The latest on the 2020 election and SCOTUS battle

Pennsylvania’s attorney general told CNN his office is investigating allegations the United States Postal Service is not complying with a court order that mail be fully processed. 

“These reports are deeply concerning—and we are on it,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told CNN in a statement. “My office is investigating this situation and any others we are alerted to while our injunction on these practices is in place. We are reviewing this matter and will take additional action in court.” 

A union source speaking to CNN verified that there have been a number of recent instances of mail not being fully processed, which has slowed on-time delivery in the greater Philadelphia area. The source said they believe these instances could amount to injunction violations and confirmed they are beginning to be investigated by the union itself.

The allegations, first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, claimed that USPS management had ordered Philadelphia employees to stop mail processing machines before all the mail had been sorted.

CNN has reached out to the USPS for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wears a hat that says The War Boys and smokes a cigarette at a rally in Delta Park on Saturday, September 26, in Portland, Oregon.

The leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group thrust into the spotlight earlier this week during the presidential debate, is also the leader of the grassroots group Latinos for Trump.

Enrique Tarrio told CNN on Thursday that there are two Latinos for Trump movements — one is run by the campaign, while the other is a grassroots movement started in 2016.

News of Tarrio’s tie to the grassroots movement supporting the President comes days after President Trump refused to disavow White supremacists during Tuesday’s presidential debate, instead using his allotted time to blame violence on what he called “antifa and the left” and to tell the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” The day after the debate, Trump claimed he had no idea who the Proud Boys were.

Based in Miami, the grassroots group headed by Tarrio has been active during the 2020 election cycle, knocking on doors during the coronavirus pandemic to reach potential voters. Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Tarrio said his Latinos for Trump group believes “all gun laws are unconstitutional.”

Shortly after Trump’s remarks during the debate, his words were embraced in memes and other social media posts by accounts that purported to be from Proud Boys members. Some emblazoned the phrase “stand back and stand by” onto the group’s logos, while others treated the President’s choice of the words “stand by” as a sort of rallying cry — and have since been promoting it.

Although it claims a diverse membership — Tarrio says he is Cuban American — the Proud Boys group lists among its central tenets a belief in “closed borders” and the aim of “reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism.”

The Anti-Defamation League has labeled the Proud Boys ideology “misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigration.”

Pres. Richard Nixon, left, poses with Rev. John Huffman, Jr., right, after attending Easter services with his family at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church, April 6, 1969, Key Biscayne, Florida.

President Richard Nixon’s former pastor, who is a lifelong Republican, tells CNN that on Friday he and others are launching “Pro-life Evangelicals for Biden,” a bipartisan group made up of about 10 senior evangelical leaders. 

John Huffman was Nixon’s pastor in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Florida, and preached at the White House at Nixon’s request. 

Huffman said this is the first time he is endorsing a candidate for president since he was ordained in 1965. 

“The evangelical movement we represent seems to have focused so much on the pro-life aspect of the President’s catering, in fact grooming, of the evangelical movement,” he said.

He said the group is not receiving any funding or sponsorship from the Democratic Party and is not an arm of the Biden campaign. “We are articulating where we are as human beings who take a strong position on this, and are speaking to the parties and to individual voters, not for any political party,” Huffman said.

The announcement comes as Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Donald Trump ramp up efforts to win over evangelical and faith voters. Earlier on Thursday, the Biden campaign announced three new ads that highlights Biden’s faith and will air on faith-based TV and radio programs.

The Trump campaign on Thursday launched a broadside against the Commission on Presidential Debates with a substantial amount of opposition research, claiming that the group, which defines itself as a private, nonpartisan 501c3 organization, is not, and reiterating that President Trump does not want any changes to the rules.

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said the commission is made up of “permanent swamp monsters” and is “not representative of America as a whole.”

The Trump campaign, Miller said during a call with reporters, “(does) not want any changes to what has already been laid out and what has been agreed to for the second and third debate, period, point blank.”

He later added, “There shouldn’t be any changes. We do not want any changes. This is purely a move by the Biden camp and their allies in the CPD.”

Max Miller, who is leading negotiations with the commission, told reporters that in a Wednesday morning meeting, the Biden campaign suggested (but did not demand, he noted), “opening and closing statements, directing questions from the moderator to each candidate, limiting the open discussion from 11 minutes to almost nothing just to regain more control and structure, and the mute button issue did come up.” 

Those suggestions came from Brady Williamson of the Biden campaign, he said.

Jason Miller appeared to leave Trump’s participation up in the air.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien listed a series of members of the commission and their previous comments and actions he perceived as biased against the Trump campaign. 

Those members included remarks in Nantucket Magazine from CPD co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf, Democratic contributions from co-chair Dorothy Ridings, and comments and Democratic contributions from co-chair Kenneth Wollack. He also listed off previous comments and/or contributions from board members Jane Harman, Antonia Hernandez, Rev. John Jenkins, Newt Minow, Richard Parsons, and Olympia Snowe.

“Joe Biden is a creature of this city, he’s been cozying up to this city’s wheelers and dealers and insiders for the last half century, and lo and behold, that’s exactly who runs this commission,” Stepien said.

Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates responded to the Trump comments in a statement saying, “We are running our campaign, not running the debates. Since June, we have consistently said we would participate in all three debates, under rules that the CPD established.” 

Moderator Chris Wallace placed the bulk of the blame on President Trump Thursday for sending the debate into utter chaos.

Wallace told his Fox News colleague Bill Hemmer that Trump “bears the primary responsibility for what happened.”

“It was frustrating for me because I tried hard to prepare for a serious debate, much more frustrating and more importantly for the American people because they didn’t get the debate they wanted that they deserved.”

Wallace, who said that he wished he had stepped in more seriously sooner, went on to describe the missed opportunity as “a loss for the country.”

Asked by Hemmer if he had rewatched the debate, Wallace replied, “Oh, God no. Oh, God no. It wasn’t something that I want to revisit. Look, it took me four years to re-watch the Trump-Clinton debate from 2016, which I very much enjoyed, and it still took me four years to look. This is going to take a while before I watch this one again.”

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Joe Biden’s campaign is launching an in-person canvassing effort in swing states after months of avoiding face-to-face outreach to potential voters due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Democratic nominee’s decision to go door-to-door in an effort to reach those who had proven difficult to contact by phone or online follows concerns from some party officials and activist groups that Biden was ceding an advantage to President Trump, whose campaign has been canvassing in-person for months.

News that Biden would begin in-person canvassing was first reported by The Associated Press.

Biden’s campaign said its door-to-door efforts will follow safety measures, including providing volunteers with masks as well as checking their temperatures and completing a symptom questionnaire before sending them out. Those who live in a neighborhood will receive text messages alerting them that a volunteer is there and could be knocking on their doors.

In-person canvassing will be underway in Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania this weekend, and begin in other states next week, a senior Biden aide said.

Visit CNN’s Election Center for full coverage of the 2020 race

US President Donald Trump makes his way to board Air Force One before departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on October 1, 2020. 

President Trump’s planned rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Saturday is no longer happening in the city.

The campaign announced Thursday afternoon that the rally would instead take place in Janesville, Wisconsin, which straddles the Illinois border and claims the move was because of an issue with the venue – “We had a change of venue. There was an issue with the lease at the first location. Not covid-related. ” 

The mayor of La Crosse had said on CNN earlier in the day he hoped Trump would cancel the airport hangar rally or postpone the event amid heightened coronavirus cases in the city.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers told reporters Thursday “both La Crosse and Green Bay are two of the hottest hot spots in the state and in the nation and it makes no sense to me that President Trump come for his campaign events there,” referring to a recent uptick in reported Covid-19 cases in the state.

Evers added, “Green Bay fits that same category for sure and I know the mayors of both cities have asked the president not to come.”

Janesville is in the task force-defined “orange zone” and is in a different part of the state and different media market from La Crosse.

Jeff Flynt, the deputy executive of Brown County, Wisconsin, where Green Bay is located, told CNN there were no changes to that rally.

“To the best of my knowledge at this time, the rally for President Trump is still going on as planned,” Flynt said.

CNN’s Gregory Lemos contributed to this report.

Amazon has pulled merchandise featuring the words “stand back” and “stand by,” a phrase now associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right collective that the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a hate group. 

Online auction and sales site eBay also said on Thursday that it was taking steps to review and remove Proud Boys items from its site.

According to a spokesperson for the company, eBay is “reviewing and removing” the items under the company’s policy that prohibits offensive materials.

The words were said by President Trump at Tuesday’s debate when he refused to condemn White supremacists for inciting violence at anti-police brutality demonstrations across the country. 

“Who would you like me to condemn?” Trump asked by moderator Chris Wallace. Joe Biden, Democratic nominee, could be heard twice saying, “Proud Boys.”

Trump continued: “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem.”

Some background: Members of the Proud Boys, have been seen in their black and yellow polo shirt uniforms at multiple 2020 Trump campaign rallies. Founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, the group is known for its anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric and describes members as “Western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”

The group’s site argues its allure stems from the fact that young American men and women are “finished” with “apology culture” but disavows links to the alt-right or to White supremacists. McInnes is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating the organization a hate group.

CNN’s Maegan Vazquez and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a visit to Lake Jackson, Texas on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation Thursday limiting the amount of drop-off locations for mail-in ballots to one site per county. 

The move significantly affects Harris County, which is the state’s largest county by population and one of the largest in the country, a Democratic stronghold, and a massive area in size. It must now reduce its 11 drop-off locations down to one starting on Friday.

Travis County, which includes the reliably Democratic city of Austin, must limit its four drop-off locations to one.

Other large counties — like Tarrant, Dallas, and El Paso County — only had one drop-off location already in place.  

The governor said in a statement the order was made to enhance ballot security. It also allows poll watchers to observe the in-person delivery of mail-in ballots by voters, but it could severely limit access for many voters.  

The decision has already drawn fire from Texas Democrats.

The state’s Democratic party chair, Gilberto Hinojosa, labeled it a “blatant voter suppression tactic” in a press release.

The group, Let America Vote, also blasted the move in a statement.

“The governor is making it harder for people to vote in the middle of a global pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 16,000 Texans. It is a shameful, blatant act of voter suppression that will disproportionately impact the large number of Black and Latinx voters in Texas’ biggest counties,” the group said. 

In July, Abbott issued an order expanding the amount of time for early voting by six days and for hand-delivering mail-in ballots out of safety concerns due to the pandemic.

Read up about what you need to know about mail-in voting in the US.

The San Antonio Spurs hold a drive in voter registration event on September 15, 2020 in San Antonio, Texas at AT&T Center. 

Professional sports teams in Texas have teamed up with civic organizations, including the Texas NAACP, to help get out the vote this November.

The goal is to encourage eligible voters to prepare for and participate in the upcoming elections, with each organization working on voter education and awareness efforts. 

Some of these sports organizations have also offered their facilities as voting locations, including the San Antonio Spurs’ home arena, the AT&T Center. The center will serve as a Bexar County polling site for early voting days from Oct. 13-30 and Election Day on Nov. 3.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll of Texas voters found 47% of likely voters plan on voting at an early voting location, while 38% plan on voting in person, and 13% plan on voting by mail/absentee ballots.

The teams involved in the effort include: