It was the week of dueling town halls. President Trump did not want to do a virtual debate but he’s trailing in the polls. Did his combative town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie make the case that voters should change their minds and re-elect him? Christine Emba says the more people see of Trump being combative, it helps Biden. Or, as Tim Carney puts it, is Joe Biden rising in the polls because there’s been no effective critique of him from the right, the left, or the media?

Josh Barro says Republicans appear to be preparing to lose the election and their last move — instead of working on another coronavirus relief package that might actually help them in this election — is to solidify a conservative majority on the Supreme Court as a bulwark to an impending Democratic majority in government. Tim Carney says that’s not really the whole story: this has always been Mitch McConnell’s aim. What did we learn from Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing? And have both the right and left gone astray with how they articulate the stakes of abortion access and prohibition in the US?

Finally: Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas at Austin has developed a model to gauge the risks of reopening schools for in-person instruction based on the spread of the coronavirus in communities. She says most localities are taking baby steps based on what they see in the data — could, and should, they be more bold?