'It's a statistical tie': Race for US Senate neck and neck less than week before election

"It's a statistical tie," said Kathryn Pearson, University of Minnesota associate professor of political science. Pearson is referring to the U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Tina Smith and Republican opponent Jason Lewis. It's a dead heat less than a week before the election.

"I think Senator Smith has the advantage of having served in the senate for around three years, having been all over the state campaigning, and Jason Lewis is, of course, well known to voters in Minnesota's second district, as he served as the second district representative in Congress for two years, but it's harder for him to gain recognition across the state," Pearson said.

Smith criticized President Donald Trump's administration for doing too little to combat the coronavirus pandemic, early on, saying, "What I think we need to do is ... have a strong national strategy and national effort to make sure that we've got tests and rapid tests in many places and that we have a strong robust effort to do contact tracing."

Lewis said, "The best thing we can do is make certain we protect the vulnerable, primarily people who are elderly and have underlying conditions ... We are locking down the young and the healthy ... That's a total mismanagement."

They call themselves 'Wives of the Deplorables' because their husbands support Trump

Carole Catherine did not know her husband, Tim, supported Donald Trump until the day after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. She called him the next morning crying.

"And he was like, 'Yeah, of course she lost. She is an awful human being,' " she said.

"It was like a light went off for me. And I thought, 'Oh boy, we're going to have trouble.' "

For the next three years, Catherine felt like she was living an alternate reality. Her husband was her high school sweetheart. A rekindled love after a first marriage, children and divorce. They barely fought for the first 11 years of their marriage. And now they were working through major ideological differences.

U.S. Voters Agree on One Thing: They'd Feel Better Owning a Gun

Like many Americans, two women a thousand miles apart are each anxious about the uncertain state of the nation. Their reasons are altogether different. But they have found common ground, and a sense of certainty, in a recent purchase: a gun.

Ann-Marie Saccurato traced her purchase to the night she was eating dinner at a sidewalk restaurant not long ago in Delray Beach, Florida, when a Black Lives Matter march passed, and her mind began to wander.

It takes only one person to incite a riot when emotions are high, she remembers thinking. What if police are overpowered and can’t control the crowd?

Ashley Johnson, in Austin, Texas, worries about the images she’s seen in past weeks of armed militias showing up to rallies and making plans to kidnap governors. The outcome of the election, she thinks, will be devastating for some people regardless of the winner.

An all-Black group is arming itself and demanding change. They are the NFAC

When two loud bangs rang out on the streets of Lafayette, Louisiana, no one knew where the gunshots came from as protesters gathered to demand justice for another Black man killed by police.

Among the crowd was a group of armed Black men and women who call themselves the "Not F**king Around Coalition" or NFAC. The group did not run toward the gunshots or break formation. Instead, they kneeled on the ground amid the confusion, and then walked away after their leader shouted, "fall back! fall back!"

The all-Black, Atlanta-based group has grown in size out of frustration during a summer of protests against questionable policing and the deaths of countless Black people at the hands of police, said their founder John Fitzgerald Johnson.

Their presence has caused a stir in the cities they've visited and the group has drawn some criticism after people accidentally fired a weapon during two of their rallies, including the one in Lafayette.

Portland protesters knock down Roosevelt, Lincoln statues in 'rage' toward Columbus Day

Protesters overturned statues of former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday night in a declaration of “rage” toward Columbus Day.

Protest organizers dubbed the event “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,” in response to Monday’s federal holiday named after 15th-century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, a polarizing figure who Native American advocates have said spurred centuries of genocide against indigenous populations in the Americas.

The group threw chains around Roosevelt’s statue, officially titled “Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider.” They threw red paint on the monument and began using a blowtorch on the statue’s base, news outlets reported.

The crowd pulled down the statue just before 9 p.m. The group later turned their attention toward Lincoln’s statue, pulling it down about eight minutes later. 

Minneapolis police say national outage impacting 911 network

The Minneapolis police are reporting that 911 lines are not operational nationwide.

The outage is impacting phone calls and text messages to 911.

Some 911 lines have returned to service following a reported nationwide outage, according to some law enforcement agencies

Both the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office and the Benton County Sheriff's Office have reported 911 functionality has returned.

Other sheriff's offices and police departments are still reporting issues.

UPDATE 8:30:

After a multi-state outage, most 911 services have been restored in Minnesota.

According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, some 911 centers are still experiencing abnormalities.

If reaching 911 is difficult, DPS urges residents call the 10-digit, 24-hour number associated with their county's 911 cente

Hennepin County attorney says no cases of ballot harvesting reported following allegations from Project Veritas, MPD evaluating claim

The Hennepin County Attorney's Office says it has not received information regarding potential ballot harvesting, nor does it have any active investigations into the matter.

The attorney's office released the statement after the right-wing activist group, Project Veritas, released a report claiming instances of ballot harvesting among "political allies and associates of Rep. Ilhan Omar."

Project Veritas has made headlines in the past for its track record of targeting Democratic groups and major media outlets, often by hiding their identities and using hidden cameras. James O'Keefe, the organization's founder, was convicted in 2010 as part of a scheme to illegally make recordings at the office of then-Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat.

The report from the organization makes a series of allegations about a scheme to get elderly Somali voters to turn over absentee ballots to people "harvesting" votes for Minneapolis City Councilman Jamal Osman, who was elected during a special election on Aug. 11. A video with the report shows what the organization claim are absentee ballots piled up in a car. Video also shows a man going door-to-door collecting ballots in the Cedar-Riverside Apartments, home to a large Somali population.