More than 68,000 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the US on Friday, the highest number in a single day since July, further confirmation the country is in the midst of a coronavirus resurgence.
Related: American Crisis review: Andrew Cuomo on Covid, Trump … and a job with Joe Biden?
Continue reading...Amy Coney Barrett’s supreme court confirmation hearings bring few surprises – with occasional glimpses of truth
It was the five-hour mark when the tech gods finally pulled the plug.
As Senator Richard Blumenthal started questioning supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, the Senate’s audio system crashed and her words floated away on the air.
Continue reading...The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons
Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.
All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.
Continue reading...Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump has surged to a record 17 points as the US election enters its final sprint, an Opinium Research and Guardian opinion poll shows.
Related: Amy Coney Barrett faces questions on legal record as nomination hearings continue – live
Continue reading...Millions of American voters will be unable to cast their ballot in this year’s presidential election and those affected will be disproportionately first-time voters and from minority groups, reports Sam Levine
As the November election approaches, Donald Trump is continuing to make stark claims about voter fraud, particularly focused on postal voting. Despite a lack of evidence, many are interpreting the president’s claims as a prelude to his challenging the result should he be defeated. Fears of fraud are also being used by many states to place more hurdles in the way of voters trying to cast their ballots.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine tells Anushka Asthana about the bureaucratic steps required to cast a legal vote in some states and how research shows that they mean the discounting of votes from disproportionately younger and minority voters. He also describes how millions of former prisoners are being denied votes decades after release due to bureaucratic errors or minuscule unpaid fines. He met Alfonzo Tucker, a resident in Alabama, who was struck from the register over a $4 fine and whose son of the same name was also prevented from voting. Meanwhile, there are growing fears of intimidation at the polls, not least following Trump’s performance at the presidential debate in which he failed to denounce white supremacists, telling the rightwing Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by”.
Continue reading...The Michigan governor who was the target of a foiled rightwing kidnapping plot said on Friday that Donald Trump’s rhetoric “incites more domestic terror”, after the president posted a series of aggressive tweets overnight that sought to shame the victim of the plot.
Related: How the domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan's governor unravelled
Continue reading...The vice-presidential debate was more courteous than last week’s horror show but still showed two contrasting faces of America
It was always going to be about the two faces of America.
One: white, male, midwestern, evangelical Christian. The other: Black, female, coastal, progressive.
Continue reading...Coronavirus was the key theme, but Harris also warned of the threat to Obamacare as both candidates dodged questions
The vice-presidential debate on Wednesday was less openly hostile than the Donald Trump-Joe Biden debacle last week – but provided a further insight into the state of both campaigns ahead of November.
Related: Kamala Harris and Mike Pence clash over coronavirus response in vice-presidential debate
Continue reading...Texas is a rapidly changing state with the fastest growing population in the US. Hispanic Texans are expected to become the majority by 2022, but will this help Joe Biden flip a Republican stronghold? Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to suburban Dallas and the border city of McAllen to look at the political impact of this diversification and the legacy of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has called for the US to put politics aside and unite as the country faces 'too many crises'. Speaking at Gettysburg, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the US civil war, Biden said he decided to run for president after the far-right rally and resulting violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. 'It was hate on the march in the open. In America,' he said. 'Hate never goes away. It only hides. And when it's given oxygen, when it's given an opportunity to spread, when it's treated as normal and acceptable behaviour, we've opened a door in this country that we must move quickly to close'
A fascinating dispatch from Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, who cites “two Republicans briefed on the family conversations” in reporting that Donald Trump Jr is worried by his dad’s car-ride-and-tweet-storm response to being hospitalised with Covid-19:
‘Don Jr has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he’s doing,’ a source said. Don Jr is said to be reluctant to confront his father alone. ‘Don said, ‘I’m not going to be the only one to tell him he’s acting crazy,’’ the source added.
One area where the family seems united is over the president’s manic tweeting early Monday morning. After Trump sent out more than a dozen all-caps tweets, the Trump children told people they want Trump to stop. ‘They’re all worried. They’ve tried to get him to stop tweeting,’ a source close to the family told me.
…Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr, insisted on working even after his Alzheimer’s disease advanced in the 1990s … Every day Fred Sr would go to the office in Brooklyn and they would give him blank papers to sort through and sign. The phone on Fred’s desk was set up so that it could only dial out to his secretary. “Fred pretended to work,” the family friend said.
A new Times/Siena survey has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, a traditionally conservative state-turned presidential battleground.
Biden leads Trump 49% to 41% in Arizona, with just 6% of likely voters saying they were undecided. He is buoyed by his lopsided support among Hispanics, women and young people. The candidates are effectively tied in their support among seniors, a critical voting block in the state that has soured on Trump amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 targeted nearly 3.5 million Black Americans to deter them from voting, and the battle for the right to vote is just as important in 2020. Kenya Evelyn travels to Florida where it's the Democrats' most loyal bloc, Black women, who are also bearing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, with its impact accelerating the fight for voting rights. From mail-in ballots and early voting, to felon disenfranchisement, Black voters are wielding their power to demand more from Democrats ahead of November
Trump’s advisers scramble to find a strategy for final weeks, saying ‘it’s important that our campaign vigorously proceed’
Donald Trump’s beleaguered campaign team woke up to another setback on Sunday as the president began his second full day in hospital: a new national poll showing their candidate 14 points behind his challenger Joe Biden with less than a month until the election day.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey indicating a 53-39% advantage for the Democratic party’s nominee injected urgency for Trump’s advisers already scrambling to find a strategy for the final weeks of the campaign until 3 November.
Continue reading...Interruptions, bickering and a shocking tone may ultimately not matter, pollsters say, as most people have already made up their minds
First-time independent voter Benaja Richardson tuned into Tuesday’s now infamous debate between US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden hoping to be presented with a vision of the future and unity amid the turbulence of the current climate.
Instead the 18-year-old student from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a potential swing state, said it opened her eyes to “truly what catastrophic times we’re in”.
Continue reading...America’s leadership has been plunged into extraordinary uncertainty after Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, raising questions over how far the infection has penetrated the heart of government.
Related: Donald and Melania Trump showing 'mild' Covid symptoms as Joe and Jill Biden test negative – live
Continue reading...Huge questions over practical matters of rallies and travel, but also of whether Trump falls ill – and what that means for the election
Hours after the announcement that he had tested positive for Covid-19, Donald Trump canceled a planned trip to Florida for a campaign rally on Friday and announced that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, who also tested positive, would enter quarantine.
Related: What happens if Trump is incapacitated and how would it impact the election?
Continue reading...
From me and Joan E Greve:
In a memorable moment from the Republican National Convention, Guilfoyle rallied supporters in what Guardian Washington bureau chief David Smith described as “a high-octane audition for Evita – without an audience”.
She said that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear” and later screamed, “Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for liberty and the American Dream: the best is yet to come!”
Continue reading...
When a reporter asked Trump about his comments on the Proud Boys last night, the president asked for a “definition” of the extremist far-right group.
Trump says he does "not know who the Proud Boys are," but they should "stand down and let law enforcement do their work."
(He said they should "stand by" last night.) pic.twitter.com/kgi2R8DgN9
Trump just spoke to reporters on the South Lawn before leaving for Minnesota, where he will hold campaign events this evening.
Addressing his comments last night on the Proud Boys, Trump claimed he did not know who the extremist far-right group was.
Related: Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacy fits pattern of extremist rhetoric
Continue reading...The dismal spectacle reminded viewers what is at stake in November for the US – and the rest of us
One unmistakable winner emerged from Tuesday’s presidential debate: Xi Jinping. The loser was the American public – and anyone else unfortunate enough to have sat through the grim 90-minute spectacle.
Variously described by commentators as a trainwreck, dumpster fire, shitshow and the worst debate in presidential history, it reflected the state of the race and the nation after four years of Donald Trump. This is America in 2020: wracked by a pandemic that has killed 200,000 people and highlighted its deep structural failings on healthcare and inequality, as well as the parlous state of its politics – a realm of bitter divisions in which facts appear to be optional.
Continue reading...The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden deteriorated into an ugly display of contempt on Tuesday night, as the president relentlessly interrupted and attacked his Democratic rival during clashes over the coronavirus pandemic, racism, the economy, mail-in voting and the future of the supreme court