White House chief of staff: 'We are not going to control the pandemic'

Washington (CNN)White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Sunday that the US is "not going to control" the coronavirus pandemic, as cases surge across the country and nearly 225,000 Americans have died from the virus.

"We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas," Meadows told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."

The comments from President Donald Trump's chief of staff come as coronavirus cases surge across the US and the administration continues to consistently disregard advice from government health experts to wear masks, social distance and avoid large gatherings as a way to curb the spread of the virus. The White House is also facing a potential second outbreak of the virus after at least five people in Pence's inner circle have tested positive in recent days, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Pressed by Tapper on why the US isn't going to get the pandemic under control, Meadows said: "Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu." He added that the Trump administration is "making efforts to contain it."




https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/25/politics/mark-meadows-controlling-coronavirus-pandemic-cnntv/index.html

Joe Biden leads in Texas in latest poll

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden leads in Texas in a poll of more than 3,000 likely voters released Thursday that showed him with a 1-percentage point edge over President Donald Trump.

The Morning Consult poll of 3,347 likely voters conducted between Oct. 11 and 20 carries a margin of error of 1.7 points. It showed Biden leading Trump 48 to 47.

It’s not the first to show Biden with a lead in Texas, but it’s by far the largest survey to show such a result. A Public Policy Polling survey of 721 likely voters released earlier this month showed Biden leading 48-49.

On Wednesday, a Quinnipiac University survey showed Biden and President Donald Trump in a dead heat in Texas.

The Morning Consult poll comes just hours before Biden and Trump are scheduled to meet for their final . It showed a close Senate contest as well, with Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn leading Democratic challenger MJ Hegar, a former Air Force pilot, by five percentage points.

It’s the latest poll to show Texas is staring down its first competitive presidential race in decades. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.


https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Joe-Biden-leads-Texas-in-latest-poll-15667815.php

Jon Ralston's Nevada Early Voting Blog - 10/25/20 - 9:15 a.m.

Good morning, fellow ravenous data types. Here's where we are after eight days of early voting:

Looks as if the SOS did update last night, but it did not pop through (for me at least). The latest — and I am going to add Clark in-person/mail (which I now have):

Clark County Dems firewall: 66,000 (44,000 at this time in 2016)

Statewide Dems lead: 54,000 (31,000 at same time in 2016)

The percentage leads are slightly above 2016 — remember there were 250,000 fewer voters four years ago:

Dem lead is 8 percentage points (43-35); it was 7 points at this time in 2016.

Clark lead is 15 points (46-31); it was the same four years ago at this time (47-32)

(Remember mail Monday could change this.)

So I predicted Saturday after the rurals were added, the statewide Dems lead would be about 55K. And...voila!

Not much change from Friday, although I always caution that the mail comes in batches and very little likely to be processed over the weekend. Here are some numbers/context — and I will update charts and tables later (remember all my apple/orange caveats because the patterns are so different this year):

Total voted: 670K (just under 40 percent of active voters)

For contrast, 780,000 cast ballots by early/mail voting for the entire election in 2016. That was more than two-thirds of the vote. A comparable number this year would probably be about 1 million voters (depends, of course, on turnout).




https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3

Harris County's early votes show more women, more young adults casting ballots

HOUSTON — Tens of thousands of voters continue to turn out to the polls in Harris County this weekend.

The county already broke its record for number of ballots cast during early voting.

The high-voter turnout trend is not restricted to Harris County. Texans have cast more early votes than residents of any other state in the country so far.

“Voting this year is a cool thing to do,” said Houston mayor Sylvester Turner at a voting event at the Toyota Center.

The basketball arena has been turned into a polling site during the pandemic.
The Harris County Clerk’s Office and MTV arranged Saturday’s event to encourage voters to continue to cast ballots early.

“If we do not continue to treat voting as something our ancestors had to fight for, it will casually be one of those things that (becomes), 'Oh, we don’t have to do that,’” singer Kam Franklin said.

The push to make voting more accessible to Harris County residents has been working. More than 1 million early voting ballots were cast in the county. More than 900,000 of the ballots were cast in person.



https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/harris-countys-early-votes-show-more-women-more-young-adults-casting-ballots/285-426a9f40-a3c4-4175-ad4a-7444fc89e05e

North Texas Counties See Record Voter Turnout With 1 Week Of Early Voting Left

A steady stream of voters at Irving City Hall Saturday added to what has become a record-breaking tally.

“There’s some things you just shouldn’t put off to tomorrow, and this is one of them,” Cat Lara, a Dallas County voter, said.

Dallas, Denton, Collin and Tarrant counties have already passed 2016 totals for early and mail-in votes. Nearly 600,000 ballots have been cast in Dallas County alone.

In Denton and Collin counties, voter turnout is already over 50%.

“You know a lot of people have already voted in early voting. I think, probably you’ll see a lot of voters coming out November 3rd,” Collin Huckaba, a Dallas County voter, said.

Concern over how many people will turn out on the actual Election Day is what was driving a number of voters to get to the polls on Saturday.

“I wanted to avoid the crowds, if there were any. I just felt that it was better,” Joseph Clark, a Dallas County voter, said.


https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/10/24/north-texas-counties-record-voter-turnout-one-week-early-voting-left/

Democrats Hope 2020 Is the Year They Flip the Texas House

After a generation under unified Republican control, Texas is a battleground at every level of government this year. President Trump and Senator John Cornyn are fighting for their political lives, and five Republican-held congressional seats are in danger of flipping.

But some of the most consequential political battles in Texas are taking place across two dozen contested races for the Texas State House, which Republicans have controlled since 2003. To win a majority, Democrats must flip nine of the chamber’s 150 seats — the same number of Republican-held districts Beto O’Rourke carried during his 2018 Senate race, when he was the first Texas Democrat to make a competitive run for Senate or governor in a generation.

Mr. O’Rourke has organized nightly online phone banks that are making about three million phone calls a week to voters during the campaign’s final stretch. His organization helped register about 200,000 Texas Democratic voters in an attempt to finish a political transformation of Texas that began with his Senate race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/us/politics/texas-house-democrats-republicans.html



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/us/politics/texas-house-democrats-republicans.html

Jon Ralston's Nevada Early Voting Blog - 10/24/20 - 7:00 p.m.

No SOS update today -- I feel like a man without nourishment -- so can't definitively update statewide outlook with rural numbers.

I did get a deeper Clark breakdown and the underlying fundamentals for the Republicans in key down-ticket races are shaky right now. Let me emphasize: A lot of people have voted in Clark County (426,000, including 231,000 by mail and 195,000 in seven days of early voting), at least 40 percent and perhaps closer to half of all who will vote this cycle in Southern Nevada. But there are still 800,000 or so Clark County active voters who have still not voted, so nothing is set in stone.

But, consider these numbers underneath the 67K-ballot firewall the Dems have in Clark:

CD3 (Lee): D+16K, down slightly from last update. 8-point lead. About 40 percent of the vote is in.

CD4 (Clark part) (Horsford): D+22K, slightly up from last update. 17-point lead. Also close to 40 percent in.

SD5 (Woodhouse): D+3.7K, slightly higher than last update. 12-point lead. Again, about 40 percent in.

SD6(Cannizzaro): D+3.7K, slight decrease. 11-point lead. More than 40 percent of the vote is in.

The story is the same in nearly every key Assembly district, too: Republicans are building up sizable margins in early voting, but they are getting overwhelmed by the mail numbers. You can see the gap slowly tightening in the amount of mail vs. the early numbers, but two questions are fundamental to this election:

No. 1 -- Can the Dems keep doing this in the email?

No. 2 -- Will there be enough votes left on Election Day for the GOP to catch up?

Unless there is more crossover going towards the GOP than usual in Nevada, from top to bottom, if both parties get out their voters, the GOP will always lose here. But if they can hold their own in Week 2 of early/mail voting and win Election Day by a lot, they can still win almost any of these races from top to bottom.

I may update later with Clark and Washoe if they report....



https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3

MI-03: Independent poll shows Democrats Biden, Scholten in the lead.

GA-07: These Atlanta suburbs show how Georgia has become a 2020 battleground state

In a suburban county northeast of Atlanta, Melissa Clink has been pursuing an ambitious goal.

We’ve been working on normalizing being a Democrat in Forsyth County for quite some time,” she said.

Clink is the chairwoman of the local Democratic Party in a county that has long been a Republican stronghold. Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential race by 71.71% and Republican Brian Kemp won the 2018 gubernatorial race by 70.57%.

Neighboring Gwinnett County tells a different story. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the county with 50.20% — the first time Gwinnett chose a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. In 2018, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams won Gwinnett County by 14 percentage points.

The reliably Republican Forsyth and increasingly Democratic Gwinnett meet in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. In 2018, the 7th District was the closest House election in the nation. Incumbent Republican Rep. Rob Woodall narrowly fended off Democratic challenger Carolyn Bourdeaux by 0.2% after a recount.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/24/georgia-7th-congressional-district-shows-how-state-has-become-2020-battleground.html

NEW FLIPPABLE: Steven Polgar for NY-AD03

When we invest in our education system, New York sees that investment pay off. We need to improve our public schools and give affordable options for students that want to go to college. While the Excelsior Scholarship was a great first step towards achieving that goal, it needs to be expanded. Many Long Islanders still cannot afford college, and that is because the current program does not account for the cost of living and the number of children in a household.


We need more science and fact-based policies. I support our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Vaccines helped us stop Polio in the United States. I would support free vaccines for everyone to fight the spread of coronavirus to help keep schools and businesses open.

Living on an island, if we don't take immediate action climate change will devastate our community. That is why we need to invest in green energy, the way of the future.

By investing in wind and solar technology, Long Island can become the green energy hub that powers the entire region. We can create high-quality, high-paying union jobs based around manufacturing, repairing, and selling these upcoming technologies.

We also need to fix our local environmental and public health disasters. That means solving the landfill crisis and ensuring our water and air quality are protected.

COVID-19 has devastated our communities. As your Assemblyman, I will make sure our small businesses get the help they so desperately need in the form of tax credits and grants. This will ensure that in the wake of the pandemic, Main Street will not only survive, but thrive.

Unfortunately, this virus is not going away. It is very likely we will still be dealing with its effects long into 2021. That is why I will make sure testing, contact tracing, and vaccines are easily accessible to all New Yorkers, regardless of their financial situation.

We must also ensure that our schools do not see their crucial funding taken away due to budget shortfalls. I will put pressure on our federal delegation and make sure we get help from the federal government. Our children are our future and should not be forced to suffer due to events that are out of their control.

I support the goals of the New York Health Act, which would give healthcare to all New Yorkers and reduce medical costs and prescription drug costs for a majority of residents and businesses throughout Brookhaven. However, this will take time to implement, and our community needs help now. I will put pressure on our federal delegation to take action and ensure we do not get left behind. This includes ensuring New York and the United States can negotiate with drug companies just like so many developed nations around the world, that way we are no longer forced to pay exorbitant amounts for our prescription drugs.

I support the goals of the New York Health Act, which would give healthcare to all New Yorkers and reduce medical costs and prescription drug costs for a majority of residents and businesses throughout Brookhaven. However, this will take time to implement, and our community needs help now. I will put pressure on our federal delegation to take action and ensure we do not get left behind. This includes ensuring New York and the United States can negotiate with drug companies just like so many developed nations around the world, that way we are no longer forced to pay exorbitant amounts for our prescription drugs.

Supports Repealing the SALT Deduction Cap (Federal law).

Supports lowering taxes on anyone making a million dollars a year or less.

Stop tax loopholes for billion-dollar corporations.

Prosecute corrupt politicians that are giving overpriced contracts to their friends, family, or donors.






https://stevepolgar.com