The Texas Supreme Court–currently made up of eight elected republicans, four of whom are up for reelection this year–sided with republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott to limit the number of ballot drop boxes to one per county, CNN reports.

With one vacant seat on the state supreme court, Texas provides for the election of Supreme Court Justices.  This year, four of those justices, including the Chief Justice, are all up for election.

The court ruling supports Abbott’s efforts to limit the ability of voters to drop off mail-in ballots at places around the state.  It limits the number of drop boxes to one per county, regardless of population.

Texas has 254 counties, with the largest being Harris County, the home of Houston, with 4.6 million residents.  The smallest is Loving County with 134 people.  Loving County has more ghost towns (Porterville and Hay Flat) than incorporated populated areas with living people (Mentone).  Both of those counties will get just one drop box.

The official campaign site for incumbent republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was hacked Tuesday evening, with the perpetrators threatening to release “evidence” of Trump’s “criminal involvement” in a plot to steal the election, prompting the campaign to take down the site for awhile during the final week of the campaign, the New York Daily News reports.

Only a single page of the site, the “About” page, was compromised.  It was replaced with a page featuring the logos of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security proclaiming “this site was seized. … multiple devices were compromised that gave full access to trump and relatives … we have evidence that completely discredits mr trump as a president. proving his criminal involvement and coorperation with foreign actors manipulating the 2020 elections. [multiple sics]”

Trump communications director Tim Murtaugh, in a statement, said no donor information was compromised.  “We are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack.  There was no exposure to sensitive data because one of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored.”

Toby Boogalooski, the guy who used to do businessman stuff or cocaine with Hunter Biden made explosive allegations about some shit with China or Russia on Tucker Carlson’s show on Tuesday night. He told Tucker that there was some kind of secret deal where they brokered a sale of a Ukrainian oil company that fell through and Joe Biden was copied in on one of the emails and…

…The Jedi Council for all those years never understood that Chancellor Palpatine was actually Darth Sidious, the leader of the Sith, right there under their noses the whole time. It was Palpatine who started the Clone Wars to destabilize the Republic and weaken the Jedi Order so he could make his final move – turning Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader and creating the Empire.

When Order 66 was finally executed and the Clone army turned on the Jedi was the culmination of a plot years in the making in which Palpatine became the Emperor – a singular autocrat who ruled the entire galaxy through fear. It wasn’t until 19 years later, after the successful Rebel Alliance raid to secure the Death Star plans from the Empire’s secret base on the planet Scarif that Palpatine’s reign began to weaken…

…in conclusion, the Tory Biglebowski story is super important to some people. And yeah, I know I said we weren’t going to cover it here any more at National Zero, but we’re still in the business of reporting news, so we’re going to give it the respect it deserves, whether we like it or not.

Paul Rosenzweig: “In the 240 years since America’s founding, no former president has been indicted for criminal conduct. This isn’t because they were angels—far from it. And it isn’t because post-term indictment is not legally allowed. Instead, it is because Americans don’t like the idea of criminalizing politics. Both parties and the public see the prospect of post-term immunity as a guarantee that the country’s politics will remain civil and that power will transition peacefully from one party to the other. That is what drove President Gerald Ford to pardon Richard Nixon. And it’s one reason why the Office of the Independent Counsel decided not to indict Bill Clinton.”

“The presidency of Donald J. Trump has upended those calculations, and the resistance to post-term investigation may now come at too great a cost. When he leaves office, whether in January or four years later, the next administration or one of the states can and should investigate citizen Donald Trump—a former president whose legal status will be no different from that of any other American. The risk of politicization of such an investigation is far outweighed by the danger posed by failing to uphold our nation’s values. To protect future presidents from retributive investigations once they leave office, however, any investigation should be limited to Trump’s conduct before and after his presidency, not his behavior while he was president. If the findings of such an investigation justify it, prosecutors should indict the former president for violations of criminal law.”

Counties in the Florida panhandle, a stronghold for republicans in the past thirty years, have shortened or eliminated early voting days as Hurricane Zeta gets set to hit Gulf states on Wednesday, Politico reports.

Escambia, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties, which went to Trump with 60, 71 and 74 percent of the vote, respectively, in 2016.  All three counties will cut early voting hours by at least four hours on Wednesday, potentially shutting down all day Thursday based on possible damage and power outages caused by the hurricane.

“It’s an abundance of caution for us,” Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux said in an interview. “Hurricane Sally just in September weakened a bunch of trees and power lines, so we need to be careful, but I do think we will get back up and running quickly.”

This is real, you can see it here (copied it to National Zero’s YouTube channel for posterity).

The family of 27-year-old Walter Wallace, the mentally-disturbed Black man killed after being shot ten times when police responded to a call to 9-1-1, have said they called to have an ambulance respond to the man in distress, the Associated Press reports.

Instead of medical assistance, police showed up at the scene.  Wallace had obtained a knife at some point prior to police arriving, and after refusing to drop the knife, police fired more than a dozen shots at Wallace from about ten feet away, hitting him ten times.

Wallace’s mother attempted to intervene at the time, and on a recording taken of the event, neighbors were shouting at police that the man had mental problems.  Wallace never charged at the officers, who were backing up as Wallace walked in the street.

Lincoln Journal-Star: “The contentious 2020 presidential election has prompted an Omaha family to involve the police in their disagreement over which candidate deserves support. A 52-year-old man and supporter of President Donald Trump called Omaha police Sunday afternoon after he looked out the front window of his home to see his sister and Joe Biden backer pull up, peel a $15 ‘Trump/Pence’ magnet off his SUV and leave. The man told police that his sister, 49, and his mother hate that he supports Trump. Officers spoke to the sister, who said she took the sign because she feared for her mother’s safety and didn’t want anyone to damage the home because of the Trump signs. She told police that her brother ‘is completely brainwashed with Trump stuff’ and mentally unstable, according to a police report.”

“After the election, we’ll get the greatest stimulus package you’ve ever seen,” President Trump declared as he set off on a series of campaign stops as his reelection chances hang in the balance.

But unfortunately for him, republicans don’t seem interested in passing any meaningful coronavirus relief aid, the Washington Post reports.

No negotiations on a package have happened in the last few days, meaning that the next time Democrats and republicans discuss aid, the Democrats could likely have won control of the House, the Senate and the White House. 

Notice how the fat asshole says “Covid, Covid, Covid” like he used to do with “Russia, Russia, Russia” as if the Coronavirus is an abstraction for most voters like the Russia scandal was and not a lethal virus that’s killed nearly a quarter million Americans with no sign of slowing down.

“Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, leads President Donald Trump, a Republican, by four percentage points in the latest Nexstar Iowa 2020 RABA Research Poll released on Tuesday. Biden leads Trump 50% to 46% in Iowa, according to research conducted by Red America Blue America in October. Two-percent of Iowans polled said they would vote for someone else and 1% were not sure who they would vote for. Last month’s poll showed Biden up by two percentage points over Trump. Iowans who were unsure from the first poll to the second poll declined from 4% to 1%, possibly indicating that undecided voters decided to vote for Biden.”

“When looking at differences between gender in the October poll, 52% of women polled said they would vote for Biden, while 46% said they would vote for Trump. 49% of men plan to vote for Biden compared to 46% who will vote for Trump. In September’s poll, Trump led with men 49% to 46% and Biden led with women 50% to 43%” – WHO13 Des Moines.

New York Times: “The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project. How Mr. Trump found trouble in Chicago, and maneuvered his way out of it, is a case study in doing business the Trump way. When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on. Big banks and hedge funds gave him years of extra time to repay his debts.”

“Even after Mr. Trump sued his largest lender, accusing it of preying on him, the bank agreed to lend him another $99 million — more than twice as much as was previously known — so that he could pay back what he still owed the bank on the defaulted Chicago loan, records show. Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s lenders forgave much of what he owed. Those forgiven debts are now part of a broader investigation of Mr. Trump’s business by the New York attorney general. They normally would have generated a big tax bill, since the Internal Revenue Service treats canceled debts as income. Yet as has often happened in his long career, Mr. Trump appears to have paid almost no federal income tax on that money, in part because of large losses in his other businesses, The Times’s analysis of his tax records found.”

“NXIVM founder Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison on Tuesday after first being convicted in 2019 on seven charges, including conspiracy, racketeering and sex trafficking. In 2017, the self-help organization he created was exposed as a Ponzi scheme and cult that forced many of its female recruits into sexual slavery, leading to his arrest as well as charges brought against other high-ranking members, including co-founder Nancy Salzman, Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman and Smallville actress Allison Mack” – ET Online.

TMZ: “The ’60 Minutes’ interview President Trump cut short over what he felt was unfair questioning from Lesley Stahl has left her, and her family, in a dangerous situation, TMZ has learned. Multiple sources tell us CBS is now providing Stahl with around-the-clock security due to a death threat made to the home of one of her immediate family members on the west coast. We’re told the network has guards monitoring the homes of Lesley and her family members, and escorting them if they go out in public.”

“Law enforcement sources tell us the death threat call was reported to LAPD around 9 AM Thursday, October 22. We’re told the caller directed the threat toward Lesley and her family, and also said something about Neo-Nazis. The call came a couple days after word got out the President bailed on Lesley. That’s also a few hours before Trump released the full interview ahead of Sunday’s broadcast. Stahl’s ’60 Minutes’ interview aired Sunday night on CBS, including her follow-up questioning of VP Mike Pence as to why the President walked out on her.”

“Undercover video taken at a GOP campaign headquarters in California and ‘Trump Store’ selling merchandise featuring the president shows store employees describing an operation to collect ballots in an unofficial ballot box. It also shows them offering to store ballots for voters in a safe, ostensibly because the ballot box had been moved off premises for ballots to be delivered.”

“The video was taken at a location in Newport Beach, California, by a citizen who sent the video along with a complaint to the Orange County Registrar of Voters. It was obtained by VICE News in a public records request from that office. The California GOP has defended its use of the ballot boxes and continued to use them, saying they’re legal under California’s ballot collection law, despite a cease-and-desist from Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The video in question was taken after the cease-and-desist was ordered, according to the person who filed a complaint” – VICE News.

Axios: “Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday instituted a nationwide mask mandate, as the nation tries to combat a second spike of COVID-19 cases, according to an order published by Rospotrebnadzor, the federal health watchdog agency. Russia currently has the fourth-most coronavirus cases in the world, with 1,537,142, according to Johns Hopkins data, behind the U.S., India and Brazil. Russia has reported 26,092 deaths to date. Effective Wednesday, masks will be mandatory in crowded public spaces including public transit, parking lots and elevators.”

“President Donald Trump’s campaign has all but pulled its advertising out of Florida, as it stakes its relatively small bank account on the industrial northern states that carried him to victory in 2016. Since the beginning of the fall campaign on Labor Day, Trump has cut $24 million from his national ad budget, while former Vice President Joe Biden has added $197 million. Biden has outspent Trump three-to-one over that time” Bloomberg reports.

“Trump is now placing his final bet on just four battleground states: Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Polls show he’s down in all those states but Ohio, where it’s effectively even. The president still has $350,275 budgeted to spend on ads in Florida through Election Day, but has canceled $5.5 million in the final two weeks of the campaign, according to data compiled from ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. The Trump campaign says its organizational strength in Florida will carry it into his column on Election Night as Republicans get more in-person voters to the polls.”

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared his health is ‘just fine’ Tuesday as he declined to explain photographs last week showing his hands bruised and bandaged. The 78-year-old dismissed the issue as a media fixation, despite his own history of health issues related to his heart and a serious fall last year that left him out of the public eye for five weeks. ‘I can just tell you that I’m just fine. And I can’t believe y’all have played with that all week long,’ McConnell said in a telephone interview as he traveled back to Kentucky for the final week of a reelection campaign in which he is asking voters for a seventh, six-year term” – Washington Post.

Politico: “The White House’s science policy office on Tuesday ranked ‘ending the Covid-19 pandemic’ atop the list of President Donald Trump’s top first-term accomplishments, even as the country registers record amounts of infections and hospitals fill up again. The list from the Office of Science and Technology Policy credits the administration for taking ‘decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.'”

“It’s the latest inaccurate claim from the administration on the severity of the pandemic, which Trump has downplayed throughout his reelection campaign, and as Vice President Mike Pence’s office is dealing with an outbreak. Trump, who insists the country is ’rounding the turn’ on the coronavirus, continues to hold packed campaign rallies and attacks the news media for focusing on surging infections. Despite the White House’s optimistic rhetoric, health officials warn that things could get worse as winter approaches and people are forced to spend more time indoors.”