FEATURING ANTONIA JUHASZ – After years of trying to center the issue of climate change during elections, the 2020 Presidential race is finally the one where global warming went from the margins to center-stage. Climate scientists are warning that the November 3rd race is a make-or-break moment not just for the United States but the whole world. 

President Donald Trump has made dismantling climate regulations one of his top priorities and has routinely denigrated renewable energy sources. He has encouraged skepticism on the science, reduced the idea of climate justice to clean air and water, and in the latest instance, installed a Supreme Court justice who thinks climate science is “controversial.”

Antonia Juhasz, leading energy analyst, author, and investigative journalist. She is an award-winning writer who has contributed to Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, CNN.com, The Nation, Ms., The Advocate, and more. She is the author of several books including The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry–And What We Must Do To Stop It and Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill. She recently organized a letter by science and climate journalists published in Rolling Stone warning against the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 

The FBI says it is investigating a disturbing incident that took place on Friday in Texas as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaign bus drove from San Antonio toward Austin for a planned event. While the bus was on the freeway, dozens of President Donald Trump’s supporters surrounded it in trucks and cars. Videos show trucks flying Trump flags trying to run Biden campaign cars off the road. CNN described the incident saying, “People in vehicles that were part of a ‘Trump Train’ began yelling profanities and obscenities and then blockaded the entire Biden entourage, according to a source familiar with the incident. At one point they slowed the tour bus to roughly 20 mph on Interstate 35, the campaign official said. The vehicles slowed down to try to stop the bus in the middle of the highway. The source said there were nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus. Biden staffers were rattled by the event, the source said, though no one was hurt.”  The campaign event had to be canceled in a state where Biden enjoys a slight lead. 

Ahead of the Trump train incident in Texas the President’s son Donald Jr. egged on Trump supporters on social media telling them to give the Biden campaign and specifically Kamala Harris a, “Trump train welcome.”  After Trump’s supporters took Donald Jr. up on his invitation to harass Biden, President Trump posted a video of the trucks surrounding Biden’s campaign bus with a caption saying, “I LOVE TEXAS!” He later bragged about the intimidating incident at a rally in Michigan. Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDonald attempted to claim that Trump doesn’t endorse harming people. But Trump, after learning that the FBI was investigating the incident tweeted angrily, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!” The international human rights organization Amnesty International condemned Trump saying, “Stop condoning violence and intimidation. You have an obligation to prevent this from happening.” There were reports of so-called “Trump Train” intimidation tactics in multiple parts of the nation over the weekend.  

Another incident of violence that took place in Graham, North Carolina, on Saturday also appeared to benefit Trump. Police pepper sprayed and arrested voters who were rallying to the polls in a large group. Many of the voters were African American and wore T-shirts celebrating the late voting rights icon Congressman John Lewis. The participants in the event marched to a confederate statue and then intended to head finally to a polling place to highlight the importance of voting. According to the Washington Post,

FEATURING MATT GERTZ – President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had hoped for an October surprise of the scale of the “Hillary Clinton email scandal” that arguably helped skew the 2016 election in his client’s favor. He shopped around a supposedly shocking story that would reveal Joe Biden’s nefarious business links involving his son Hunter. The Wall Street Journal refused to play so the New York Post did. But the story fell flat. Now, even Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who harped on about it, appears reluctant to slam Hunter Biden for much longer. What is the current status of the rightwing echo chamber between Trump and Fox News ahead of the 2020 election? 

Matt Gertz, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America and his latest article is called Fox News really doesn’t care about voluminous evidence of Trump-Russia malfeasance. 

FEATURING MATTHEW C. MACWILLIAMS – The 2020 Presidential race is about more than a referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency. It is a moment when America decides whether to choose authoritarianism and fascism or not. It turns out a significant number of Americans bend toward authoritarian attitudes whether we know it or not. Now, digging through American history author Matthew MacWilliams traces the historic framework by which we can understand the state of the nation under Donald Trump.

Matthew C. MacWilliams, teaches in the Department of Political Science at UMass-Amherst. He served as Senior Research Advisor (2017-2019) to the Gallup worldwide survey on authoritarianism and has analyzed the rise of authoritarianism in Europe for the Open Society Initiative. His writings on American authoritarianism and Donald Trump have appeared in Politico, Vox, and the London School of Economics blog. His new book is called On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History. 

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that Minnesota’s absentee ballots arriving after Election Day (but mailed before election day), could not be counted. Minnesota’s Secretary of State Steve Simon had extended the deadline by which absentee ballots could be received and still count, in light of the coronavirus pandemic. But the appeals court in a 2-1 ruling said his extension was unconstitutional and sided with Republican state legislators. This means that any absentee ballots being delivered by hand after 3 pm or by mail after 8 pm should be set aside when vote counting commences. “There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution,” wrote the judges that struck down Mr. Simon’s order. Both President Donald Trump and Democratic Nominee Joe Biden headed to Minnesota. While Trump holds an in-person gathering in Rochester, Biden has planned a car rally in St. Paul. The former Vice President leads the state by 8 points to Trump as the President has been busy recruiting former police officers to watch polls in a thinly veiled attempt at voter intimidation. 

Republicans have been adopting Democratic talking points ahead of the election claiming the opposite of reality. For example, President Trump on Friday claimed that if Biden won it would be because the Supreme Court helped him win, even though it’s the President who has been ensuring he has a conservative supermajority on the court to help him. And Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick said that if Democrats win his state on election day it will only be, “because they stole it.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been working hard to suppress the vote in Texas insisting on having only one ballot drop-box per county in the vast state. Still Texans have been showing up in droves to vote and as of Friday the early voting totals have exceeded all votes cast in the state four years ago. Across the nation early voting has resulted in 80 million ballots being cast so far – an incredibly high number. 

One heartening trend is that young people are turning out to vote in high numbers as well. Four years ago turnout among voters under the age of 30 was low. That trend appears to be reversing this time. The high stakes election year is prompting Americans to purchase guns at an alarming rate. A record 17 million guns were purchased this year alone. Others are choosing a different approach including some unions discussing the idea of a general strike if Trump wins reelection. 

Trump held an outdoor and very crowded rally in Tampa, Florida on Thursday where several of his supporters were treated for heat exhaustion.

FEATURING JASON BERLIN – In my years as a journalist I have talked about coup attempts, actual coups, and overturned coups on my program many, many times. But never, until now, have I discussed the idea of a coup taking place here in the United States. With a President seeking reelection who has shown absolute determination to break all rules to benefit him personally, there is already plenty of groundwork being laid for Trump to steal the 2020 election. 

Americans are new to the idea of anticipating an undemocratic seizure of power in our nation. But history and the experience of nations show that there is a playbook for coups—but there is also a playbook for how to stop a coup.

For information on how to organize visit www.tallyrally.org. 

Jason Berlin, Founder & Executive Director, Field Team 6. With its army of volunteer heroes, and with its own voter registration app, VOTERIZER.org, Field Team 6 has registered over 28,000 progressive voters in swing states. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in two cases around absentee ballot deadlines. In both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Justices ruled that absentee ballots ought to be counted days after election day, as long as they were postmarked ahead of the election. Newly confirmed Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett did not rule in the cases saying she had not had time to review the documents. In the case of Pennsylvania the court turned down an appeal by state Republicans and in North Carolina justices allowed a lower court ruling to stand so that voters can ensure their ballots are counted up to nine days after the election. In the Pennsylvania ruling the 3 conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh appeared to indicate that they could potentially rehear the case and decide against counting ballots after election day. Huffington Post speculated that the justices appear to be “itching to steal the election for Trump.” The rulings are at odds with Monday’s decision on Wisconsin that prevents the counting of mail-in ballots past 8 pm on election day. Meanwhile election officials have announced that millions of mail-in ballots that were sent out have not yet been returned. Some of the discrepancy could be because voters chose to cast ballots in person due to deep mistrust of the Postal Service’s ability to get the ballots delivered on time. A federal judge has now issued a nationwide order for the postal service to boost its services to ensure ballots are delivered on time.

President Donald Trump continues to hold in-person and very crowded rallies across the country to whip up support for his flagging campaign. A common theme is to provoke deep fear about what his rival Joe Biden would bring to America. At one event in Arizona Trump said: “If you vote for Biden, it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas and no Fourth of July together.” Social media users pointed out that this was already the reality for most Americans living in Trump’s America. Both Trump and Biden are campaigning in Tampa as Florida voters witness two polar opposites.

Election officials are reporting massive amounts of rightwing misinformation from anxious voters calling about voter fraud—an issue that Trump and Republicans have boosted to sow doubt in the electoral process. On top of that they have to contend with the potential for violence as Trump and the GOP have also recruited thousands of what they call “poll watchers” to watch voters. And now, hackers are also interfering.

FEATURING CHENJERAI KUMANYIKA – The city of Philadelphia is reeling from yet another police shooting as mass protests have sprung up in the wake of the videotaped killing of Walter Wallace Jr. The young Black man was gunned down in broad daylight in the middle of the street by officers who were several feet away from him. He was apparently in the middle of a mental health crisis and was waving what appeared to be a knife. Now Gov. Tom Wolf, a week before an election where Pennsylvania plays an outsize role as a swing state, has called in the National Guard to help quell protests. 

Chenjerai Kumanyika, Assistant Professor at Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. 

FEATURING JON STERNFELD – The White House recently published a press release from its science office that claimed President Donald Trump was responsible for, “ending the COVID-19 pandemic,” and that he, “has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.” 

The statement would have been true if we lived in an alternate universe in which Trump wasn’t president. The U.S. is now seeing 50 to 80,000 new cases of the virus each day and that number could rise alarmingly to 100,000 a day as we head into the winter months. But if Trump’s version of history holds, we will have disappeared the virus this past summer, the nation will have “turned a corner” on the pandemic every other week, and a vaccine would be miraculously appearing across the country by election day. 

The true history of the COVID-19 pandemic is already being documented and one book wants to set the record straight right from the start.

Jon Sternfeld, freelance writer and editor of Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus. 

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by a wide margin in a new poll of the battleground state of Wisconsin. The Washington Post/ABC poll also found Biden leading in Michigan but more narrowly. According to the Post, “Strong support among women powers Biden’s advantages in both states.” Trump is apparently failing to capture enough white voters to keep him in the White House. According to one analysis of the poll, “The Trumpian appeals that were supposed to work on Whites are failing, whether it’s his fanning of ‘populist’ rage against social distancing or his incitement of racial conflict.” A new Morning Consult poll released the same day as the Post/ABC poll found that 45% of voters blame Republicans and Trump for the stalled Congressional negotiations over economic Covid-related relief. About 40% blamed Democrats. Meanwhile Mr. Biden, who has outraised Trump’s campaign funding in the last weeks of the race, is blitzing voters with TV ads at a rate far higher than the incumbent. 

The pace of early voting continues to break records in the U.S. with more than 70 million people having cast ballots 6 days before the election. That figure is equivalent to about 51% of all ballots cast in the 2016 election. About 40% of early voters this year have cast ballots in battleground states where residents have disproportionate power to select the President. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling that disqualifies Michigan’s mailed-in ballots if they arrive after 8 pm on election night, election officials in that state are now urging voters to send them in immediately in order to be counted. Voters are also being advised to simply drop off absentee ballots to an official drop-box instead of mailing them in. The state Supreme Court in Texas has just ruled in favor of Gov. Greg Abbott’s blatantly suppressive tactic of limiting ballot drop box locations to only one per county. Meanwhile the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies released results of a poll showing widespread fears of election violence in the U.S. Specifically 44% of voters worry that there will be violence if the results are contested. 

Michigan’s State Secretary had enacted a ban on displaying weapons within 100 feet of polling places on Election Day in light of such fears and after a kidnapping plot aimed at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled – but a judge has just overturned her rule. Whitmer just published a piece in The Atlantic saying, “Every time the president ramps up his violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way.” The