“The stupid. It hurts. Trump supporters picketed Bill Barr’s house in McLean today to demand that he indict Joe Biden. I have no explanation for the white horse” reports Twitter user Minh Ngo.

Arizona: Biden 50 – Trump 46
Michigan: Biden 53 – Trump 41
North Carolina: Biden 51 – Trump 45
Wisconsin: Biden 52 – Trump 44
Read more here.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has implemented a national shutdown of non-essential businesses as the UK faces an immense second wave of the coronavirus, sending seven-day moving averages rise 20 times higher than they were just 60 days ago, Politico reports.

Saying now is the time to be “humble in the face of nature,” Johnson noted that England could see a “several thousand” deaths daily within the matter of weeks.

People will only be allowed to leave their homes for specific purposes including: to go to work if they cannot work from home; for education; for exercise or recreation outdoors with their own household or alone with one other person from another household; or to shop for essential items, according to Politico.

“Fox News, home to several of Mr. Trump’s most loyal media allies, will receive particular scrutiny [with regard to calling election results accurately]. The network’s election telecast will be led by the anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, although pro-Trump opinion stars like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are likely to pop in occasionally, said Jay Wallace, the president of Fox News Media, who oversees news coverage.”

“Asked if he would put Mr. Trump on the air if the president dialed into the Fox control room on election night, Mr. Wallace said: ‘Honestly, we’d have to see what was going on.’ But he called that scenario ‘unlikely,’ in part because Mr. Trump’s preferred opinion hosts won’t be guiding the broadcast. ‘I wouldn’t think he would call in, knowing that the squad is on that is on,’ Mr. Wallace said. He added, ‘Whatever he were to say wouldn’t sway anything when it comes to what we’re counting.’ That was a reference to Fox News’s decision desk, which has a track record of independence and accuracy” – New York Times.

Raleigh News and Observer: “Alamance County sheriff’s deputies and Graham police pepper-sprayed people — including a 5-year-old girl and other children — who were participating in the ‘I Am Change’ march to the polls on Saturday afternoon. A racially diverse group of about 200 people walked with a police escort from Wayman’s Chapel AME Church to Court Square, where they held a rally encouraging people to vote. The event was organized by Rev. Greg Drumwright, a Burlington native who leads the the Citadel Church in Greensboro, according to his website.”

“At one point, the marchers held a moment of silence in the street in honor of George Floyd, the Black man killed while in police custody in Minneapolis earlier this summer. After the moment of silence concluded, law enforcement told people to clear the road. Then, deputies and police officers used pepper spray on the crowd and began arresting people. Several children in the crowd were affected by the pepper spray. Melanie Mitchell said her 5-year-old and 11-year-old daughters were pepper-sprayed just after the moment of silence. She said Graham police approached the crowd assembled in the street and told them to move onto the sidewalk and soon began spraying pepper spray toward the ground. Mitchell’s 5-year-old took off running, she said. Both kids threw up. “My 11-year-old was terrified,” Mitchell said. “She doesn’t want to come down to Graham anymore.” The crowd then moved to the courthouse where speeches were being given. But before the speeches concluded, Alamance County sheriff’s deputies began dismantling the sound system and telling the crowd to disperse. George Floyd’s niece was slated to speak at the event, but the speeches were disrupted before she got a chance at the microphone. Deputies and officers again used pepper spray to force people off the courthouse property.”

“Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out 100,000 ballots in Harris County cast through curbside voting. They drew Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan Republican judges in the entire federal judiciary. This is alarming. Judge Hanen has already scheduled an emergency hearing for Monday morning—without even giving Harris County a chance to file a response brief. This, too, is extremely concerning. It looks like he may be rushing to throw out 100,000 disproportionately Democratic votes” reports Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern.

Not even halfway through his planned 17 rallies in four days and he’s in bad shape here in Pennsylvania. Almost sounds like a concession speech.

“Joe Biden campaigners were forced to cancel an event in Texas on Friday as tensions flared in the key battleground state ahead of election day. Local Democrats said they were forced to pull the plug on a gathering scheduled to take place in Pflugerville – a small city about 17 miles north of Austin – due to ‘security reasons’. It came as vice-presidential candidate, senator Kamala Harris, completed a whistle-stop three-city tour of the Lone Star state in a last-minute bid for votes. President Trump has a slight lead in the state, according to FiveThirtyEight’s latest poll update. But that advantage is within the margin of error and a Biden win in Texas could be key to his path to the White House. Sheryl Cole, a Democrat running for re-election to Austin Council, said officials cancelled an event set to feature the city’s young party members and the Biden campaign.”

“‘This is a first for me,’ said Ms Cole of the decision to scrap the event. ‘Unfortunately, pro-Trump protesters have escalated well beyond safe limits. Sorry to all who looked forward to this fun event,’ she added. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, US representative candidate Wendy Davis and Austin mayor Steve Adler were among some of the speakers due to deliver remarks at the event. A Biden/Harris campaign bus made a brief stop in downtown Austin and was heckled by around a dozen president Trump supporters. It was not immediately clear if senator Harris was travelling on the bus. According to local Democrats, the same group of Trump supporters has been following the bus around the country in an attempt to disrupt events in key battleground states” – Yahoo News.

The Sentinel: “Cumberland County officials received an email this week from the Trump campaign requesting highly specific details about the county’s ballot security. The email, obtained by The Sentinel, went so far as to ask for the address and room numbers of ballot storage locations, and requested that the information be sent to the Gmail account of a Florida-based Trump operative. County officials said they have not responded to the request and do not intend to, according to the county commissioners. The Trump campaign described the request as ‘standard election transparency details,’ but local officials find the implication — that the President’s campaign staff is harvesting election security plans through what appears to be a personal web-based email account — to be extremely concerning.”

“‘It’s almost kind of chilling the sort of data they wanted us to provide,’ Cumberland County Commissioner Gary Eichelberger said. ‘This is basically the whole security plan. We’ve never received a request of this detail and I find it troubling that one of the interested parties [in the election outcome] feels they have a right to information that obviously could jeopardize the security of the ballots.’ The message was sent Tuesday, according to emails reviewed by The Sentinel, from Leslie O’Shaughnessy, who said she was writing ‘on behalf of Donald J. Trump for President.’ The Trump campaign’s communications office confirmed to The Sentinel that O’Shaughnessy is a volunteer with the campaign, and offered an explanatory statement from Deputy National Press Secretary Thea McDonald. ‘As part of the Trump campaign’s efforts to ensure a free and fair election, we have asked county clerks for information so that we can gain a detailed understanding of voting processes — and the similarities and differences that may exist in different jurisdictions,’ McDonald wrote.”

Who let all these people into my basement? pic.twitter.com/E17SPqmXib

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 31, 2020

AP: “Russian interference has been minimal so far in the most tempestuous U.S. presidential election in decades. But that doesn’t mean the Kremlin can’t inflict serious damage. The vulnerability of state and local government networks is a big worry. One troubling wildcard is the potential for the kind of ransomware attacks now affecting U.S. hospitals. Russian-speaking cybercriminals are demanding ransoms to unscramble data they’ve locked up. It’s uncertain whether they are affiliated with the Kremlin or if the attacks are timed to coincide with the election.”

“U.S. national security officials have repeatedly expressed confidence in the integrity of the election. And they report little actual election meddling of consequence from Moscow outside of disinformation operations. There have been phishing attempts aimed at breaking into the networks of political campaigns, operatives and think tanks, but no indication that valuable political information was stolen. That’s in contrast to the 2016 Russian hack-and-leak operation that U.S. officials say was aimed at boosting Donald Trump’s campaign.”

The sample voted Trump 49 – Clinton 41 in 2016, Trump won Texas 52 – 43. PPP is a left-leaning pollster, but they’re rated B by FiveThirtyEight. Read more at Public Policy Polling.

“We investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of COVID-19 by studying the impact of eighteen Trump campaign rallies. To capture the effects of subsequent contagion within the pertinent communities, our analysis encompasses up to ten post-rally weeks for each event. Our method is based on a collection of regression models, one for each event, that capture the relationships between post-event outcomes and pre-event characteristics, including demographics and the trajectory of COVID-19 cases, in similar counties. We explore a total of 24 procedures for identifying sets of matched counties. For the vast majority of these variants, our estimate of the average treatment effect across the eighteen events 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 eighteen rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19. Applying countyspecific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees)” – intro to a Stanford research team’s paper titled “The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies“.

Grand Forks Herald: “A 33-year-old self-professed ‘Proud Boy’ was arrested Wednesday, Oct. 28, by the Dickinson Police Department on terrorizing charges after sending an anonymous email to The Dickinson Press in which he conveyed a bomb threat, targeting a voting location in the city. Anthony A. Raymond of Dickinson was arrested and is being held at the Southwest Multi-County Correction Center. The anonymous email threat was received by The Press Wednesday afternoon. The email stated, ‘I will blow up the voting location in Stark Co.’ and it was signed by ‘The Proud Boys.’ Dickinson Police Sgt. Joe Cianni said the investigation team was able to determine the IP address and locate Raymond by tracing the origin of the email that was sent to The Press.”

Thank you Wisconsin! 💙🤍❤️ pic.twitter.com/B9UjBHZuWm

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) October 31, 2020

In an election featuring an historically unpopular presidential incumbent, GOP Senate incumbents and challengers find Donald Trump’s coattails virtually nonexistent and in many races, a drag to their own chances of winning, the Washington Post reports.

The “Trump drag” makes republicans maintaining control of the Senate unlikely, with traditionally republican Senate seats in play, requiring the republican National Committee and the National republican Senatorial Committee to try to stretch funds into races that were not foreseen to be challenged.

States like Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Maine were on the radar as toss-ups early on in the year, but are now likely to be Democratic seats after the next election.  Democrats foresee losing one seat, Doug Jones’ seat in Alabama.

Now, however, a slew of new republican “gimmes” are suddenly in play, stretching republican resources and making candidates question whether having Trump appear in their states is a benefit to their campaigns.

Actor Sean Connery, perhaps best known for his role as British superspy James Bond, has died overnight in the Bahamas at the age of 90, CNN reports.

Born Thomas Sean Connery in Edinburgh, Scotland, the actor starred as James Bond for 22 years, starting with the role in Dr. No.  He was the first actor to play the role to utter the iconic line, “The name is Bond.  James Bond.”

Connery had a career that spanned 58 years, including roles in The Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Untouchables, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far.  He announced his retirement from show business in 2006, although he did pick up an occasional role in movies after that.

Connery was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2000.  He is survived by his second wife, Micheline Roquebrune, and one son, actor Jason Connelly, from his first marriage to Australian actress  Diane Cilento.

Daily Beast: “With just a few days left before Election Night and the president trailing in numerous state and national polls, Donald Trump’s inner circle is increasingly whispering the same thought: Our guy blew it. A forecast of a Biden White House is not one they welcome. But it’s one many of them have come to finally accept after a year of coronavirus deaths, economic devastation, and racial and civil unrest have throttled an administration run by a man they believe has failed to rise to the occasion, even on just a purely messaging front.”

“Dan Eberhart, chief executive at Canary and another major Trump donor who contributed $100,000 to Trump Victory this cycle, told The Daily Beast on Thursday evening that if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t have given a dime of that to the joint fundraising committee for the president’s re-election. ‘I think Trump has a 25 percent chance of winning the election. His campaign focused on exciting his base not on pursuing people in the center. COVID was a massive headwind that minimized the roaring Trump economy,’ Eberhart said. ‘The president has struggled to maintain message discipline. And the left is highly motivated to vote, as seen by the record turnout so far. That’s not to say there’s not a window for the president to win. It’s just being realistic that he’s the underdog in this contest.’ The businessman continued. ‘If I could redo my donations this cycle, I would put it all on red again,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I would have put all my donations towards holding the Senate. I never thought the Senate would be in play.'”

The Louisville police officer shot in the leg as he fired gunshots that killed Breonna Taylor is filing a lawsuit against Taylor’s boyfriend for shooting him in the leg during the invasion of the couple’s apartment, Yahoo News reports.

Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, drew a legally-owned handgun as two officers broke down the door of the apartment.  He fired one shot, which hit Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg.  Mattingly claimed Walker acted recklessly in defending his home and his girlfriend from the intruders.

Mattingly and two other officers fired more than two dozen rounds into Taylor’s apartment, hitting the unarmed Taylor six times and killing her.  Walker was not shot.