Trump news – live: Fauci issues stern warning to president's campaign on Covid as Amy Coney Barret grilled on guns, abortion

‘If I’m confirmed, you would not be getting Justice Scalia. You would be getting Justice Barrett’

The candidate - not wearing a mask today after being invited to remove it by the chairman - has pushed back against Lindsey Graham’s comparisons between her and the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Meanwhile, today there are TWO Republicans with coronavirus in the chamber - Mike Lee being joined now by Thom Tillis, who was working from home yesterday.

Judge Barrett refuses to be drawn on Roe v Wade

California Democrat and ranking member Dianne Feinstein pushes ACB on abortion but the conservative ducks and squirms to avoid answering.

Griffin Connolly has the latest from the upper chamber.

Ivanka Trump tried to claim her father took the pandemic more 'seriously' than anyone else

Let’s step away from the Senate for a moment.

Campaigning for her dad in Las Vegas yesterday, Ivanka Trump attempted to argue that the president had taken the coronavirus “more seriously” than other DC polticians earlier this year.

Given that her father has regularly mocked masks, sparked an outbreak in the West Wing, overseen American 214,000 deaths and staged a superspreader rally in Florida that very evening, her claim did not go over particularly well.

Greg Evans has more on this for Indy100.

Trump offers Columbus Day ‘flash sale’ as campaign coffers dwindle

“For a limited time, YOU can use code COLUMBUS to get 30% OFF your ENTIRE ORDER,” reads an email sent out to supporters of the president over the weekend, which, according to Raw Story, is indicative of Trump’s empty coffee can.

Recipients were offered a chance to win a signed Trump-Pence American football or gain membership in an exclusive “100 Club”, whatever that is, as part of the same offer.

They’ve also been badgering Magaworld with promos for Trump-branded beer glasses in other emails, a message rather at odds with the president's own teetotalism.

While Trump insists his campaign is not running out of cash, it only pulled in $210m in fundraising in August while Joe Biden made a handsome $365.4m.

To put it another way, that means Biden raised $1.74 for every dollar Trump made, hence the frantic efforts to pass the hat.

NBC says we’re already seeing the discrepancy in the shape of TV advertising, with Biden spending $109m on ads between Labour Day and the end of September, when Trump spent just $45m.

Trump campaign pulls ads in key states as poll numbers slump

The president’s re-election team has pulled radio and television commercials across three Midwestern states that could decide next month’s election amid unfavourable poll numbers.

Trump is also reported to have reduced campaign spending across four other states, as he reallocates spending to the nation’s Sun Belt.

According to Newsweek and Advertising Analytics, the president has pulled ad-time totalling $17m across Ohio, Iowa and New Hampshire, where polls show him lagging behind Biden.

Gino Spocchia has more on this.

ACB says she would approach Trump trying to deal election 'with open mind’

Back at the Judiciary Committee, Judge Barrett gave this somewhat alarming answer on the president’s efforts to derail a ballot he looks all set to lose.

Pat Leahy has - grindingly slowly - pushed her on her knowledge of the Affordable Care Act and on whether she would recuse herself should an election dispute arise (being a Trump pick). Again, she declined to commit. 

Meanwhile, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren offers this timely footnote on her refusal to be drawn on abortion. 

ACB owns a gun but says she would rule 'fairly' on gun control cases

Griffin Connolly has this on Judge Barrett’s answers to Senators Feinstein and Dick Durbin on fire arms.

Mitt Romney says US politics has become ‘vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass’

The Utah senator is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more. 

“The world is watching America with abject horror,” he writes in a mission statement calling on Trump, senators, congressmen and the media to “lower the heat and tone it down”.

Biden responds to Trump’s ‘court-packing’ allegations

Joe Biden said he was “not a fan” of adding seats to the US Supreme Court in a new interview and insisted the “court-packing the public should be focused on” was Republican-led efforts to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before Election Day.

The former vice president and Democratic nominee made the comments in an interview on Monday with WKRC in Cincinnati, as senators on Capitol Hill were conducting confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative nominated to the nation’s top court by Donald Trump after justice Ginsburg’s passing.

“I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue,” the former vice president told the radio show, adding: “I want to keep focused.” 

Story to come…

Republican says ‘it’s ACA vs ACB’ during confirmation process

Senator John Cornyn made the quip during Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation process, in which she has declined to state whether she would help overturn the Affordable Care Act passed by former President Barack Obama: