š Good Thursday morning, and welcome to October! President Jimmy Carter is 96.
- Today's Smart Brevity⢠count: 1,292 words ... 5 minutes.
š Good Thursday morning, and welcome to October! President Jimmy Carter is 96.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
President Trump made it clear at the debate that heāll continue to call the results fraudulent ā and contest the outcome in key states ā no matter how wide the margin.
Why it matters: Back in 2000, we didnāt know Bush v. Gore was going to happen. We know this is going to happen.
Election officials, especially in areas with significant minority voting populations, need to prepare for an increased danger of "rogue Trump supporters taking matters into their own hands," said Rick Hasen, a national election law expert at UC Irvine.
Pennsylvania, with a GOP legislature that could try to bolster Trump in the case of contested results, is a major focus of both parties' post-election planning.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told Stef Kight: "What is distressing about the presidentās remarks is I fear his supporters will take it upon themselves to mobilize large numbers to go to the polls" as poll watchers.
Share this story. Margaret Talev and Alayna Treene contributed reporting.
Three words Americans associated most with President Trump's debate performance: Bully, childish and rude.
An Axios-SurveyMonkey poll (2,618 U.S. adults: ± 2-point margin of error) shows that Trump hurt himself more than Biden in what's been called the worst U.S. presidential debate in history, Margaret Talev writes.
The bottom line: More than 9 in 10 people who say they'd already decided on Trump or Biden ... planned to stick with their choice.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Several voters in Youngstown, Ohio, who previously supported President Trump decided to stick with him, even if they were embarrassed by his debate performance, Alexi McCammond writes from a focus group.
The bottom line: These voters indicated there's almost nothing that could change their minds between now and November.
New coronavirus infections rose over the past week in half the country, Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon write.
Nationwide, the U.S. averaged roughly 43,000 cases per day during the past week ā essentially unchanged from the week before.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
Amazon's decision to move Prime Day to Oct. 13-14 this year will pull the whole holiday shopping season forward by more than a month ā and help make online retail bigger than ever, Dion Rabouin writes in his daily Axios Markets.
Global online holiday sales are predicted to grow 30% from 2019's strong levels, and digital revenue is expected to grow by an average of 90% over last year's holiday season for companies offering options to buy online and pick up in-store, new projections from Salesforce show.
What we're hearing: "This is something we tried to do for decades," Rob Garf, Salesforce's VP of Industry Strategy and Insights, said during a presentation Wednesday ā online retailers tried to offer smaller discounts in autumn hoping to lure customers through a game of "discount chicken."
Between the lines: The jump in online sales comes largely at the expense of brick-and-mortar retailers, Deloitte says in "A Tale of Two Holiday Seasons."
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Lawmakers are moving to push back on social media platforms in the days leading up to the election, Ashley Gold writes.
Today, the Senate Commerce Committee will vote to authorize subpoenas of three CEOs ā Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Google's Sundar Pichai and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ā to testify at a hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the tech industry's prized third-party content liability shield.
Our thought bubble: Time is on tech's side to endure these particular regulatory headwinds. But a fuller reckoning may come next year.
ā” Google will pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years to create and curate high-quality journalism for a new set of features called Google News Showcase, executives tell Axios' Sara Fischer. Go deeper.
A variety of far-right fringe groups, just slivers on their own, together constitute a potential paramilitary force that's hungry for violent clashes with political opponents, Axios' Kyle Daly writes.
The Proud Boys remain relatively small ā a Portland rally this past weekend billed as the group's largest-ever gathering drew just a few hundred people.
Go deeper: Other groups.
More than 73 million people watched Tuesday's debate on television, according to Nielsen ā down more than 13% from the record number who tuned in for the first debate of the 2016 election, Axios' Sara Fischer writes.
The Partnership for Public Service named Dr. Anthony Fauci the 2020 Federal Employee of the Year as part of the group's Service to America medals, the "Oscars of federal government."
ClickĀ here to watch a video of Dr. Fauci getting home delivery of his award.
CLEAR, the secure-identity system familiar at airports and stadiums, is now being used to help restaurants reopen indoor dining for winter.
How it works, per CLEAR: "Employees approach a CLEAR kiosk, where they receive a temperature check, and scan their QR code to share their health insights. ... [E]mployees are issued a red or green Health Pass on their app."
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