Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Former first lady says president ‘not up to the job’ in passionate plea for voters to support Joe Biden
Michelle Obama has released a video sharply criticising Donald Trump’s record as president, particularly over the coronavirus pandemic and his approach to racial injustice, and urging the Americans to vote for Joe Biden.
Describing him as “not up to the job” in the 24-minute video posted to her social media channels, the former first lady said the Trump presidency was accompanied by “a constant drumbeat of fear, division and chaos that’s threatening to spiral out of control.”
In a speech highly critical of the president, the former first lady made an impassioned plea to Americans to vote for Joe Biden in the election on 3 November. Among the condemnations of Trump's presidency, she criticised his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying he 'doubled down on division and resentment', adding: 'What the president is doing is, once again, patently false ... it’s morally wrong ... and yes, it is racist'
Rulings in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have eased mail-in voting restrictions but higher courts could yet intervene
America is less than a month away from election day, but high-stakes fights over access to the ballot have been moving through US courts for months. Democrats and civil rights groups have sought to ease restrictions on voting by mail amid the Covid-19 pandemic, while Republicans and the Trump campaign have sought to keep them in place.
In recent weeks, courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all key battleground states, have issued hugely consequential rulings that could decide whether tens of thousands more votes are counted in November. Those three states will probably help decide who wins the election and Trump won each by less than one percentage point in 2016.
Joe Biden says he was not surprised by Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection and delivered a blunt rebuke to the president during a town hall event in Miami, Florida. The Democratic presidential candidate drew a stark contrast with Trump, who on returning to the White House just an hour earlier had instantly removed his face mask for a photo op.
During the NBC event, moderator Lester Holt noted that a recent poll found two in three people think the president bears some responsibility for contracting coronavirus. Biden agreed, saying: ‘Anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying, masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter, I think is – is responsible for what happens to them.’
After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, a contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House and immediately took off his face mask while posing for cameras.
Trump later waved and walked inside, where masked staff were visible, only to reemerge for what appeared to be a film shoot. In the film, which he tweeted soon after, Trump offered some bizarrely contrary advice about the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans: 'Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it'
The desperation that has driven Donald Trump to leave hospital prematurely and theatrically pull off his mask on the White House balcony while in the throes of coronavirus infection gives some measure of how dangerous the next four weeks will be.
Many students of Trump’s life and career have warned that he would be prepared to sacrifice anyone – even those closest to him – to spare himself the humiliation of a one-term presidency, but even they surely could not have anticipated how literal that sacrifice would be.
A contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday and immediately took off his face mask for a photo op, despite being in close proximity to his staff.
After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, the US president stepped off the Marine One helicopter just before 7pm and walked up the south portico staircase. He stopped in front of an illuminated entrance with four US flags, turned to face the south lawn – and brazenly removed his mask while posing for cameras.
Donald Trump has returned to the White House following his hospital stay at the Walter Reed Medical Center. He removed his surgical mask on the White House balcony and recorded a video message telling people not to be afraid of Covid-19. 'Don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it, you're going to beat it,' the US president said. 'I know there's a risk, there's a danger but that's OK'. He suggested he may now be immune to the disease though he added he did not know.
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 has often boasted of surrounding himself with “the best people” and the medical skills of Dr Sean Conley, the personal physician now charged with steering the US president back to health through his encounter with Covid-19, have never been called into question.
The latest intervention from Donald Trump’s medical team has been to put the president on dexamethasone, a steroid that is proven, thanks to the UK’s Recovery trial, to benefit Covid-19 patients who are having breathing difficulties.
But the decision to administer the steroid now has only added to the confusion surrounding the president’s state of health. Normally, dexamethasone is reserved for patients who have been ill for at least a week and whose oxygen levels are low.
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.
Network run by fake news-publishing father and son spreads word to Trump supporters they should prepare for violence in November
A militia-promoting father and son duo of fake news publishers and a Trump-connected social media consultant are linked to pages which promote the idea of an American civil war with material presented in a way that appears to be an effort to sidestep Facebook’s fact-checking system.
Comments on their Facebook pages and other materials obtained by the Guardian show that some rank and file Donald Trump supporters are enthusiastically receiving the message that they should prepare for violence against their perceived political enemies in November.
Why did the White House allow a fundraising event to go on after one of Trump’s closest aides tested positive for Covid?
On Thursday afternoon Donald Trump held a roundtable of 19 top Republican donors at Bedminster, his 36-hole golf course in New Jersey, where he vented his frustrations about how his push for a rapid vaccine against Covid-19 was being undermined by the deep state.
According to a description of the meeting recorded on video by one of the donors present, “the president said that the approval for vaccines has been slowed down for political reasons by people who wanted to hurt him”.
Concerns mount over spread of the virus within the building, and whether it could disrupt the functioning of government
Golden autumn sunshine shone down on Washington on Saturday to illuminate a US capital upended as Donald Trump began his first full day in hospital battling coronavirus amid a presidential election thrown into chaos.
A couple of follow ups to those White House photos of Trump Signing Things.
The photos released by the WH tonight of the president working at Walter Reed were taken 10 minutes apart at 5:25:59 pm and 5:35:40 pm ET Saturday, according to the EXIF data embedded in both @AP wire postings that were shared by the White House this evening. pic.twitter.com/EzeqIkGdf7
In the UK, millions of employees preparing to work from home this winter will face a collective hike of almost £2bn on their energy bills, and tougher working conditions, with only a “pittance” in compensation from their employers.
Half the UK’s workforce is likely to work primarily from home over the coming months as they help to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and may see their winter energy bills rise by a fifth as radiators and boilers are kept running through the day.
Donald Trump released a new video message on Saturday evening saying that he is “doing well”, his wife Melania is “doing very well” and the next few days will be the “real test” after he was taken to hospital with Covid-19.
“I came here, wasn’t feeling so well, I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back,” Trump said from behind a desk in his suite at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
Donald Trump has posted his first video message from Walter Reed hospital, saying: 'I came here, wasn’t feeling so well. I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back ... I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon.'
During the four-minute video posted to Twitter, the president said that he could have stayed isolated at the White House after his Covid-19 diagnosis, but that he 'can't be locked up in a room and totally safe' - adding that 'as a leader you have to confront problems'.
Trump acknowledged that the 'next few days will be the real test' and said the first lady, Melania Trump, who also tested positive for coronavirus, was 'really handling it very nicely' – with the president joking about their 24-year age gap during his video message
Democrats urge delay in process amid coronavirus turmoil
Senate judiciary committee to convene as planned on 12 October
Senate Republicans are facing a shrinking window of time before the November 3 election to confirm Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, following the news that at least three Republican senators have tested positive for the coronavirus and more are quarantining after likely exposure.
The White House doctor Sean Conley said Donald Trump was 'doing great' after the president was admitted to the Walter Reed military medical centre on Friday. Trump has received antibody therapy and is on a five-day treatment of remdesivir, and was reported to be 'in exceptionally good spirits'