Donald Trump has described his Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden, as the 'worst candidate in history' at a rally in Wisconsin. 'If I lose … what do I do? I'd rather run against somebody who is extraordinarily talented, at least this way I can go and lead my life.' Trump again insisted that he was immune from Covid-19, saying he 'got better fast' and that he 'can now jump into the audience and give you all a big kiss, the women and the men'
Continue reading...Category Archives: US elections 2020
Biden accuses Trump of trying to wish away Covid ahead of Wisconsin rally – as it happened
- Trump to hold Wisconsin rally despite Covid warnings
- Can Biden overcome racist legacy of crime bill he backed?
- Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter
Here’s a summary of the latest events:
Mitch McConnell announced Saturday that the Senate will vote Tuesday on a Paycheck Protection Plan funding bill and Wednesday on the same $500bn Covid-19 aid package that Democrats blocked last month on the grounds that it didn’t go far enough.
“It is long past time for the two parties to agree where we can and get more money out the door,” the Senate majority leader said in a statement.
I just announced the Senate will vote next week on hundreds of billions more dollars for relief programs that Democrats do not even oppose. Working families have already waited too long for Speaker Pelosi’s Marie Antoinette act to stop. Let's make law. pic.twitter.com/iR7OYKuCKw
Continue reading...US records highest daily coronavirus case total since July
- 68,000 new cases on Friday amid Covid-19 resurgence
- Dr Fauci warns of danger of ‘high community infection baseline’
- Trump to hold Wisconsin rally despite public gathering warning
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...Trump blasts Sasse for predicting Senate Republican bloodbath
The president issued a familiar stream of insults on Twitter after the Nebraska senator heavily criticised him to constituents
Down in the polls to Joe Biden and campaigning through a surging pandemic, Donald Trump chose to devote time on Saturday morning to a Twitter rant against a member of his own party in the Senate, a chamber Republicans face losing on 3 November.
Related: Trump trails Biden with two weeks to go – but there could yet be surprises
Continue reading...‘Things have changed’: can Biden overcome the racist legacy of the crime bill he backed?
The 1994 crime bill paved the way to mass incarceration of Black Americans. Biden says his support was a ‘mistake’
In 1994, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware stood proudly behind Bill Clinton as he signed into law a reform bill that touched nearly every aspect of the US criminal justice system.
Related: Trump trails Biden with two weeks to go – but there could yet be surprises
Continue reading...Trump condemned for QAnon dodge as Biden town hall wins TV ratings battle
- President refused to disavow baseless QAnon conspiracy theory
- TV figures show rival Biden event drew about 1m more viewers
Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in their TV ratings battle from their duelling town hall events, figures showed Friday, while the president faced condemnation over his failure to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Related: Biden's town hall drew 2 million more viewers than Trump's in early figures – live
Continue reading...Trump v Biden at TV town halls: a president kept in check – latest reaction live
- Candidates offer dramatically different visions at town halls
- Biden at ease while Trump struggles under pressure
- Savannah Guthrie hailed for keeping Trump in check
- McConnell says he has votes to confirm Amy Coney Barrett
- Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter
Joe Biden said at a town hall event Thursday night that he would announce before election day whether he favors expanding the supreme court.
Biden has repeatedly declined to lay out a stance on the issue amid an ongoing Republican sprint to install a third justice nominated by Donald Trump before the election, in what critics have called a naked power grab.
Related: Biden says he'll lay out stance on expanding supreme court before election
In a new interactive elections timeline, Alvin Chang has explained how various 2020 US election scenarios, including the case of Trump losing but refusing to concede, could play out.
Americans are used to a certain routine with presidential elections – but this year might be different, Alvin writes. If you’re not current on such concepts as the safe harbor deadline and wonder how states select electors, read about it here:
Related: Timeline: how 2020 US election scenarios could play out
Continue reading...Joe Biden lays out plans for tax, Covid and the supreme court in town hall event – video
The Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, took to the stage in Pennsylvania in a modified town hall event, following the cancellation of the second debate. Biden gave detailed answers about his proposals on everything, from the coronavirus pandemic to tax reform – in a stark contrast to Donald Trump's combative event that took place in Miami at the same time
Continue reading...Trump grilled on white supremacy, QAnon and his taxes by Savannah Guthrie – video
The US president, Donald Trump, refused to denounce rightwing conspiracy theory QAnon during a town hall-style event, claiming he did not know about it, despite retweeting QAnon accounts. In heated exchanges with the NBC host Savannah Guthrie, Trump was pressed to denounce white supremacy before being asked about QAnon and a baseless conspiracy theory about Joe Biden
- Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory during town hall
- Trump and Biden offer dramatically different visions at dueling town halls
- Town halls live: angry Trump clashes with moderator as Biden lays out policies at competing events
US election: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter endorses Joe Biden
‘I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now,’ former New York mayor’s daughter writes in Vanity Fair
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter has endorsed Joe Biden for president in an essay for Vanity Fair, writing that in this historic election “none of us can afford to be silent”.
“My father is Rudy Giuliani,” Caroline Rose Giuliani said in the magazine. “We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a ‘Giuliani’ feels counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now.”
Continue reading...Trump and Biden town halls: two channels, two candidates, two planets
Trump rambled feverishly like ‘someone’s crazy uncle’ as Biden looked relaxed in an armchair like a grandfather with pipe
America is often described as a “split screen nation”, bitterly divided between two political tribes dwelling in echo chambers. But Thursday night at 8pm was a bit too on the nose.
The NBC network hosted a town hall event with Donald Trump. ABC hosted a simultaneous town hall event with his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. CBS, meanwhile, hosted the reality TV show Big Brother with Julie Chen Moonves.
Continue reading...Trump and Biden offer dramatically different visions at dueling town halls
Combative president defends his record on coronavirus as Biden calls for far more robust national response
In a split-screen display, US voters heard dramatically different visions from Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his democratic challenger, at dueling town hall-style events on Thursday night, less than three weeks before the election.
Related: Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory during TV debate
Continue reading...Mail-in ballot tracker: counting votes in US swing states
With millions of Americans casting their ballots by mail during the pandemic, The Guardian and ProPublica are tracking the votes in critical states to determine how many are counted, rejected and delayed
This piece is published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
An unprecedented number of Americans are voting by mail this year to avoid Covid-19 risk. Joe Biden’s supporters have said they are more likely to vote by mail while Donald Trump’s supporters say they are more likely to vote in person. With postal delays, rejected ballots and a dearth of funding, the process isn’t always smooth – ballots can be rejected for multiple reasons, and due to court challenges, election rules are changing even while voting is underway. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republican officials have spent the last months casting doubt on the mail-in voting process, paving the way for legal battles during the vote count.
Continue reading...Biden article row shows how US election is testing Facebook and Twitter
Online giants felt forced to take unprecedented action as they struggle with role during divisive presidential battle
Mere hours after the publication of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, both Twitter and Facebook took unprecedented action to restrict distribution of the post.
Facebook, a company spokesman revealed, had immediately begun to “reduce its distribution on our platform”, altering how the company’s recommendation algorithm would normally react to such a viral story in order to buy its third-party fact checkers time to come to a conclusion about its veracity.
Continue reading...Amy Coney Barrett hearing to conclude as Trump and Biden head for TV town halls – US politics live
- Barrett pledges ‘open mind’ and plays down conservative record
- Trump and Biden to hold dueling town halls after canceled debate
- Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter
Maggie Miller reports for the Hill this morning on an IT security study that suggests that half of battleground states are facing cybersecurity challenges ahead of the election. She writes:
IT security group SecurityScorecard evaluated and ranked all US states and territories on their overall cybersecurity posture between September and early October, examining state election-related websites, along with network security, information leaks, endpoint security and other cybersecurity issues.
The company awarded 75 percent of all states and territories a “C” rating or below, including traditional swing states such as Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio. Of these, 35 percent were awarded a “D” or below, with North Dakota, Puerto Rico and American Samoa awarded the lowest scores.
Jason Wilson reports for us on how scores of private actors have aided police in militarizing their operations and expanding their surveillance capacities, in a profit-making industry.
Scores of private firms, consultants and non-governmental organizations have provided software, equipment, training and information to law enforcement agencies in a burgeoning profit-making industry, according to documents from the so-called Blueleaks information dump.
The documents show how private actors – from major corporations to small-scale contractors – have aided police in militarizing their operations, expanding their surveillance capacities, and pursuing the so-called “war on drugs”.
Continue reading...Civil rights and Qanon candidates: the fight for facts in Georgia – video
Joe Biden won the nomination for president on the shoulders of older Black voters in the US south. But how do younger, progressive people of color feel about his candidacy in the southern state of Georgia, in play for the first time in decades? And will a dangerous campaign of Qanon disinformation have any bearing on the outcome of the election? Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone try to find out
- Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? - video
- Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video
US election: what a Biden or Trump victory could mean for Britain
It could be the most significant election for US foreign policy since 1940, with huge implications for the UK
The British government has a long history of misreading America – from Lord Palmerston expecting the Confederacy to survive the civil war, to Ernie Bevin being shocked that the US would not pay the UK’s postwar bills, to Tony Blair believing in 2003 that he could ride the US military tiger in Iraq and create a democracy.
Few serving or former British diplomats are confidently predicting the outcome of this November’s presidential election, or even whether an increasingly erratic Donald Trump will accept the result as legitimate. The collective delusion about the 2016 election hangs heavy.
Continue reading...Facebook and Twitter restrict controversial New York Post story on Joe Biden
Social media platforms move to limit spread of article amid questions over its veracity
Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.
In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.
Continue reading...US election 2020: mistrust spurring black community to early voting in Georgia – video
Thousands of members of Georgia's black community have come out to vote early in the US election, enduring long lines and hours of waiting. Many acknowledged they could have voted by mail or returned to a polling place at a different time, but with no expectation of voting becoming easier in the weeks to come, they saw waiting as a necessary step. 'I wanted to make sure that my vote was counted,' Wilbart McCoy said as he queued to cast his ballot. 'The suspicions, or the alleged suspicions around mail-in voting, we never had those before but it pushed me to come out early'
Continue reading...Amy Coney Barrett refuses to tell Kamala Harris if she thinks climate change is happening – video
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to the US
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