A daily snapshot

11 days until Election Day:

On the trail Friday

President Donald Trump was in Florida; Democratic challenger Joe Biden was in Delaware; Vice President Mike Pence was in Pennsylvania; and Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, was in Georgia.

Making their case

Trump and Biden fought over how to tame the raging coronavirus in the final 2020 debate. They largely shelved the rancor that overshadowed their previous face-off in favor of a more substantive exchange that highlighted their vastly different approaches to solving the major domestic and foreign policy challenges facing the nation. Trump sought to portray himself Thursday as the same outsider he first pitched to voters four years ago. Biden, meanwhile, argued that Trump was an incompetent leader of a country facing multiple crises.

Russian meddling

Russian hackers have targeted the networks of dozens of state and local governments in the U.S. in recent days and have stolen data from at least two servers, federal officials say. The warning, less than two weeks before the election, amplified fears of the potential for tampering with the vote and undermining confidence in the results.

Interlude of normalcy

The second and final presidential debate, it turns out, was actually a debate — and a reprieve for voters turned off by the candidates’ noxious first face-off. There were heated clashes but far fewer of the angry interruptions and cross-talk that made the opening debate nearly unwatchable. A mute button mandated by the debate commission helped enforce decorum.

Ballot surveillance

The Trump campaign has been videotaping people as they deposit ballots in drop boxes in Philadelphia in what it says is an attempt to catch violations. It’s surveillance that the battleground state’s Democratic attorney general suggested could amount to illegal intimidation. The Trump campaign acknowledged the taping in a letter from a lawyer that complained it had caught voters on video illegally depositing multiple ballots. City elections officials responded they could not confirm the activity was inappropriate under Pennsylvania law.

Quotable

“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.” — Biden on his strategy for combating the coronavirus pandemic