With Covid-19 deaths set to almost double this month, the president is putting the stock market before lives, critics say
Donald Trump is effectively abandoning a public health strategy for the coronavirus pandemic and showing “clear willingness to trade lives for the Dow Jones”, critics say.
Related: Will Americans ever forgive Trump for his heartless lack of compassion? | Francine Prose
Continue reading...It's one of the most important decisions a presidential candidate can make: so who will Joe Biden choose as his running mate? Political correspondent Lauren Gambino breaks down the most likely candidates for November's election
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Donald Trump appears to have revised upward to 100,000 his expectations for the number of Americans who will die of Covid-19.
“Hopefully we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless,” Trump said at a White House event to honor people who are doing work related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Reuters.
The last patient has left the field hospital that was erected in New York City’s Javits convention center, the AP reports.
The emergency facility was erected by the members of the US military to alleviate strain on the city’s hospital system at the height of the outbreak. It ultimately treated 1,095 patients, the last 8 of whom left the hospital today.
Continue reading...The presumptive nominee has come under pressure to address the allegation from fellow Democrats and progressive activists
Joe Biden will publicly address for the first time a sexual assault claim against him during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday morning, after weeks of silence on the subject.
Biden, the presumptive nominee, will “respond for the first time to the recent allegation of sexual assault”, the network announced in a tweet on Thursday.
Continue reading...Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has remained silent amid new reporting on allegation of 1993 assault
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is facing growing pressure to publicly address an allegation of sexual assault made by Tara Reade, a former aide to his Senate office.
The former vice-president has remained silent about the accusation, a position that is seen as increasingly untenable in the wake of new reporting. Many major Democratic women’s organizations and prominent feminists have also declined to comment publicly on Reade’s claim that Biden, then a senator from Delaware, assaulted her in 1993.
Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said in a statement this month that “this absolutely did not happen”, but she has not commented further.
Continue reading...The Republican turned Libertarian announced plans to jump in the race with the hopes he can rally voters disaffected by Trump
Michigan congressman Justin Amash late Tuesday announced plans to jump into the 2020 presidential race. Amash, a former Republican turned Libertarian, had toyed with the idea for a while. His argument has been that he could rally voters disaffected by Donald Trump but disinterested in voting for a Democrat.
Amash, a five-term congressman, is known as a gadfly who has bucked Republican leadership and eagerly skirmished with his colleagues when he was a Republican. In July 2019 Amash, the only Republican congressman to vocally support impeaching Trump, left the Republican party.
Continue reading...Findings underscore partisan divide over voting as Democrats push to ease restrictions while Republicans defend them
As America hurtles towards the critical 2020 presidential election during the Covid-19 pandemic, less than half of Democrats are confident it will be fair and accurate, according to a new national survey from the Pew Research Center.
Just 46% of Democrats are confident in the fairness and accuracy of the November election, the survey found. Even fewer are confident all citizens will be able to vote if they want to.
Continue reading...The president had been intending to campaign on a strong economy and facing a socialist opponent but scapegoating foreigners has worked for him before
Donald Trump had been intending to run a re-election campaign based on a strong economy and a socialist opponent. Both have vanished in the past month. But the US president still has his ultimate weapon: xenophobia.
Related: Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point
Continue reading...Tuesday, 3 November is the date set by federal government for the 2020 US presidential elections, but amid the pandemic this has been called into question.
America has the world's highest number of coronavirus-related deaths, with many states struggling to contain the outbreak; primary contests have been disrupted, conventions delayed and the two candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have both been prevented from holding rallies.
Could Trump delay the vote, and if so what would that mean for 2021? The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt explains
Continue reading...At his latest coronavirus press conference, the president attacked Joe Biden and suggested he might have saved the planet
He bashed “Sleepy Joe” Biden. He railed against the Russia investigation and “fake people” in the media. He predicted that had he not been elected, the world might have ended.
And somewhere along the way, he talked about the coronavirus.
Continue reading...Sanders criticizes his supporters who have so far resisted his vow to do whatever it takes to help Biden win the presidency
Bernie Sanders has warned that it would be “irresponsible” for his loyalists not to support Joe Biden, warning that progressives who “sit on their hands” in the months ahead would simply enable Donald Trump’s re-election in November.
Sanders endorsed Biden on Monday and was quickly followed by the crucial endorsement on Tuesday by Barack Obama of his former vice-president.
Continue reading...Former president announces support for presumptive nominee, his former VP, in statement
Barack Obama has endorsed Joe Biden for president, casting his former vice-president as the experienced statesman and unifying leader that will be needed to confront the public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic that will probably be the defining issue of the 2020 presidential election.
Related: Stage set for Biden v Trump as Democrats seek return to Obama era
Continue reading...Bernie Sanders endorsed his former rival Joe Biden for president on Monday, during a surprise appearance on a live stream related to the US response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Coronavirus US live: Andrew Cuomo details 'horrific level of pain' as deaths pass 10,000 in New York
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What does protest look like under a stay-at-home order?
This evening, activists are lighting a candle in solidarity with more than 90,000 people typically incarcerated in state prisons and jails in New York state, as coronavirus threatens to turn crowded, unsanitary prisons into death traps.
Lighting a candle for all incarcerated people tonight in solidarity with #FreeThemAll4PublicHealth pic.twitter.com/fzWJZ8O7Yj
It is inhumane to let people die in cages. That has always been true, and it is especially true now in the midst of a global pandemic.
6 y/o and I are joining the @FreeThemAll2020 campaign in calling on @NYGovCuomo to #FreeThemAll4PublicHealth. pic.twitter.com/vrAjImhUAe
#FreeThemAll4PublicHealth #FreeThemAll because people don't belong in cages pic.twitter.com/bWZGnmQQar
Advocates have been pleading for weeks that San Francisco move people out of homeless shelters and into hotel rooms, given that the conditions inside these facilities are often unsanitary and crowded, making it easy for a virus to quickly spread.
Now, there has been a major coronavirus outbreak inside a homeless shelter in San Francisco: nearly 70 residents at MSC South have tested positive, which is roughly half of all the people who were tested.
After 70 residents of a San Francisco homeless shelter test positive for Covid-19, advocates say others are trapped in lockdown in shelters with restrictions. "Telling them they cannot leave is not protecting them"-@Leahfsw. "People need to be moved to hotels, not just locked up" pic.twitter.com/YTfxVaMIGg
Continue reading...Contest will unfold in a political landscape transformed by pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives and millions of jobs
Democrats made their choice and on Wednesday Bernie Sanders made it official. His withdrawal from the Democratic primary race leaves Joe Biden with only one opponent: Donald Trump.
Now the stage is set for a November general election battle between two candidates with radically different visions of presidential leadership and America’s role in the world. The contest will unfold in a political landscape transformed beyond all recognition by the coronavirus pandemic that has already claimed at least 14,000 American lives and nearly 10m jobs.
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The White House is reportedly having discussions about reopening the economy next month, which could cause friction with health experts who have warned against lifting “stay at home” orders too quickly.
CNN reports:
Officials said the options being discussed on reopening the country vary widely in scope, from recommendations on benchmarks for when individual states can begin easing restrictions to a nationwide ‘big bang’ that Trump previewed Tuesday evening on Fox News. The officials said the conversations were still preliminary and would likely evolve over the course of the next weeks.
Still, some officials have even begun mulling the type of event Trump may want to mark the day when nationwide restrictions are lifted after he suggested a ‘big celebration’ when the crisis is over. ...
At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we're opening on May 1. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.
Barack Obama called for a “robust system of testing and monitoring” to confront the coronavirus crisis.
Social distancing bends the curve and relieves some pressure on our heroic medical professionals. But in order to shift off current policies, the key will be a robust system of testing and monitoring – something we have yet to put in place nationwide. https://t.co/evkTSrzReB
Continue reading...Inspirational senator’s youth-led movement pushed for sweeping social change but fell far behind Joe Biden in bid for nomination
Bernie Sanders, the 78-year-old senator from Vermont who reshaped American politics with his youth-led movement for sweeping social change, announced on Wednesday that he was ending his presidential campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Sanders informed staff he was suspending his presidential campaign during a conference call on Wednesday morning, capping what has been an extraordinary rise from relative obscurity to standard-bearer of the American left as an unabashed democratic socialist who championed the working class and called for political revolution.
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Joe Biden said he would like Bernie Sanders to be “part of the journey,” although not his running mate, if he wins the Democratic nomination.
Biden has a significant lead in the delegate count, but Sanders remains in the race, despite an increasingly narrow path to the nomination.
President Trump said he had a friendly phone conversation with former Vice President Joe Biden to talk about the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden told @craigmelvin in a one-on-one interview that he doesn't want the November election delayed. pic.twitter.com/DICLhBafTE
The White House has confirmed Stephanie Grisham is leaving her role as press secretary to rejoin the first lady’s team.
“My replacements will be announced in the coming days and I will stay in the West Wing to help with a smooth transition for as long as needed,” Grisham said in a statement released by the White House.
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Dr Birx shared a personal story about her granddaughter’s current high fever and her inability to visit. Earlier, Trump accidentally referred to her “grandson”.
“I’m sure it’s roseola or something,” Birx says of her 10-month-old granddaughter’s high fever.
She doubts it’s coronavirus because her family is self-isolating.
“No one is allowed into that house or out of that house because there’s too much precious cargo inside,” Birx says https://t.co/zvWlrulgbf
More details from the Guardian’s Sam Levine on the Wisconsin election:
The US supreme court ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin voters have to have their mail-in ballots postmarked by 7 April, election day, in order to have them counted in the state’s closely watched election. The deadline for election officials to receive the ballot is 13 April. The decision, which came shortly after the state supreme court ordered the election to move forward on Tuesday, ends days of legal fighting over the deadline for receiving absentee ballots in the state.
While I do not doubt the good faith of my colleagues, the court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement. A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic.”
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The president was tested this morning, according to the White House physician.
True paper statement from the White House, passed out to reporters in the briefing room just now. pic.twitter.com/K0SVhLAk1X
LIVE: Press Briefing with Coronavirus Task Force https://t.co/L80j4W1c8O
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