The Daily 202: V.P. debate turned on truth – and flies

Moments later, Trump called into Fox Business for his first interview since disclosing last Friday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He declared that he is feeling great, claimed without evidence that he is no longer contagious and said he is not going to participate unless he gets to face Biden in person.

“I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate,” the president said. “That’s not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate. It’s ridiculous, and then they cut you off whenever they want.” Then he baselessly attacked Scully, a veteran C-SPAN host, as a “Never Trumper.”

Biden’s campaign welcomed the virtual debate, and the former vice president predicted that Trump could change his mind. Speaking to reporters as he boarded a flight for a trip to Arizona, Biden said: “We don’t know what the president is going to do. He changes his mind every second, so for me to comment on that now would be irresponsible. I’m going to follow the commission’s recommendations. If he goes off and he has a rally, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien issued a statement blasting the commission’s “pathetic” move to go virtual: “We’ll pass on this sad excuse to bail out Joe Biden and do a rally instead,” he said. Stepien issued this statement from home, where he is convalescing from covid-19. 

Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate in Salt Lake City will be remembered years from now for the plexiglass barriers that separated the candidates – and the fly that landed on Vice President Pence’s white head of hair and then rested there, unobstructed, for two minutes. Unfortunately, it distracted many viewers from Pence downplaying the systemic nature of racism in America generally and law enforcement specifically.

The emphasis on the fly and this morning’s drama have also distracted from a central theme that has gotten short shrift in the initial round of coverage: Trust.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) opened her first answer by describing Trump’s handling of the pandemic as “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.” She cited Trump’s statement to Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward that he wanted to play down the threat of the contagion, as far back as January, because he did not want to create a panic. “They knew what was happening, and they didn't tell you,” Harris said. “You respect the American people when you tell them the truth.”

“Which we've always done,” Pence interjected. 

Pence opened his first answer of the debate with two false claims: The first was that Trump “suspended all travel from China” right away. In fact, nearly 40,000 people traveled from China to the United States after the restrictions went into place. Pence’s second claim was that Biden had called the restrictions xenophobic. “Biden did call Trump xenophobic, but not obviously in relation to the restrictions that had been announced only minutes before and of which Biden was not aware,” Philip Bump explains.

That opening back-and-forth set the tone for the evening and helped illustrate why Trump faces an historic credibility gap with under a month to go until Election Day. 

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team documented more than 20,000 false and misleading claims by the president through early July.

This fusillade of falsehoods from this administration has taken a toll on public opinion. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month, which had Biden ahead by 10 points nationally, found that 35 percent of likely voters said Trump is honest, compared to 59 percent who said he is not, while 49 percent said Biden is honest, compared to 43 percent who said he’s not. That is on par with what a Washington Post-ABC News poll found in May. In our July national poll, we asked people to compare the two nominees: 49 percent said they trusted Biden more while 35 percent said they trusted Trump more."

A poll conducted by CNN while Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed over the weekend found that only 12 percent of Americans said they trusted almost all of what they heard from the White House about the president's health, compared to 69 percent who said they trusted little of the information.

When discussing foreign policy, Harris also pivoted to critique Trump’s honesty. She said Biden told her that “foreign policy might sound complicated, but really it’s relationships. So just think about it as relationships.”

“You’ve got to keep your word to your friends. You’ve got to know who your adversaries are and keep them in check. But what we have seen with Donald Trump is that he has betrayed our friends and embraced dictators around the world,” the senator explained. “The thing that has always been a part of the strength of our nation, in addition to our great military, has been that we keep our word. But Donald Trump doesn't understand that, because he doesn't understand what it means to be honest.”

Pence shot back: “Well, President Trump kept his word when we moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel. When Joe Biden was vice president, they promised to do that. They never did.”

Harris seemed like she was trying to say the word “facts” as much as possible, and she went out of her way to describe Pew and Moody’s as “reputable” outlets when she cited their polling and economic estimates during the debate. Harris also referred to her running mate’s propensity for gaffes to make the case that he is unvarnished and therefore trustworthy. “One thing we all know about Joe: He puts it all there. He is honest, he is forthright, but Donald Trump on the other hand has been about covering up everything,” she said, proceeding to attack Trump for concealing his tax returns.

When discussing the Supreme Court, Harris even referred to President Abraham Lincoln as “Honest Abe.” She told a story about how Justice Roger Taney died 27 days before the 1864 election and claimed that Lincoln said that the winner of the election should get to choose his replacement: “Lincoln's party was in charge, not only of the White House but the Senate, but Honest Abe said, ‘It's not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States. And then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land.’ And, so, Joe and I are very clear. The American people are voting right now. And it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime.”

Harris’s story sounded too good to be true, and it was. Lincoln’s true motive for the delay was to keep people in his tent as Election Day neared. Former senator and Treasury secretary Salmon Chase had challenged Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1860 and really wanted the job. Lincoln disliked him, but Chase had a big following in the GOP.

“The overarching effect of the delay is that it held Lincoln’s broad but shaky coalition of conservative and radical Republicans together. And it kept rivals like Chase in line,” Gillian Brockell reports. “Chase, who had often been critical of Lincoln in the past, immediately began stumping for the president across the Midwest, sparking rumors of a secret deal … Congress was in recess until early December, so there would have been no point in naming a man before the election anyway. Lincoln shrewdly used that to his advantage. If he had lost the election, there is no evidence he wouldn’t have filled the spot in the lame-duck session. Lincoln was, of course, reelected. And the day after the Senate was back in session, he nominated Chase for chief justice.”

Brockwell notes that there is one thing Lincoln definitely supported, which Harris repeatedly refused to weigh in on during the debate: court-packing. In 1863, Lincoln and Republicans in Congress passed a law to create a 10th Supreme Court seat for almost entirely partisan reasons. All told, Lincoln appointed five justices in just four years and five weeks as president. In 1869, under President Ulysses S. Grant and with Republican nominees in full control of the high court, a new judiciary act was passed that reduced the number of justices back from 10 to nine to avoid ties. 

Pence capitalized on Harris’s evasiveness over whether Democrats might try to add seats to the Supreme Court if they win control of the White House and Senate, something liberal activists are pushing them to do. Biden opposed this idea last year during the primaries, but now he declines to rule it out as Republicans rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election. “If you haven’t figured it out yet,” Pence said, “the straight answer is they are going to pack the Supreme Court.”

More team coverage

Our fact checkers round up 15 suspect claims that were made last night. “Pence took a number of flimsy claims out of the Trump playbook, although he often delivered them more deftly,” write Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, adding that Harris “also stretched the truth at times.”

“Pence’s soft-spoken debate style was a marked contrast to the excitable and at times belligerent tone Trump took a week earlier in his debate with Biden. But like Trump, he repeatedly went over his allotted time and spoke over moderator Susan Page, ignoring her attempts to keep the debate moving by frequently saying, ‘Thank you, Mr. Vice President,’” David Weigel, Michael Scherer and Chelsea Janes report. “Nor was there a major misstep or effort to trod new ground in a way likely to disrupt the race, which has remained remarkably stable, with slight variation, since the late summer.”

“Both candidates ducked, bobbed and wove past questions they didn’t want to answer, segueing into their preplanned talking points and attacks and largely ignoring Page, as well as her best efforts to enforce time limits,” Ashley Parker reports. “Pence employed the strategy most frequently, bulldozing — politely, calmly, resolutely — through Page’s pleas to move along and sweeping aside inquiries about everything from Trump’s health to his administration’s specific plan to protect insurance coverage for people with preexisting health conditions. … The vice president also ignored a question near the end on what he would do if Biden is declared the winner of the election but Trump refuses, as he has threatened previously, to accept a peaceful transition of power.”

“Everything about a debate tells voters something,” Page said in an interview with her publication, USA Today, after the debate. “So, with both candidates, and especially with Vice President Pence, they didn’t address the questions I asked. That is frustrating to me because I spent a lot of time writing those questions, but that is illuminating in its own way to voters, and that was the point.”

“Pence had a difficult hand to play,” writes Dan Balz, “and he did what he could with the case he wanted to make. But the more he tried, the clearer it became just how much President Trump continues to undermine his own campaign.”

“His tone was calm, verging on prayerful at times, but the accompanying words were often bracingly cold — most notably when the subject turned to racial justice,” writes Robin Givhan. “Harris laughed when she was appalled by Pence, studiously refraining from frowning or giving the impression that she was angry because being simultaneously angry and Black is treading into treacherous water in our culture of inequality.”

Commentary from the opinion page: 

• E.J. Dionne Jr.: “Harris succeeded by declining to make herself a center of attention.” 
• Alyssa Rosenberg: “The vice-presidential debate was boring. Good. We need more of that.”
• Gary Abernathy: “Pence ably defended Trump in a way that few, including Trump, have managed to do.” 
• Jennifer Rubin: “Pence should have self-quarantined instead of debating Harris.” 
• Alexandra Petri’s satire: “An exclusive interview with the fly from the debate.” 

Quote of the day

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Harris said during one of the 16 times when Pence interrupted her. (Vox)

A majority of viewers thought Harris won the debate.

A CNN-SSRS instant poll found that 59 percent of those polled after the debate said she won, while 38 percent said Pence had the better night, CNN reports. The California senator’s favorability rating improved among those who watched, going from 56 percent to 63 percent. Pence’s favorability remained the same – 41 percent – in pre- and post-debate interviews. (CNN producers also calculated that the speaking time of both candidates was roughly equal: 36:24 for Harris and 36:27 for Pence.)

• The debate had “no questions on the shutdown of the nation’s school system and the millions of kids with essentially no current access to organized education,” notes Dana Goldstein of the Times. “We live in a gerontocracy in which both children’s and parent’s needs are so often invisible.”
• “Through two debates there has been no substantial conversation over immigration,” complains Hamed Aleaziz of BuzzFeed. 
• “The debate was a bucket of warm you-know-what,” writes Politico’s John Harris. “Neither [Pence] nor [Harris] could escape the fundamental dynamic of the job they are seeking: The vice presidency is by definition minimizing.”
• “Pence did that typical thing that he does and too many other Republican men do, who think that they own the stage and own the debate and can somehow dominate a female debate opponent,” says Lincoln Project co-founder Jennifer Horn, the former chair of the New Hampshire GOP, in an interview with the 19th.
• Pence attacked the Obama administration by citing things it polled well on, writes HuffPost’s Ariel Edwards-Levy, including its handling of the swine flu and, in retrospect, Obamacare.
• “Pence said Trump listens to scientists. That’s a joke, right?” asks Mother Jones’s Rebecca Leber. 
• “It was a little hard, by the end of the night, to see either of these politicians effectively leading a national ticket. The debate showed why we’ve ended up with an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, despite their obvious flaws,” writes the New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells.
• Pence and Harris “politely traded milquetoast zingers … like it was 2012—or some other year before Trump commandeered American politics and remade it in his own image,” writes the Atlantic’s Russell Berman.

More on the coronavirus

Job growth is slowing, businesses are sliding, and cooler weather is driving people inside. 

The Labor Department said there were 840,000 new jobless claims last week. (Eli Rosenberg)

• For the first time since the pandemic began, the Homebase gauge of small business activity declined in September, signaling weakness ahead. (David Lynch)
• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had two conversations yesterday with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about a stand-alone bill to help airlines. Pelosi sounded out the options with her members, who said they would still prefer a larger, comprehensive bill but are sensitive to the many jobs at risk in the airline industry. (Jeff Stein and Erica Werner) 
• After more than 33,000 airline workers were furloughed last week, the White House signaled support for a bill introduced by two Republican senators to extend airline payroll support. (Lori Aratani and Michael Laris) 
• About 865,000 women left the workforce last month. That is four times the number of men who left, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many mothers of young children are focusing full-time on child care. (Soo Youn)
• Legions of parents are following the guidance of Brown University economics professor Emily Oster to stay sane. “Oster has broadly argued for reopening schools in person,” writes Bloomberg News’s Esmé Deprez. “When it comes to reopening society broadly, the WHO draws a line at 5% of Covid tests yielding positive results. Oster defers to this threshold."

Trump returned to the Oval Office.

“The White House again refused on Wednesday to say when Trump last tested negative for the novel coronavirus, leaving open the possibility that he potentially exposed dozens of people to the deadly virus before the announcement of his positive test early Friday,” Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Parker report. “Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows declined to say when Trump last tested negative, citing privacy. Two officials familiar with the situation said Trump has not been tested daily in recent months. Only rarely has Trump been tested on a machine other than the one produced by Abbott Laboratories, which provides rapid results … The rapid tests are not always accurate.” (“We’re not asking to go back through a bunch of records and look backwards," said White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern.)

“Trump sought to depict a presidency that has returned to normal, saying on Twitter that he had ‘recovered’ from the virus. ‘Hi, perhaps you recognize me. It’s your favorite president, and I’m standing in front of the Oval Office at the White House,’ Trump said in a recorded video released on Twitter late Wednesday. The president was recorded while standing in the Rose Garden without a mask. He focused mostly on erroneously pitching therapeutics as a ‘cure’ rather than emphasizing good public health practices. … ‘I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president, because I feel great,’ Trump said, pledging to make sure that all Americans receive the same experimental antibody cocktail that was used to treat him, free. ‘I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise.’ … Trump spent much of the day posting all-caps tweets against his perceived enemies. …

"White House physician Sean Conley released a memo Wednesday describing Trump’s vital signs as ‘stable and in normal range’ and announcing that lab work conducted Monday had detected antibodies for covid-19 … The [memo] provided only limited information. … The West Wing remains largely empty, with most aides working from home.”

Trump demanded that Water Reed doctors sign non-disclosure agreements. 

“During a surprise trip to Walter Reed on Nov. 16, 2019, Trump mandated signed NDAs from both physicians and nonmedical staff, most of whom are active-duty military service members,” NBC News scoops. “At least two doctors at Walter Reed who refused to sign NDAs were subsequently not permitted to have any involvement in the president's care … The reason for his trip last year remains shrouded in mystery." It's not clear if Trump made the same demand of Walter Reed staff during his hospitalization this weekend.

• The White House outbreak has infected 34 staffers and “other contacts,” according to an internal FEMA memo. (ABC News)
• The head of the White House Security Office, Crede Bailey, became sick with the virus last month and remains gravely ill in the hospital, but the administration kept it secret. (Bloomberg News)
• Chris Christie remains hospitalized with the virus, where he's been since Saturday, and his condition is unknown. The former New Jersey governor has struggled with his weight and has a lifelong history of asthma, putting him at a higher risk of developing complications. Christie helped Trump with debate prep and was at the Rose Garden super-spreader event. (Star-Ledger)
• Two staffers for Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) tested positive in recent days, and more test results are expected soon, but there is no contact tracing in place and staffers were told not to disclose to roommates that they may have been exposed, per the Wall Street Journal, which also reports that Lamborn told people he does not plan on getting tested. The congressman is expected to travel back to Colorado tomorrow. A spokeswoman said staff members were instructed to protect each other’s medical privacy but denied that they were ordered to conceal cases. 
• White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows hosted a lavish wedding for his daughter in Atlanta in May with about 70 guests, despite guidelines that banned gatherings of more than 10 people to prevent the virus from spreading, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was among the guests who donned tuxedos and ball gowns but no masks, according to pictures.
• The D.C. government reached out to the White House about contact tracing. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt discussed contact tracing with a White House official, although it wasn’t clear what action might emerge from the talks. "Local leaders across the Washington region have said there’s no evidence of a widespread caseload rise tied to the outbreak,” Lola Fadulu, Rachel Chason, Justin Wm. Moyer and Dana Hedgpeth report.
• The White House quietly told a veterans group that it might have exposed them to coronavirus at a Sept. 27 event for Gold Star families. (Daily Beast)
• The Marine Corps’ No. 2 officer has tested positive. Gen. Gary Thomas contracted the contagion after meeting with Coast Guard Adm. Charles Ray, who attended the Gold Star event at the White House. (Politico)  

Covid-19 survivors see callousness, not compassion, in Trump’s bout with the virus. 

“Rather than bond Trump to the millions of Americans who have suffered from the virus or watched a loved one go through it, Trump’s experience with the virus has only deepened the sense of distance that some voters say they feel from a president who has consistently downplayed its severity,” Griff Witte reports. “In interviews, Americans whose lives have been upended by the virus said they felt disappointed that the president missed an opportunity to model responsible behavior. They expressed anger that Trump has continued to minimize the virus’s threat after receiving deluxe care that the vast majority of people can only dream of at a time when testing and treatments are running low. And they voiced fear that Trump’s words and actions would lead to more reckless behavior among his supporters.” 

Regeneron asked the FDA for emergency use authorization for the antibody therapy Trump received.

This treatment was developed with the use of a cell originally derived from an abortion, according to Regeneron. “The Trump administration has taken an increasingly firm line against medical research using fetal tissue from abortions," the MIT Technology Review reports. "But when the president faced a deadly encounter with covid-19, his administration raised no objections over the fact that the new drugs also relied on fetal cells, and anti-abortion campaigners were silent too. Most likely, their hypocrisy was unwitting. Many types of medical and vaccine research employ supplies of cells originally acquired from abortion tissue. It would have taken an expert to realize that was the case with Trump’s treatment.”

• The New England Journal of Medicine called for U.S. leaders to be voted out of office. “The magnitude of this failure is astonishing," the editors of the prestigious medical journal write. “Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative.”
• Hospital executives are urging doctors and nurses to take vacations now before a fall wave of new cases hits in force. (Abigail Hauslohner) 
• “Saturday Night Live” dropped country star Morgan Wallen as this weekend’s musical guest after he was spotted partying maskless at the University of Alabama. (Emily Yahr)
• The NFL’s outbreak worsened with positive tests by New England Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore, two more Tennessee Titans players and a Las Vegas Raiders player. The results put this weekend’s games involving the Titans and Patriots in doubt after both teams already had their games postponed last weekend. (Mark Maske and Cindy Boren) 
• Italy is mandating face coverings nationwide as fears of a second wave grow. The new regulations require residents to carry masks at all times and wear them in any outdoor settings where they might come into contact with people outside their immediate family. Violators will be fined up to 1,000 euros, or $1,176. (Antonia Farzan) 
• The coronavirus killed three times as many people as the flu and pneumonia in England and Wales during the first eight months of 2020, according to data from the British government. (Jennifer Hassan)

More on the election

Fresh polls look good for Biden.

Biden is up by five points among likely voters in Wisconsin, 46 percent to 41 percent, according to a Marquette University Law School poll. New Quinnipiac University polls put Biden up 11 points in Florida, 13 points in Pennsylvania and five points in Iowa. A Fox News poll puts Biden up 10 points nationwide among likely voters, up from five points in the same poll last month. 

The GOP is in crisis mode after Trump ended economic relief talks.

“Facing a political reckoning as Trump’s support plummets and a possible blue tsunami looms, it is now conservatives and Trump allies who are showing flashes of discomfort with the president, straining to stay in the good graces of his core voters without being wholly defined by an erratic incumbent,” Robert Costa reports. “For some Republicans, the 11th-hour repositioning may not be enough to stave off defeat. But the criticism, however muted, illuminates the extent of the crisis inside a party that is growing alarmed about its political fate and confused by Trump’s tweets and decision-making. … One senior GOP official close to Trump … compared this crossroads to when the ‘Access Hollywood’ story broke in October 2016 and many Republicans distanced themselves from Trump. … ‘The situation is getting worse and worse,’ the senior official said. … ‘We didn’t think it’d be this bad at this point.’ … 

“In Arizona, Sen. Martha McSally (R), struggling to hold on to her seat … was evasive on Tuesday night at a debate when she was asked about whether she is proud of her support for Trump … On Wednesday, the Cook Political Report said the race between Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison is a ‘toss up’ … Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, tweeted on Wednesday that he did not agree with Trump’s decision to stop negotiating with (Nancy) Pelosi until after the election. … Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), a House member in a tough race, said he also disagreed with the president and would ‘strongly urge’ Trump to rethink the decision. And in Maine, Sen. Susan Collins (R) did the same as she fends off Democrat Sara Gideon in her reelection race. ‘Waiting until after the election to reach an agreement on the next covid-19 relief package is a huge mistake,’ Collins said in a statement.”

The Department of Justice weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections.

“Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes,” ProPublica reports. “In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race. But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election. …

“Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said. Both groups have been falsely singled out, in different ways, by [Trump] and his campaign for being involved in voter fraud.” Experts are alarmed that this could be exploited by Attorney General Bill Barr, who has heavily politicized the department, to use the arm of the law as part of an effort to drag Trump to victory.

A Russian bank is trying to trace individuals who uncovered its alleged connections to the Trump Organization. 

Two years ago, the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins wrote about a series of mysterious contacts between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of the most powerful financial institutions in Russia. The connections, recorded in logs of the Domain Name System, were never explained, and the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank denied that they had been communicating all. “Since then, Alfa Bank’s lawyers in the United States have carried out an aggressive campaign to uncover the identity of the sources who gathered the D.N.S. logs, filing lawsuits and serving subpoenas on some of America’s leading computer experts, some of whom helped decipher the logs for The New Yorker," Filkins writes. "Two lawsuits—filed against ‘John Doe et al.,’ the unidentified scientists who discovered the seeming evidence of communication—claim, without offering evidence, that malicious people doctored the data, in an effort to smear Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign. Remarkably, Alfa Bank’s legal efforts are proceeding in parallel with the Justice Department and its allies in the conservative press … In recent weeks, scientists and others quoted in my story have been summoned to testify to a grand jury impanelled by [U.S. Attorney John Durham]. It is unclear whether lawyers for the Justice Department and Alfa Bank are working together, but they share an interest in pursuing people who have investigated Trump’s ties to Russia. ‘There’s a unity of purpose,’ one lawyer involved in the litigation told me.”

• Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist, approved the release of almost 1,000 pages of materials to the DOJ as part of Durham's probe. The decision follows Ratcliffe’s earlier declassification of notes by former CIA director John Brennan, which current and former officials criticized as a political maneuver to bolster the president's claims that Obama administration officials conspired against him. (Shane Harris)
• The DOJ acknowledged that FBI notes given to Michael Flynn’s defense team contained altered information. Government lawyers said they inadvertently altered dates on copies of notes from two former senior FBI officials that were turned over to the former national security adviser's defense team and filed to the court as potentially exculpatory evidence. (Spencer Hsu and Matt Zapotosky)
• ICE announced 128 immigration arrests in “sanctuary” cities as part of a wider pre-election operation. “Privately, ICE and DHS officials acknowledged that the number of suspects taken into custody so far by the ‘sanctuary op’ did not amount to a major increase in arrests,” Nick Miroff reports. "While ICE officials have criticized sanctuary policies since the Obama administration, the messaging effort behind this month’s campaign has left critics warning a new line has been crossed in the deepening politicization of immigration enforcement during the Trump era.” 
• The White House installed a 2016 Trump campaign surrogate inside the CIA. Bert Mizusawa has been serving as a senior adviser for national security technology and business integration at the agency since earlier this year, an unusual position to be filled by a political person. (Politico)

Facebook expanding restrictions on election ads.

“Facebook said it plans to temporarily suspend all political and issue-based advertising after polls close Nov. 3, a move the company said was intended to limit confusion, misinformation and abuse of its services in the days after the presidential election,” Elizabeth Dwoskin reports. “The social media giant also said it would remove calls for people to watch the polls when those posts use militaristic or intimidating language. Executives said the policy applies to anyone, including [Trump] … The company has previously said it will suspend running new political ads in the week before the election but will allow ads that have previously been approved to continue running.” 

• Parler and Gab, two social media networks aimed at conservatives, are keeping up apparent Russian disinformation that mainstream platforms have removed. (Craig Timberg)

Other news that should be on your radar

The Trump administration will impose crushing sanctions on Iran.

European allies warn that the move could have devastating humanitarian consequences on a country reeling from the coronavirus and an ongoing currency crisis. The measures will target the few remaining banks not currently subject to secondary sanctions in a move that U.S. allies fear will diminish channels that Iran uses to import humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. (John Hudson)

• Trump tweeted that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be home by Christmas. His comments come as Afghan government and Taliban negotiators continued negotiations in Doha, Qatar, aimed at forging a political solution to the 19-year war. But there is still no evidence that the Taliban has severed relations with al-Qaeda, a key condition in a deal struck with the Trump administration earlier this year. The level of violence has sharply increased across Afghanistan in recent months. (Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung)
• France and Germany will propose sanctions on individuals they deem responsible for the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reiterating that they suspect the Kremlin was involved. (Loveday Morris and Isabelle Khurshudyan)
• American poet Louise Glück won the 2020 Nobel Prize in literature. (Ron Charles) 

Kentucky's attorney general is trying to gag a grand juror.

Daniel Cameron (R), a Mitch McConnell acolyte who is considered by many to be his heir apparent, filed a court motion seeking to bar an unidentified grand juror in the Breonna Taylor case from speaking publicly about the proceedings, which the juror alleges that Cameron continues to mischaracterize. The motion came as the city of Louisville released a trove of documents from the police department’s internal investigation of Taylor’s shooting, which showed other Louisville officers criticizing the raid and casting doubt on the department’s justifications for the warrant. (Marisa Iati, Hannah Knowles and Abigail Hauslohner)

• Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was released on a conditional $1 million bond as he prepares to face trial in George Floyd’s death. (Holly Bailey)
• A White Texas police officer was charged with murder after shooting Jonathan Price, a 31-year-old Black man, while on duty. The Texas Department of Public Safety said the officer, Shaun Lucas, fatally shot Price after he “resisted in a nonthreatening posture and began walking away.” (Mary Beth Gahan, Kim Bellware, Mark Berman)
• In Oakland, Calif., demands by protesters to defund the police are gaining momentum, even as homicides and violence spike amid a city budget also being ravaged by the recession. Soon after the protests started this spring, the city council approved a $14 million reduction to the police budget – a 5 percent cut. Five of the nine council seats are on the ballot in November, and many of those races are turning on the issue of funding. (Scott Wilson and Holly Bailey)
• Maryland lawmakers participated in a police union’s “shoot, don’t shoot” exercises as part of a major mobilization by the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police against new accountability measures that could include the abolition of the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. (Ovetta Wiggins)

Here's a reminder that we live in a relatively young country.

Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., a grandson of President John Tyler, died at 95. His father Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr., alive from 1853 to 1935, was the longtime president of the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Lyon Tyler Sr.’s father, who was born 231 years ago, was the 10th president from 1841 to 1845 and is best remembered for annexing Texas. Lyon's great-grandfather was John Tyler Sr., who lived from 1747 to 1813 and served in the Continental Army and then as governor of Virginia. (NYT)

Social media speed read

Some quickly found parallels to Harris’s facial reactions: 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called out Pence after he name-checked her as “AOC”: 

China stopped transmission of the debate when the country came up:

For two minutes, the fly that landed on Pence’s head had everyone’s attention:

The Biden campaign is now selling fly swatters:

Videos of the day

Stephen Colbert said he spent all of the debate on the middle of his seat: 

Jimmy Kimmel joked that the fly is now Pence’s running mate: