Miami-Dade County has Covid-19 restrictions in place, but the county “will be flexible” with the rules during the Trump rally scheduled tonight at an airport in Opa-Locka.
“As with any other events, the county will continue to enforce the curfew. We will be flexible, as we have been with recent late-ending sporting events, so that people get home safely,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez tweeted.
Wearing a mask in public is required in Miami-Dade County when social distancing is not possible, or when there is no physical barrier present. A midnight to 6 a.m. ET curfew is also in place.
According to Gimenez, the Republican National Committee confirmed that the event is scheduled to begin at 9:30 p.m. and is expected to end before midnight.
But according to an email sent to the Miami-Dade Aviation department by the RNC, and obtained by CNN, the permit requested a 10 p.m. start time, with remarks from President Trump expected to start at 11:00 p.m. According to an email obtained by CNN, the RNC requested a “first amendment permit” for the MAGA rally which could be attended by up to 10,000 people.
Gimenez said county personnel will hand out flyers listing local Covid-19 rule requirements, including the mask in public and physical distancing mandate. The RNC is expected to distribute masks and hand sanitizer to attendees, according to Miami-Dade County.
The FBI is investigating an incident in Texas on Friday involving the alleged harassment of a Biden-Harris campaign bus by motorists displaying Trump 2020 flags, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.
According to another source familiar with the incident, people in vehicles that were part of a "Trump Train" began yelling profanities and obscenities and then blockaded the entire Biden entourage.
At one point they slowed the tour bus to roughly 20 mph on Interstate 35, the campaign official said. The vehicles slowed down to try to stop the bus in the middle of the highway. The source said there were nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus. Biden staffers were rattled by the event, the source said, although no one was hurt. Staffers on the bus called 911, which eventually led to local law enforcement assisting the bus to its destination.
After tweeting a video of the bus incident with the words "I LOVE TEXAS!," Trump claimed at a campaign rally on Sunday that his supporters were "protecting" the bus.
Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale is used to diffusing tense situations from her time as a chaplain in a federal prison. This year, she’s hoping to bring the skills she learned working with prison inmates to the polls.
“I see my role very similar here, in terms of bringing peace and calm to the situation and helping people resolve their issues as carefully as possible,” Hale, who is 68 years old, told CNN.
Hale and hundreds of other members of the clergy have been trained as part of a nonpartisan initiative called Lawyers and Collars to act as “poll chaplains” in nine battleground states. Hale will act as a poll chaplain in Georgia, a state that was at the center of a debate over voter suppression during the 2018 midterms.
In a tumultuous election year in which there are heightened fears about voter intimidation and suppression, these poll chaplains hope to ensure that every vote gets counted. They have been trained to provide information to voters about their rights, and deescalate any conflicts that may arise at polling locations.
“In Georgia in particular, we have some real concerns about voter intimidation and voter suppression,” Hale said. “Some of these can be handled easily, you know, people not having the right ID, or something of that nature.”
Hale is the founder and senior pastor of the Ray of Hope Christian Church, which doubles as her polling location. Prior to joining this church, Hale said she was the first woman to serve in an all-male federal prison as a chaplain in North Carolina.
In addition to the poll chaplains, the group set up a hotline to make lawyers available to identify and address any voting irregularities and intimidation that may occur throughout the voting process.
Bishop Claude Alexander, a poll chaplain and pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina, told CNN, “We are still having incidences of suppression, where people are being intimidated, and they are actually being told, ‘Go away, you cannot vote here.’ And therefore, there has to be some counter-presence that helps redirect and then give assurance to those individuals.”
This is the second time in recent weeks the Supreme Court has blocked attempts to dismantle drive-thru voting in Harris County. The petition argued that drive-thru voting violated federal law.
Meanwhile, a similar court case is pending at a federal court in Houston with a hearing set for tomorrow.
Ten of Harris County's 120 early voting sites are drive-thru locations. As of Friday, nearly 127,000 votes had been cast via drive-thru, marking nearly 9% of the total votes cast in the country's third most populous county. While curbside voting in Harris County is limited to voters with a disability and located at all polling sites, the drive-thru voting locations are open to all voters.
Ohio's top election official affirmed that every legally cast vote needs to be counted in his state, including those that arrive after election day in accordance with Ohio law.
“I know a lot of people like this idea of election night coverage is sort of reality TV but it's not really the way that it works and it certainly may not be the way that it works this year in an election where we're relying more heavily than ever on absentee ballots.” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said.
When asked about what President Trump has said that he wanted the results of the election that night, LaRose added, “That's not the way elections work. It's just simply not, it's not the way elections work in Ohio or most any other state election night is a snapshot in time.”
Ohio law allows for absentee ballots post marked by election date to be received up to 10 days after election day and still be counted.
“Every legally cast valid deserves to be counted and will be counted by our boards collections and reported as part of our final certified result at the end of the month,” LaRose added.
The state is under a statewide mask order, to try and slow the spread of the virus. The order has been contentious in some parts of the state. Voters who arrive to the polls who do not wear a facemask will be offered one, LaRose said. If they refuse to wear one other accommodations like curbside voting will be offered, he added.
“Of course, if somebody refuses all of those accommodations that we offer them, we can't turn anyone away. No one will be disenfranchised here in Ohio," he added.
First lady Melania Trump is set to make her fourth solo campaign stop of the election on Monday in Huntersville, North Carolina.
As of Sunday morning in North Carolina, 61.7% of the 7,345,481 registered voters in the state have already voted, by either Absentee Ballot or Early Voting. Early voting concluded Saturday at 3 p.m. local time.
There were more than 3.6 million one-stop early voting ballots cast, and over 929,000 absentee by-mail ballots in the state.
President Trump’s election night party is expected to be moved to the East Room of the White House, a person familiar with the plans said.
While Trump had initially planned to hold a gathering on Tuesday night at the Trump Hotel in Washington, DC, the limits on the number of people who can gather indoors caused some problems for the planning. Discussions shifted to the idea of just holding it at the White House, where Trump will spend the evening of Election Day.
Trump on Saturday said he might be going to the hotel during some of the evening.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York Times first reported the plans.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris underwent PCR testing for Covid-19 Sunday and the virus was not detected, per a Harris aide.
Harris is in Georgia and North Carolina today and Pennsylvania on Monday for the last days of campaigning.