Minnesota’s state canvassing board was to meet Tuesday to certify the state's election results, an ordinarily routine task that is drawing closer attention due to President Donald Trump's efforts to delay it in key states.

Joe Biden defeated Trump in Minnesota by more than 230,000 votes, or about 7 percentage points.

Minnesota's board is made up of Secretary of State Steve Simon; Minnesota Supreme Court Justices Margaret Chutich and Gordon Moore; and Hennepin County District Judges Regina Chu and Christian Sande.

Simon is a Democrat. Chutich, Moore and Sande were all appointed by former Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat; Chu was appointed by former Gov. Jesse Ventura, an independent.

Weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election, the world’s political intrigue turned to a Wilmington computer repair shop after the New York Post revealed that its owner gave a copy of a laptop hard drive he believed belonged to Hunter Biden to a lawyer representing Rudy Giuliani.

Ten days after the election, a sign on the repair shop’s door said it had closed. A neighbor said the owner had left town.

A slew of new information has surfaced in the weeks since, including details about the laptop’s journey from the repair shop to Giuliani's office.

Yet with fears of fake news flooding the nation's consciousness and Giuliani's resistance to share the source material, it remains unclear whether the emails purportedly found on the hard drive and which formed the basis of the disputed New York Post story are authentic.

With the Senate majority hanging in the balance and coronavirus cases spiking, Georgia Democrats have resurrected a hallmark of their pre-pandemic campaigning: knocking on voters' doors.

Democrats largely halted the practice earlier this year, but the party's candidates this week returned to in-person canvassing in the Peach State as they seek to juice turnout in two critical runoff elections on Jan. 5. The new efforts are being coordinated between the two Democratic campaigns and follow strict health guidelines created in consultation with an epidemiologist.

The transition back to door-to-door canvassing comes after a November election marked by asymmetrical tactics: Democratic candidates generally moved their mobilization efforts online and over the phone, while many Republican campaigns still worked the doors to contact voters.

Both sides recognize that turning out their bases in Georgia will be paramount, and as a result their efforts are focused less on persuading undecided voters and more on getting supporters to the polls or to return absentee ballots. It’s why the two Democratic candidates — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — and a litany of outside groups are set to resurrect door-knocking despite the health concerns.

The hostage negotiator

“The first thing you do is try to establish a rapport with the individual,” said Alfred S. Titus, Jr., a retired NYPD homicide detective who was a member of the force’s hostage negotiation team.

“You want to try and get into their mind to find out what the issue is,” said Titus, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The animal control officer

“When we do a wildlife evacuation, we don’t do anything except give them the ability to get out,” said Mark Thomas, the owner of Baystate Wildlife Management, in Canton.

“When you’ve got squirrels or bats or raccoons, they’re all coming and going on a regular basis, leaving to eat and drink and then coming back in, so we install one-way doors,” he said. “They’re like little exit tunnels where they go out but can’t get back in. They squeeze out and the door closes behind them.

The toddler whisperer

“With any transition, I give warnings of the change a few minutes ahead of time,” said Kim Warrington, owner of Kim’s Kid Kare FCC and Preschool, in Athol.

She gave an example: “In five minutes, it will be time to pick up the blocks and go… In two minutes, it will be time...”

“I will also acknowledge their feelings,” she said. “I know you do not want to go inside yet because you are having so much fun, but we have to go in now, so we can eat lunch, rest, and have time to come back outside before it’s time for you to go home.”

While the McDonald shooting has become the flashpoint for liberal ire directed toward Emanuel, the ill will directed at the former mayor long predates that incident.

Emanuel, from his days leading the Democratic congressional campaign arm in the mid-2000s, has been willing to antagonize liberals within the party. He recruited moderate and conservative Democrats to run in swing districts in the 2006 election -- a strategy widely credited with restoring Democrats to the House majority in that election.

But the antipathy really began in earnest after Emanuel was chosen by former President Barack Obama to serve as his first White House chief of staff. Emanual, infamously to liberals, counseled the new president to avoid an attempt to reform the health care system under the belief that the outcome was too uncertain to risk it. "I gave him my advice," Emanuel said in 2012 of Obama's decision to tackle health care reform.

"I told him many times (about) the political cost of doing this," Emanuel said. "And thank God for the country, he didn't listen to me."