WHAT'S BREWING
FAUCI URGES AMERICANS TO RECONSIDER THANKSGIVING PLANS Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that his family’s Thanksgiving “is going to look very different this year” and said Americans “may have to bite the bullet” and rethink holiday gatherings as the coronavirus pandemic continues raging. Fauci told CBS that his children, who live in three different states, would not be visiting him over the holidays “because of their concern for me and my age.” Meanwhile, a bevy of health organizations has come together to issue a statement speaking out against the herd immunity strategy touted by the White House as a means of limiting the spread of COVID-19. [HuffPost]
U.S. INTELLIGENCE WARNED TRUMP GIULIANI WAS TARGET OF RUSSIAN DISINFO The White House was told last year by U.S. intelligence officials that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was the target of a Russian effort campaign to peddle misinformation to the president. Trump reportedly shrugged off the presentation. The intelligence was based on sources and communications showing Giuliani interacted with associates of Russian intelligence in December 2019, when the former New York mayor was on a trip to Ukraine attempting to gather information to expose "corruption" -- claims of which are not supported by evidence -- by Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. [HuffPost]
TRUMP WON'T CONFIRM WHETHER HE TOOK A COVID TEST BEFORE FIRST DEBATE Trump refused during a town hall Thursday to say when he last received a negative coronavirus test result before his positive diagnosis — despite being pressed repeatedly to clarify this point. Asked by NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie whether he was tested for COVID-19 on the day of the first presidential debate, Sept. 29, Trump said “Possibly I did; possibly I didn’t." This comes as Sen. Kamala Harris canceled her immediate travel plans after two aides tested positive for coronavirus. [HuffPost]
DATE SET TO VOTE ON BARRETT CONFIRMATION The Senate Judiciary Committee set an Oct. 22 vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination as Republicans race to confirm Trump’s pick before the Nov. 3 election. The session is without Barrett after two long days of public testimony in which she stressed that she would be her own judge and sought to create distance between herself and past positions critical of abortion, the Affordable Care Act and other issues. Her confirmation to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems inevitable, as even some Senate Democrats acknowledged. [AP]
ANATOMY OF A SMEAR With only 20 days before the presidential election, the New York Post published what it called a “smoking-gun email” in a front-page feature accusing Biden of high-level political corruption. Within hours of its publication, the viral story was dominating the news cycle, with aggressive promotion from Trump’s campaign. As the Post tells it, Biden’s son, Hunter, left his damaged laptop — which, the story claims, contained footage of him having sex while smoking crack — at a Delaware repair shop last spring, but he never came back for it. It’s a highly suspicious narrative that’s riddled with inconsistencies and other red flags. [HuffPost]
LOEFFLER TOUTS ENDORSEMENT FROM QANON SUPPORTER Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) accepted the endorsement of Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extreme Republican congressional candidate who has embraced the QAnon conspiracy movement. Greene, who will almost certainly win her race in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District, has suggested that President Barack Obama is Muslim, called Jewish billionaire and liberal philanthropist George Soros a Nazi, and questioned whether a plane really crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. [HuffPost] | 