CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Purdue football team improved to 2-0 on the season with a 31-24 victory at Illinois on Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois.
The Boilermakers improved to 2-0 for the first time since 2007 and are 2-0 in Big Ten action for the first time since 2010.
Sophomore wide receiver David Bell had a historic showing in the win, as he set a school record with his fifth consecutive game with 100-plus receiving yards. He finished the day with nine catches for 122 yards with a touchdown.
Junior quarterback Aidan O'Connell was 29-for-36 for 376 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions to record his second career 300-plus yard passing performance. On the other side of the ball, the sophomore safety Jalen Graham recovered two fumbles, one returned for a touchdown. The defense also totaled had two interceptions and got a key fourth-down stop in the final two minutes to halt an Illini drive.
Purdue jumped out to a 14-0 lead, thanks to a one-yard touchdown run by junior Zander Horvath less than six minutes into the game and a 45-yard touchdown catch by sophomore wide receiver Milton Wright early in the second quarter.
Illinois cut its deficit in half with a seven-yard touchdown run with 4:46 left in the first half, and both teams traded field goals in the final 73 seconds to send Purdue to the locker room with a 17-10 halftime advantage.
Bell caught a three-yard touchdown pass with 8:47 left in the third quarter to extend Purdue's lead to 24-10, and the Boilermakers made it 31-10 when Graham recovered the fumble in the end zone for the touchdown. It was the second fumble recovery of the day for Graham, who became the first Boilermaker to recover a pair of fumbles in a game since 2011.
The defense had Illinois backed up on its own two-yard line before the fumble was forced by redshirt freshman Marvin Grant and Graham recovered it in the end zone. The fumble returned for a touchdown is Purdue's first since 2015.
Illinois made it 31-17 with a touchdown pass with 11:44 left in the game, and added another touchdown through the air with 6:36 left to cut the advantage to 31-24. The Illini got the ball back with 2:55 left on their own 48 yard line and advanced the ball to the Purdue 15. However, the Boilermaker defense forced three incompletions before a completed pass on fourth and 10 went for seven yards.
The turnover on downs gave Purdue the ball back on its own eight with 1:50 left. On third and 11 from the seven, O'Connell connected with Bell for a 27-yard completion to seal the victory.
Purdue, which knotted the all-time series against Illinois at 45-45-6, has won four of the last five meetings between the two clubs and five in a row in Champaign. Since 1994, the Boilermakers are 15-6 against the Illini and 9-2 at Memorial Stadium.
Horvath rushed for 11 yards with a touchdown and added six catches for 55 yards, both career-high totals. Wright added seven catches for 85 yards, also both career-best marks.
Purdue has had a 200-yard passer (O'Connell), 100-yard receiver (Bell) and a 100-yard rusher (Horvath) in both games this season.
Defensively, Graham had two fumble recoveries, while DaMarcus Mitchell had a team-best and career-high 11 total tackles, five solo, with a sack.
Up next, Purdue travels to Wisconsin on November 7. Kickoff at Camp Randall Stadium is set for 3:30 p.m. ET, with the contest broadcast on ABC and the Purdue Radio Network.
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Nancy Foster, of the American Hospital Association, about the strain the coronavirus pandemic is putting on U.S. hospitals — and why so many struggle with capacity.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You may be surprised to learn that the U.S. has fewer hospitals and hospital beds per capita than almost all other industrial nations, including Italy, France and the U.K. That's according to analysis by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation. We wanted to learn more about why this is the case and how it could be affecting efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, so we've called Nancy Foster. She is vice president for quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association, and she's with us now.
Nancy Foster, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
NANCY FOSTER: My pleasure to be with you today. Thank you, Michel.
MARTIN: So before we jump in, as we mentioned, there are surges across the country. And I'm imagining as part of your work, you're hearing from hospitals across the country about what they're experiencing. Like, what are some of the top lines that they're telling you?
FOSTER: You are exactly right. We are hearing from hospitals across the country. They are concerned because there are growing numbers of positive patients in their communities. Many of our members are already reaching capacity or have really struggled to keep enough staff on duty in order to care for all who are coming to them.
MARTIN: So it's a staffing problem as well as an infrastructure problem.
FOSTER: It is.
MARTIN: So I want to talk about that infrastructure issue. I mean, according to data analysis by the Peterson Center on Health Care and the Kaiser Family Foundation that we cited earlier, the U.S. actually has fewer hospitals and hospital beds per capita than other industrialized nations, including Italy, China and South Korea. This is before the pandemic. Why is that?
FOSTER: In the U.S., we tend to use our hospitals to care for only those who are critically ill or, for instance, giving birth to a baby. Our length of stay in hospitals is generally less than that in other countries, so we tend to keep people in the hospital less time. We send them home to recuperate and provide support to them while they're at home. Or if they need additional support, we send them to skilled nursing facilities or rehab facilities in order to recuperate from whatever brought them to the hospital in the first place.
MARTIN: So this reflects - what? - a different philosophy about how care should be delivered?
FOSTER: It does - a different utilization of the facilities.
MARTIN: What happens, though, if a hospital gets overwhelmed? What does that affect their ability to do?
FOSTER: Each of these jurisdictions has a plan for what to do when there is an emergency that overwhelms an individual hospital. And that plan will draw on other resources in the community. And that plan will also draw on available resources from the federal government or from hospitals across the country in sort of a volunteer effort to step forward and help each other out. We've seen nurses and doctors from other parts of the country voluntarily move to hard-hit communities in order to support the caregivers there.
The challenge we're facing right now is that the outbreak is so widespread that it's harder to find critical health care workers who are available to move into some of those hardest-hit areas. And so it is an ongoing challenge for us to try to meet the needs of patients in all areas of the country right now.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, as we know, we're nearing the end of this election season. No matter who wins the election, we know that this health crisis will be with us for a while. And a number of commentators have observed that this crisis has laid bare issues that needed to be addressed anyway - you know, about issues around access to health care and things of the like as well as a number of issues, safety issues - the access to protective equipment, all these other supply chain issues.
Is there something that you would point attention to that this crisis has revealed that you think the public should be aware of anyway when it comes to the question of hospital capacity or the ability - of hospitals having what they need to serve the country in the days that - in the days and months ahead? Has something been revealed that you think people should know about anyway?
FOSTER: This virus has tested our ability to work collaboratively as a team across the health care continuum, keeping us integrated from public health to hospital to physician office to post-acute care setting or nursing homes so that we are effectively working as a collaborative team is something that has been absolutely necessary in this pandemic and something we need to work on for the future so that we are better caring for individuals in our communities.
MARTIN: That is Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Nellie Peshkov, formerly Reddit’s VP of People and Culture, is now Chief People Officer. Her appointment to the C-suite is part of the much-needed, growing trend of tech companies elevating employees focused on diversity and inclusion to the highest leadership ranks.
Uber Eats made this change in June, following racial justice protests around the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Uber Eats said it wanted to make it easier for customers to support Black-owned businesses in the U.S. and Canada. To qualify, the restaurant must be a small or medium-sized business and, therefore, not part of a franchise. In contrast, delivery fees are still in place for other restaurants.
In one of these claims, viewed by TechCrunch, a customer says Uber Eats violates the Unruh civil Rights Act by “charging discriminatory delivery fees based on race (of the business owner).” That claim seeks $12,000 as well as a permanent injunction that would prevent Uber from continuing to offer free delivery from Black-owned restaurants.
Uber driver claims rating system is racially biased
Uber is no stranger to lawsuits, so this one shouldn’t come as a surprise. Uber is now facing a lawsuit regarding its customer ratings and how the company deactivates drivers whose ratings fall below a certain threshold. The suit alleges the system “constitues race discrimination, as it is widely recognized that customer evaluations of workers are frequently racially biased.”
In a statement to NPR, Uber called the suit “flimsy” and said “ridesharing has greatly reduced bias for both drivers and riders, who now have fairer, more equitable access to work and transportation than ever before.”
Yes on Prop 22 gets another $3.75 million influx of cash
DoorDash put in an additional $3.75 million into the Yes on 22 campaign, according to a late contribution filing. Proposition 22 is the California ballot measure that aims to keep gig workers classified as independent contractors.
The latest influx of cash brought Yes on 22’s total contributions north of $200 million. As of October 14, the campaign had raised $189 million. But thanks to a number of late contributions, the total put toward Yes on 22 comes out to about $202,955,106.38, or, $203 million.
Prop 22 hit the most-funded California ballot measure long ago, but it’s now surpassed the $200 million mark.
TechCrunch Sessions: Justice is back
I am pleased to announce TechCrunch Sessions: Justice is officially happening again! Save the date for March 3, 2021.
We’ll explore inclusive hiring, access to funding for Black, Latinx and Indigenous people, and workplace tools to foster inclusion and belonging. We’ll also examine the experiences of gig workers and formerly incarcerated people who are often left out of Silicon Valley’s wealth cycle. Rounding out the program will be a discussion about the role of venture capital in creating a more inclusive tech ecosystem. We’ll discuss all of that and more at TC Sessions: Justice.
DURHAM, N.C. – Duke field hockey closed out the fall regular season on top, picking up its second straight shutout with a 2-0 triumph over Virginia on Saturday afternoon on Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium.
The Blue Devils (2-6, 1-4 ACC) used two goals in the first half to earn its first conference victory of the season while its stellar defense shut out the Cavaliers (3-6, 2-3 ACC).
"I feel great about the game today, obviously getting the win, " head coach Pam Bustin said. "We've been working really hard to get a conference win this fall and it's been a progression so I'm really proud of the kids for sticking to it. I thought we had other opportunities to put even more on the board, but it was a really good battle on both ends."
Freshman Darcy Bourne gave the Blue Devils an early lead in the third minute, scoring off Duke's first penalty corner of the contest. Senior Lily Posternak inserted the ball to senior Lexi Davidson who set up Bourne's second tally of the season for the game-winning goal.
Duke was aggressive in the first period, taking six shots while drawing four penalty corners in the frame.
Scoring in back-to-back contests, graduate student Eva Nunnink found the back of the cage off a corner in the 27th minute of action. Sophomore Hannah Miller assisted on the insert while Davidson garnered her second dime of the contest with the stick stop as Nunnink slipped the ball past the goaltender.
Freshman Alayna Burns nearly gave Duke a 3-0 advantage in the second half, but her goal was waved off after a video review. Duke saw a few opportunities in the fourth period but finished the game with a 2-0 feat.
Statistically, the two teams were even in the match as both recorded 11 shots and earned seven penalty corners. Bourne led the Blue Devils with four shots while Nunnink finished with three. Freshman goalkeeper Piper Hampsch recorded two saves en route to securing the second shutout of her young career.
The Blue Devils return to action next Thursday, Nov. 5, in the quarterfinals of the 2020 ACC Field Hockey Championship held at Karen Shelton Stadium. Duke will find out its seeding and opponent following league competition this weekend.
Election workers sort ballots at the Maricopa County Recorder's Office in Phoenix. Matt York/APhide caption
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Matt York/AP
Election workers sort ballots at the Maricopa County Recorder's Office in Phoenix.
Matt York/AP
For months now, election officials have cautioned that the winner of the presidential election may still be unknown when election night is over.
Rules in some states don't allow election workers to begin the labor-intensive work of processing mail-in ballots until Election Day. And with a record number of voters casting their ballots by mail, the influx could delay final tallies for days.
In six particularly key states — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the margin of victory is expected to be slim, so it may be hard to know who won until their mail ballots are fully counted. It takes 270 electoral votes to secure the White House — these states account for 101 combined.
While election officials in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania are telling voters it may take a few days before results are tallied in full, officials in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, where mail ballots can be processed far in advance, are expecting to have results more quickly. But if the contest is close in those states, a final count could take a long time as absentee ballots sent close to Election Day trickle in.
Here's a closer look at what to expect:
Arizona
State law in Arizona allows election officials to count mail votes up to two weeks before Election Day, so most ballots received by this weekend will already be counted. Those tallies can be released starting around 10 p.m. ET on election night, along with early vote results. Votes cast at polling places on Election Day will follow shortly afterward.
The pre-counted absentee ballots and in-person votes will make up the bulk of votes cast in Arizona, so it's possible a winner there could be declared on election night.
Absentee ballots sent right before the election, however, may not be tallied until Thursday or Friday, so if the race is close, it could remain undecided late into next week.
In Arizona, as well as elsewhere where mail votes can be counted ahead of Election Day, early tallies may show a lead for Joe Biden. But the results could begin to swing back toward President Trump when in-person votes are factored in later in the evening. For good measure, that could all shift again as the last remaining mail ballots trickle in.
Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Christina White examines signatures on vote-by-mail ballots with members of the Canvassing Board. Lynne Sladky/APhide caption
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Lynne Sladky/AP
Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Christina White examines signatures on vote-by-mail ballots with members of the Canvassing Board.
Lynne Sladky/AP
Florida
Americans may know who won Florida before they go to bed on election night.
Unlike Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Florida allows counties to do processing work — like sorting and opening envelopes — weeks before Election Day. Also unlike other states, it doesn't allow a grace period for receiving mail ballots after Election Day.
All early votes and mail ballots tabulated in advance are supposed to be released starting around 7:30 p.m. ET on election night, according to Mark Ard, communications director at the Florida Department of State.
"If the election is decisive enough, we should be able to call Florida on Election Night," University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Like Arizona, those early and mail ballot votes that are tallied in advance and released first are expected to be more favorable to Biden, balanced out shortly after as polls close and in-person votes are counted.
However, it may take some counties longer to finish counting mail ballots that arrive just before and right on Election Day. If the election is close, it may take until Wednesday or Thursday, when those counties finish counting, to determine who won the Sunshine State.
An election worker organizes absentee ballots ahead of Election Day at the city clerk office in Warren, Mich. David Goldman/APhide caption
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David Goldman/AP
An election worker organizes absentee ballots ahead of Election Day at the city clerk office in Warren, Mich.
David Goldman/AP
Michigan
"It could take until Friday, Nov. 6 for all ballots to be counted," the office of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wrote on Thursday. "Depending on how close the races are, this likely means that outcomes will not be determined on Tuesday."
In Michigan, election officials in cities with more than 25,000 residents can start processing mail ballots on Monday at 10 a.m., sorting ballots and removing outer envelopes. They can't be counted, though, until polls Election Day.
Historically, the city of Detroit, an important Democratic stronghold, has been slow to tally election results. In a press conference on Thursday, Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said the city has hired thousands of additional poll workers to improve the process but warned that the final results won't be ready on Tuesday night and talked about the idea of "election week."
"Time is not a real concern of ours," Winfrey said. "We want to make sure that every voter and every ballot ... has been properly processed, received and tabulated on Election Day."
As in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democrats in Michigan are expected to disproportionately cast their ballots by mail. If in-person tallies start to be released before mail ballots are totaled, it could show President Trump ahead at first, with his lead narrowing or disappearing as more mail ballots are counted.
North Carolina
North Carolina is another state where initial results should come quickly.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections estimates 80% of votes will be cast early or by mail and will be released once polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.
"For the 20% or so of North Carolinians who vote on Election Day, we will be receiving those from the precinct and uploading those, as well," executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections Karen Brinson-Bell said on Thursday. "So, if there are really close races, those Election Day votes will tremendously matter in the outcomes of these elections."
Initial results may favor Democrats, who are more likely to vote by mail. An influx of Republican votes could pour in as Election Day votes are tallied.
North Carolina accepts mail ballots that arrive by Nov. 12 so long as they were postmarked by Election Day, a policy recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. So as in other states with generous mail ballot deadlines, those final ballots could matter if races are tight and leave the final result unclear for days past Election Day.
Pennsylvania
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar has said that the "overwhelming majority" of ballots will be tallied by Friday, Nov. 6.
"We're sure it will take more time than it used to," Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday. "We probably won't know results on election night."
Pennsylvania election officials can accept mail ballots that arrive up to three days after the election, as long as they were postmarked by Nov. 3.
Many counties say they will begin processing ballots as soon as allowed, at 7 a.m. on Election Day, but a handful, like Cumberland County outside Harrisburg, have said they won't begin dealing with absentee ballots until Wednesday.
"We're having a conversation with any county that says they're waiting," Boockvar said on Thursday. "I want every one of them starting on Election Day."
An election official gathers mail-in ballots being sorted in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Matt Slocum/APhide caption
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Matt Slocum/AP
An election official gathers mail-in ballots being sorted in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Matt Slocum/AP
Erie County, which swung from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016, will begin processing absentee ballots on Election Day, but will wait to count them until about 11 p.m., after in-person ballots are counted.
In Luzerne County, home to Wilkes-Barre, Manager David Pedri told NPR the county is hoping to count a large portion of the mail ballots on Tuesday night, but won't finish until Wednesday or Thursday. He said he has 40 people working from 7 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. processing and later counting ballots. Keeping them on the clock much longer can result in mistakes being made, said Pedri.
During the primary, Pedri says it took four days to count 40,000 mail ballots. They've since added an envelope opening machine that should speed the process, but this fall, Luzerne has sent out 70,000 mail ballots — a third of the electorate.
In Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, Commissioner Robert Harvie told NPR that officials will begin announcing batches of results from in-person and mail voting at 10 p.m. on Election Day. He says it's hard to know how long it will take to finish because they don't know how many absentee ballots will be returned still, but he's confident they will be done "before Friday."
If the 2020 election comes down to Pennsylvania, and the margin is tight, it is possible the election hangs in the balance for several days.
Wisconsin
"I believe that we will be able to know the results of the Wisconsin election, hopefully that night and maybe at the latest the very next day," Gov. Tony Evers said earlier this month.
Wisconsin cannot begin the bulk of its processing work until Election Day, but most counties say they expect to finish counting before Wednesday morning.
Julietta Henry, the Milwaukee County elections director, said she expects the county will finish reporting absentee ballots between 3 and 6 a.m. on Wednesday.
"If it takes longer than that, we just ask that you be patient because we want to make sure every vote is counted and is counted accurately," she says. "We'll be here til it's done."
State law says the count cannot be paused once it begins, so election workers may end up working through the night, though the elections commission has expressed some leniency on that front.
"There are certainly smaller cities and towns where the results will come in like normal," said Reid Magney, public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. "But in some bigger cities, especially where they count absentee ballots at a central location instead of the polling place, we might not see all the results until the next morning."
Peter Hamby has found a way to be a political journalist for a new generation.
After covering two presidential campaigns at CNN, he made an unusual career move in 2015: joining the social media app Snapchat. As the host of the platform’s first original series, “Good Luck America,” Mr. Hamby, 39, breaks down the political landscape and coming election for the millions of young people who scroll through the app every day.
“Politics feels existential to them,” Mr. Hamby said. “Climate change feels existential. Going to high school every day with the threat of gun violence is life or death.”
It’s an audience that is most likely not tuning in to cable news bulletins or reading the Sunday New York Times. So he’s meeting these Americans where they are.
“I’m aware of where I stand at Snapchat, and a lot of people don’t think that’s necessarily an ivory tower of journalism, but we are creating journalism that I think is credible and serious,” Mr. Hamby said. “It is insanely important for media organizations to be way more thoughtful, way more creative about creating formats for people that plug into their lives.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Mr. Hamby, who is also a contributing writer for Vanity Fair, is a world away from his former life as a roving campaign reporter.
“I feel like I’ve become smarter about American politics since leaving Washington and leaving the establishment media side of things,” he said.
Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited.
Sunday
9 a.m. Reading The Los Angeles Times and listening to Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” For me, Sundays are for reading, cooking and music — trying to turn off as much as possible. That’s obviously close to impossible with two weeks until a presidential election, but I know I won’t be good during the week if I haven’t taken some time to retreat from Twitter and the political news cycle, which can be pretty mindless sometimes.
10 a.m. Took my dog, Boone, for a walk. He’s a year-and-a-half-old golden retriever. He brought a rock inside. He likes toys, but he loves rocks.
11:20 a.m. Polished off a piece for Vanity Fair about some of the red states that might tip in a fluky wave election. They’re gracious enough to let me write for them when I can find time. “Good Luck America” is obviously a video format, but writing is my first love, so I need an outlet for it.
Keep up with Election 2020
3 p.m. Had a bunch of Amazon deliveries: Halloween decorations. I’m a huge Halloween guy. I do my yard up in a big way. Eric Garcetti is forbidding trick or treating this year, but my house is on a big trick-or-treating street. I bought six feet of PVC piping to slide candy from a distance to any kid who comes by.
8 p.m. Text my producer, Charles Bay, with story ideas for tomorrow.
Monday
7 a.m. I get up, make coffee, take Boone out and grab the newspaper. I subscribe to The L.A. Times, and The New York Times on the weekends. I’m an evangelist for new journalism formats, but I still think print newspapers might be the best vehicle for news discovery. Online, I read almost exclusively about politics, sports and music. But just by serendipitously paging through the paper, you find stories you would have missed in your feeds.
8 a.m. By now I’m just catching up on whatever news has already happened on the East Coast, and looking for story ideas. I’m also listening to NPR on KPCC. Did I mention I love local news?
9 a.m. My producer and I always text around this time, identifying our story for the day. We produce the show for 6 a.m. E.T. the following morning, sort of like The Times’s “The Daily.” We don’t bother living in the immediate news cycle. News is just ambient for our audience — sometimes politics is just background noise — and they’re coming to us for quick clarity and authority on something important. We have about 2.5 million subscribers, and the vast majority of them are under 25. They aren’t watching cable news or looking at Twitter all day.
10 a.m. Charles and I riff on a script in a Google doc for about an hour. The show is short, about three minutes of fast-paced vertical video, and it’s competing for attention with a lot of other stuff on your phone. We rely a lot on humor and quick video clips to keep people engaged. Charles is a ninja at finding obscure clips on YouTube and Twitter.
11:10 a.m. Because I prefer to travel rather than doing the show from a studio, we had already developed an easy way to film from anywhere with professional sound, lighting and a phone. So it was an easy transition to filming from home when the pandemic started. (Why do men still wear a jacket and tie at home when they do a news hit? Everyone knows you’re wearing shorts.)
11:20 a.m. I upload the raw video for the piece, and Charles spends the next few hours editing from his house.
Noon Preparing for another Zoom election panel. This one is for a series I’m doing with Warner Music Group. Maybe it’s because Zoom makes everyone more accessible, or maybe it’s because everyone with a pulse is interested in this election, but I’ve done a ton of these election panels the last few months.
3:30 p.m. Charles sends me a first cut of tomorrow’s show. I go through it and have a round of notes. Then we collaborate on the headline and what image we should use for the “Good Luck America” tile on Snapchat. It’s like Netflix — that image on the show tile is really important for getting people to tap in.
Tuesday
8 a.m. Today’s episode will be on the South Carolina Senate race. I didn’t think it would end up this close. This is my fourth presidential election, and normally I’d be in Ohio or North Carolina or Texas right now. But the Biden-Trump race has been so stable and even predictable.
9:30 a.m. One of my best Democratic sources texts to inform me that he has moved from optimism to terror because of a single Florida poll. It’s that time of year.
11:30 a.m. My brain is kind of mush around lunchtime, so I try to run errands and work out in the middle of the day.
1 p.m. Going to the doctor for a checkup. I fractured my right hand tripping off my bike a couple weeks ago, so I have a cast on my typing hand for the full month before the election. I hit my keyboard with one finger like an old man with an iPad.
Image
Credit...Maggie Shannon for The New York Times
1:55 p.m. The nurse heard I work in politics. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said.
2:30 p.m. Did an interview about my career with a Georgetown student for his journalism class. Turns out we both worked for one of the undergraduate papers, The Georgetown Voice. I did not tell him that I’m old enough to remember when The Voice had a darkroom.
4 p.m. Vanity Fair story posts. Dems on Twitter are jumping on some district-level internal polling I got from a swing district in Kansas. It shows Biden is beating Trump in Kansas’ Third Congressional District by 15 points. Clinton won it by a single point. As the saying goes, “So goes Olathe …” Seriously, if Trump is losing 2018 swing districts that badly, especially in Kansas, it’s really hard to see him winning.
6 p.m. My girlfriend is a Dodgers fan, so we’re having a couple people over to watch the World Series on my deck.
Wednesday
8 a.m. We’re previewing the last debate for tomorrow’s show. Trump has totally steamrollered the Debate Commission. It’s such a mothballed enterprise. At the same time, it’s hard to see how Trump changes a race that has been static since March.
9 a.m. When I write my scripts, my North Star is really the low-information news consumer. That’s not an insult. I try to give casual news consumers just a few facts to hang on to, and talk to them like a normal person would, not a blow-dried TV anchor. People talk a lot about the partisan divide in our culture. But to me, one of the biggest divisions is between people who obsess about political news and those who don’t.
12:30 p.m. Taped a segment about the campaign for “Inside the Issues With Alex Cohen,” a public affairs show here in L.A. I’d rather do local news shows than cable. The topics are usually different. We talked about the youth vote, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez going on Twitch as a get-out-the-vote mechanism. We also chatted about how Snapchat has built tools to help register more than one million new voters, which we’re pretty proud of.
2:45 p.m. Just got off a call with a big-name journalist — I can’t say who — who is leaving a prominent newsroom to start something new and a bit more innovative. I’m psyched to see more of this. I think the stay-at-home element of the pandemic has had this psychological effect of making some entrepreneurial journalists realize they don’t need to be tethered to a newsroom if they can come up with a new plan.
3:30 p.m. Had a planning call with my production team for election night — or nights. We’re filming “Good Luck America” from our studio in Santa Monica and have some new tricks planned. Ten million people watched our election night coverage in 2018. We want to blow it out this time, especially since we might be in the studio for a few days.
Thursday
9 a.m. Today is the final debate. Debate days are kind of like election days, in that you don’t have much to do until prime time. You spend all day on Twitter, make calls, text and just kind of wait around.
4 p.m. Called my grandma, a lifelong Republican who lives in South Carolina, to ask her about Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison. She’s my best source. One time she bought a scanner so she could digitize and email me the direct-mail pieces she gets. I haven’t seen her since the pandemic. It’s the worst.
6 p.m. Watching debates on the West Coast is like watching sports on the West Coast. It’s so nice to start early and be done early.
7:45 p.m. Kristen Welker did great. The mute button did great. Biden still has a 10-point lead, like he has since June. Nothing changed it since, and nothing did tonight. That is my boring take.
8 p.m. Taped and file-transferred my episode. Now it’s on Charles to make it sing. And it’s on me to open a bottle of wine with a broken hand.
“I couldn’t believe it — it only took the post office 41 years to deliver it,” said Sargent, 61, who renamed the leather repair shop Outback Leather when he bought out the previous owner.
“I was really surprised, but I immediately knew exactly what was inside the box,” he said, adding that the size and shape of the box indicated only one thing: “boots.”
He was busy and distracted, so he set the package on a shelf and on Oct. 28, he opened it and found out they weren’t just any boots, but a pair of size 10-D, black Burghley riding boots made in England before the company went out of business. Gayer’s Saddlery, where Sargent worked after he graduated from Laurel High School, sold and repaired thousands of pairs of Burghleys mostly for equestrian enthusiasts and motorcycle cops coast to coast, he said.
Sargent also found a set of boot jacks and a riding bat (a shorter version of a riding crop) inside the box, which was mailed from Dr. A.K. Taori in South Charleston, W.Va., about 360 miles away.
When he tried to track down Taori or his family members but had no luck, Sargent said, he decided to go public with his snail-mail surprise.
“I’m hoping that somebody in his family might hear about the package and come forward,” he said. “I’d love to be able to get the boots back to them.”
Sargent also figured that some people might be able to relate to his story since the U.S. Postal Service has been in the news lately for erratic service and slowdowns in advance of the Nov. 3 Election Day.
“With everybody worried about their mail-in ballots, it makes you wonder,” he said. “Plus, I’d just watched a story on TV about a 100-year-old postcard that was finally delivered in Michigan. It got me thinking, ‘How often does something like this happen?’ ”
The U.S. Postal Service says deliveries that take decades to complete are rare.
“In many cases, old letters, postcards and other items delivered years ago are dropped into the mail stream by customers who discover or purchase them in hopes that the Postal Service can reconnect the items with their original senders, recipients or family members,” said Michael Hotovy, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.
“These incidents don’t (typically) involve mail that had been lost in our system and later found,” he said.
Sargent said he has a hard time believing that’s what happened in his case.
“The mailman who brought the package to me didn’t want his name mentioned because he didn’t want to take the blame for delivering it 41 years late,” he said with a laugh.
“He came into the shop one morning and said, ‘Hey, boss man, check this out.’ He showed me the postmark and told me it had probably been sitting for four decades somewhere.”
When Sargent inspected the box, he saw his own handwriting on the back. He surmised that after he repaired the boots in 1979, he must have written down the amount owed for the repair ($10) and the amount of length he’d cut off the top of each boot for a proper fit — then shipped them to the customer.
The customer seems to have used the same box to send the boots back — though it didn’t reach Sargent for 41 years.
There was no note inside the box, so Sargent isn’t sure why the customer sent them back, but he suspects the doctor must have wanted further adjustments.
“But then he decided to throw in two boot jacks and a riding bat for whatever reason, so who knows what he was thinking,” said Sargent.
It was an amazing feeling to look at his handiwork 41 years later and realize he’d done a “pretty good” job, he said.
“I cut a quarter-inch off the left boot and one inch off the right, and even though I hadn’t been at it very long, I was pretty precise,” he said. “And what’s really incredible is that even after four decades, those boots are in perfect condition.”
In 1976, Sargent was working in the Laurel Theater across the street from Gayer’s Saddlery, when his father suggested that he try to get a job repairing saddles instead of tearing movie tickets.
“They hired me, and I really liked it, so I stuck with it,” he said. “They sent me to Omaha to learn how to do boot repairs and pretty soon, that’s how I was spending most of my time.”
Dozens of packages arrived or went out weekly from the shop, he said, and today that hasn’t changed.
“Saddles, boots, chaps — we repair them from all over, but getting an order 41 years late is a first,” said Sargent.
“I suppose that now would be a good time to say, ‘Better late than never.’ ”
As a record-breaking early voting cycle winds down in Florida, and with the race for president between Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remaining close in the state, both campaigns are hoping to squeeze as many votes out of their candidate's supporters as possible in the final days.
Combining mail-in votes and early in-person votes, over 8.2 million ballots have already been cast in Florida as of Saturday morning, according to the Florida Division of Elections, surpassing the 6.6 million early votes in the 2016 presidential election.
Democrats hold a lead by 116,051 votes over Republicans in turnout among registered voters, a result of a monthslong campaign by the state Democratic Party to encourage voters to vote by mail ahead of Election Day. But Republicans have been closing the gap, out-voting Democrats in person by 528,000 during the early voting period.
With only two days left of early voting in many counties (and just one in some), the GOP is trying to capitalize on the momentum so it's better poised to earn a victory on Tuesday in a state that has historically been won by thin margins.
"[Democrats] did a great job of having their voters register for absentee ballots, and then did a great job of having those voters return those ballots," a Trump campaign adviser in Florida told ABC News. "We worked very hard to register more Republicans than had ever been registered before."
According to data released this month by Florida election officials, Republicans narrowed their deficit in voter registration to 134,242 voters, down from 327,483 in 2016.
To turn out those voters, Republicans have relied on campaign methods that Democrats in Florida have largely avoided during the coronavirus pandemic: in-person voter contact and packed -- mostly maskless -- rallies across the state.
"I know people like to roll their eyes at the rallies, but they do energize the voters," according to the campaign adviser, who said officials provide masks and encourage social distancing, though attendees rarely adhere to the guidance. "People like to say they energize the base -- they don't. They energize voters, and sometimes the voters are the base, but not always."
Democrats, for their part, say it's important to supplement their vote-by-mail advantage with strong in-person turnout between now and Election Day.
"Obviously we are pushing our voters out for early vote, but we'll make sure that once we have a sense come Sunday night what's missing, we'll be making sure we keep our foot on the gas Monday as well," said Karen Andre, a senior adviser for the Biden campaign in Florida. "We're going to make sure we're banking as many of our votes as possible, but have a readymade program to push all the way through the end of the day on Election Day."
The Biden campaign and Democratic organizers have launched a myriad of get-out-the-vote events throughout the state, from golf cart parades in The Villages, the largest senior retirement community in the nation, to "parrandas to the polls," a musical and festive tradition in the Puerto Rican community.
Biden's Florida campaign has also enlisted an army of surrogates -- like rapper Common and Latin American actress America Ferrera -- and Republican backers, like former Republican state Sen. Paula Dockery, to criss-cross the state and make sure voters have a plan to get to the polls early.
This week, former President Barack Obama stumped for his former vice president along the Interstate 4 corridor, one of the most hotly contested regions of swing voters in Florida, where Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino community, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Data.
"We got one week, Orlando, one week -- si se puede -- one week until the most important election of our lifetimes," said Obama. "And you don't have to wait until next Tuesday to cast your ballot."
A whopping 1.7 million ballots have been cast by independents or unaffiliated voters, according to Florida's Division of Elections. Although it's impossible to know who they voted for until results are released, both parties see an opportunity to court the unaffiliated voters, whose political preferences may not be so cut and dry.
Florida Democratic strategist Steven Schale has been analyzing early vote data and thinks that while registered Republicans might continue to close the turnout gap in the following days, Democrats have an opportunity to win over unaffiliated voters, referred to sometimes as NPAs.
David Odenwald, 61, an unaffiliated voter in Atlantic Beach, a suburb of Jacksonville in Duval County, voted early for Biden after casting a ballot for Trump in 2016.
"I was ready for a change [in 2016]," Odenwald, who drives for Uber, told ABC News. "I had nothing to go on with Trump; I just was no way going to vote for Hillary Clinton. The outright lies, deception. The whole family is out for themselves."
But Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic became too much for Odenwald, who used to work in health care. "This pandemic is real, the numbers are going up, and he's trying to play like it's almost over. It's far from over," he said.
As for Trump's rallies? "They're like a super-spreader, and he doesn't care," said Odenwald. "To me, he's going to be responsible for a lot of deaths."
Schale said Biden may have an edge with the unaffiliated voters due to their demographics.
"More and more younger voters of color are registering as NPAs, so the non-party affiliate voters are probably a little bit more Democratic in their party orientation than they were 10 years ago," said Schale.
Twenty-one percent of unaffiliated voters are Hispanic and 7% are Black, according to Schale. Over one-fourth of them are new or sporadic voters. Many of them, he says, are Puerto Ricans.
At a drive-in rally in North Miami, Obama took a shot at the president's handling of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.
"When a hurricane devastates Puerto Rico, a president is supposed to help it rebuild, not toss paper towels, withhold billions of dollars in aid until just before an election. We've got a president who actually suggested selling Puerto Rico," he said.
Yet turnout so far in Miami-Dade County, where Obama spoke, is causing anxiety for Democrats, who worry that Biden is not in position to carry the heavily Democratic county by a large enough margin.
"The biggest cause for concern for Democrats is the gap in Hispanic voting in Miami-Dade," Matthew Isbell, a Democratic data analyst, told ABC News.
According to Isbell, turnout by Hispanic Democrats in the county lags behind 2016's numbers.
"That's pretty significant," said Isbell. "I think it's finally starting to spark some alarm bells among some of the different Democratic organizations down there."
Florida is a "war for turnout," according to Josh Mendelsohn, CEO of Hawkfish, a Democratic data and technology firm. He said it's all going to come down to what candidate can rally support among voters who have yet to vote.
"Campaigns ought to reorient themselves to take advantage of the fact that they can now narrow those last persuasive arguments they're trying to make -- the proverbial closing arguments," he said.
This undated selfie photo provided by Rickia Young shows her lip. Attorney Kevin Mincey, who represents Young, says she went to retrieve her 16-year-old nephew from the area were a protest was occurring, and put her 2-year-old son in the car to help him fall asleep. Rickia Young/APhide caption
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Rickia Young/AP
This undated selfie photo provided by Rickia Young shows her lip. Attorney Kevin Mincey, who represents Young, says she went to retrieve her 16-year-old nephew from the area were a protest was occurring, and put her 2-year-old son in the car to help him fall asleep.
Rickia Young/AP
As some protesters smashed storefront windows to make off with merchandise during the chaos of Monday night's Walter Wallace Jr. protests, some Philadelphia Police officers smashed an SUV's windows and violently yanked out its driver and a teenaged passenger, threw them to the ground, then pulled a small child from the back seat.
The incident was captured on video and streamed live by Aapril Rice, who watched the "surreal" scene from a rooftop across the street.
In it, she narrates as more than a dozen police officers swarm the dark SUV, which appeared to be trying to slowly make its way out of the melee. Officers shouted for the driver to get out of the car before at least two, bashed in several of its windows with their batons.
With the windows destroyed, officers apparently forcibly removed Rickia Young, who was driving at the time, and her 16-year-old nephew. The two are surrounded by officers who appear to wail on the two bodies on the ground. Moments later another officer grabs the child out of the backseat and carries him away.
On Thursday, lawyers representing Young and her 2-year-old son, who is hearing impaired, said she was beaten by the officers, separated from the child for hours, and kept in handcuffs while being treated for injuries at a hospital.
Civil rights attorneys Kevin Mincey and Riley H. Ross III said the 28-year-old woman, who is a home health care aide, is filing a civil rights case against the police department.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Mincey said Young "had a bloody nose, a swollen trachea, blood in her urine, and swelling and pain on her left side," while the child was treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for "a large welt on his head."
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said the incident is under investigation by Philadelphia Police Internal Affairs. In a video interview on Friday, Outlaw said one of the officers — "the one that we see using the strikes against the car" — has been put on restricted duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
She did not name the officer.
In an interview with the Inquirer, Young's attorneys explained that she had set out for that part of West Philadelphia in an effort to get her son to fall asleep in the car. She decided to drive to pick up her 16-year-old nephew who lives in that neighborhood, but on her way home ran into the police barricade. Young tried to make a three-point turn to head in the opposite direction but that's when police officers attacked the vehicle, Mincey said.
He said that when Young asked where the police were taking her child, they refused to tell her, saying, "he's gonna go to a better place, we're gonna report it to [the Department of Human Services.]"
Young was initially transported to police headquarters but then transferred to Jefferson University Hospital for medical treatment, where she remained handcuffed, Mincey recounted. Young was then taken back to police headquarters and although she spent the night in a holding cell, was released without being charged.
Meanwhile, her son was taken about 4 miles away from the scene where his grandmother, found him "sitting in his car seat in a police cruiser with two officers," the Inquirer reported. Mincey said the child's car seat was still covered in shattered glass from the SUV's broken windows and he had a lump on his head.
The National Fraternal Order of Police on Thursday posted a close up image of the officer on social media with a caption that read: "This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness. The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child."
When contacted by reporters asking questions about the post and the false claim alongside it, the FOP removed the image. Later, a spokesperson told the Inquirer the organization "subsequently learned of conflicting accounts of the circumstances under which the child came to be assisted by the officer and immediately took the photo and caption down."
But Riley Ross, a partner at the firm representing Young, called the move racist propaganda.
"This post by the [FOP] is a lie," he wrote in a tweet.
"This photo was taken moments after police attacked their vehicle, busted out the windows, ripped the mother from her car and assaulted her."
He added: "Our firm will not stand for this blatant attempt to use our clients to peddle propaganda by using racism and fear to force compliance."
A judge granted an extradition request to send Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch in northern Illinois, to Wisconsin, and he arrived at the Kenosha County Jail later that day, according to officials and court documents.
The judge rejected arguments by Rittenhouse's attorney that the documents did not conform to statutory requirements and that extraditing the teenager to Wisconsin would violate his Constitutional rights.
Rittenhouse is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and other charges in the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of a third man on Aug. 25.
The shooting happened after Rittenhouse went to Kenosha during protests and unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back on Aug. 23. Blake survived, but his family has said he is paralyzed.
Rittenhouse's lawyers have said Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and that he was there to try and protect businesses.
Kyle Rittenhouse carries a weapon as he walks along Sheridan Road in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 25, 2020.Adam Rogan / AP file
At a hearing in Illinois on Friday, Rittenhouse's attorney, John Pierce, told Lake County Judge Paul Novak that he no longer wanted to call witnesses, and he instead focused on what he called “fatal defects” in extradition papers.
An Illinois prosecutor, Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Stephen Scheller, countered that the law on extradition was unambiguous, The Associated Press reported.
“You can imagine the chaos if someone can commit a crime and step over the (state borderline) and get sanctuary,” Scheller said.
Rittenhouse's attorney argued that there was insufficient evidence that the complaint was sworn before a magistrate as required, a court order granting the extradition states.
Novak wrote in the order that Rittenhouse offered no evidence of that.
"Even if this court were to find the complaint were not made before a magistrate as set above forth, Rittenhouse's argument would still fail," the judge wrote,
Novak noted that an affidavit of probable cause was also filed that satisfies the law, that a second judge found probable cause for Rittenhouse's arrest, and that a magistrate in Kenosha County also determined there was probable cause supporting an arrest warrant and that it complies with the law.
The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department said later Friday that Rittenhouse was at the jail after being extradited.
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Before the fatal shooting of the two protesters, there had been nights of protests and demonstrations. There had been some looting and damage to businesses, including buildings being burned.
Rittenhouse was armed with what authorities have described as a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223-caliber rifle.
But that gun was bought and stored in Wisconsin, Lake County prosecutors have said, meaning Rittenhouse would not face gun charges in Illinois. His attorney has said in a statement that Rittenhouse and a friend armed themselves that night and that the guns never crossed state lines.
Aug. 28, 202004:37
The shooting was captured on video. Video appeared to show Rosenbaum throw a plastic bag at Rittenhouse, which does not hit him, and approach Rittenhouse before he is shot, court documents say. A witness told police Rosenbaum was trying to grab Rittenhouse's gun.
Rittenhouse a short time later runs away and is heard saying into a cell phone "I just killed somebody," according to the criminal complaint.
Video also showed Rittenhouse being followed by people as he ran, he appears to trip and then fire at another person who jumped at him who is not hit, the complaint says. Huber approaches while carrying a skateboard and tried to pull the rifle away from Rittenhouse before his is fatally shot, the video shows. A third person, who appeared to have had a handgun, was then shot in the arm, according to the complaint.
"This was classic self-defense, and we are going to prove it," Rittenhouse's lawyer, Pierce, has previously said. "We will obtain justice for Kyle no matter how hard the fight or how long it takes."
If convicted of first-degree homicide, Rittenhouse faces a sentence of life in prison.
Antioch is a village of around 14,000 near the Wisconsin border, and is around 15 miles from Kenosha.
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DURHAM, N.C. – Duke field hockey closed out the fall regular season on top, picking up its second straight shutout with a 2-0 triumph over Virginia on Saturday afternoon on Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium.
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David Goldman/AP
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Matt Slocum/AP
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