Putin rejects Donald Trump's criticism of Biden family business  —  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden's past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump's attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.

Our choice is Joe Biden*  —  This year's general election ballot presents the voter with a dilemma.  We have wrestled with this year's choices, as we imagine many voters have.  Up and down the ticket we are faced with choices in political ideologies, personalities, backgrounds and governing styles.

Health Agency Scraps Coronavirus Ad Campaign, Leaving Santa Claus in the Cold  —  The $250 million federally funded effort had aimed to ‘defeat despair, inspire hope’ on pandemic  —  A federal health agency halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million …

Barrett clears pivotal Senate hurdle ahead of Monday confirmation vote  —  The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle Sunday for Amy Coney Barrett's nomination for the Supreme Court, bringing the 48-year-old judge one step closer to confirmation to the high court.

White House chief of staff: ‘We are not going to control the pandemic’  —  Mike Pence's top adviser tests positive for Covid-19  —  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 …

Election live updates: Trump rallies supporters in N.H.; Biden holds virtual ‘I Will Vote’ concert  —  President Trump is rallying supporters in Londonderry, N.H., on Sunday afternoon, before returning to Washington and holding a “Halloween at the White House” event with first lady Melania Trump.

A Message for Reluctant Trumpers of Good Faith  —  1. Moms and Politics  —  I was talking to my mother about politics last night.  —  That's a dangerous sentence for most of us these days, but in this case it was refreshing and illuminating.  I got out of my bubble a bit …

Conservative News Sites Fuel Voter Fraud Misinformation  —  Breitbart, The Washington Examiner and others amplify false claims of rampant cheating in what a new Harvard study calls a “propaganda feedback loop.”  —  In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, right-leaning news sites with millions …

GOP slowly gaining as early vote total surpasses 2016  —  With nine days before Election Day, more people already have cast ballots in this year's presidential election than voted early or absentee in the 2016 race as the start of in-person early voting in big states led to a surge in turnout in recent days.

Trump plans to fire heads of FBI, CIA and Pentagon if he wins re-election  —  If President Trump wins re-election, he'll move to immediately fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and also expects to replace CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, two people who've discussed …

Kamala Harris to make campaign stop in Texas  —  Harris will be the highest-profile representative from the Biden campaign to visit Texas in person during the general election.  —  Copy link  —  Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's running mate and the California U.S. senator, will be visiting Texas on Friday …

'Deep down, he's a terrified little boy': Bob Woodward, John Bolton and others on Trump  —  The authors of recent exposés, including Mary Trump and Anthony Scaramucci, on the president, his time in office - and what they expect to happen at the polls  —  Interviews by Jude Rogers and Andrew Anthony

Trump-Biden race is tight in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — CBS News Battleground Tracker poll  —  In the final stretch of the campaign, we find three Southern battlegrounds that could still go either way.  Our estimates show Joe Biden with just a two-point edge over President Trump in Florida …

Boston ballot box set on fire, officials say, in ‘disgrace to democracy’  —  A ballot drop box outside the Boston Public Library was set on fire early Sunday morning, according to state and city officials, who say it appears to be a deliberate, criminal attack and called it a “disgrace to democracy.”

Biden rebounds to edge over Trump in Texas, as Hegar slightly narrows Cornyn's lead in Senate race  —  A new Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler poll shows Texas is up for grabs, with the former vice president posting gains among independents, Hispanics.  —  AUSTIN — Former Vice President Joe Biden …

Giuliani's Crew of Misfits and Hucksters Storms Into the Hunter Biden Wars  —  Bo Dietl, Bernie Kerik, Keith Ablow and the authors of “Lucifer's Banker” are all jumping into the saga that Trump hopes will win him a second term.  —  Bo Dietl, the bombastic private investigator, was on a mission.

GOP Senate majority besieged on multiple fronts  —  Democrats began the 2020 election cycle with only a narrow path back to the Senate majority.  But entering the final week before the election, there are competitive races everywhere.  —  Republicans are scrambling resources into red …

Federal disaster team sent, overflow hospital set up as COVID surges in El Paso  —  A surge in lab-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations in far West Texas has prompted state health officials to convert a convention center in El Paso into a makeshift hospital to ease the crush of patients in the state's 6th-largest city.

Why Trump could face a Jimmy Carter scenario  —  Harry Enten polling analysis: Trump is dragging down GOP  —  (CNN)The last president facing re-election troubles like Donald Trump's was Jimmy Carter in 1980.  Injured by recession and impotent against a national crisis, Carter lost big.

Facebook Prepares Measures for Possible Election Unrest  —  Tools include slowing the spread of certain posts and tweaking users' news feeds  —  Facebook Inc. teams have planned for the possibility of trying to calm election-related conflict in the U.S. by deploying internal tools designed for what it calls …

Trump, TV pundits don't have a fracking clue about Pennsylvania and fossil fuels  —  Both President Trump and a small army of TV talking heads were on full alert at Thursday night's debate for a Joe Biden “gaffe” that could change the dynamic of an election that the incumbent seems to be losing by a large margin.