2020

• In the final presidential debate, President Donald Trump again downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, saying it will “go away,” and said without evidence that a vaccine will be ready within weeks, drawing pushback from Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who said the country is headed toward a “dark winter” and that the president has no plan to deal with the virus. Republicans seized on Biden’s acknowledgement that he would “transition from the oil industry” and replace it with renewable sources “over time,” which the president called “a big statement.”

• Nearly 3 in 5 voters support the move to transition away from the oil industry, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll taken after the debate. The survey also found that 54 percent of voters who tuned in thought Biden performed best, while 39 percent said the same of Trump.

• Former President Barack Obama held his first public campaign events on behalf of Biden, criticizing Trump’s handling of the pandemic and making more personal jabs, noting shrinking ratings for the president’s speeches and town halls.

• Top national security officials said Iran and Russia have obtained voter registration data on Americans, but there was no indication that election tallies were changed or that registration data was altered. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said Iran used the information to send threatening emails to voters, some of which purported to be from far-right groups such as the Proud Boys.

• On a call with his campaign, Trump called Dr. Anthony Fauci a “disaster” and said more people would have died from the coronavirus pandemic if the government’s top infectious diseases expert had been in charge, even as his campaign features the popular doctor in commercials.

• As Trump tried to cast his Democratic rival as corrupt, an ex-business partner of Hunter Biden alleged that his father was part of a discussion about a Chinese business venture, but corporate records showed no role for the elder Biden.

• Biden said if he is elected, he will establish a commission on how to overhaul or expand federal courts, punting on the question of whether he’d support adding justices to the Supreme Court.

• Democrats entered the final two weeks of the campaign with advantages in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and North Carolina, according to the latest Morning Consult Political Intelligence tracking, while Democrat Jaime Harrison has taken a narrow lead over Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. In Texas, Republican Sen. John Cornyn still leads Democratic challenger MJ Hegar, though the senior senator’s edge has been almost cut in half since earlier this month amid his rival’s gains with Black voters and independents.

• The Supreme Court cleared the way for Pennsylvania election officials to count mailed-in ballots up to three days after Election Day, rejecting a Republican challenge to the practice in the key presidential battleground state. In a 4-4 ruling, the Supreme Court’s four most conservative justices said they would have sided with Republicans, but the effort failed due to the court’s deadlock.

• Trump said he hopes the Supreme Court will “end” Obamacare when it takes up a Republican-led case challenging the 2010 health care law next month. The comments, revealed in a video posted on his Facebook page of a forthcoming “60 Minutes” interview, undermine Senate Republicans’ efforts to minimize the case as they push to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration

• National security adviser Robert O’Brien said an agreement with Russia to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is not “a done deal,” dimming hopes for a pre-election deal between the two nuclear powers.

• Trump and his advisers have repeatedly discussed whether to fire Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray after Election Day amid frustrations that federal law enforcement agencies have not boosted his re-election campaign as they did in 2016 with damaging revelations about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to sources. Trump has called for jailing former Biden, and has sought for law enforcement officials to indicate that the Democratic nominee and his son, Hunter, are under investigation, according to the sources.

• Both Trump and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe have pushed officials for the declassification of a document disputing the intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Russia worked to help the president get elected in 2016, according to three government officials. Ratcliffe sent a letter to the intelligence community’s inspector general requesting the document go under a former declassification review, while a former intelligence official familiar with the matter said officials were trying to stop the document’s release “because it would damage national security assets and jeopardize sources and methods.”

• The Justice Department sued Google, alleging its search and advertising functions violated federal antitrust laws.

• A federal judge in Washington, D.C., struck down the Trump administration’s plan to end Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for nearly 700,000 unemployed people, siding with 19 states, the District of Columbia, New York City and private groups who sued to overturn the Department of Agriculture rule announced last year. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the Department of Agriculture failed to justify or address the impact of the administration’s new food stamp regulations, which took away states’ discretion to waive work requirements in economically distressed areas.

• Court-appointed lawyers tasked with identifying families who were pulled apart by the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border have not been able to find the parents of 545 migrant children, according to a court filing. The court filing also said about two-thirds of the parents were deported back to Central America without their children.

• Trump maintains foreign bank accounts in Great Britain, Ireland and China, all of which do not appear on his public financial disclosures because they’re held under corporate names, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records. Trump has sought to cast Biden as soft on China pointing to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings there, even as his own business history is full of foreign business deals, some of which involve Chinese businesses.

• The White House has been pressuring the government to fast-track a lucrative contract to lease the Department of Defense’s mid-band spectrum, a profitable 5G market, to Rivada Networks, a company that’s backed by prominent Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump, according to senior officials. Karl Rove, a veteran Republican strategist and lobbyist for the company, said it would not accept a no-bid contract if offered one.

• Kash Patel, the top White House counterterrorism official, traveled to Damascus earlier this year for secret talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s administration, marking the first known instance of a high-level American official meeting with the government in more than a decade, according to sources. Patel’s trip was part of an effort to secure the release of two Americans who are believed to be in the custody of the Syrian government, including a freelance journalist who disappeared in 2012 and a Syrian-American therapist who was stopped at a Syrian government checkpoint in 2017.

• Trump issued an executive order to strip civil service protections from anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of government employees. According to the order, any employee whose work involves policy making would be able to be dismissed with little cause or recourse, much like the government’s political appointees.

Congress

• In a 12-0 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate. Democrats on the panel boycotted the hearing.

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) privately told Senate Republicans that he warned the Trump administration not to reach a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on a coronavirus economic relief package before the Nov. 3 election, according to three sources.

• Plus, Senate Republicans are said to be unhappy with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who they believe has ceded too much ground in coronavirus economic stimulus talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), including a $1.9 trillion top-line figure and at least $300 billion for state and local government.

• The House is not in session. The Senate is expected to vote tomorrow on Barrett’s confirmation.

• In the early part of the final week of the campaign, Trump is set to travel to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nebraska.

1) The Most Vulnerable Incumbent In The House Is A Democrat, But Republicans Are Defending More Competitive Seats
Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

2) The hidden factors that could produce a surprise Trump victory
David Siders, Politico

3) Key Senate Races Are Tightening as Nov. 3 Approaches
Eli Yokley, Morning Consult

4) McConnell warns White House against making stimulus deal as Pelosi and Mnuchin inch closer
Jeff Stein and Erica Werner, The Washington Post

5) I Wrote Trump’s ‘The Art of the Deal.’ And I’m Terrified of What He’ll Do Next.
Tony Schwartz, The Daily Beast

6) Ratings changes in 25 House and Senate races; only three move toward GOP
Nathan L. Gonzales, Roll Call

7) Excuse me, but is that a partisan wave building?
Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call

8) Supreme Court denies GOP request to stop extended deadline for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, a key state for Trump
Robert Barnes, The Washington Post

9) Trump weighs firing FBI director after election as frustration with Wray, Barr grows
Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post

10) “If There Is Another Tick Down, It’s a Total Bloodbath”: How Trump’s Self-Destructive Candidacy Could Blow up the Electoral Map
Peter Hamby, Vanity Fair