US election 2020: Trump and Biden head to crucial swing states Minnesota and Wisconsin – live

Twitter updated its policies around hacked materials, the company announced Friday, lifting restrictions that were placed on the account of the New York Post after it published a controversial story a few weeks ago.

The Guardian’s Kari Paul reports:

It is the latest move in an ongoing saga that called into question the moderation policies of social media platforms. Both Twitter and Facebook took measures to limit the spread of an article published by the New York Post on 14 October, which was reported based on documents gleaned from an abandoned computer formerly belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

“Our policies are living documents,” the company shared in a tweet on Friday. “We’re willing to update and adjust them when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback from the public. One such example is the recent change to our Hacked Materials Policy and its impact on accounts like the New York Post.”

Twitter’s ban on the story marked the first time the company has directly limited the spread of information from a news site, as it works to address misinformation ahead of the 2020 elections.

The blocking of the New York Post story was seen by some Republicans as censorship of conservative speech or a move favoring Biden over his opponent Donald Trump. Twitter’s reversal may have been a response to the Senate hearing on Wednesday, in which CEO Jack Dorsey was excoriated by Republican lawmakers.

“Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?” Cruz asked Dorsey, asserting that Twitter was functioning as “a Democratic super PAC.”

Hi there, it’s Maanvi – blogging from the West Coast.

Drew Ferguson, a representative of Georgia and the House Republican Chief Deputy Whip has tested positive for Covid-19.

He said he took a diagnostic test after experiencing symptoms and is self-quarantining. He and Georgia governor Brian Kemp – who said he has been exposed to the virus – were both at a rally in Manchester on Tuesday, speaking with a largely maskless crowd. Georgia Public Broadcasting captured a photo of the two men shaking hands.

The campaign trail race continues. I’m handing over to my colleague in California now, Maanvi Singh, who will take you through developments over the next few hours, so stay tuned.

Donald Trump is just beginning to speak in Rochester, Minnesota, after complaining mightily on the way in about crowd restrictions because of coronavirus.

Joe Biden will be speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shortly, as the two candidates wrap up a busy Friday in the heartland.

The National Guard Bureau has established a new unit made up mostly of military policemen that could be dispatched to help quell unrest in coming days, after a turbulent summer in which National Guard members were deployed to several cities, the Washington Post reports.

The unit, which also could be used to respond to natural disasters and other missions, was formed in September and initially described as a rapid-reaction force. But as one of the most divisive elections in American history closes in, National Guard officials have softened how they characterize the service members, instead referring to them as “regional response units.”

A National Guard official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the new name more accurately details their mission. But the shift away from language used in war also hints at the complicated situation the National Guard could face, as President Trump signals that he might not accept the results of the election if he loses.

National Guard members, who are organized within each state and territory and typically commanded by their governor, could be called upon to perform crowd control, safeguard landmarks or enforce curfews, based on roles they already have had this year. Some of them also could be deployed to the nation’s capital, if Trump decides to repeat his plan from June and amass a military force in Washington that teams with federal and local law enforcement.

The new response unit, with a total of about 600 members split between Alabama and Arizona, is not large enough to provide a response like the one Washington saw in June. First reported on by the Associated Press this month, it could provide an initial wave of extra support in states where there is unrest or be used in the nation’s capital, where the Trump administration has broader control because of the city’s status as a federal jurisdiction.

As we reported earlier today, what military brass are really hoping for is a decisive result.

Political change is afoot in Arizona. Well worth a read this weekend, #ICYMI, is the Guardian’s special Phoenix Rising series this week.

My colleagues Lauren Gambino and Maanvi Singh zeroed in on some topical voting trends in the Grand Canyon state to find out whether it will become the graveyard of Trumpism.

Here’s Lauren a little earlier, on the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s widow, who recently endorsed Joe Biden, and one of the pieces in the series:

Once in a blue moon?

Well, you’re in luck, this is a blue moon month – there was a full moon on October 1 and there’s one tomorrow, too, October 31.

And the reward, if you’re a Democrat and a music fan, is that Stevie Wonder is going to rally with Joe Biden and Barack Obama tomorrow in Detroit.

Biden and Obama will campaign together in Flint, Michigan, first, for a get-out-the-vote rally, then proceed to the Motor City to be joined by Wonder, a home grown Michigander and Motown legend, as my colleague, Daniel Strauss, noted earlier:

George Conway, who’s very much back on Twitter, likes this art.

Here’s a reminder of the tumult in the Conway household this summer.

The White House coronavirus task force coordinator, Deborah Birx, has, like other prominent public health officials and experts in recent days, explicitly and unequivocally contradicted Donald Trump’s public prognosis on the pandemic in the US.

Birx warned the nation’s governors of a “broad surge” of the Covid-19 pandemic across the country as the weather cools, reversing the president’s repeated claims that the US is “rounding the turn” towards the end.

CBS is reporting that Birx said on the latest call that nearly one-third of the nation is in a Covid-19 hot spot, and things aren’t getting any better as people turn to indoor activities.

“This is a broad surge across every state where it is cooling,” Birx said. “We’re learning from the far north about how dramatic that spread can be, and we do not see yet improvements in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota or Wisconsin.” CBS further reports that:

The pandemic will only plateau if “every single person in your states” takes wearing masks, social distancing and hygiene seriously, Birx said on the call, which was obtained by CBS News. She told governors that people must decrease indoor gatherings with family and friends. The goal is to “form a bridge of human behavior change over the next few weeks,” she said.

Even as the pandemic rages across the country, the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force has become less visible and less active. “Nothing of substance” is happening with the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, but the president doesn’t want to deal with the bad press of disbanding the group, so it continues, even if only symbolically, according to a source familiar with the situation. The task force now only meets once a week.

Last Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows admitted that the Trump administration is not going to control the pandemic.

The US is now on its way to the next stage, it seems – a full-blown national coronavirus crisis that will rage for the next few months regardless of the outcome of the election.

With just four days remaining in the US presidential campaign, more than 85 million Americans have already cast ballots.

This includes nine million in Texas, where the secretary of state’s office on Friday said early voting had eclipsed total turnout from 2016, Reuters writes.

Early voting has been setting records across the United States, with nationwide turnout passing 60% of the 2016 total, according to the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.

But Texas is just the second state, after Hawaii, to break the full-year record before Tuesday’s Election Day.

The unprecedented level of early voting reflects both intense interest in the contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, as well as a desire on the part of many voters to avoid exposure to the coronavirus in crowds on Tuesday.

More than 20 million Americans who had voted early as of Friday did not vote in the 2016 election, according to TargetSmart, a Democratic analytics firm.

Friday is the final day of early voting in several states across the country, including Georgia and Arizona.

Here’s a take today on voting in Georgia:

Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, but opinion polls show Joe Biden is leading among the voters who have helped set the unprecedented early vote levels.

Polls also show Biden effectively tied with Trump in Texas, whose 38 Electoral College votes make it a prize for either candidate seeking the 270 minimum votes needed to win.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg plans to spend $15 million in the state and Ohio in a last-minute bid to flip both Republican-leaning states.

Jessica Glenza

About that comment in Michigan from the president earlier where he slammed doctors with a false implication that they are fiddling the numbers and profiting from coronavirus deaths, and his repeated, misleading messages about data, my health reporter colleague, Jessica Glenza, has this clarity:

Donald Trump has – again – falsely claimed the United States is over-counting the number of people who have died of Covid-19. In fact, the United States is likely under-counting deaths.

“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. Our doctors get more money if somebody dies of Covid,” Trump said. He continued: “With us, when in doubt choose Covid.”

Multiple studies have shown the US is almost certainly under-counting the true toll of Covid-19. Scientists studying population health measure the impact of pandemics, such as Covid-19 and the 1918 Spanish flu, by comparing expected deaths against actual deaths.

Here’s our Guardian colleague, Nina Lakhani:

In several of his rallies this week, Donald Trump has accused the media of focusing on the coronavirus crisis only for political purposes, in order to damage him.

Barack Obama has trolled him for it in rallies in Florida, where the former president warned that America could not afford four more years of Trump and needed to put Joe Biden into the White House next week.

Once again, earlier today, the president complained that the headlines are all about “Covid, covid, covid”.

Here’s Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell’s riposte.

A federal judge this afternoon ordered the US Postal Service (USPS) to adopt “extraordinary measures” at some processing locations to ensure the timely delivery of millions of ballots before Tuesday’s presidential election.

US district judge Emmet Sullivan said he was ordering the measures in places where election mail processing scores for completed ballots returned by voters were below 90% for at least two days from October 26-28.

The list includes Alabama, Alaska, Atlanta, central Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming, Detroit, Fort Worth, Texas; Indiana; South Carolina; Louisiana; the Mid-Carolinas, Mississippi; northern New England and Oklahoma, among others, Reuters writes.

The measures are outlined in the Postal Service’s October 20 “Extraordinary Measures Memorandum.”

Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson sought a hearing in a separate Postal Service case after data showed “consistently poor Election Mail performance data in certain regions.”

Ferguson said data showed on-time delivery of ballots sent by voters in Michigan’s Detroit district dipped as low as 57%, while national processing has been 93% or higher.

Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer declined to comment, but the service issued a memo today outlining numerous extra measures it is taking to deliver ballots, including arranging for after-hours handoffs with boards of elections.

Starting today, employees can use the Express Mail network to get completed ballots returned by voters entered close to or on Election Day, November 3, to their intended destination.

The Postal Service does not recommend mailing ballots less than seven days before state deadlines.

Some states accept ballots if postmarked by Election Day, while others require actual receipt by then.

Yesterday, the Postal Service said it delivered 122 million blank and completed ballots ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, in which there has been record early voting.

More than 85 million Americans have already cast ballots in the presidential election, according to the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.

Taking over from Joan Greve, it’s Joanna Walters here. The president is still talking in Wisconsin.

Donald Trump is enjoying himself in Green Bay, at one of his win-or-bust rallies before the election.

He just promised that a vaccine for coronavirus is coming “momentarily”, which is his new timeframe this week, following recent predictions that it was coming in a few weeks, hinting it would be before the election.

A safe and effective vaccine has not yet emerged from final trials in the US, although the top public health official on the White House coronavirus task force, Anthony Fauci, has said he is confident there will be a vaccine announced in the next few months.

Trump to Green Bay, while looking skyward: “I just want normal life. All I want in normal life.”

It’s the Trump administration wing and a prayer strategy.

Now he’s telling his regular anecdote about some guy saying Trump is the most famous person in the world, to which Trump responds no, Jesus Christ is.

Crowd loves it, cheering loudly. A few minutes ago they were chanting “we love you, we love you” to Trump.

Here’s my colleague David Smith on what Trump’s rallies mean to him: today’s article.

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

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The US has surpassed 9 million cases of coronavirus. According to Johns Hopkins University, 9,007,298 Americans have been diagnosed with coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. The country hit the grim milestone one day after setting a new single-day record in new cases, amid 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 likely undercounts how many Americans have died of coronavirus.
• Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both campaigning in the Midwest today, with just four days to go until election day. Biden held a drive-in rally in Iowa and will soon speak in Minnesota, while Trump is holding a rally in Wisconsin now.
• Texas surpassed its total 2016 vote count with early voting. As of today, Texans have already returned a record 9,033,154 ballots, according to the US Elections Project.
• 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.

Joanna will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Donald Trump has taken the stage for his campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as the state experiences a surge in coronavirus cases.

“We’re going to win Wisconsin,” Trump told the crowd. “You are so lucky I’m your president.”

Recent polls of Wisconsin, which Trump won by less than 1 point in 2016, have shown Joe Biden leading by an average of about 9 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Trump’s visit to Wisconsin comes as coronavirus ravages the battleground state, with nearly 200 Wisconsinites dying of the virus in the past week alone.

Photos of Trump’s Green Bay rally showed no social distancing and infrequent mask usage.

AS CNN’s Ryan Struyk noted, this is the shortest amount of time it has taken for the US to confirm another million cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

It has been just 14 days since the US surpassed 8 million total cases, and the country hit 9 million cases today.