Democrat Joe Biden holds a narrow lead over President Trump in the all-important battleground state of Pennsylvania, while the two candidates are tied in Arizona, according to the final NBC News/Marist state polls of the 2020 presidential election.

In Pennsylvania, which Trump won four years ago, Biden is ahead by 5 points among likely voters, 51 percent to 46 percent, although that advantage is within that poll’s margin of error; a combined 3 percent say they’re undecided or are voting for someone else.

That’s down from Biden’s 9-point lead in the state in September’s NBC/Marist poll of the state.

Biden’s current 5-point edge in Pennsylvania is consistent with other recent high-quality public polls of the state, which show the former Democratic vice president ahead in the mid-single digits.

Read more here.

A federal judge is hearing arguments in a suit to throw out more than 127,000 ballots because they were cast in drive-thru voting booths in Harris County, Texas.

Harris, the third most populous county in the country, set up drive-thru voting booths to accommodate voters during the pandemic. The Texas Supreme Court denied multiple attempts to toss the voting method in recent weeks, before the same group of Texas Republicans brought the issue to federal court last week, arguing that the county’s decision to offer drive-thru voting to all voters violates the legislature’s authority over elections and equal protection clauses because other counties did not implement drive-thru voting.

An emergency hearing was scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. CST, but much of the media is in the dark for now: social distancing requirements kept reporters out of the courtroom and a dial-in line set up for press disconnected reporters off just as the hearing was set to begin. A Houston Chronicle reporter said he was later allowed in the courtroom, but others remain outside.

Democrats and national voting rights advocates quickly moved to defend the ballots this weekend, but there’s also been some high profile Republican opposition to the suit.

Joe Biden was spending the final days of the presidential campaign appealing to Black supporters to vote in-person during a pandemic that has disproportionally affected their communities, betting that a strong turnout will boost his chances in states that could decide the election.

Biden was in Philadelphia on Sunday, the largest city in what is emerging as the most hotly contested battleground in the closing 48 hours of the campaign. He participated in a “souls to the polls” event that is part of a nationwide effort to organize Black churchgoers to vote.

“Every single day we’re seeing race-based disparities in every aspect of this virus,” Biden said at the drive-in event, shouting to be heard over the blaring car horns. He declared that Trump’s handling of Covid-19 was “almost criminal” and that the pandemic was a “mass casualty event in the Black community.”

Read more here.

The story of President Donald Trump's approval poll numbers is the story of consistency. 

Trump's approval rating has hovered within the same nine-point range (upper: 47 percent in the Oct. 14-17, 2018 and February 14-17, 2020, polls; lower: 38 percent in Oct. 23-26, 2017) since his inauguration in January 2017.

According to the October 29-31 NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll, Trump's most-recent poll comes in at 45 percent job approval. At this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama and George W. Bush were at 49 percent and Bill Clinton was at 56 percent. 

See the full numbers on presidential approval ratings.

The Justice Department on Monday announced plans to monitor voting rights on Election Day, a common practice for the agency to ensure there are no civil rights violations. 

“Federal law entrusts the Civil Rights Division with protecting the right to vote for all Americans,” said Eric S. Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. The department will be taking complaints from voters nationwide on possible violations of voting rights law.

On Election Day, the Civil Rights Division will be sending officials to 44 jurisdictions across 18 states. This year, the majority of personnel will be in Michigan, with seven officials there, followed by Florida with six and Massachusetts with five.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., warned on Monday of potential election interference by foreign agents. 

Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and receives the high-level briefings. 

He urged Americans to verify election "rumors" with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency website, which created a taskforce to deal with election interference, foreign and domestic. 

Warner closed the tweet with the hashtag #Protect2020, which was created as part of the agency's efforts to combat misinformation this election cycle. 

"Stay calm, and be judicious about what you believe and share online," Warner said. 

Following Trump's rally in Rome, Georgia, Sunday night, crowds of people waited 90 minutes or more to get back to their vehicles from the rally site.

It was the latest episode of a chaotic post-airport rally scene, after a rally last week in Omaha saw supporters wait hours in the cold for buses while after a subsequent rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, groups of supporters opted to walk rather than wait for limited bus service to return to their cars.

These regional airports have limited access to major thruways, which can make transportation after a large rally difficult.

As the U.S. enters the final day of early voting ahead of Election Day, almost 94 million Americans have already cast votes — nearly doubling the 50 million who did so in 2016.

As of 8 a.m. on the East Coast, more than 93,800,000 voters have so far cast early ballots, according to data from the NBC News Decision Desk/Target Smart, a Democratic political data firm. The Decision Desk projects that number could approach 100 million by Tuesday.

With about 94 million votes already cast, the early vote total in 2020 represents about 69 percent of the total vote cast in all of 2016, when about 136.5 million ballots were counted.

Continue reading on NBCNews.com. 

This photo shows a boarded-up Walmart in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. When asked why the store was doing this, an employee responded by saying they were preparing for the day after the election.

The company has recently overturned its policy and will not remove guns and ammo for sale from select stores. The policy was originally in place over concerns of civil unrest but later determined to be “isolated civil unrest.”

Photo courtesy of Beth Shelburne in Birmingham.