The Daily 202: Amid coronavirus, Democrats look for new ways to juice turnout among irregular voters

For example, a left-leaning group called VoteTripling.org will spend $3.5 million during this final week to hire thousands of canvassers to stand outside early voting locations and polling places in nine metropolitan areas. They will ask people who cast ballots to call or text three friends or family members to ask them to also vote. With 5,500 shifts signed up for, the group’s goal is to generate more than 1 million personalized voter contacts to low-propensity voters

Robert Reynolds, a behavioral scientist who runs this group, revealed his plans in an interview. His group is targeting Phoenix, Tucson, San Antonio, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Charlotte and Greensboro, N.C.

There are about 3,000 precincts in the swing states Reynolds has focused on where Democrats win more than 90 percent of the vote but only 111 that are 90 percent or more Republican. He is targeting voting sites that data analytics show will draw the highest traffic of young, racially diverse and lower-income voters. The canvassers will take precautions to avoid spreading the coronavirus, and they will stay as many feet away from the polling location as required by law in each state in what are referred to as “electioneering perimeters.”

“We have the contrarian hypothesis that the people who are most disengaged are the best for friend-to-friend voter contact because of their networks,” Reynolds explained. “Because birds of a feather flock together, it’s disengaged non-activists who are most closely connected to irregular voters, not highly engaged activists. Activists like me are relatively ineffective messengers. We come off as the boy who cried wolf because each and every election we’re barking about how it’s the most important race in a generation.”

Reynolds, a Montana native, previously worked for a firm that used behavioral science to nudge people to give more money to charity. After he wrote an article in September 2017 about the concept of vote tripling for Harvard’s Kennedy School Review, a political philanthropist he declined to name reached out to offer seed funding so he could focus fulltime on testing and refining the idea. During the 2018 midterms, Reynolds worked with 26 Democratic campaigns to help them get out the vote.

“The reason this works extremely well is because people are glowing when they walk out of a polling place,” Reynolds said. “People who typically are disengaged from our political system are for one fleeting moment just totally glowing about the importance of voting. … They are celebrating it by wearing an ‘I Voted’ sticker and are enthusiastic about publicizing it to others.”

During the primaries this March, a randomized control trial in the liberal college town of Oberlin, Ohio, offered proof of concept. A dozen more pilot projects during subsequent primaries helped sharpen techniques to maximize the number of voter contacts per hour and how best to approach people in the time of covid-19. Their experiments have found that, even with the virus, about 65 percent of voters who get approached immediately after voting will agree to text or call three people. Reynolds said they found this is vastly higher than asking people to do it as they are on their way into vote. He said they also tried asking voters to reach out to varying numbers of friends. Requesting three proved most fruitful.

The group initially gave canvassers T-shirts to wear that urged people to get friends to vote, but the workers started wearing jackets as it got colder. Now Reynolds is having them put on racing bibs like you would get in a marathon to prevent the message from being obscured. The canvassers count how many friend-to-friend reminders they actually witness. 

On average, one of the canvassers outside a polling place is able to get 15 to 20 people per hour to stop. In theory, that leads to 45 to 60 voters getting a reminder to vote. “If you go knock on doors in Milwaukee on Election Day, you’ll talk to four voters per hour,” Reynolds said. “If you do this outside of the polling place on Election Day, you will get 40 people per hour.” 

The program is a reminder that word of mouth from someone you know, as old fashioned as it might sometimes seem in the digital era, still works as well as anything else. Reynolds said that, as part of his research, he’s even looked into how Abraham Lincoln used friend-to-friend strategies in 1840 when he ran for his fourth term in the Illinois state House and traveled the Midwest as a surrogate for Whig presidential nominee Henry Clay. 

Reynolds said he also closely studied what went wrong for Democrats four years ago. “Almost all Election Day messaging in 2016, when you look at the biggest voter turnout organizations and biggest campaigns, simply told people to vote. It was almost totally devoid of any cue to remind others to vote,” he said.

Democrats and their allies, such as labor unions, have not been running the full-scale, door-to-door field programs they typically do in presidential elections, concerned about exposing canvassers and voters, although some of that hesitation faded a little after Labor Day after Republicans developed advantages in key states on registering new voters and other important metrics that showed unilateral Democratic disarmament was taking a toll.

Trump’s team has been far more aggressive about traditional door-knocking efforts than Joe Biden’s campaign, which spent months pooh-poohing the value of such field programs. The Trump operation tweeted a video Tuesday of Eric Trump knocking on what he said was the campaign’s 1 millionth door in Nevada. Neither Eric Trump nor the five people he is seen talking with in the video wore masks. The president’s son even shakes hands with the man of the house and one of his sons.

Reynolds said that his canvassers stand outside the entire time, where experts say the virus is less likely to spread. They are also required to wear personal protective equipment, including masks, and given hand sanitizer that they are instructed to use frequently. The workers are also forbidden from approaching anyone who is not wearing a mask. The mantra at their training is “No mask, no ask.”

Tuesday marked the first time that the rolling seven-day average of new daily coronavirus case counts nationwide topped 70,000.

Reynolds said that the impact of covid-19 on his initiative is “one step back and two steps forward.” On the one hand, there are fewer people voting in person. On the other, there are fewer polling places this year so, logistically, the program is easier to implement. “The second is just that so many things we typically do are off the table,” Reynolds said.

For now, the early voting numbers overwhelmingly favor Democrats in 16 of 19 states that provide such data. “But the gap between Democratic and Republican voters has narrowed in recent days in several battleground states,” Amy Gardner and Rosalind Helderman report. “More Republicans are expected to vote on Nov. 3, Election Day, than Democrats, according to numerous polls. The question is how many more. … As of Monday, voters who did not participate in 2016 accounted for 25.6 percent of early ballots cast nationally … And signs have emerged that young voters are on track to sustain the record turnout they displayed in the 2018 election.”

“The CIA’s most endangered employee for much of the past year was not an operative on a mission abroad, but an analyst who faced a torrent of threats after filing a whistleblower report that led to the impeachment of Trump,” Greg Miller and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. “The analyst spent months living in no-frills hotels under surveillance by CIA security, current and former U.S. officials said. He was driven to work by armed officers in an unmarked sedan. On the few occasions he was allowed to reenter his home to retrieve belongings, a security team had to sweep the apartment first to make sure it was safe. The measures were imposed by the CIA’s Security Protective Service, which monitored thousands of threats across social media and Internet chat rooms. Over time, a pattern emerged: Violent messages surged each time the analyst was targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president. …

“In recent weeks, the danger has become more alarming and visible. The FBI disrupted an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Days later, Anthony S. Fauci, the U.S. immunologist leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic, revealed in an interview on ‘60 Minutes’ that he requires near-constant security because of threats against him and his family. … Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who presented the impeachment case against Trump in the Senate, faced so many threats during that trial that he required round-the-clock security … 

“Among the most frequent targets is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of four female minority members Trump declared should ‘go back’ to their countries last year, even though all four are U.S. citizens, and three — including Ocasio-Cortez — were born in this country. … Lauren Hitt, communications director for Ocasio-Cortez, said that the congresswoman’s office routinely fields between two and eight ‘serious threats’ each week, meaning communications that mention violence. These are only the most worrisome messages among dozens more that come in each week that are deemed merely ‘harassing’ because they don’t mention physical harm to the congresswoman.”

• CBS hired a 24-hour security detail for Lesley Stahl after she received death threats following her interview with Trump. TMZ reports that a death threat reported to the LAPD last Thursday was directed toward her and her family.
• A Michigan judge halted a directive by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) banning the open carry of guns at polling locations on Election Day. The state’s attorney general promised to appeal. (Detroit News)
• Beverly Hills business owners have been told to board up their windows, and Rodeo Drive will be shut down ahead of election night. Authorities fear there might be mass protests and unrest if Trump wins. (Los Angeles Times)

“Some of the loud displays, often from supporters of Trump and particularly frustrating to Democrats, have prompted local law enforcement agencies to station officers near polling places to keep the peace. In some locations, they have sparked allegations of voter intimidation and fears of tinderbox confrontations,” Abigail Hauslohner reports. “The potential for such violence and claims of voter intimidation led sheriff’s departments in Laredo, Tex., and Pinellas County, Fla., last week to station deputies outside early-voting stations. In Laredo, the move came after a group of Trump supporters was accused of surrounding and harassing Democratic Party volunteers in a parking lot near a voting precinct. … While some of the vocal activity outside voting precincts might trot right up to the line of illegal intimidation, most of it isn’t actually violating the law, law enforcement officials and experts say.”

“Election officials in Wisconsin are redoubling efforts to persuade voters to return their mail ballots as soon as possible after the Supreme Court ruled Monday night that ballots received after Election Day cannot be counted, no matter when they were mailed,” Helderman reports. “As of Tuesday, voters in the key battleground state had returned more than 1.45 million of the 1.79 million absentee ballots they had requested so far — a return rate of more than 80 percent. But that means that nearly 327,000 absentee ballots had not yet been returned. And voters continue to request ballots — under state law, they have until 5 p.m. Thursday to seek one, a deadline state officials have warned is probably too late for voters to receive and return a ballot by mail before Election Day.” 

Experts suggest that you not risk mailing your ballot at this point. “Biden’s campaign internally switched its language to voters this week, encouraging them to submit ballots in person or at a secure drop box, according to campaign officials, rather than through the mail,” Jacob Bogage reports. “Even the controversial postcard the Postal Service sent to every American household in September advised voters to ‘mail your ballot at least 7 days before Election Day.’” David Becker, executive director at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said: “At this point, if you haven’t requested a mail ballot yet, plan to vote in person and vote early, if possible.”

A federal judge orders USPS to reverse limitations on mail collection imposed by Trump-backed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. “In a highly detailed order, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District Court for the District of Columbia granted an emergency motion … to enforce and monitor compliance with Sullivan’s previous injunction tied to USPS services,” Politico’s Colby Bermel reports.

“Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cited the case and another from the 2000 recount of the presidential vote in his explanation of why he voted to deny a request to reinstate an extension for the receipt of mail-in ballots in Wisconsin,” Robert Barnes reports. “Indeed, the Supreme Court has never cited it as precedent in the two decades since, and only one other justice, Clarence Thomas, has even mentioned it in an opinion. The case has become shorthand for what the Supreme Court would like to avoid: a central role in the drawn-out recount of the vote in Florida that eventually handed the presidency to George W. Bush and divided the nation. … The court is currently considering a case from North Carolina that raises similar issues … Republicans in Pennsylvania have cited Bush v. Gore in asking the court to reconsider an extension on ballot receipt in that state. 

“In her first day on the job, the controversy has reached new Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Although she has not said if she will participate in the court’s reconsideration of the Pennsylvania request, lawyers for one of the commonwealth’s counties asked her to recuse. … Justices make their own decisions on recusals. The tension has been heightened by Trump’s comments that a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was needed on the court to break ties that might arise from election litigation. And Trump continued to suggest Tuesday that it would be unlawful for states to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, which it is not.”

• Mitch McConnell said he is bullish Barrett’s confirmation helped shore up vulnerable Republican incumbents in red states, citing Montana Sen. Steve Daines as an example. The Senate majority leader said in an interview yesterday with The Post that the GOP keeping control of the chamber is “a 50-50 proposition.” McConnell and his aides drafted possible statements on Aug. 13 for a potential vacancy in case Ginsburg died, a senior GOP aide familiar with the planning told Paul Kane. McConnell, 78, also insisted his own health is “fine” and declined to explain recent photos showing his bruised hands.
• Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Biden to her more than 10,000 followers. (AP)
• “Advertisers — including both the Trump and Biden campaigns — ramped up spending over the last week to scrape in ads before the Oct. 27 deadline, after which Facebook said that only older ads could continue to run in the week before Election Day. … But the new policy resulted in some hiccups Tuesday,” Rachel Lerman and Cat Zakrzewski report. 
• Google said it will ban political ads for at least a week after the election. “Election results will probably take longer to confirm this year as more people vote by mail, and Google said in a blog post Tuesday that the ban is necessary ‘to limit the potential for ads to increase confusion post-election,’” Lerman reports.

“Four months before Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks died in September, sending the pivotal Second Congressional District race into a legal tailspin, he told a close friend that he had been recruited by Republicans to draw votes away from Democrats,” the Star Tribune reports. “The recording [of a May voicemail], underscoring the intense battle in one of the state’s most competitive elections, has come to light just as the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office listed Weeks’ death as a result of substance abuse, caused by ethanol and fentanyl toxicity.” Weeks, an organic farmer from Red Wing who voted for Trump in 2016, said on the voicemail: “They want me to run as a third-party, liberal candidate, which I’m down. I can play the liberal, you know that.”

The spoiler candidate’s death has triggered a legal battle because there’s a state law that says an election should be delayed if a major-party candidate dies, a designation the Pot Party earned by getting more than 5 percent in a state auditor’s race. Republicans have sued to postpone the election until next year. Democrats have said it’s unconstitutional to do that in a federal election. Three federal judges last week sided with Democrats, allowing the election to go on as scheduled. The Supreme Court opted last night not to take up an appeal by the GOP.

“As the Dodgers celebrated their championship on the field, many of them wearing masks, one key figure was missing: Third baseman Justin Turner, the longest-tenured Dodgers position player, had been pulled before the seventh inning after his latest coronavirus test came back positive, a result that arrived midgame. He was immediately put in isolation but was later spotted on the field celebrating with his teammates,” Dave Sheinin and Scott Allen report. “It was the first positive test for a player in more than six weeks, and coming in the middle of the final game of the World Series — it was perhaps a fitting conclusion to a season that at times seemed endangered by the spread of the virus. It also appears baseball barely avoided a messy outcome had the series been extended to a seventh game. And for a while Tuesday night, Game 7 seemed to be a strong possibility. The fact the series never got there was due in large part to the stunning and highly questionable pitching move the Rays made in the bottom of the sixth inning, when they pulled ace Blake Snell from a magnificent performance — a move that backfired immediately when the next two Dodgers hitters, Mookie Betts and Corey Seager, gave Los Angeles the lead.”

“Peter Berkowitz, the director of policy planning at the State Department, met with senior officials at 10 Downing Street and the Foreign Office in London, and with officials in Budapest and Paris earlier this month. One official said that Berkowitz’s mask-wearing and social distancing practices were lax during the trip and that U.S. embassy staff in Europe expressed some concerns before the trip about him traveling during the pandemic,” John Hudson reports. “Following Berkowitz’s visit to London, British officials have started being more selective about approval of American delegations, officials said. They have postponed an upcoming trip by Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Iran and Venezuela.”

“The refusal to go along with expert health guidance has persisted even in parts of the country that are seeing soaring caseloads and hospitalizations. That was driven home this week when the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Deborah Birx, toured North Dakota, which has had more coronavirus infections per capita than any other state and over the past month has experienced a stunning surge in hospitalizations and deaths. What Birx witnessed dismayed her,” Joel Achenbach and Lori Rozsa report. “‘This is the least use of masks that we have seen in retail establishments of any place we have been,’ Birx told reporters after participating in a round table with Republican Gov. Doug Burgum. … Burgum has endorsed masks but declined to impose a statewide mandate, saying Monday that the decision to wear a face covering is a personal one.”

• A security guard in Chicago asked two sisters to put on a mask. They allegedly stabbed him 27 times instead. They now face charges of first-degree attempted murder. In Chicago, indoor dining will come to a halt starting Friday because of rising case numbers. (Jaclyn Peiser)
• A Kansas nursing home faces severe federal penalties after a coronavirus outbreak left at least 10 dead. (Brittany Shammas)
• U.S. government data suggest a record number of Americans are seeking to give up their citizenship this year. But disruptions to consular services have made it nearly impossible for some Americans to stop being American. (Adam Taylor)
• People recovering from covid-19 may suffer significant issues with brain function, with the worst cases linked to mental decline equivalent to the brain aging by 10 years. A non-peer-reviewed study led by Adam Hampshire, a doctor at Imperial College London, found in some severe cases, coronavirus infections were linked to substantial cognitive deficits for months. (Reuters)
• Louisiana’s governor and attorney general disagree over whether the state still has a mask mandate. Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) insists his mandate is still in effect, but Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) is using an obscure state law to overturn all emergency public health restrictions that have been imposed by Edwards. (Antonia Farzan)
• The four Western states – California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada – that formed a pact to collaborate on obtaining crucial supplies and developing a joint plan to reopen their economies are now joining forces to review an eventual covid-19 vaccine. (Farzan)
• Drugmakers Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announced that they would supply 200 million doses of a successful vaccine to Covax, the distribution initiative backed by the World Health Organization. (Farzan)
• The caseload in the greater D.C. region jumped to its highest level since mid-August. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he expects the pandemic to worsen this fall but added he has no plans to reimpose the types of restrictions he did earlier this year. (Ovetta Wiggins)
• Parties by basketball fans after the Lakers won the NBA championship appear to have fueled a spike in cases in Los Angeles. (Cindy Boren)
• At least 98 federal air marshals have tested positive for the virus, casting doubt on claims by airlines that flying is safe. (Yahoo News)
• State universities in New York will require students to test negative for the coronavirus before they can leave for Thanksgiving break. (Farzan)

“Trump welcomed the Japanese prime minister at Mar-a-Lago … The two could have met in Washington, but Trump said his private club was a more comfortable alternative,” David Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell and Anu Narayanswamy report. “In the next two days, as Trump and [Shinzo] Abe talked about trade and North Korea, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., club billed the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral arrangements. Trump’s club even charged for the smallest of services. When Trump and Abe met alone, with no food served, the government still got a bill for what they drank. ‘Bilateral meeting,’ the bill said. ‘Water.’ $3 each. Those 2018 payments, revealed here for the first time, are part of a long-running pattern whose scope has become clear only in recent months. 

“Since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers — and from his political supporters — into his own businesses. The Post has sought to compile examples of this spending through open records requests and a lawsuit. In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, those documents and publicly available records show. … He’s visited his hotels and clubs more than 280 times now, making them a familiar backdrop for his presidency.” 

“He and his family hoped the Trump International Hotel & Tower [in Chicago] would cement their company’s reputation as one of the world’s marquee developers of luxury real estate,” the New York Times reports. “Instead, the skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them. Construction lagged. Condos proved hard to sell. Retail space sat vacant. Yet for Mr. Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of his ability to strong-arm major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of his repeated business failures. The president’s federal income tax records show … his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project. … 

“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.”

In Wisconsin, Oshkosh is the biggest city in a county that twice backed Barack Obama and then flipped to Trump. It is also a coronavirus hot spot, with rapidly increasing numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. As goes Oshkosh goes Wisconsin, in all likelihood. Peter Kendall talked with voters in a ward that went Republican in 2016 by a single vote. Here are the two most revealing vignettes from his dispatch:

“Edie Richoz, 70, and her son, Steve Wirsing, 35, last voted for a presidential candidate in 2008, inspired by Obama’s message of change. By 2016, they felt discouraged and disengaged, and neither Trump nor Clinton drew their support. ‘I couldn’t decide between the worse of the two evils,’ Richoz said. These days, both are newly motivated, especially by what they consider Republicans’ botched handling of the pandemic. The president’s attack on the Affordable Care Act also ranks high because of family health concerns. ‘All he has been doing is trying to demolish it,’ Wirsing said. Last week, Richoz cast her first ballot in a presidential election in 12 years for Biden. Her son did the same on Tuesday.”

“Lydia Comstock, who in 2016 voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson for president, had been doing well enough pre-pandemic. She was a server at ZaRonis, an Italian restaurant in town, where she could count on making $100 to $200 a night in tips. Then the coronavirus closed the dining room, and she went to taking phone orders for just $7 an hour. Then schools closed, and Comstock, 29, had to supervise her young children during their virtual school day. She no longer could work the restaurant shifts. She and her husband, a prepress graphic designer, have slashed expenses. The family stopped ordering takeout food as a way to support local businesses. ‘We didn’t want to cut that back but had to,’ said Brent Comstock, 30. … They recently slipped their ballots into a drop box at City Hall. He supported Libertarian Jo Jorgensen. Her motivation was strictly to defeat Trump. ‘I voted for Biden,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t like it.’”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll out this morning shows Biden leading Trump among likely voters in Michigan by 51 percent to 44 percent. In Wisconsin, likely voters favor Biden 57 percent to 40 percent. “Biden’s margins in both states are driven by overwhelming support among female likely voters. He leads Trump by 24 points among those women in Michigan and by 30 points in Wisconsin. Biden trails Trump among Michigan men by double digits, and the two are running about even among men in Wisconsin,” Scott Clement, Dan Balz and Emily Guskin report.

Hundreds of people who attended Trump’s rally in Omaha on Tuesday night spent up to three hours in freezing temperatures waiting for buses to take them back to their cars. “Several people who were waiting required medical attention,” the Omaha World-Herald reports. “The president, who spoke for nearly an hour, wrapped up shortly before 9 p.m. Some people in his audience waited until after midnight for campaign buses to take them to their cars, which were parked miles away.”

“With our voices and our votes, we must free ourselves from the forces of darkness, from the forces of division, and the forces of yesterday,” the former vice president said. Biden extensively quoted Franklin Roosevelt while speaking of the “pre-vaccine decades” in which the former president lived. “To him and to so many others facing physical challenges, Warm Springs offered therapy for the body, and I might add, and the soul,” he said. “FDR came looking for a cure, but it was the lessons he learned here that he used to lift a nation.”

“With a sea of fog and pine trees behind him, Biden spoke at the Mountain Top Inn and Resort, a getaway filled with log cabins in the hills of the Georgia Piedmont,” Sean Sullivan, Anne Gearan and Felicia Sonmez report. “Biden made his comments in his first campaign stop in Georgia as the Democratic nominee … Polls show a close race in the state, which a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since 1992. 

“In his second stop, a drive-in rally meant to energize voters in Atlanta, he resumed his more aggressive attacks on Trump. … Biden has sometimes struggled to balance an embrace of racial-justice demonstrations with his criticism of violence and looting. On Tuesday, Biden and [Kamala] Harris issued a statement denouncing the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia on Monday, while also calling for an end to the violence and looting that occurred during some of the ensuing protests. Trump on Tuesday aligned himself with law enforcement and claimed that Biden ‘stands with the rioters,’ even as the Democrat has repeatedly stated he does not. … ‘He won’t say, ‘Black lives matter,’ because they do. We know they matter,’ said Biden.”

• By custom, most world leaders don’t weigh in on U.S. elections. But Trump has, in 2016 and 2020, received the vocal support of a handful of foreign leaders, mostly right-wing populists. These include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. (Miriam Berger)
• The Trump campaign is toning down the immigration messaging that dominated the 2016 election. The issue barely makes the top 10 list of topics highlighted in political TV ads this year, the Wall Street Journal found. 

“He would not only be the first male spouse of a vice president, making him – wait for it, the first second husband – but he has also become the Great Jewish Hope,” Manuel Roig-Franzia writes in a new profile. “A winning Democratic ticket would make him the first Jew in the quartet of presidents, vice presidents and their spouses. He’s been called a mensch so many times that it may as well be on his business cards. ‘Obviously there’s a tremendous amount of nachas to have one of our own in that role,’ says Alex Weingarten, a former Emhoff law partner who is a prominent leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community, invoking a Yiddish word for pride.”

But Democrats deploying Harris at the end of the week makes sense for other reasons, Tumulty writes in her column: “The state is seeing massive early voter turnout, and many Democrats there believe they are within reach of taking control of the Texas House by picking up at least nine of the chamber’s 150 seats. That would break the grip that Republicans have had over all the levers of power in the state since 2003 and could have enormous consequences for once-a-decade redistricting next year, which is expected to see Texas pick up three additional seats in the U.S. House. Harris reportedly plans to make a stop in Houston, which would also send a reassuring signal to the oil industry that Biden’s proposed ‘transition’ from fossil fuels to renewable energy would not come too quickly. And her swing through Texas could also help generate more enthusiasm among Hispanics, where Biden has been underperforming.”

White House national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien visited Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday, acting for all intents and purposes like some kind of a campaign surrogate, drawing criticism for using taxpayer-funded official trips for thinly veiled activities designed to boost Trump’s reelection. Paul Sonne notes that this is part of a pattern: “In recent weeks, for example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to a Texas megachurch, addressed the Wisconsin legislature and made virtual remarks to a Florida conservative antiabortion group. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt have all visited key swing states on official trips. … Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s criticism of Biden during a September interview prompted accusations that she also violated the Hatch Act. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump regularly tweets messages urging people to vote for her father, despite holding an official advisory position in the White House that makes her subject to the Hatch Act. … White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said in an interview with Politico that ‘nobody outside of the Beltway really cares’ about the Hatch Act.” 

“‘The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,’ said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of taking ‘action against those who have stood up for the interests of justice,’” Tom Hamburger and Devlin Barrett report. “The letter, signed by prosecutors appointed by every GOP president from Eisenhower to Trump, is the latest instance of Republicans backing Biden. In August, dozens of GOP national security experts signed a full-page newspaper ad endorsing Biden over Trump.”

“Our current president, he whines that ‘60 Minutes’ is too tough. You think he’s going to stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl’s a bully,” Obama said during a rally in Orlando. “Just yesterday, [Trump] said that the leaders of North Korea want him to win. We know! We know, because you’ve been giving them whatever they want for the last four years. Of course they want you to win! That’s not a good thing.”

• The acting chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was removed after he sent a message to new Trump political appointees asking them to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which prohibits manipulating research or presenting ideologically driven findings. (NYT)
• Tropical Storm Zeta is charging toward the Gulf Coast, prompting hurricane and storm warnings. It will be the 11th named storm to strike the U.S. this season. (Matthew Cappucci and Andrew Freedman)
• Southern California wildfires have forced nearly 100,000 people to evacuate. Nearly a million Californians are without power because of deliberate power cuts that utilities made to reduce the risk of sparking a major blaze. (Andrew Freedman and Diana Leonard)
• A rare October ice storm hit Oklahoma, leaving 300,000 without power. (Matthew Cappucci)
• Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) can remove Richmond’s towering tribute to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, a circuit court judge ruled, just not immediately, giving the group trying to preserve the statue a chance to mount an appeal. (Laura Vozzella)
• The National Guard responded to continuing Philadelphia protests over the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man. (Robert Klemko, Katie Shepherd and Maura Ewing)
• Police de-escalation training is gaining renewed clout, as law enforcement agencies seek to reduce killings. (Tom Jackman and Dan Morse)
• Protests in Northwest D.C. over a fatal accident involving a moped driver who crashed after police tried to pull him over turned unruly last night when windows were broken at a police station, trash was strewn about and objects were thrown at officers. The D.C. police chief said video of the incident, which resulted in the death of Karon Hylton, “never shows any contact between the police car and the scooter.” (Fredrick Kunkle, Peter Hermann and Martin Weil)
• Keith Raniere, the leader of NXIVM, a purported self-help organization that engaged in international multilevel marketing, has been sentenced to 120 years in prison for running a sex-trafficking ring. (Shayna Jacobs)

A century after the 19th Amendment passed, Trump told women in a crowd of supporters that he’ll get their husbands “back to work”:

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is tying her reelection hopes entirely to hugging Trump as tightly as possible:

Obama put pandemic preparedness to the side upon taking office, focusing instead on an economy in free fall. But the 2009 outbreak of H1N1, the first flu pandemic in 40 years, made health security an urgent priority for his administration; later, it would confront the emergence of Ebola in West Africa. Through interviews with former top officials, Part Two of our documentary series on the pandemic portrays a White House that gained critical expertise and created a pandemic playbook the Trump administration could have drawn upon:

Stephen Colbert joked that Trump’s closing message boils down to: “Let the maskless man spit on you!” He says that’s not resonating with voters:

“Late Night’s” Amber Ruffin shared her thoughts on the recent support Trump has received from some rappers: