Mr. Pence told the lawmakers he planned to travel to Georgia on Nov. 20 to campaign for Republican senators in the two runoff elections.

For Mr. Pence, the day he will have to announce Mr. Trump’s defeat is two months away. In the meantime, he has resumed more traditional duties of the job, appearing with the president on Wednesday at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. And he postponed a family vacation to Florida, opting instead for a speaking engagement on Friday.

Aides have told Mr. Trump that he would face stiff resistance from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to firing General Milley, who is in the middle of a four-year term as the military’s top officer.

The Pentagon, more than other departments, has resisted Mr. Trump’s directives, slowing the withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, a breach that led to the resignation of Jim Mattis as defense secretary.

In fact, almost everyone expects the mother of all temper tantrums, quite possibly including calls for violence, if Trump does, in fact, lose next week. To some extent he may just be getting an early start.

The point is that for Trump and many of his supporters, that future has already arrived. Does he believe that there’s any truth behind his bizarre claims that Californians are being forced to eat through complicated masks?

What’s scary about all this isn’t just the possibility that Trump may yet win — or steal — a second term. It’s the fact that almost his entire party, and tens of millions of voters, seem perfectly willing to follow him into the abyss.

This strategy may or may not work; this year it probably won’t. But either way, it will poison America’s political life for many years to come.

In an ideal world, Mr. Biden and President Trump would jointly threaten retaliation. (In a less polarized political environment, such joint threats might even become a standard feature of presidential campaigns.) Yet President Trump has not evinced great concern about the possibility of foreign election interference. It falls to Mr. Biden to issue a threat that is clearer and more consequential than those he has issued so far.

t might also be the case that Russian and Iranian hackers are overrated or more cautious than we think and the risk of interference is small.

Before Trump, I’d never had the feeling of wanting to fast-forward through the era I was living in, of longing to be in the future, looking back at how it all turned out.

Of course, it can be thrilling when art and entertainment are politically relevant. But when politics are so alarming that the rest of the world seems to recede, it creates cultural claustrophobia. Since Election Day 2016, writers, artists and critics have wondered what many forms of cultural production — novels, fine art, theater, fashion — mean “in the age of Trump.” It’s a cliché — one I know I’ve used — about the reorientation of almost everything around the monstrous fact of the Trump presidency.

Living in Trump’s panic-inducing eternal present is bad for art, but it’s also bad for imagination more broadly, including the imagination needed to conceive a future in which Trumpism is unthinkable.

But the push may have come too late to regain lost ground.

From last October to March nearly half of asylum claims made by Venezuelans were denied, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

The great shame is not that Mr. Trump brought an anachronistic masculinity into the Oval Office, but that he used the Oval Office to market a very modern brand of compensatory manhood — with a twist.

The gender gap in this election can be simply explained. Most women are turned off by the toxic displays of chest-beating that many male voters — notably but not exclusively white — find exciting.

Women were trapped in their ornamental cage because they were locked out of productive work and economic self-sufficiency

If he wins the election, Mr. Biden’s success, but, more important, the nation’s success, will depend in part on his ability to re-enlist Mr. Trump’s foot soldiers into what all of us want — a meaningful role in a mutual effort that serves the greater good.

“Polls give people a false sense of security, and they think they don’t have to turn out to vote,” he said. “Is there going to be a peaceful transfer of power? That’s a big question. The big worry is that he won’t accept the results, or he’s going to incite violence.”

“I find this individual so disgusting,” said Jane Kelly-Forest, 61, who lives in a suburb of Des Moines. “You want to believe the polls, and you want to believe that people will see what’s right in front of their eyes

Mr. Biden has indicated that he would re-enter the nuclear deal and lift many of those sanctions as long as Iran first returns to obeying the limits on its nuclear program that it agreed to five years ago.

“This may be the beginning of a more concerted operation,” Mr. King said.

Iran’s efforts appear to focus on voter intimidation and disinformation.

Republicans intended to proceed anyway, even if it meant tossing out Judiciary Committee rules that required members of the minority party to be present to conduct official business.

New public polling suggests American voters may increasingly be on the side of Republicans, with opposition to Judge Barrett’s confirmation before the election waning, even among Democrats.

The boycott on Thursday was arguably their most drastic step yet, but Democrats have repeatedly turned to dilatory tactics to try to frame the fight, fluster Republicans and show liberals they are doing all they can to push back on Judge Barrett’s nomination.

Democrats had briefly discussed boycotting Judge Barrett’s confirmation hearings last week, but they decided against giving up their only chance to publicly and directly question the nominee about her legal philosophy and record. But now, with confirmation all but preordained, they reasoned a boycott would show the party’s progressive base they had fought until the end.

Trump, of course, is not a front-running candidate of any stripe.

Really, a clear front-running candidate would have to screw up royally — wander absent-mindedly offstage reading emails or forget the kids’ names when introducing the family — to have a debate change the election outcome.

While the state did not include a specific dollar amount in its request, Mr. Newsom wrote that because of a recession induced by the pandemic, California went from a projected $5.6 billion budget surplus to a $54.3 billion projected deficit. “California’s economy is suffering in a way we have not seen since the 2009 Great Recession,” he said.

California has been smacked in the face from climate change, one scientist said.

Over the past 50 years, excluding the last four, wildfires averaged about the same in direct damages: a billion dollars per year, adjusted for inflation.But in three of the past four years, including this one, fires are on track to cause damages in excess of $10 billion.

On ABC, the mood was different. Mr. Biden and Mr. Stephanopoulos engaged in a sober policy conversation more suited to a Sunday morning public-affairs broadcast.

The tone tensed up when Mr. Biden declined, as he has several times, to fully explain his view on expanding the Supreme Court. “Don’t voters have a right to know where you stand?” Mr. Stephanopoulos asked.

I would urge you to remember that you stand on the shoulders of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Please think about their legacy, not just that of Antonin Scalia, when forming opinions and voting. I hope you evolve more in their image rather than his.

It is one thing to practice a religion; for that the First Amendment is sufficient protection. It is quite another to impose your religion on another, particularly in the guise of a judicial ruling. That is the reason to question Judge Amy Coney Barrett closely on her willingness to separate her beliefs from her possible rulings.

Democrats fully understand that this bill would constrain Joe Biden’s power, particularly if Republicans won back control of Congress in the 2022 midterms.

Republicans once insisted that Merrick Garland, Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, didn’t deserve a hearing because the election was only 11 months away. They should be taken exactly as seriously when they claim, after nearly four years of Trumpism, to care about the unwritten rules of American governance.

The more the Democratic Party becomes a vehicle for Black political empowerment, the less its votes count.

They should also lodge a complaint with the Organization of American States, a regional organization that has pledged “to respond rapidly and collectively in defense of democracy,” and which in 2009 used that mandate to suspend Honduras after its government carried out a coup.

Americans are not so inherently virtuous that they can safely disregard the moral discipline that international oversight provides. Wells-Barnett, Du Bois and Robeson understood that from brutal, firsthand experience. Now that Mr. Biden and other white Democrats are tasting disenfranchisement themselves, they need to learn that lesson, too.

The testing and release of a vaccine is an issue that has gained wide national attention. Mr. Trump has repeatedly misrepresented how quickly a vaccine might be available to most Americans, promising a major breakthrough in vaccine development as early as this month.

Staff members at the budget office scrutinize the documents for statements that could undercut the president’s public message that the administration either has the pandemic under control or will soon, according to former and current federal officials.

Some vaccine makers, including Johnson & Johnson, have publicly indicated that they will follow the agency’s recommendations, regardless of the White House’s actions.

In addition to the two-month follow-up period, the guidelines stated that there should be at least five cases of severe infection in the placebo group as evidence that a vaccine is effective in preventing more than just mild to moderate illness. About 10 percent of Covid-19 cases are considered severe.

In the hospital, Trump and his enablers worked to minimize the perception that he was really sick. His doctor misled the public about the president’s condition. Trump staged photo shoots of faux work sessions and risked the health of Secret Service agents to drive by a gathering of fans.

If a critical mass of people continue to trust Trump, the way he’s spinning his ordeal might lead them to take the coronavirus even less seriously. Announcing his discharge on Monday, Trump tweeted that he felt better than he had in 20 years, saying: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Given this uncertainty, we are going to need to be patient. The negative tests we might want to celebrate over the next few days won’t actually tell us much. We can only hope for the best.

And that is why the only choice in this election is Joe Biden. The Democrats are not blameless when it comes to playing politics, but there is no equivalence to the Republicans. The Democratic Party sorted through all the choices, and, led by older Black men and women in South Carolina, rejected the Democratic socialist candidate and said they wanted a moderate unifier named Joe Biden.

They have fallen in line lock step behind a man who is the most dishonest, dangerous, meanspirited, divisive and corrupt person to ever occupy the Oval Office. And they know it. Four more years of Trump’s divide and rule will destroy our institutions and rip the country apart.

To get back a semblance of unity and sanity, Biden has to win. And that is why I have only one answer to every question now: Vote for Biden