Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
It’s been a lively day on the election trail. We’re closing this blog now but will be back with all the developments in US political news, as it happens, tomorrow.
Here are the main events of the day:
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is calling for an administration that is frank about racist police brutality in America.
“There isn’t a Black man I know, be it a relative or friend, who has not had some sort of experience with police that’s been about an unreasonable stop, some sort of profiling or excessive force,” she said.
We can’t just speak the truth about police brutality in our nation—we must act to change our systems of justice and demand accountability. pic.twitter.com/arSdFLi7Wj
How is America faring after four years of Donald Trump? Which way will voters turn? US authors including Richard Powers, Ocean Vuong and Kiley Reid share their hopes and fears
Days before the election, Hunter Biden emails dropped with a roll call of Trump associates involved in ‘discovering’ them – and experts say it probably isn’t the last of the dirty tricks
On 28 October 2016, the then director of the FBI, James Comey, dropped a bomb into the middle of the presidential race. With just 11 days to go until election day, he announced that his agents were investigating a newly discovered batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal server.
Data from the US Elections Project predicts a record 150m ballots, representing 65% of eligible voters, for this election
More than 50 million Americans have cast ballots in the US presidential election with 11 days to go in the campaign, a pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in over a century, according to data from the US Elections Project on Friday.
The eye-popping figure is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Republican Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger, as well as Americans’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000 people across the United States.
And now for a semi-regular feature when I’m blogging, entitled Fun With Polls and basically just a read-off of the averages from fivethirtyeight.com but nonetheless it paints a picture, less than two weeks out from election day.
Herewith, the current scores on the doors in the battleground states, both the ones everyone always thinks of and some – Georgia, Iowa, Texas – which really shouldn’t be close but with this Republican in the White House, are:
What you said about Texas, don’t worry about Texas. Texas is with us. [Democrats] want to take away your guns, your oil and your God. OK, that’s what they want. They want to take away your second amendment. They want to take away fracking and oil. They don’t care. They want to take it away they want to go to the Green New Deal. That’s not for Texas. Texas is not going to be losing the guns, and they’re not going to be losing their oil and they’re not going to be losing their religion or their God.
Following up the post below, Reuters has an eye-catching line about early voting and what it might say about turnout:
More than 50m Americans have cast ballots in the presidential election with 11 days to go, a pace that could lead to the highest turnout in more than a century, according to data from the US Elections Project.
The eye-popping figure is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as well as Americans’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000 people across the US.
Grrr....I'm getting emails from orgs cheering 50 million #earlyvote without saying where these data are coming from. All I ask for this free site is attribution. If you want to show appreciation, please donate to this charitable @UF election science fund https://t.co/xtN28Mq9Nn
The Attorney General has to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast, he’s got to appoint somebody, this is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election, and by the way we’re doing very well, we’re gonna win the election, we’re doing very well, if you look at all of what’s happening and all of the people that come in and don’t come in, you take a look all around the country and with Texas early voting. Those are our votes and we were doing well in Texas. I mean, I just got to report we’re doing great in Texas, but we’re doing great all over, but forget that, this has to be done early. So the attorney general has to act.
Covid has tanked the gains he made in the economy and any new stimulus could be too late
It all looked so simple for Donald Trump as he took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year. At the start of an election year, the annual gathering of the global business elite was an opportunity to launch his campaign.
It was one Trump eagerly seized. The next 30 minutes was one long boast, detailing how a US economy that had allegedly been on its knees under Barack Obama had been transformed under his stewardship.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump have gone head-to-head for the final time before the US election on 3 November in the final television debate, helped by a mute button on the candidates’ microphones that prevented interruptions.
Squaring off in Nashville, Biden had to field aggressive questioning about his son’s business dealings and when Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, the challenger branded his opponent 'one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history'. Here is a look back at the key moments
The closing moments of the final presidential debate focused on climate change. Joe Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy while again disputing Donald Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not. 'I know more about wind than you do,' Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. 'It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds'
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have clashed over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic during the final presidential debate. While Trump says a vaccine will be available within weeks, Biden questioned the veracity of Trump's claims after the president's previous predictions the pandemic would end by Easter. The pandemic has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have squared off over immigration policies, including the US government being unable to locate the parents of more than 500 immigrant children. 'Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they're brought here and they used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we've ever had,' Trump said. The president also criticised immigration under the previous Obama-Biden administration, including the catch and release policy, saying 'those with the lowest IQ' were the only ones who returned for an immigration hearing
Trump tried to change his tone, Biden calls the president a racist and ‘Bidencare’ is now a thing
In the days leading up to the debate, Donald Trump’s advisers urged the president to stay calmer than he was at the first presidential debate in Cleveland last month, when he was widely criticized for repeatedly and aggressively interrupting his Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden.
Donald Trump has defended his handling of race issues in the US, declaring three times during the final presidential debate he is 'the least racist person in this room'. Trump was questioned on his handling of incidents such as describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol of hate and saying protesting Black athletes should be fired. Presidential rival Joe Biden called Trump 'one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history. He pours fuel on every racist fire', before adding 'this guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn'
Donald Trump presented a fantasy world in which fossil fuels are ‘very clean’ but realpolitik tempers Biden’s climate crisis stance
In Donald Trump’s world – laid bare during Thursday night’s final presidential debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Nashville – fossil fuels are “very clean”, the US has the best air and water despite his administration’s extensive regulatory rollbacks, and the country can fix climate change by planting trees.
Victor Gevers claimed he had access to president’s account, De Volkskrant reported, but Twitter said ‘we’ve seen no evidence’
Donald Trump’s Twitter account was allegedly hacked last week, after a Dutch researcher correctly guessed the president’s password: “maga2020!”, Dutch media reported.
Victor Gevers, a security expert, had access to Trump’s direct messages, could post tweets in his name and change his profile, De Volkskrant newspaper reported.
There’s been quite the online reaction to the scenes of Rudy Giuliani in the new Borat movie. In the film the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.
It’s just one release in the run-up to the US election seeking to make a political impact. Charles Bramesco writes for us this morning asking can entertainment really affect an election?
The run-up to the presidential election has brought about an explosion of topical projects announcing themselves as a noble bulwark against the encroaching threat of another Trump term. And with them, the age-old debate over what any of this actually accomplishes has been reignited. Every time a film introduces itself as the one we need right now, it must first answer the question of whether a film is what we really need. As of late, the arguments have not been especially compelling.
As President Trump entered the final stretch of the election season, he began making more than 50 false or misleading claims a day. It’s only gotten worse — so much so that the Fact Checker team cannot keep up.
As of 27 August, the tally in our database that tracks every errant claim by the president stood at 22,247 claims in 1,316 days.
Donald Trump has responded to Barack Obama's speech at a campaign rally for Joe Biden, saying the former president underestimated him in 2016. "I think the only one, the only one more unhappy than crooked Hillary that night was Barack Hussein Obama," Trump said. Less than two weeks from the election, Trump's campaign took him to North Carolina, where he told supporters "I love this particular state, but I might not have come here so often. I've been all over your state, you better let me win"
In rare news conference, the director of national security says Iran has sent spoofed emails to intimidate voters
Russia and Iran have obtained some US voting registration information and are attempting to sow unrest in the upcoming election, the government’s national intelligence director said in a rare news conference Wednesday night.
“We have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails, designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump,” said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence.
Barack Obama has delivered a stinging rebuke of president Donald Trump in a speech delivered in Philadelphia while campaigning for Joe Biden. Obama criticised Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis as well as divisive behaviour including retweeting conspiracy theories that you wouldn't tolerate from anyone “except from a crazy uncle". The former president also praised the positivity shown during the pandemic and recent Black Lives Matter movement . "We see that what is best is us is still there, but we've got to give it voice."
Lawyers struggling to find parents deported to Central America, says ACLU, after US government removed 1,030 children in 2018
Three years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a court filing, the ACLU said that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported back to the country of origin in Central America, leaving their separated children behind. In the rush to carry out Trump’s orders, the locations of the parents were not recorded and three years later they still cannot be found.