While the surge of new coronavirus cases dominates the closing days of the presidential campaign, five lawyers who worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House want other Republicans who may be torn about how to vote next week to remember what they believe will be President Trump’s enduring legacy.

“Mr. Trump’s lawless, amoral and dishonorable ethos makes a mockery of the democratic accountability that is fostered through respect for law and our constitutional principles,” they write in an open letter today explaining their decision to endorse Joe Biden. “He has overtly refused to honor the independence of the judiciary, failed to acknowledge the authority of Congress and the corresponding constraints imposed on a president by the separation of powers, demonized the free press that speaks truth to power, and undermined due process and the fair administration of justice by relentlessly politicizing the investigation and enforcement of the criminal law.”


The signatories are Peter Keisler, Robert Kruger, Alan Charles Raul and J. Michael Shepherd, who were all appointed by Reagan to be associate White House counsels, as well as Nicholas Rostow, who was the legal adviser to the National Security Council. Raul and Rostow also served under President George H.W. Bush.

“Chanting ‘lock him (or her) up’ or ‘enemy of the people’ are statements we could not have imagined Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush – or any president before this one – uttering about a political opponent or about some of our leading news organizations,” they write. “Those ugly sentiments are the very antithesis of American ideals and echo the authoritarian tyrants that every previous president would have challenged.”

Molly Jong-Fast, like many of us, is nervous about the election. Sure, the polls look pretty decent for Biden; they looked good for Hillary, right? Not exactly, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report tells Molly. In the last couple of weeks of the last campaign, there was so much attention on those freakin’ emails. “You could see the race tightening. Hillary went from up 11... and then in the very last NBC poll, she was up four points, with 16% undecided,” Walter recalls on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. This time, though, the pandemic is the focus. And Trump has basically surrendered to the virus. “Now Biden's up, nine, 10 points with very few people undecided and very few people thinking they're going to vote third party. So it's just, it's a different environment. Biden's a different kind of candidate. And Donald Trump is the president at a time when we're in the middle of a crisis that the majority of Americans don't think he's handled well.” Then! Sen. Sherrod Brown talks about whether Biden has a shot in increasingly-Red Ohio. Plus! Rick Wilson debuts the Lincoln Project Time Machine! MAGA junkies chase the Dragon of Cray! Jared Kushner attempts to outsmart a sack of hair! Steve Bannon gets ready to punch out license plates instead of lies! And Eric Trump takes a delightful trip to Frog Dick, Alabama!

GREENSBURG, Pa. — At 32, Ryan Walsh has never voted in a presidential election. He didn’t identify with either party before this year. But in the spring, he registered as a Republican, and he plans to cast a ballot in person on Tuesday for President Trump.

“I’m petrified of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi getting power and doing all this stuff that’s going to totally destroy the economy,” said Mr. Walsh, who works for a social services agency of state government.

He cited a string of proposals that trouble him — broad tax increases, the Green New Deal, “Medicare for all” — that Mr. Biden has said he opposes. Mr. Walsh does not believe him.

Voters who didn’t show up in 2016 are Mr. Trump’s “secret weapon,” said Mr. Walsh, who lives outside Pittsburgh and works in Westmoreland County, an exurb where the Trump campaign is indeed hoping to expand its margin compared with 2016. Mr. Walsh called polls showing the president trailing “a joke,” adding, “He will do nothing but gain in the areas he won last time.”

A presidential election that has driven a nation to drink is being fought to the bitter end by two men who do not.

For the first time in modern history, both major party candidates for the White House are teetotalers. President Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., have not had an alcoholic drink over the course of their lives, by their own accounts.

This Teetotaler Campaign, and the fact that this circumstance has drawn so little notice, is to some extent evidence of how the once hard-drinking culture of politics is changing. Candidates, campaign aides and reporters are drinking less, aware of the scrutiny that comes in the age of cellphones and Twitter, not to mention the nonstop demands of a round-the-clock campaign.

But it also goes to the way Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, for all their stark differences, share some similarities in character and background, according to biographers and others who have observed them over the years. They each grew up in families shadowed by the specter of alcoholism — Mr. Trump’s brother died from it, and one of Mr. Biden’s favorite uncles, whom he lived with growing up, was a heavy drinker.

Detroit election officials are projecting 50% voter turnout in the city of Detroit, higher than in 2016, but lower than in 2012 and 2008 when Barack Obama's candidacy drew high voter participation.

And the number of absentee ballots the city is expecting is now lower than officials had estimated earlier this month.

Speaking Thursday to reporters in the basement of TCF Center in downtown Detroit, Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey and other election officials said they are working to prepare for a historic election in Michigan — a swing state that many will be closely watching next week.

"We want people to have confidence in the process," Winfrey said. "Your vote matters."