiting on buses hours after Trump’s plane had departed. The problem was blamed on limited traffic flow on the two-lane road that led to the site of the rally.

The Washington Post reported that Trump supporters were stuck after the president spoke at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. It said many elderly supporters of Trump were among those stranded.

Omaha police said in a written statement that first responders dealt with 30 people for medical reasons throughout the day and seven were sent to hospital.

At the rally, Trump said he’s issued a memorandum that calls on government agencies to determine fracking’s impact on the economy and trade and the costs of banning the oil and gas extraction through fracking. The president has repeatedly charged that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support restrictions on the industry.

“In other words, if one of these maniacs come along and they say we’re gonna end fracking we’re gonna destroy the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Trump said in announcing his memorandum during his remarks. “You can say ‘sorry about that.”’

Updated at 12.37am GMT

12.15am GMT

Barack Obama briefly showed off his silky left-handed shooting stroke at Flint Northwestern High School where he spoke at a drive-in rally with Joe Biden earlier today.

so this was absolutely insane pic.twitter.com/W4JL6LQZxq
— Olivia Raisner (@OliviaRaisner) October 31, 2020

The clip of the impromptu three-pointer has gone viral in the hours since Saturday’s rally, garnering praise from no less than LeBron James.

“Now you just showing out now my friend!!” the recently minted NBA finals Most Valuable Player tweeted. “That’s what you do huh?? Ok ok I see. All cash!”

Updated at 12.15am GMT

11.44pm GMT

A federal judge has ordered the US Postal Service to take “extraordinary measures” to deliver ballots in time to be counted in Wisconsin and around Detroit, including using a priority mail service.

The Associated Press reports:

Chief US district judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, issued the order on Friday after being presented with data showing on-time delivery of ballots sent by voters was too slow in Michigan and Wisconsin. They are both “battleground states” in the November election.

Delivery of ballots in the USPS’ Detroit district, for example, has dipped as low as 57% over the past week, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office said Saturday.

“Every vote must be counted,” Ferguson said. “Our democracy depends on it.”

National on-time delivery has been at 93% or higher, said the statement from Ferguson, who leads a coalition of 14 states that filed a lawsuit on 18 August over changes to the Postal Service.

Bastian, an appointee of former US president Barack Obama, said that starting Sunday and continuing through 10 November, the USPS must report to his court the prior day’s “all clear” status for each facility and processing center in the Detroit area and a district covering most of Wisconsin.

If the USPS identifies any incoming ballots in its “all clear” sweeps of these facilities, it must make every effort to deliver those ballots by 8pm local time on Election Day, including by using Priority Mail Express or other extraordinary measures, Bastian said.

Priority Mail Express is an overnight service that costs a minimum of $26.35 per envelope, according to the USPS.com website.

Asked for comment on the judge’s order, Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer referred to a fact sheet posted Saturday that says as of Friday, Postal Service employees are authorized to use the Express Mail network to speed completed ballots to their intended destinations.

“We take our legal obligations very seriously and (are) complying with all court orders,” Partenheimer said. “The Postal Service continues to implement extraordinary measures across the country to advance and expedite the delivery of the nation’s ballots.”

They include extra pick-ups, extra deliveries, and collecting mail on Sunday, Partenheimer said.

11.20pm GMT

US judge to hear Republican bid to void 100,000 votes in Texas

A federal judge in Texas scheduled an emergency hearing for Monday on whether Houston officials unlawfully allowed drive-through voting and should toss more than 100,000 votes in the Democratic-leaning area, Reuters reports.

US district judge Andrew Hanen in Houston on Friday agreed to hear arguments by a Republican state legislator and others that votes already cast at drive-through voting sites in the Houston area should be rejected.

Early voting surges in Texas

In a stunning display of enthusiasm, more than 9.6m Texans have voted ahead of election day, surpassing the total number of votes cast four years ago.

What that means for the races up and down the ballot is “the million dollar question”, says Emily M Farris, an associate professor of political science at Texas Christian University.

“We just don’t really know,” she says.

In what has been a reliably red state with low voter participation, 30.4% of this year’s ballots have been cast by voters who didn’t participate in 2016 at all, according to Tom Bonier, chief executive of political data firm TargetSmart. Turnout has surged especially among Asian, college-educated white and young Texans.

“You can definitively say now, more voters under the age of 30 have voted already in Texas than have ever voted in any election, and that’s remarkable,” Bonier says.

Nearly 4.2m Texans who voted early do not have a history of voting in either party’s primary election, Republican consultant Derek Ryan wrote in a report on Friday. Around 1.7m live in Republican-dominated precincts, while 1.2m are from areas that typically swing Democratic.

Ryan expects more than 12m Texans to vote when all is said and done, which would amount to a double-digit spike in turnout from 2016.

“Clearly people are interested, and they’re motivated with this election,” says Juan Carlos Huerta, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.

But at the US-Mexico border, large Hispanic communities and Democratic strongholds with chronically low turnout are not keeping up with the rest of the state. In El Paso county, where Covid-19 cases have surged and officials have imposed tougher restrictions, 45.4% of registered voters have voted. Those numbers have only reached 48.2% in Hidalgo county, in the Rio Grande Valley, compared to 57% statewide.

“Texas is a tough state to vote in,” Huerta says. “And, you know, there’s plenty of folks who would say ‘Oh, that’s by design,’ because it’s designed to discourage participation.”

Donald Trump is still slightly favored to win Texas – a state he took by nine points in 2016 – though polls showing a close race have ignited a firestorm of speculation about whether this is the year the state actually turns blue.

“We feel good with where we’re at, but we need to keep on going, and you know, we’re not there yet,” says Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic party.

On top of the battle for the White House, Texas is home to a key Senate race, as air force veteran MJ Hegar tries to unseat Republican John Cornyn. But Cornyn is still favored to win re-election, and despite a more competitive race than many would have predicted back in March, “it would be a surprise” if Hegar prevailed, Farris says.

“Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat, you know, statewide in more than two decades now,” she says. “And so that kind of shift in Texas would be a pretty big change.”

7.27pm GMT

Texas Democrats cancel event after campaign bus followed

Texas Democrats said they cancelled a campaign event on Friday for “public safety and security reasons”, after a group of Trump supporters driving trucks followed a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a highway outside of Austin.

While vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris was campaigning in Texas that day, she was not on the bus, a spokesman for a state Democratic representative confirmed.

Multiple video clips posted on social media showed trucks flying Trump flags surrounding a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a highway.

“They’re like chasing him,” a man says, laughing as he narrates one clip shared by Trump supporters. “They’re literally escorting him out of town.”

A group of the same 12 cars has been following the Biden bus all over the country, CBS News Austin reported, citing Texas Democrats.

A Democratic campaign event scheduled for Friday evening in Pflugerville was cancelled due to security concerns related to the cars following the Biden bus, Sheryl Cole, a Democratic state representative, tweeted on Friday.

“Unfortunately, Pro-Trump Protesters have escalated well beyond safe limits,” she wrote.

This is a 1st for me - but we just cancelled a joint event in Pflugerville w/ @JoeBiden campaign, @AustinYoungDems, & more, due to security reasons. Unfortunately, Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits. Sorry to all who looked forward to this fun event. https://t.co/tSq4moqro0
— Sheryl Cole (@SherylCole1) October 30, 2020

The decision to cancel the Pflugerville event came after Democrats received reports in the late afternoon that there had been some kind of collision between a pro-Trump vehicle and another vehicle on I-35, André Treiber, a spokesperson for Cole, told the Guardian. The details of the incident on the highway are still not clear, Treiber said, including whether the collision turned out to be “an accident or an escalation”.

“When you have two hours to make the call, you make the safe call,” Treiber said. “We wanted to make sure everyone was safe.”

An event with Democratic politicians in Austin was also cancelled on Friday, but CBS News Austin reported that Democrats in Austin said the cancellation was not prompted by security concerns, but by the decision not to take focus from Kamala Harris, who was making appearances elsewhere in the state.

When the Biden-Harris bus stopped briefly in Austin earlier on Friday, Trump supporters heckled and faced off with Democrats, with Trump supporters calling Biden a “Chinese communist”, CBS Austin reported.

The cars following the bus include a pro-Trump hearse emblazoned with the slogan, “Vote like your life depends on it,” according to social media and news reports.

Republicans apologized after Trump supporters brought a casket to a Biden event outside Houston, with a dark-haired mannequin that some viewers saw as representing Kamala Harris, a local Fox News affiliate reported.

7.15pm GMT

Axios reports that early voting in the 2020 election on Saturday afternoon had already reached 65.5% of 2016’s total turnout, citing state data compiled by the US Elections Project.

Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who administers the US Elections Project, said last week the high level of early voting augurs a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.

6.53pm GMT

Biden's 'decency and kindness' praised by Obama

Barack Obama vouched for Joe Biden’s “decency and kindness” while taking a swipe at Donald Trump’s idea of masculine strength in an appeal to Michigan voters in their first joint campaign appearance at Flint Northwestern High School.

An excerpt from the former US president’s remarks:

With Joe and Kamala at the helm … you’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about him every day. It won’t be so exhausting. You’ll be able to get on with your lives knowing that the president is not going to suggest we inject bleach as a possible cure of Covid. You won’t have to wake up in the morning, kind of open your phone and, hey, news flash: the president retweeted conspiracy theories that the Navy Seals didn’t actually kill Bin Laden. You’re not going to have a president who goes out of his way to insult people just because they don’t support them. This is not normal behavior, people. We would not tolerate it from a teacher or a coach or a co-worker or a family member. If a neighbor was acting like this, you would stay away from that neighbor. Why would we accept it from the president of the United States?

And you know what, there are consequences to his actions. There are consequences to his actions. This is not just a joke. It’s not funny. Those actions embolden other people to be mean, and divisive, and racist. And it frays at the fabric of all of our lives and it affects how our children see the world and how they treat each other. It affects the way our families get along. It affects the way the world sees America. That’s why Joe talks about the soul of America. That’s why he talks about decency, and kindness, and responsibility and hard work. That more than anything is what separates Joe Biden from his opponent: he actually cares about every American. He does not have a mean-spirited bone in his body. I have seen him spend time with people, strangers that he doesn’t know, when he hears they’re going through hardship, he talks about what he’s gone through. When he sees a kid, his eyes light up because because he thinks about his own kids and grandkids.

Joe Biden tries to live the values we cherish: honesty, hard work, kindness, humility, responsibility, helping somebody else out. That used to be the definition of manliness. Not strutting and showing off, acting important, bullying people. It used to be being a man meant taking care of other people. Not going around bragging, but just doing the work. Not looking for credit. Trying to live right. Passing on those values to your kids. Looking out for a community. Carrying your weight. Giving up a little bit of what you might have to help somebody who has a real need.

When you elect Joe, that’s what you’ll see reflected from the White House. And those shouldn’t be Republican or Democratic values – they didn’t used to be! They’re what we grew up learning for our parents and from our grandparents. And they’re the values we still try to teach our kids. And they’re not white or black or Hispanic or Asian or Native American values – they’re American values. And we’ve got to reclaim them right now. And to reclaim them, we’re going have to turn out like never before. And if we’re going to reclaim those values, we need to leave no doubt. We can’t afford to be complacent. Not this time. Not in this election.

Former president Barack Obama speaks at a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Updated at 7.17pm GMT

6.18pm GMT

Barack Obama has taken the stage at a drive-in campaign event in Flint, the first stop of a two-city jaunt alongside Joe Biden through Michigan today. You can watch above.

Polls show that Biden has maintained his lead in Michigan, a traditional Democratic stronghold which Donald Trump won by a 0.3% margin that averaged out to two votes per precinct in 2016. The RealClearPolitics average of recent Michigan polls, taken between 21 and 27 October, shows Biden with an 8.7-point advantage over the incumbent president.

6.07pm GMT

Lincoln Project takes Trump billboards to Mar-a-Lago

“Just in time for election day, Donald Trump’s last South Florida rally and expectations the first lady will cast her vote locally,” the Palm Beach Post reports, “the Times Square billboards showing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner seemingly delighting in the death and suffering caused by the coronavirus pandemic will be floating near Mar-a-Lago this weekend.”

Which is about the size of it. The original billboards caused a huge kerfuffle last weekend, which was precisely the intention of the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump, pro-Biden group of former Republican consultants who put them up.

Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer for the president, sent a threatening letter, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.

The Lincoln Project hoped that would happen too, and was ready with a stinging response, citing first amendment free speech protections and one of the most amusing cases in all US constitutional law, “one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases” … that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation”.

“Mr Kushner and Ms Trump’s claims,” the Lincoln Project’s attorney wrote…

… will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini’s, given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19.”

Ron Steslow, one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, told the Palm Beach Post: “This falls into our psychological warfare – to take them off message. We hit the bull’s eye with these.”

The president was in Pennsylvania on Saturday and told the pool reporter he planned to spend election night, on Tuesday, between the White House and his Washington hotel. Regardless, the Lincoln Project also said it planned to have a truck version of the billboard circling Trump Tower in New York this weekend.

Updated at 6.38pm GMT

5.42pm GMT

An Illinois judge ordered 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse to be extradited to Wisconsin on Friday to face homicide charges there in the shooting deaths of two men at a protest against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Police documents about Rittenhouse’s arrest, obtained by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel after a lawsuit, also offered new details about how the teenager obtained the rifle used in the shooting, which he was not old enough to buy or possess under Wisconsin law.

Rittenhouse said the rifle he used was purchased by an 18-year-old friend who lived in Wisconsin, and the police records state it was found in the trunk of his friend’s car, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Both teenagers had been at the volatile late-night protest in Kenosha, they said, but the friend told an officer was standing with a gun on the rooftop of a business and did not see the shooting.

The 18-year-old friend said that Rittenhouse “had given him money to buy the rifle” at a local hardware store, that it was “only to be used while hunting up north at the friend’s family property,” and that it had been stored at his stepfather’s house, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

The stepfather told investigators he was aware that the 18-year-old had purchased a gun for his 17-year-old friend, and said he had insisted that the gun be kept in his own locked gun safe because of Rittenhouse’s age. But he said he had taken the gun out of the safe to have it ready during protests against police violence in Kenosha, and that the 18-year-old had taken it without his permission.

According to the police report, the friend recalled telling Rittenhouse after the shooting that he was going to be in trouble because he purchased the gun. “In all reality, you are not supposed to have that gun. That gun was in my name,” the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Straw purchasing, buying a gun for someone who is not legally allowed to have one, is a serious federal crime. But local prosecutors have not charged the 18-year-old friend with any crime, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Accompanied by his mother, Rittenhouse turned himself in at the police department in his hometown in Illinois just hours after the shooting, the Journal-Sentinel reported. The police report notes he was emotional at moments, at one time saying, “”I shot two white kids,” and that a medical examination revealed “small scratches on his arm but no bruising or cuts.”

Rittenhouse claimed to officers that he had been hired to protect a business in Kenosha, a claim his lawyer echoed in a Fox News interview. But a Kenosha car dealer has publicly denied hiring armed men to guard his business, the Journal-Sentinel reported previously.

5.24pm GMT

Nina Lakhani reports from Pennsylvania:

It was supposed to be peaceful Biden/Harris caravan through Nazareth Borough Park, in pivotal Northampton county. Instead, the midday event was gatecrashed by a couple of dozen honking vehicles adorned with huge Trump flags and Biden effigies.

“Obama’s a piece of shit,” screamed one man through a megaphone. “Latinos for Trump,” yelled another who was originally from Chile and taunted the other side for having no minorities among them. At one point, someone shouted “KKK!”

Tigh Hillegas, 43, a concrete worker from neighboring Lehigh county, said they’d come to show the other side that they were more pumped and energized “I’m voting for freedom. If we get socialism, we won’t be able to protest our government like we are today. Trump has exposed how bad the [political] swamp really is.”

Hillegas dismissed reports of Trump’s tax evasion as made up, before adding: “If they say abortion is about the right to choose, choosing to risk Covid is my right.”

Not a single Trump supporter was wearing a mask as they shouted insults and taunts at the masked Biden supporters.

“Why would you vote for pedophiles and baby killers?” shouted one woman who declined to give her name.

The Biden supporters largely refused to rise to the bait, but were visibly upset.

Jennifer Peterson, 61, a dental hygienist, said: “It’s terrible that we can’t come out to protest without being bullied and harassed. I’m sure Trump is going to try and steal the election. I just pray that this is still America and our laws protect us.”

Regi Koonsman, 71, a retired teacher, said: “Trump is the most corrupt, inept, incompetent president we’ve ever had – and I’m not exaggerating. His handling of the pandemic has been deplorable. I’ve never seen division like this – and I’ve been around a long time. I blame Trump and the Republican senators who’ve enabled him.”

The Biden caravan set off with the honking Trump fans tailing them through the county.

More here:

Updated at 6.09pm GMT

5.11pm GMT

Today's news so far

I’m going to hand over to my colleague Bryan Armen Graham. But here’s a quick roundup of where things stand today:

Donald Trump is holding four rallies in crucial swing-state Pennsylvania. As he departed from Joint Base Andrews, he told reporters: “It’s going to be a very interesting three days. It’s going to be a very interesting Tuesday.“A big red wave has formed. We’re doing very well.”
Joe Biden has left Delaware for Michigan, where he’ll hold two drive-in rallies with Barack Obama. The pair will visit Flint shortly and then on to Detroit.
Researchers at Stanford University say 700 deaths were probably caused by 18 Trump rallies. Their paper said: “Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees).”
Louisiana is seeing long lines and big turnout as residents vote before election day. Despite serious logistical hurdles, nearly a million had voted in-person or by mail by the conclusion of early voting on 27 October, close to a third of registered Louisiana voters.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo praised “some of our bravest and most skilled warriors” after US special forces in Nigeria rescued an American citizen abducted in neighboring Niger earlier this week. Donald Trump tweeted of a “ big win for our very elite special forces”.

That’s all from me. Thanks for reading.

4.50pm GMT

Trump rallies linked to 700 Covid deaths, researchers say

US researchers have suggested that a series of recent Trump rallies probably produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.

The study, released on Friday by scientists at Stanford University, looked at “the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.

Trump supporters in Newtown, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images

“Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.

“Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of Covid-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees).”

4.35pm GMT

New York’s quarantine travel list has been replaced with new testing protocols in which people coming from out of state must enter with a negative Covid test, according to reports.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday he is replacing the mandate that had required a 14-day quarantine for persons arriving from states with high levels of Covid transmission. Under Cuomo’s new requirement, travelers arriving from out of state must enter New York with proof that they had a negative Covid-19 test within three days of arriving, according to Syracuse.com.

After coming into New York, travelers must quarantine for three days. On the fourth day, they have to undergo another Covid-19 test. If this fourth-day test is negative, they are no longer under a quarantine requirement, Cuomo reportedly said.

Travelers who don’t undergo Covid tests will still have to quarantine for 14 days, the report said.

Andrew Cuomo earlier in October. Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

Travelers who leave New York for 24 hours or less have to undergo a test – and show a negative result – within four days after their return to the state.

The just-announced testing requirements do not apply to New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Connecticut.

Updated at 4.37pm GMT

4.15pm GMT

Biden and Obama stump together in Michigan today

As Donald Trump heads to Pennsylvania today, Joe Biden and Barack Obama will campaign together in Michigan. The pair will hold a drive-in event in Flint, which will begin shortly, and then head to Detroit, for another drive-in rally, set to begin at 5.30pm. Stevie Wonder is scheduled to join Biden and Obama in Detroit.

Polls show that Biden has maintained his lead in Michigan. The RealClearPolitics average of recent Michigan polls, taken between 21 and 27 October, shows Biden with an 8.7-point advantage over Trump. In 2016, Trump won Michigan, which has 16 electoral college votes, by 0.3 points.

Joe Biden leaves New Castle, Delaware, en route for Michigan on Saturday. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Updated at 4.17pm GMT

4.04pm GMT

Obama to campaign in Georgia and Florida on Monday

Barack Obama will travel to Florida and Georgia on Monday to campaign for Joe Biden and for Democratic Georgia Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

David Perdue, the Republican Ossoff is trying to unseat, pulled out of their final scheduled debate on Thursday, a day after Ossoff had denounced him as a “crook” who downplayed the threat of Covid. Ossoff said, witheringly: “It’s not just that you’re a crook, senator, it’s that you’re attacking the health of the people you represent.”

Perdue denied Ossoff’s claims but decided to withdraw from the final debate, preferring instead to attend a rally with Donald Trump.

Sen. David Perdue is out for himself — not for our health. pic.twitter.com/zbtmw6rU4Q
— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 29, 2020

3.48pm GMT

Trump: 'A big red wave has formed'

Donald Trump spoke briefly to reporters this morning, on his way from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Pennsylvania. The president is scheduled to hold four rallies, in Newton, Reading, Butler and Montoursville.

He was asked: where will you be on election night?

Trump said: “I’ll be perhaps between the White House and the hotel. I guess they placed a limit yesterday on the hotel. They did that yesterday in Minnesota. Just ridiculous. Thousands and thousands of people were disenfranchised. They traveled for many miles to be there.

“We’re spending the day in Pennsylvania. And I think we’re doing extremely well with the votes. It’s going to be a very interesting three days. It’s going to be a very interesting Tuesday.

“A big red wave has formed. We’re doing very well.”

Trump speaks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

From a “red wave” to a “red mirage”: Tom McCarthy has been looking into the possibility of election-night chaos. Known as the “red mirage”, the scenario could develop if Trump appears to be leading in the presidential race late on election night and declares victory before all the votes are counted.

The scenario can be averted, election officials say, by heightening public awareness about it – and by cautioning vigilance against carefully targeted lies that Donald Trump has already begun to tell.

Long lines – and big turnout – in Louisiana

At the State Archives Building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Pastor Errol Domingue watched as people drove up, then kept driving once they saw the line to vote. He had set aside three hours on a Saturday to cast his ballot. So when he ended up waiting in a crowd for 50 minutes to an hour, he said: “I really had no problems.”

“I was determined,” Domingue said. “I’m a Black man in the Deep South, and so I’m kind of hyper-sensitive to this idea of discouragement in voting, and suppression in voting.”

Amid record-breaking turnout during Louisiana’s early voting period, which after a legal battle was extended from seven to 10 days in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, voters fielded long wait times in close spaces across the state. In Caddo Parish, where a single early voting site served around 240,000 residents, people stood in line for hours. An image posted online showed congested, winding queues and an ambulance in the distance at a polling place in Jefferson Parish’s Marrero.

“I don’t understand why we weren’t prepared to be able to address what we knew would be record turnout for what is an election of our lifetime, I think, or our generation for sure,” said Ashley K Shelton, executive director of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice.

When Pastor Fred Jeff Smith’s wife tried to vote at the State Archives Building, she encountered a wait of up to two hours. Although she was able to cast a ballot during a later trip to the same polling location, the prospect of such a huge time commitment didn’t appeal to Smith, who has decided to go on election day instead.

“I didn’t feel like I had that kind of time to give up,” he said. “But I know that I’m going to vote on Tuesday.”

Despite serious logistical hurdles, nearly a million had voted in-person or by mail by the conclusion of early voting on 27 October, close to a third of registered Louisiana voters. Demographically, Black Louisianans comprised more and Republicans less of the vote than in 2016, as the state logged just under half of the total turnout from four years ago.

“It is exciting to see traditionally marginalized and underserved communities really working to get the vote out,” Domingue said. “I haven’t seen this in my lifetime.”

2.44pm GMT

With days to go until the election, a Black Voices for Trump function in Ohio on Friday night represented one of the last chances for the Trump campaign to win over Black voters in the state.

Unfortunately for Trump, the event in Cleveland, a city with a population of 383,000, drew a total of 20 people.

It didn’t seem to bother Katrina Pierson, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign who as Trump’s former spokesperson, has echoed conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and criticized women who accused Trump of sexual assault.

“We have a leader in Donald Trump who has kept promises he didn’t even make,” Pierson told the audience.

Pierson did not elaborate on how that would work, but did offer an optimistic take on Trump’s re-election chances.

“The numbers right now look phenomenal,” Pierson said, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Early voting … it’s not looking so great for the Democrats. Have you heard about that? You won’t read about that. But it’s true.”

Trump won 8% of the Black vote in 2016, compared to Mitt Romney’s 6% in 2012, and Joe Biden is expected to win the overall Black vote convincingly. But polling suggests a generational gap, with Trump’s support among younger Black people having increased since 2016.

At the Cleveland event, held in a dimly lit campaign office in the east of the city, five of the attendees appeared to be white people, with

@KatrinaPierson and @JaRonSmith45 kicking off #BlackVoicesforTrump homestretch event in Cleveland, Ohio! pic.twitter.com/1bghuXEqhV
— Gail Wilson —Text WOKE to 88022 (@MsGailWilson) October 30, 2020

“As a black person, it’s the things that he has done specifically that will effect Black people positively,” said Lawrence Hill, 58.

“He’s supported all black colleges and universities,” Hill said. “Obama really didn’t try to do anything to help our black colleges and universities.”

Trump has claimed he “saved” Historically Black colleges and universities – higher education facilities established prior to 1964 with a mission to educate Black Americans – by allocating permanent funding. Fact checkers have pointed out that while Trump did sign a bill drafted by Democrats and Republicans, the amount of funding allocated to HBCUs has changed little from Barack Obama’s presidency.

Still, Hill predicted a groundswell of support for Trump come Tuesday.

“There’s an undercurrent of Black people who are going to come out and support our president. I’ve met more this year than I’ve ever met in my life,” Hill said.

“Hispanic and black voters, we are the ones who are going to to turn this thing out.”

2.41pm GMT

Pompeo praises US forces over hostage rescue

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has issued a statement on the rescue of an American citizen in Nigeria. US special forces rescued Philip Walton, 27, who was abducted on Tuesday from his home in neighboring southern Niger, two US officials said on condition of anonymity

The operation in northern Nigeria is believed to have killed several of his captors, officials said.

A diplomatic source in Niger said Walton is now at the US ambassador’s residence in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

Pompeo said in the statement: “The United States is committed to the safe return of all US citizens taken captive. We delivered on that commitment late last night in Nigeria, where some of our bravest and most skilled warriors rescued a US citizen after a group of armed men took him hostage across the border in Niger.

“Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our military, the support of our intelligence professionals, and our diplomatic efforts, the hostage will be reunited with his family. We will never abandon any American taken hostage.”

Trump also mentioned the raid on Twitter. He wrote of a “big win for our very elite US special forces”.

Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today. Details to follow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2020

2.34pm GMT

Unsurprisingly, billionaires have been spending big this election campaign. Sheldon Adelson, the super-rich casino mogul, is expected to have spent a quarter of a billion dollars this cycle to support Trump, Republicans and other conservative causes.

Peter Stone reports that Adelson, a close acquaintance of Trump, and his wife Miriam, an Israeli-born physician, have already spent a single election record sum of $183m through 14 October, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson in Las Vegas in February this year. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Adelson, 87, has made his huge donations even as his casino empire, which stretches from Las Vegas to Asia, has seen its revenues drop significantly this year because of Covid.

The data showed that the second biggest donor behind Adelson has been Michael Bloomberg, who has spent $107m, much of it on ads in Florida to help Biden, CRP data shows.

US citizen rescued by American forces in Nigeria – Pentagon

A very quick snap here – US forces carried out a rescue operation in northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen being held by “armed men” on Saturday, the Pentagon said.

“This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the US Department of State,” the Pentagon said in a statement, adding that no military personnel were injured in the operation.

There’s a little more detail here from Fox News’ Pentagon correspondent Lucas Tomlinson:

BREAKING: An American hostage has been rescued in West Africa by SEAL Team 6 in a daring raid early this morning

Philip Walton, 27, "is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State," DoD says

Walton kidnapped in Niger earlier this week. He was recused in Nigeria
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) October 31, 2020

Updated at 1.21pm GMT

1.01pm GMT

Kamala Harris is in the same position on the other side of the ticket to Mike Pence. She’ll make history as the first woman, the first Black American and the first Asian American to hold the country’s second highest office if Joe Biden wins, and she will immediately be in a strong position to run for the top job four years from now.

Given his age, the 77-year-old Biden is not expected to seek a second term.

“Harris always made the most sense as a running mate for Biden because she had the ability to help him unify the Democratic coalition across racial and generational lines and was able to spike base enthusiasm,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announcing that she would be his running mate in 2020. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Accusations from progressives that Harris did not do enough to investigate police shootings and wrongful conviction cases when she was California’s attorney general helped doom her own presidential run, but have surfaced little during her time as Biden’s running mate.

The Trump campaign, notes James Oliphant for Reuters, have sought to paint Harris instead as more of a tool of the Democratic left who would wield power and influence behind the scenes in a Biden presidency.

As the Senate’s only Black woman, Harris emerged this year as a leading voice on racial justice and police reform after Minneapolis police killed African-American man George Floyd in May. She marched with protesters on the streets of Washington and won over some liberal skeptics.

Asked on “60 Minutes” last month why, given Biden’s age, he believed Harris would be ready to step into the presidency if something happened to him, the presidential candidate rapidly fired off five reasons.

“Number one, her values. Number two, she is smart as a devil, and number three, she has a backbone like a ramrod. Number four, she is really principled. And number five, she has had significant experience in the largest state in the Union in running the justice department that*s only second in size to the United States Justice Department. And obviously, I hope that never becomes a question,” he said.

12.55pm GMT

Jeff Mason and Sonya Hepinstall at Reuters have this look ahead at the future for vice president Mike Pence – whatever Tuesday’s election holds. They point out that Pence, 61, will be catapulted into a group of front-runners for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as soon as the 2020 results are known.

Pence has been one of the few constants in Trump’s tumultuous White House and has kept his boss’s confidence by being careful never to step out of the president’s shadow.

Pence and Trump in Virginia in September. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters

He has been content to play a largely behind-the-scenes White House role, eschewing Trump’s propensity for drama. His style, however is much different from that of his boss. He is calm rather than volcanic, and deeply religious. “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” Pence has said.

He has always been careful to praise Trump and hew to his positions, even in closed-door meetings when the president is absent, and often says the job is “the greatest privilege of my life.”

Critics say he effectively validates Trump’s often erratic behavior by quietly accepting the president’s combative style.

If Pence runs for president in 2024, he could face other Trump acolytes such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in the Republican race

What he will not be able to do is separate himself from Trump’s agenda.

Reducing taxes and regulation, advancing anti-abortion policies, and transforming the judiciary with conservative judges and Supreme Court justices are among the policy changes of which Pence is most proud.

But perhaps the greatest obstacle to Pence’s further political advancement is that he oversaw the US response to the coronavirus pandemic as head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. That brief - despite being hailed as a success by the administration - has not gone well.

12.44pm GMT

The president is up and tweeting about his taxes. He’s repeatedly promised to release his tax returns, although is yet to do so.

I paid many millions of dollars in Taxes to the Federal Government, most of which was even paid early, or PREPAID. MANY $MILLIONS. The Failing @nytimes never likes reporting that!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2020

12.42pm GMT

It’s all about the swing states. If you want to keep an eye on the latest polling numbers as we close in on Election Day itself, then we have our elections polls tracker which is looking at 8 states which could hold the key to the big night.

The current state of play is that Biden has a significant lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden is also ahead in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Iowa – but those much narrower leads are within the grasp of Trump because of the margin for error in the figures. Trump leads in Ohio.

More detail here: US election polls tracker: who is leading in swing states, Trump or Biden?

12.30pm GMT

'We're moving the wrong way' – Kentucky governor on state's Covid situation

Kentucky reported a near-record number of new coronavirus cases Friday as the surging outbreak continued sending more people to hospitals, Gov. Andy Beshear said.

“This is a dangerous time. We’re moving the wrong way,” the Democratic governor said as he urged Kentuckians to wear masks in public to protect themselves and those around them.

Beshear reported 1,941 new Covid-19 cases the second-highest statewide daily total since the pandemic began, and 15 more virus-related deaths.
The state’s positivity rate reached 6.19%, the highest level since May 6, he said.

Associated Press report that the recent surge has led to rising hospitalizations. On Friday, there were 974 patients hospitalized in Kentucky due to the virus, the governor said, noting the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care rose to 241.

“Remember, the more cases, the more people in the hospital, the more people in the ICU and the more people who die,” Beshear said.

Total statewide Covid-19 cases surpassed 105,000, and the virus-related death toll reached at least 1,476. The latest deaths announced included people ranging in ages from 39 to 91.

12.20pm GMT

US sets all-time global high for daily coronavirus cases – Reuters tally puts figure at 100,233

There are several different counts of how many cases of coronavirus the US has, and this morning the Reuters tally set an all-time global high for cases recorded in a 24-hour period, with just over 100,000 new infections on Friday, eclipsing its previous record of 91,000 the day before.

The daily caseload of 100,233 surpasses the 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September.

The US has exceeded its previous single-day record of 77,299 cases registered in July five times in the past ten days. The number of daily infections reported in the last two days suggests the country is reporting more than one new case every second.

The US has a rate of about 28,100 cases per million people, which places it about 14th in the world for prevalence.

The New York Times keeps an alternative tally, and they give yesterday’s figure as 98,859. This is, they record, 42% higher than the number of daily new cases was 14 days ago.

For consistency, on this live blog we’ve been using the figures from the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which put the number of new US cases yesterday at 99,321.

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11.59am GMT

National Nurses United (NNU), the largest organization of registered nurses in the US, has put out a statement highly critical of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. They’ve called on him to withdraw his threats against El Paso County officials for ordering stronger coronavirus measures.

NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo condemned Paxton’s “appalling and unconscionable” threat of exploring “all legal actions” aimed at reversing an order to close non-essential businesses in the area, which is suffering one of the highest hospitalisation rates in the whole of the US.

Castillo’s letter stated that “our members are literally putting their lives in jeopardy struggling to keep up with this crisis” and goes on to say “we understand the critical importance of every step that is taken to reduce the spread of this virus.”

Trisha Garcia reported for us earlier in the week on the Covid crisis that has engulfed the border city.

11.52am GMT

Talking of those possible Trump routes to victory, Tim Murtaugh, the director of comms for the Trump campaign, is getting very sportsball on Twitter this morning with CBS about whether the candidates are playing offense or defense in the last few days of the campaign.

He’s suggesting that Biden is trying to shore up usually safe Democratic areas, while Trump is on the attack.

Um. Joe Biden visited Minnesota on Friday, a state Republicans haven’t won since 1972. That’s playing DEFENSE.

Trump was ALSO in Minnesota Friday, definitely on OFFENSE.

And, in case you don’t understand how this works, if Trump wins his 2016 states again, he gets re-elected. https://t.co/HIrkPIqlqJ
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 31, 2020

11.42am GMT

Niall Stanage, over at the Hill, says Donald Trump is very clearly the underdog in Tuesday’s election, but still has several narrow but plausible paths to victory.

Trump’s simplest and easiest route to victory this year is to hold onto Florida and Pennsylvania, both of which he won in 2016. Florida is, as usual, a tight race — Biden led there by 1.2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average on Friday afternoon.

Biden’s polling lead in Pennsylvania is bigger, at 3.6 percentage points — but that’s hardly an invincible margin, especially if state-level polls are off as they were in 2016. The president has three events scheduled for Pennsylvania on Saturday.

If Trump won Florida and Pennsylvania, he could afford to lose two key states, Michigan and Wisconsin, so long as he held onto the other states that he won in 2016 — including Arizona, where he is under significant pressure. This scenario gives Republicans hope, despite all the polls in which the president is trailing.

Read it here: The Hill – Trump retains narrow path to victory

11.29am GMT

Republicans have attempted to make an election issue out of damage to US cities from the overwhelmingly peaceful Black Lives Matters during the summer and into the fall. Lois Beckett reports on a new report looking at the human cost – finding that so far at least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020. It’s a worrying portent for the election to come.

The new data on fatalities and violence at American protests comes from a database created by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit, working in collaboration with a group of researchers at Princeton.

ACLED, a widely-cited source for data on civilian casualties in Yemen, has been a nonpartisan monitor of protests and violence in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Latin America, and launched its US Crisis Monitor in July, citing concerns over hate crimes and rising political violence.

ACLED found that the overwhelming majority of the more than 9.000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations that took place across the US after the killing of George Floyd have been peaceful. News reports at the height of demonstrations over Floyd’s killing cited dozens of deaths in connection with protests, but many of those turned out to be examples of deadly crimes carried out in the vicinity of protests, rather than directly related to the demonstrations themselves, the researchers concluded. ACLED’s dataset only focuses on political violence.

Most of the protesters killed this year were shot to death, and many of the incidents involved confrontations at protests that escalated and turned deadly when at least one of the people involved had a gun.

11.14am GMT

The Biden campaign have put out a reminder to vote this morning, stressing “This is your chance to be a part of history”.

This is your chance to be a part of history.

Vote: https://t.co/eoxT07uII9 pic.twitter.com/4bH8iawiSE
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 31, 2020

There’s still some concern from Democratic organisers that it could be the wrong type of history. I mentioned earlier their worries over turn-out in Florida [see 6:22].

These will not have been aided by concerns raised after House Democratic Leader Kionne McGhee tweeted yesterday a video from a “concerned postal worker” who told his team “mail-in ballots are within these piled up in bins on the floor. Mail has been sitting for over week!”

Raw footage of mailroom in post office here in Miami Dade. Source revealed “mail in ballots are within these piled up in bins on the floor. Mail has been sitting for over week!.” @AmandiOnAir @PeterSchorschFL @MarcACaputo @GlennaWPLG @CNNPolitics @NewsbySmiley @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/DO8jx1VUnz
— Dem House Leader (@kionnemcghee) October 30, 2020

The clip is being widely shared on social media, and has led to State Attorney Kathy Rundle issuing a statement that “all postal distribution centers be audited”.

This is my statement regarding the South Dade ballot mail delay. I have requested that all postal distribution centers be audited & any and all ballots that may remain in these centers be immediately transported to the @MDCElections. pic.twitter.com/MNCLgL6lOB
— Kathy Rundle (@KathyFndzRundle) October 31, 2020

10.45am GMT

There were Black Lives Matter protests and vigils last night for Kevin Peterson Jr, a 21-year-old Black man who was killed by police on Thursday.

Mourners gathered in Hazel Dell, about 12 miles (19km) north of Portland. Hundreds of people gathered for the vigil Friday evening, report the Associated Press, with some holding signs reading, “Honk for Black lives. White silence is violence” and “Scream his name”.

Kevin Peterson Jr is remembered with a candlelight vigil at Hazel Dell. Photograph: Amanda Cowan/AP

Mac Smiff, an organizer of Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, said he knows Peterson’s sister and spent more than five hours at the scene.

“There was a ton of grief, a ton of grief. He’s 21 and has a baby, an infant,” Smiff said. “They’re not sure what happened, why the encounter took place. Everyone was extremely disheveled and confused.”

A woman lights a candle as people gather for Kevin Peterson Jr. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/AP

Jake Thompson, a high school acquaintance of Peterson, said he took photos at the wedding of Peterson’s parents in Portland in 2018. On Friday, he posted a black-and-white photo of Peterson in a suit and bow tie. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” he said Friday.

Later, tensions flared between left- and right-wing protesters. Video recorded by journalists in a parking lot showed two groups of people shouting at each other. Some armed demonstrators gathered near a building which they told reporters they were protecting.

Armed people gather during a counter-protest against Black Lives Matter in Vancouver, Washington. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/AP

A group of hundreds of protesters later marched through downtown Vancouver, Washington. Federal agents dressed in riot gear surrounded a building warning people that trespassing on federal property would result in arrest. Authorities declared an unlawful assembly and ordered protesters to disperse.

Vancouver police stand guard downtown as a tense standoff took place after a candlelight vigil for Kevin Peterson Jr. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/AP

In a statement, Clark County Sheriff Chuck Atkins said a joint city-county narcotics taskforce was conducting an investigation just before 6pm Thursday and chased a man into the parking lot of a bank, where he fired a gun at them. A firearm was recovered at the scene, Atkins said.

“I can say that our agency is grieving as is the Peterson family and the community,” Atkins said. “As the community grieves, I call for there to be a respectful and dignified observance of the loss of life in this matter. There is always the potential for misinformation, doubt and confusion - and there may be those who wish to sow seeds of doubt.”

The Oregonian reported that Peterson was on the phone with his partner, Olivia Selto, at the time he was shot. Selto said Peterson was running during the phone call and then she heard multiple gunshots before the line went silent. She said she didn’t know the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter.

Updated at 10.55am GMT

10.27am GMT

If you are currently getting anxious about Tuesday’s result – or whenever it finally comes – then you could cast an eye over our election builder to either reassure yourself, or give yourself an additional Halloween fright.

Pick which states are going to opt for Trump, and which will opt for Biden, and build your way to the 270 electoral college votes needed to find the man being inaugurated as president of the United States on Wednesday 20 January 2021.

Updated at 10.56am GMT

10.22am GMT

CNN reports that Democrats are uneasy about the higher Republican turnout in an important Florida county. Florida is worth 29 electoral college votes, and the winner of the state has ended up in the White House in the last six elections.

Republicans in Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, are turning out to vote at a somewhat higher percentage than Democrats – causing uneasiness among some Democratic operatives.

Nearly 63% of the 428,000 registered Republicans in the county have voted so far, whereas about 56% of the county’s 634,000 registered Democrats have voted to date, according to state data. About 225,000 people with no party affiliation have also already voted in the county.

While more Democrats than Republicans have voted overall in Miami-Dade, the county is seen by Democrats as a region Joe Biden must win by wide margins in order to offset voting in the state’s predominantly red regions.

Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic Florida strategist, said that Black voters in the county tend to vote in-person closer to election day, so he expects a bump in turnout over the coming weekend.

Democratic data consultant Matt Isbell said he’s seeing a “lagging factor” among Democratic Hispanic voters in Miami Dade.

“I don’t have a good answer for why that might be. But that is certainly a factor at the moment that is giving Democrats a lot of worry,” Isbell said.

Updated at 10.57am GMT

10.08am GMT

First class mail delivery in several Michigan cities remains slower than usual

Delivery of first class mail in several Michigan cities remains much slower than usual during the two weeks preceding the election, a test of the local postal system found.

The Guardian sent about 150 first class letters between locations in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Hamtramck, three Democratic strongholds in the critical battleground state. The mail was sent to mimic the route that a ballot would take from a mailbox to a city clerk’s office in the same municipality. About 83% of the mail arrived on time. But the service was much worse in Detroit where about 36% of letters arrived at least three days late, and one Detroit letter remains unaccounted for.

Detroit delays could spell trouble for Democratic candidates and the Biden campaign. About 170,000 Detroiters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, have requested absentee ballots ahead of the election. Trump previously won the state by just over 10,000 votes, and a Michigan judge recently ruled that mail-in ballots arriving after election day will not count. The Detroit city clerk exacerbated the situation by failing to send out 70,000 absentee ballots until the election’s final weeks.

Before the pandemic, and before changes were made by the Trump-appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, this summer, the United States Postal Service posted on-time delivery rates of around 95%. But new cost-cutting strategies, including the removal of sorting machines at the nation’s largest mail processing center in Pontiac, have slowed distribution.

The on-time delivery rate in the Guardian’s test is in line with the latest data from the postal service, which put its on-time rate in Detroit as low as 52% during a recent three-day period. The national rate was at 82% for a week-long period ending on 16 October, though it has been much lower in key swing states.

Read more of Tom Perkins’ report here: Critical mail delays hit swing states ahead of US election

Updated at 11.05am GMT

9.58am GMT

Dr Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious-diseases physician and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, is another medical professional to appear on the airwaves in the wake of Trump’s comments. She said:

As a frontline healthcare worker I have a few choice words to say to that malicious lie that I unfortunately can’t say on national television. Just to share the heartbreak of my fellow healthcare workers going through this process, let me start by saying, no, doctors do not profit by listing someone as being Covid-positive on a death certificate. In fact, most doctors I know have seen cuts to their salaries, or potentially no increases.

Our hospitals suffer major financial losses. The American Hospital Association says that hospitals are likely to lose $323bn by the end of 2020, because when there is a big surge, we have to stop all other services. Here in the north-east when we saw that, we actually had to furlough healthcare workers, because all the elective surgeries and everything else were put on hold.

So this is really damning, and it’s actually, as someone who’s now anticipating our hospitals getting full again, and watching my co-healthcare workers suffer through this in Wisconsin and the midwest, it just breaks my heart.

You can watch the clip here: MSNBC – Dr Bhadelia debunks Trump claim: doctors don’t profit from listing patients as Covid-positive

Updated at 11.25am GMT

9.35am GMT

With coronavirus rising across the United States, Andy Sullivan writes for Reuters on how Trump is spending the closing days of his re-election campaign criticizing public officials and medical professionals who are trying to beat it back, rather than coming up with a national strategy to combat it.

Trump delivered a closing message to the midwest that promised an economic revival and a vaccine to combat the pandemic, but that slice of optimism was delivered with great heapings of grievance – directed at Democratic rival Joe Biden and plenty of other people who aren’t on Tuesday’s ballot.

He told reporters he was not concerned that supporters who flock to his events might contract the virus, even though he, his family and many White House staffers have battled the disease in recent weeks.

The president criticized Democratic officials in Minnesota for enforcing social-distancing rules that limited his rally to 250 people. “It’s a small thing, but a horrible thing,” he said.

And he mocked the Fox News host Laura Ingraham for wearing a mask as she attended his rally.

Seeing her, the president said: “I can’t recognize you. Is that a mask? No way, are you wearing a mask? I’ve never seen her in a mask. Look at you. Laura, she’s being very politically correct. Whoa!”

Trump mocks Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who is at his rally, for wearing a mask, calling it "politically correct." pic.twitter.com/mYFmIqUYuf
— The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) October 30, 2020

Trump warned voters that Biden would prohibit Americans from celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and other special events if he wins office.

Biden, who has accused Trump of giving up in the fight against the disease, has by contrast sharply limited crowd sizes at events or restricted supporters to their vehicles. Speaking in Milwaukee on Friday, he delivered his remarks while wearing a medical mask.

“The only thing that can tear America apart is America itself, and that’s exactly what Donald Trump has been doing,” he said.

Updated at 11.33am GMT

9.21am GMT

The US has suffered its worst week for new infections of the entire Covid-19 pandemic just days ahead of the election

Scientists have sounded alarms about unabated Covid-19 spread across the midwest, a spread that has the potential to create even more devastation this winter if nothing is done to control the virus. And political divisions are fueling the surge.

“There were so many red flags early on that made us vulnerable from day one,” said Natalia Linos, a social epidemiologist who ran in a Democratic primary in Massachusetts this fall and is executive director of the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. “We were worried, and it showed from day one this has been a political failure.”

As key swing states such as Wisconsin are experiencing “crisis levels” of Covid-19 infections, it has “driven people further into their camps”, said Katherine J Cramer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.

“There’s still very strong support for President Trump here, and I think among his supporters they think he’s done a great job handling the pandemic,” said Cramer. “Then, the opposite is the case for people who are leaning toward Joe Biden,” she said about the Democratic presidential candidate.

This week marked the worst week in terms of new infections of the entirety of the pandemic in the US, breaking 500,000 new cases for the first time, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

More tests are coming back positive in 47 states, and hospitalizations are climbing in 39 states. More than 1,000 people are dying a day on average, but deaths have not risen as fast as new cases, because they are considered a “lagging indicator”. It often takes weeks between a positive test, hospitalization, death and reporting for victims of Covid-19.

Read more from Jessica Glenza’s report here: Americans go to the polls as US suffers worst week for coronavirus infections

Updated at 11.37am GMT

9.08am GMT

One of the medical professionals to respond was Dr Ashish Jha, who was asked about Trump’s comments on MSNBC. After being played the clip of what the president had said, Dr Jha replied.

I don’t know where to begin. First of all it’s offensive. Second, attacking frontline health workers who have been saving American lives, despite this botched public health response, is doubly offensive. And then it’s just wrong. Right, doctors don’t get a single extra cent.

Now, hospitals do get reimbursed a little bit more if it’s a Covid pneumonia versus a non-Covid pneumonia, but they don’t go around committing large scale fraud. You have to test people, you have to show it.

And that was, by the way, designed, and it was a law passed and signed by this president, because we know it takes more money to take care of patients with Covid. Hospitals have to pay for PPE, because the federal government sure isn’t going to provide it. And so what we’ve done is we’ve taken a policy intervention that was reasonable, and turned it into an attack on American doctors and nurses, and it is really beyond the pale.

Dr Jha is dean of the Brown University school of public health. You can watch his response here: MSNBC – Dr Jha on Trump’s claim that doctors are Inflating Covid deaths for money

Updated at 11.38am GMT

9.02am GMT

Key events so far…

Hi, and welcome to our live coverage as the election campaign enters its last weekend. Here’s a quick catch-up on where we are, and what we might see today.

The US surpassed 9 million cases of coronavirus. According to Johns Hopkins University, 9,043,957 Americans have been diagnosed with coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. There are surges in dozens of states.
Trump falsely claimed doctors are diagnosing more cases of coronavirus to bolster their paychecks. “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people,” Trump said at his rally in Michigan. In reality, health experts say the US death toll is likely to undercount how many Americans have died of coronavirus.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump both campaigned in the midwest, with just four days to go until election day. Trump stopped in Michigan and Biden in Iowa, and they held starkly different events in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Trump criticized the supreme court for upholding an absentee ballot extension in North Carolina. The president said it was “crazy” that the justices ruled to allow North Carolina election officials to count ballots as long as they are postmarked by election day.
Twitter updated its policies around hacked materials, lifting restrictions that were placed on the account of the New York Post after it published a controversial Hunter Biden story a few weeks ago.
Joe Biden will be in Detroit today at a campaign event attended by Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder.
Donald Trump has four scheduled ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign stops in Pennsylvania today: Newtown, Reading, Butler and Montoursville.
You can join Guardian journalists Jonathan Freedland, Kenya Evelyn, David Smith and Sarah Churchwell online to chat about the election results in an online event next week. Find out more about our 4 November plans and book tickets here.

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

9.00am GMT

Here’s a clip of those comments from the president yesterday which have outraged members of the medical profession in the US. At his rally, Donald Trump said:

Our excess mortality rate is 42% lower than Europe. They’ve kept saying, Germany! Germany! Germany! First of all they have different ways of counting. You know in Germany, if you have a bad heart and you’re ready to die. Or if you have cancer and you’re going to be dying soon. And you catch Covid, that happens, we mark it down to Covid. You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from Covid. You know that, right?

I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is, they say, I’m sorry, but you know everybody dies of Covid. But in Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack, or if you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch Covid, they say you died of cancer, you died of a heart attack. With us? When in doubt, choose Covid.

Now, it’s true. Now, they’ll say ‘oh, it’s terrible what he said’, but that’s true. It’s like $2,000 more.