KARE: “With less than a week until the election, a ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down an extension for Minnesota election offices to receive mail-in absentee ballots, dramatically altering the timeline for Minnesota voters. In a ruling issued Thursday, the court overturned a state plan enacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which would have allowed mail-in ballots to be received by election offices within seven days of the election (Nov. 10) if the ballots were postmarked by Election Day (Nov. 3).”

“As a result of the ruling, all absentee ballots must now be received by county election offices by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3. ‘The democratically-enacted election rules in Minnesota provide that mail-in votes must be received by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted (or 3:00 p.m. if delivered in person). Minn. Stat. § 203B.08. The rule of law, as established by the United States Constitution and the Minnesota Legislature, dictates these rules must be followed notwithstanding the Secretary’s instructions to the contrary,’ the ruling stated. ‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution.’ It’s currently unclear if Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The documents that supposedly link Hunter Biden to a company funded by the Chinese Communist Party – a cornerstone of the conspiracy theory being propagated by opponents to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden – were “found” by a company that isn’t real and an operative who doesn’t exist, NBC News reports.

The 64-page document was supposedly created by a man named “Martin Aspen” working for an intelligence firm called “Typhoon Investigations.” The document has been circulated among Republican operatives as evidence backing the laptop, supposedly Hunter Biden’s, that was abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop. The Typhoon Investigations document was first posted on a public blog called “Intelligence Quarterly” by Christopher Balding, an associate professor specializing in the Chinese economy at Fulbright University Vietnam in Saigon.  Balding admits to writing some of the narrative in the document. He also admits that Aspen doesn’t exist.

The Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald has resigned from the company, citing censorship as his reason for leaving, while the staff at The Intercept has stated Greenwald was having “a tantrum” because editors checked his work.

After receiving worldwide attention for a series of articles featuring classified material released by former US security contractor Edward Snowden, Greenwald began a campaign questioning the legitimacy of US military and surveillance operations around the world.

Greenwald, a former constitutional law attorney, has won Pulitzer and Polk awards for his journalism.  He now lives in Brazil.

The staff at The Intercept stated that Greenwald is misrepresenting the reason for his departure from the site, saying that Greenwald objected to people editing and checking his work.

BREAKING: Senator Perdue just cancelled our final debate.

At last night's debate, millions saw that Perdue had no answers when I called him out on his record of blatant corruption, widespread disease, and economic devastation.

Shame on you, Senator.

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 29, 2020

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports that at least two people who attended incumbent republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s rally in Gaston, North Carolina have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Gupta says this is a part of a larger pattern showing 82% of counties that host Trump campaign events saw jumps in COVID cases within four weeks after the event.

Two sites specifically mentioned in the report was Minden, Nevada, which saw a 200% increase in infection rates after Trump’s rally on September 12th, and Beltrami County, home of Bemidji, Minnesota, which saw more than a 385% jump in infection rates.

Vox: “President Donald Trump is polling significantly worse than he was at this point in 2016, both nationally and in key states. His chances of victory in the FiveThirtyEight forecast model (11 percent) are lower than they ended up last time (28 percent), as of October 28. But those chances aren’t zero. So what would it take for Trump to win? The most likely victory scenario for the president is a bit of a stretch, but not that complicated.”

“First, he needs about a 3-point polling error or a late switch of votes in his favor in most swing states. Going off FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, that would be enough to push Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa — states Biden narrowly leads — into Trump’s column. But that on its own wouldn’t provide Trump enough electoral votes. Trump also needs to win a big state or multiple smaller contests where Biden has a larger lead. His best prospect for that appears to be Pennsylvania, where Biden is up by a little over 5 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s average. There’s little indication that this is a particularly likely scenario. Experts who picked up on signs that Trump could win in 2016 are generally not seeing the same signs this time around. But it is a scenario that can’t entirely be ruled out until the votes are counted. Indeed, it’s pretty similar to the analysis of Trump’s path to victory I wrote just before the last presidential election: run the table in the very close states, and then break into the blue wall.”

“Because of a wind advisory issued with gusts reaching 50 mph and other weather conditions, the outdoor Fayetteville, NC rally has been postponed until Monday” – Trump campaign statement.

The Week: “With just days left until the election, and with somewhere north of 73 million people having already voted, the president has precious little time to turn around the fortunes of his re-election campaign and the prospects of the endangered Republican Senate majority. You would think that someone interested in stumbling into a second inaugural would be doing everything he can to convince the dwindling number of persuadable voters to give him another chance. Instead, the president is bent on alienating as many voters as possible in the campaign’s closing days by flouting public health guidelines, babbling convoluted innuendo about Hunter Biden, and ignoring the increasingly desperate plight of Americans teetering on the edge of disaster.”

“It is hard to look dispassionately at this strategy and conclude anything other than that the Trump campaign is either trying to lose on purpose or is led by people who are genuinely incapable of reading polls or adjusting their strategy based on new information… This is where the standard ‘Trump could still win’ caveat would go, but it is honestly impossible to see how, absent a polling error of such magnitude that it would obliterate the industry forever. Unlike everything else Trump’s campaign is doing right now, hoping fervidly for an incredible, across-the-board polling failure at least has the virtue of not actively turning off voters he needs to win.”

“With Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorusch noting their dissent, the Supreme Court has denied the last of the pending applications to put on hold the six-day extension of the absentee ballot receipt deadline in the North Carolina cases” – CNN contributor and UT law professor Steve Vladeck.

A 3 day extension for Pennsylvania is a disaster for our Nation, and for Pennsylvania itself. The Democrats are trying to steal this Election. We have to get out and VOTE in even larger numbers. The Great Red Wave is coming!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2020

David Frum: “Polls suggest Republicans are facing defeat in the 2020 races, and probably by big margins. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are neck and neck in Georgia and Texas, nobody’s previous idea of swing states. Republican senators are at risk not only in Maine and Colorado, but also in Iowa and even Kansas. Republicans are in danger of losing something more than seats and chambers in 2020. They are in danger of losing an entire system of political control.”

“The central gambit of Trump-style authoritarianism is to claim legitimacy as a representative of ‘the people’ while selectively disenfranchising and disempowering more and more of those people. The U.S. Constitution in many ways protects minorities against majorities. In the Trump era, we see instead politicians like Lee trying to pretend that minorities are majorities—and to grab the powers that legitimately belong to majorities away from them. That’s the thing that needs to stop. That’s the thing that needs to change. And if Trump and his allies seem in these final days to act more frantically, more abusively, than usual, perhaps it is because they sense that the change is coming.”

In the aftermath of a superficial “peace treaty” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the Trump Administration has agreed to sell 50 F-35 fighters to the UAE for more than $10 billion, Politico reports.

While the UAE and Israel have never engaged in hostilities and the two nations have had informal relations for decades, the Trump Administration has touted the agreement as a major step to achieving Middle East peace.

The sales of F-35s to the UAE, however, has raised questions about the security of Israel, which also has agreed to buy 50 of the advanced fighters.  US defense pacts with Israel commit the US to sell Israel equipment to maintain a military advantage in the region.

Florida: Biden 45 – Trump 42
Iowa: Trump 47 – Biden 46
Ohio: Biden 48 – Trump 43
Pennsylvania: Biden 51 – Trump 44
Iowa Senate: Ernst 48 – Greenfield 46
Read more here.

(& I don’t know if you’ve been in a photoshoot Laura, but you don’t keep the clothes.)

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 29, 2020

New York Times: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a small but durable lead over President Trump in North Carolina, where fully 64 percent of likely voters say they have already cast their ballots, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Thursday. Biden leads Trump by 48 percent to 45 percent in the survey, which was conducted after the final presidential debate last week, from Friday to Tuesday. Nearly seven in 10 voters said they had watched the debate. In the Senate matchup, Cunningham held a lead of three percentage points over Tillis, 46 to 43 percent.”

“Among all registered voters in Florida, the race for president stands at 50% for Biden and 45% for Trump. Another 1% support Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian), less than 1% back Howie Hawkins (Green), and 2% are undecided. In different likely voter models+, the race stands at 51% for Biden and 45% for Trump in a high turnout scenario and 50% to 46% with lower turnout. Biden’s current lead is nearly identical to the likely voter model results in last month’s Monmouth poll. The last two presidential elections in Florida were decided by a single percentage point” – Monmouth University.

Daily Beast: “A spokesman for UPS told The Daily Beast on Thursday that they had located a mysterious packaged that Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested had been deliberately misplaced or intercepted because it contained “damning” materials on the Biden family. ‘After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return,’ the spokesman said. ‘UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right.'”

Metaphorical representation of our nation’s politics and culture caught on video in Mauriceville, Texas on Thursday morning. Read more at KBMT.

“Federal agents on Thursday arrested two men, including the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, a violent, white supremacist group, as part of a continuing crackdown on extremism in Michigan three weeks after the FBI said it thwarted a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A team of FBI agents arrested Justen Watkins, 25, of Bad Axe, the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, and Alfred Gorman, 35, of Taylor, during a pair of raids across Michigan” The Detroit News reports.

“They are linked to a December 2019 incident in Dexter in which a local family was terrorized by the men, who tried to intimidate a husband and wife and shared their address with members of the Base, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. Her office charged the men with several felonies, including gang membership, a 20-year felony, using a computer to commit a crime and unlawful posting of a message. The charges were filed in Washtenaw County District Court, the location of the alleged Dexter incident. Both suspects were lodge in the Washtenaw County Jail pending arraignment.”