AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

In 2020 finale, Trump combative, Biden on offence

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the closing hours of a campaign shadowed by a once-in-a-century pandemic, President Donald Trump charged across the nation Monday delivering an incendiary but unsupported allegation that the election is rigged, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden pushed to claim states once seen as safely Republican.

America stood at a crossroads. Never before in modern history have voters faced a choice between candidates offering such opposite visions as the nation confronts a virus that has killed 230,000 Americans, the starkest economic contraction since the Great Depression and a citizenry divided on cultural and racial issues.

The two men broke sharply Monday on the voting process itself while campaigning in the most fiercely contested battleground, Pennsylvania. The president threatened legal action to stop counting beyond Election Day. If Pennsylvania ballot counting takes several days, as is allowed, Trump charged that “cheating can happen like you have never seen.”

Going further, Trump even tweeted about election-related “violence in the streets,” though none has occurred. Asked about it, Biden said “I’m not going to respond to anything he has to say. I’m hoping for a straightforward, peaceful election with a lot of people showing up.”

Biden, earlier in Pittsburgh, delivered a voting rights message to a mostly Black audience, declaring that Trump believes “only wealthy folks should vote” and describing COVID-19 as a “mass casualty event for Black Americans.”

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The Latest: Biden predicts ‘big win’ in Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times local):

9:45 p.m.

Joe Biden is predicting a victory in Pennsylvania on the eve of the election.

Speaking at a drive-in rally in Pittsburgh, Biden encouraged the audience to vote and said, “I have a feeling we’re coming together for a big win tomorrow!” The crowd, about 250 cars gathered in the parking lot of Heinz Field, honked their horns and cheered as he spoke.

Biden was the headliner at a star-studded pair of rallies Monday night. Before he spoke in Pittsburgh, running mate Kamala Harris delivered a call to action at a rally in Philadelphia that was live-streamed on a large screen at the Pittsburgh rally. John Legend played in Philadelphia, while Lady Gaga performed in Pittsburgh and exhorted the crowd to “vote like your lives depend on it!”

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‘Raw exposed nerves’: Anxious nation awaits Election Day

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — She could have dropped her ballot at the post office, but she wasn’t sure if she should trust the mail. She considered slipping it into the secured ballot box just outside of City Hall, but what if something happened? A fire maybe; or theft.

This year has delivered so many shocks that anything seemed possible. So 58-year-old Diane Spiteri trudged up three flights of steps to place her absentee ballot straight into the hands of the clerk in this critical battleground suburb of Detroit.

As the traditional Election Day closes in, Americans are exhausted from constant crises, on edge because of volatile political divisions and anxious about what will happen next. Their agony is not in deciding between President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Most made that choice long ago. Instead, voters arriving in record numbers to cast early ballots say basic democratic foundations feel suddenly brittle: Will their vote count? Will the loser accept the result? Will the winner find a way to repair a fractured, sick and unsettled nation?

“I just can’t wait until the whole thing is over. And I think it’s long from over, even after Tuesday. There’s just so much anxiety,” said Spiteri, who voted last week for Biden. “I am hoping that there wasn’t too much damage done in the last four years that it can’t be undone.”

Here in Macomb County and across the country, some say the stress has made them physically ill. Others have obsessively tracked polls to soothe their nerves, or bought guns, or researched moving abroad, or retreated to a cabin in the woods. Tension has ratcheted up, sometimes within families, as each side believes the other is threatening to usher in the end of America as we know it.

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Hospitals competing for nurses as US coronavirus cases surge

FENTON, Michigan (AP) — As the coronavirus pandemic surges across the nation and infections and hospitalizations rise, medical administrators are scrambling to find enough nursing help — especially in rural areas and at small hospitals.

Nurses are being trained to provide care in fields where they have limited experience. Hospitals are scaling back services to ensure enough staff to handle critically ill patients. And health systems are turning to short-term travel nurses to help fill the gaps.

Adding to the strain, experienced nurses are “burned out with this whole (pandemic)” and some are quitting, said Kevin Fitzpatrick, an emergency room nurse at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan, where several left just in the past month to work in hospice or home care or at outpatient clinics.

“And replacing them is not easy,” Fitzpatrick said.

As a result, he said, the ER is operating at about five nurses short of its optimal level at any given time, and each one typically cares for four patients as COVID-19 hospitalizations surge anew. Hospital officials did not respond to requests for comment.

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Biden backers make final plea for delivery of mail ballots

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Down to the wire with the threat of court battles looming, supporters of former Vice-President Joe Biden scrambled Monday to rally swing-state voters to drop off ballots, visit precincts in person and ensure their votes are counted.

As months of President Donald Trump undercutting the legitimacy of mail-in votes gave way to promises he would challenge them in court, both sides made a final push to ensure their supporters turned out, even with the lingering threat of lawsuits aimed at invalidating ballots.

“Do not put ballots in the mail. Hand-deliver your mail ballot to your county election office, satellite election office or other designated drop box or drop-off location,” Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said Monday. “Do it today. Do not wait.”

With about 700,000 of some 3.1 million requested mail ballots in Pennsylvania still outstanding, some voters like 57-year-old Daniel Pigott took the warning to heart.

Pigott stood in a line of dozens of voters outside the Bucks County government building on a blustery Monday waiting to cast his vote after being alerted there was a problem with his mail-in ballot.

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Lawyers on standby if cloudy election outcome heads to court

WASHINGTON (AP) — Signature matches. Late-arriving absentee votes. Drop boxes. Secrecy envelopes.

Democratic and Republican lawyers already have gone to court over these issues in the run-up to Tuesday’s election. But the legal fights could take on new urgency, not to mention added vitriol, if a narrow margin in a battleground state is the difference between another four years for President Donald Trump or a Joe Biden administration.

Both sides say they’re ready, with thousands of lawyers on standby to march into court to make sure ballots get counted, or excluded.

Since the 2000 presidential election, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, both parties have enlisted legal teams to prepare for the unlikely event that voting wouldn’t settle the contest. But this year, there is a near presumption that legal fights will ensue and that only a definitive outcome is likely to forestall them.

The candidates and parties have enlisted prominent lawyers with ties to Democratic and Republican administrations. A Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court pits Donald Verrilli, who was President Barack Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer, against John Gore, a onetime high-ranking Trump Justice Department official.

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AP PHOTOS: In campaign’s last days, a final push for votes

Election Day is Nov. 3, but the nation has been teeming with voting activity for weeks as the 2020 campaign barrels down the home stretch.

With coronavirus cases spiking in most of the country, millions of Americans are mailing in ballots or lining up at socially distanced intervals at early voting stations to have their say well beforehand.

Meanwhile, the candidates, their running mates and surrogates are making last-minute pitches to any voters who may still be persuadable — and haven’t already voted.

Amid the rallies and speeches, local elections officials from coast to coast are preparing by sanitizing polling booths and checking vote-counting systems.

Here’s a look at the day in photos, 2020 election edition.

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2 dead, 15 wounded in Vienna terror attack, authorities say

VIENNA (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on people enjoying a last night out at Vienna’s cafes and restaurants before a coronavirus lockdown Monday in what authorities said was a terrorist attack that left at least two dead — including one of the assailants — and 15 wounded.

“We are victims of a despicable terror attack in the federal capital that is still ongoing,” Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said hours after the gunfire erupted.

“One of the perpetrators was neutralized, but several perpetrators appear to still be on the loose,” he said. “They seem to also, as far as we know, be very well equipped, with automatic weapons. So they were very well prepared.”

Police said that several shots were fired shortly after 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) on a lively street in the city centre and that there were six shooting locations. Unverified footage on social media showed gunmen walking through the streets, apparently shooting at people at random, wounding several.

The motive was under investigation, but Kurz said the possibility it was an anti-Semitic attack cannot be ruled out, given that the shooting began outside Vienna’s main synagogue. It was closed at the time.

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Trump threatens to fire Fauci in rift with disease expert

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is suggesting that he will fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after Tuesday’s election, as his rift with the nation’s top infectious disease expert widens while the nation sees its most alarming outbreak of the coronavirus since the spring.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Opa-locka, Florida, Trump expressed frustration that the surging cases of the virus that has killed more than 231,000 people in the United States this year remains prominent in the news. That sparked his supporters to begin chanting “Fire Fauci.”

“Don’t tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election,” Trump replied to thousands of supporters early Monday, adding he appreciated their “advice.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tweeted later Monday in response: “We need a president who actually listens to experts like Dr. Fauci.”

Biden has sought to keep the campaign focused on what he says is a disastrous federal response to the pandemic. Trump is countering by using the race’s final hours to accuse Biden of wanting to force the country back into a lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.

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Widely shared photo of Biden without mask was taken in 2019

CHICAGO (AP) — President Donald Trump’s supporters have seized on a photo circulating on Twitter since late Sunday that shows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden not wearing a mask while he talks to a campaign staffer on a plane.

Why wasn’t Biden, who has made a point to put on a facial covering throughout the campaign, wearing a mask? Because the photo was taken in November 2019, before the first case of the new coronavirus was reported, and months before global health officials began urging people to wear masks in order to stop the spread of the virus.

The image was shared on Twitter by Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, where it was liked and shared from his account more than 50,000 times. Grenell, who currently serves as special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, was a U.S. ambassador to Germany for two years before resigning in June.

When contacted by The Associated Press, Grenell did not answer questions about whether he knew the image was old before sharing it with his 671,000 followers.

Mask wearing has become a political issue on the campaign trail, with Biden frequently putting one on in public and Trump rarely doing so, and even mocking Biden for wearing a mask so often.