California and New York now saying that they won’t play along with Trump’s pre-election COVID vaccine charade. They’ll refuse to distribute a vaccine that’s not safe and effective, which seems obvious on its face, but what they mean is a vaccine that’s been rushed through abbreviated phase III trials for political reasons. Josh Kovensky has our exclusive report.

This morning we published two pieces with starkly disturbing headlines within about thirty minutes of each other.

In this week’s edition of The Josh Marshall Podcast we discuss the Democratic fretfest and barreling toward election day. Watch after the jump …

It’s easy to get lost in the big muddy river of polling data and headlines. But before we get further into the day I wanted to discuss a new group of polls that came out yesterday. This was the first batch of quality polls entirely after the GOP convention. The upshot of really all of them is that “law and order” is not only not helping Trump cut into Biden’s lead. Trump appears to be losing that debate on its own terms. When pollsters ask voters which candidate they trust more to handle civil unrest, protests or crime, they’re picking Biden.

This post may take a few deep breaths because it’s hard to have any sympathy for Kyle Rittenhouse. But it’s not about sympathy. TPM Reader BG raises some important legal points – a couple of which had occurred to me as well – about his legal representation. I’ll note as a separate or related matter that Rittenhouse is being represented by a couple of wingnut hucksters, one of whom, Lin Wood, is the celeb right wing lawyer who’s been filing nuisance lawsuits against myriad news organizations on behalf of Nicholas Sandman. From BG …

Rittenhouse is 17, which means he can be a child in need of assistance (CINA) in most states.

He will also be charged as an adult, almost certainly.

Three points:

From TPM Reader JB, a physician and professor at a major academic medical center …

I think we now know what the October surprise will be for the election: It will be the rolling out of a COVID19 vaccine. The CDC has already said that states should prepare for distribution in October/November and the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn, has said he may Fast Track approval for a vaccine.

This is the President’s campaign press secretary again defending accused double-murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and saying his behavior is a logical consequence BLM and criticism of the police.

President's Press Secretary again defending accused double-murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, says it's the logical consequence of Black Lives Matter movement. "If you don't allow police to do their job then the American people have to defend themselves some way." pic.twitter.com/onxmeMtaOG

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 2, 2020

Tomorrow, September 3, from 5 – 7 p.m. ET TPM is hosting a virtual Zoom event focused on the unique challenges of holding an election during the crisis that is 2020.

TPM staff will be joined by Hannah Fried, All Voting is Local’s national campaign director and the former national director and deputy general counsel for voter protection on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Tammy Patrick, senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and an expert on vote by mail, to discuss efforts to take advantage of the crisis to suppress votes.

They couldn’t even find a willing participant. So they replaced a shop owner with someone who’d be happy to play his game.

This is all pretty much in the open now. Trump has the US intelligence agencies running interference for and assisting Russian interference and disinformation campaigns against the Democrats.