The Commission on Presidential Debates on Friday canceled the second debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden after Trump, and then Biden, backed out of the event on Thursday.
Why it matters:Trump first refused to attend the Oct. 15 debate after the commission announced that it would be held virtually, and Biden indicated that that he too would skip it if Trump would not show.
NIAID director Anthony Fauci told CBS News Radio on Friday that the "data speak for themselves," there was "a superspreader event at the White House."
Driving the news: Several people who attended the White House's Rose Garden celebration for the introduction of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett have tested positive for the coronavirus, including President Trump. Photos and video from the event show that few in attendance wore masks.
President Trump will hold a rally from the White House on Saturday followed by a campaign event in Sanford, Florida, on Monday, the president tweeted on Friday and White House officials confirmed.
Why it matters: These will be the president's first public events since he announced he had tested positive for COVID-19. Saturday's event will come just five days after Trump was discharged from Walter Reed Medical Center.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said that Virginia and other states around the country have seen a "dramatic uptick" in early voting among those most likely to support Vice President Joe Biden during an Axios News Shapers event on Friday.
Why it matters: Early voting has taken on increased importance and use nationwide amid the coronavirus pandemic with as many as 80 million people expected to cast their ballots before Election Day, whether by mail or in person.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Axios that at next week's Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, he will call on Democrats to preemptively renounce any attacks on her Catholic faith.
"I want to hear that out of their mouths from every Judiciary Committee member," Hawley told me during an Axios News Shapers virtual event. "I'm going to call it out at every single opportunity."
Ivanka Trump, after a week of virtual fundraising while in voluntary quarantine, will travel to four states next week to campaign for President Trump, a Trump political aide tells Axios.
Why it matters: Ivanka Trump is among Republicans' most requested fundraisers. The Trump campaign views his family as a major asset on the campaign trail. That was true even before the president tested positive, sidelining him from the road.
Twitter said Friday it would be making a slew of significant new product and enforcement changes to help clamp down on misinformation leading up to the election.
Why it matters: It's the most aggressive set of changes that Twitter has rolled out to date to curb election-related misinformation on its platform.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a bill Friday that would create a "Commission on President Capacity" to allow Congress to intervene under the 25th Amendment, which can be invoked if the president becomes physically incapable of fulfilling their role.
Why it matters: There's almost no chance of this bill ever becoming law, so it's meant more as a publicity stunt to troll President Trump — despite her claims otherwise.
A Goldman Sachs note this week helps visualize one reason analysts believe Devon Energy's $2.6 billion merger with WPX Energy makes sense: It helps Biden-proof Devon to a degree.
The state of play: Goldman analysts looked at how much of various shale producers acreage in the prolific Permian Basin is on federal lands, since Joe Biden has pledged to thwart new oil-and-gas development there. Devon's federal lands exposure is one reason their shares "remain out of favor," Goldman notes, although WPX also has a decent — albeit much smaller — share of their acreage in federal areas.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a Kentucky event on Friday that a coronavirus stimulus deal is "unlikely in the next three weeks," per the Washington Post's Erica Werner.
Our thought bubble: Two sources close to Senate leadership said President Trump is desperate, has zero leverage to push them to support a bill crafted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Republicans aren’t inclined to wrap themselves any tighter to a sinking ship.
Pennsylvania, the big swing state that President Trump narrowly won in 2016, is now the second-largest natural gas producer behind Texas.
Why it matters: Trump and Vice President Pence are frequently accusing former vice president Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris of wanting to ban fracking — costing jobs in the process.
Peloton, the networked fitness-bike seller, has found itself in the position of having to scour its forums and leaderboards to remove hateful speech.
The bottom line: It highlights how toxic the social media environment is in 2020. If it's online and social, it's probably going to require moderation.
A quarter of Americans say they know someone who has gone into work while feeling unwell, according to a survey provided exclusively to Axios by the Paid Leave for All campaign.
Why it matters: We will not be able to get the pandemic under control unless people can stay home when they're sick. Clearly, many Americans are not able to do that — especially people of color — without risking their job or their paycheck.
President Trump has called an experimental coronavirus therapy he received "a gift from Heaven" and promised to make it widely available — igniting yet another round of concern about politics encroaching on science.
What they're saying: "We have an emergency use authorization that I want to get signed immediately," Trump said in a video Thursday.
President Trump will be interviewed on camera during Friday's episode of Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" by Dr. Marc Siegel, the network announced.
Why it matters: It will be the president's first on-camera sit-down since being diagnosed with coronavirus last week. He called into Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business show and Sean Hannity's Fox News show on Thursday.
Princeton University, which said in June that it was dropping Woodrow Wilson's name on campus because of his racist views, will tear down Wilson College and replace it on the site as Hobson College, named for boardroom powerhouse Mellody Hobson, one of the most senior women in finance.
Why it matters: Hobson College will be the first residential college at Princeton named for a Black woman. (Princeton's residential colleges are complexes of dormitories and social space.)
Attorney General Bill Barr has begun telling top Republicans that the Justice Department’s sweeping review into the origins of the Russia investigation will not be released before the election, a senior White House official and a congressional aide briefed on the conversations tell Axios.
Why it matters: Republicans had long hoped the report, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, would be a bombshell containing revelations about what they allege were serious abuses by the Obama administration and intelligence community probing for connections between President Trump and Russia.
The D.C. Health Department is trying to jump-start contact tracing efforts around the White House's coronavirus outbreak. Tracing has been inadequate so far even as cases spread deeper into the city.
The big picture: The White House has decided not to move forward with recommended public health protocols of contact tracing and testing since President Trump tested positive for the virus.
Several Michigan voters who are sticking with President Trump think that if Joe Biden gets elected, Sen. Kamala Harris will be running the show — and her Wednesday debate performance reinforced their view.
Why it matters: These are some of the few voters for whom the vice-presidential pick has outsized importance in how they view the two tickets, and for now that's benefitting Trump.
Wednesday's vice presidential candidate debate got far better reviews in early poll numbers than a similar poll taken after the first presidential debate, with respondents calling it "civil," "informative," and even "presidential."
Why it matters: The new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll suggested that Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris made better impressions with the public than President Trump and Joe Biden did in their debate last week — or, at least, didn't actively repel voters.
President Trump on Thursday criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a series of tweets, and then an appearance on Fox News, after it was revealed the FBI thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap her and violently overthrow the state government.
Why it matters: Trump's tweets comes after Whitmer attacked President Trump for his positions on extremist groups in a speech earlier Thursday. The governor said extremists heard Trump's refusal at a debate last month to explicitly condemn white supremacist groups "not as a rebuke, but as rallying cry, as a call to action."
