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US Elections 2020 : The Joe Biden vs Donald Trump Thread

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Newly minted Democratic White House nominee Joe Biden said US President Donald Trump has "cloaked America in darkness for much too long".

The former US vice-president said his rival has unleashed "too much anger, too much fear, too much division".

His impassioned speech was the capstone of a political career spanning nearly half a century.

Mr Biden, 77, heads into the general election campaign with a clear lead in opinion polls over Mr Trump, 74.

But with 75 days to go until the election the Republican president has plenty of time to narrow the gap.

Speaking from a mostly empty arena in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Mr Biden said: "Here and now, I give you my word, if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst.

"I'll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.

"It's time for us, for we the people, to come together. And make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.

"We'll choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege."

Mr Biden said "character is on the ballot" this November.

"We can choose a path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion," he said.

"Or, or, we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite. A path of hope and light.

"This is a life-changing election. This will determine what America going to look like for a long, long time."

Mr Biden vowed to heal a country crippled by a deadly pandemic and economic catastrophe and riven by a reckoning on race.

He continued: "What we know about this president is that if he's given four more years, he'll be what he's been for the last four years.

"A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cosies up to dictators and fan the flames of hate and division.

"He'll wake up every day believing the job is all about him, never about you.

"Is that the America you want for you, your family and your children?"

Referring to America's coronavirus death toll, Mr Biden said: "Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation: he has failed to protect us."

Paraphrasing the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, he concluded: "This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme."

Call it Joe Biden's "return to normalcy" speech.

That was Warren G Harding's campaign slogan when he ran for president in 1920, with a campaign centred around healing and calming Americans after the trauma of World War One.

In his winning presidential bid, he preached healing, serenity and restoration. To put it in modern terms, an end to all the drama.

Mr Biden bills his campaign as a "battle for the soul of this nation", but his message on Thursday night - the message of many of the Democratic speakers this week - was not so different from Harding's.

There was a lot of pressure on Mr Biden to deliver with this speech, particularly when Republicans have suggested the 77-year-old was in decline or "diminished".

At least for one night, the former vice-president, who has given rousing stemwinders in the past, hit all his marks. He was angry when he had to be, and reassuring when needed to be.

Mr Biden gave a powerful speech, delivered powerfully. If he loses in November, it won't be because of anything that happened on Thursday night or at the convention this entire week - which is exactly what a party currently leading in the polls wants.

Did Joe Biden succeed in making his case?

Mr Biden's live speech marked the grand finale of the four-night Democratic party conference.

But there was no balloon drop, cheering throngs, or any of the other fanfare and razzamatazz of the typical American party conference, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Organisers opted instead for a virtual set piece of mostly pre-recorded speeches crunched into two hours of highly produced programming each evening.

Thursday night's climax was hosted by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of US political satire Veep and a vocal critic of Mr Trump.

Throughout the evening, Democrats who had challenged Mr Biden for the nomination praised his leadership in a taped messages.

Some of those former rivals - US Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker; former congressman Beto O'Rourke, former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg and entrepreneur Andrew Yang - could be in line for jobs in a Biden administration.

Speakers at the convention over the past three nights have depicted Mr Trump as incompetent, selfish and a danger to democracy, imploring Americans to vote him out of office - a tone that Mr Biden echoed.

On Wednesday his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, became the first black woman to accept a major party's vice-presidential nomination.

The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants assailed Mr Trump's "failure of leadership" and amplified the cries for racial justice that have convulsed the nation.

"There is no vaccine for racism. We have got to do the work," the 55-year-old said, adding: "None of us are free until all of us are free."

How is Trump responding?

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Trump - who has nicknamed his challenger "slow Joe" and "sleepy Joe" - visited Mr Biden's birthplace of Scranton in the presidential swing-voting state of Pennsylvania.

"Biden is no friend of Pennsylvania," Mr Trump said, accusing his opponent of destroying American jobs through global trade deals, the Paris climate accord and clean energy plans.

He said: "If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency, think of the smouldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the blood-stained sidewalks of Chicago and imagine the mayhem coming to our town and every single town in America."

As the Democratic nominee was still speaking on Thursday, the Trump 2020 campaign issued a statement, dismissing Mr Biden as "a pawn of the radical leftists".

Spokesman Tim Murtaugh said: "His name is on the campaign logo, but the ideas come from the socialist extremists."

Next week, Mr Trump is expected to accept his nomination as the Republican candidate from the White House lawn during his party's convention, which has been drastically scaled down because of the pandemic.

Who is Joe Biden?

Mr Biden became a US senator from Delaware in 1973, working his way up to the chairmanship of the chamber's judiciary and foreign relations committees.

After two unsuccessful White House campaigns, in 1988 and 2008, he became vice-president to Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, serving as his deputy from 2009-17.

Only in February this year, Mr Biden's third run to become the Democratic White House nominee seemed on the verge of collapse.

Then black voters in South Carolina's primary rewarded him with a victory that made his candidacy seem all but inevitable virtually overnight.

Mr Biden has faced questions about his age - he would be the oldest president ever elected. And his lengthy centrist record has come under heavy scrutiny in a party that has been gravitating leftwards.

But he was able to rally the unruly progressive and moderate wings of his party to his banner by persuading Democratic voters that he has the best chance of defeating Mr Trump.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53858149
 
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US postmaster general: 'Mail-in votes will be delivered on time'

The head of the US Postal Service has vowed the agency is "fully capable and committed" to handling the nation's mail-in votes for November's election.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told lawmakers that postal votes will continue to be prioritised and that recent policy changes were not made in attempt to influence the 2020 election.

Democrats say new delivery policies could lead to issues with postal votes.

The row quickly became a top campaign issue in the past two weeks.

Mr DeJoy, a top Republican donor and former logistics executive appointed to lead the agency in May, told a senate panel on Friday that the delivery changes - which have drastically slowed deliveries - were based on a "data-driven" review of mail volume.

He addressed the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee amid a public furore to the changes, and amid concerns that they were made to help re-elect US President Donald Trump.

During the hearing, Mr DeJoy fended off criticism from lawmakers who said they were concerned that the removal of mail sorting machines and post boxes would lead to millions of ballots being delivered too late to be counted on election day.

Mr DeJoy told lawmakers that he is "extremely highly confident" that ballots sent back to state election officials shortly before election day on 3 November will still be delivered on time.

It comes after the US Postal Service (USPS) sent letters to states warning that mail delays may mean that millions of ballots are unable to be returned by the deadline.

"There have been no changes to any policies with regard to election mail," he told lawmakers, adding: "The postal service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's election mail fully and on time."

Read more:

Why is there a political row over the mail?

Slower mail delivery times in the US have raised concerns about how one of the oldest and most trusted institutions in the US can handle an unprecedented influx of mail-in ballots in November's election.

This year fewer voters are expected to vote in-person amid the coronavirus pandemic, in which the US has seen the highest number of deaths and infections in the world.

That drop-off is expected to lead to an unprecedented influx of voters submitting their ballot by mail.

What is happening in Congress?

During the hearing, Mr DeJoy denied he had spoken to Mr Trump about the changes, said that he himself has voted by mail "for a number of years" and called any attempt to interfere in the election "outrageous".

He also said that there are 140,000 collection boxes in the US, but over the last 10 years, about 35,000 have been removed. He added that the recent removal of mail sorting equipment and boxes predates his tenure.

"I repeat, both the collection boxes and this machine closedown I was — I was made aware when everybody else was made aware," Mr DeJoy said.

During the hearing, which was conducted over video-link, one Democratic senator told Mr DeJoy that he owed the American public an "apology for the harm you have caused".

Michigan Senator Gary Peters said medications have arrived weeks late forcing people to skip doses, and businesses that relay on mail have been forced to layoff customers "all because of changes you directed".

Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to hold a rare Saturday session to pass $25bn (£19bn) in spending to help mail in voting operations. Twenty states have sued the USPS to reverse the changes that have already been made.
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53828151
 
Trouble for Trump as Fox News praises 'enormously effective' Biden speech

Under pressure on on the last day of the Democratic convention, Joe Biden “hit a home run” with an “enormously effective” speech that blew “a big hole” in Donald Trump’s efforts to paint him as a mentally faltering captive of his party’s left wing.

And that was to hear Fox News hosts Dana Perino and Chris Wallace tell it.

“It was a very good speech,” added Karl Rove, a Republican strategist respected and reviled on either side of the aisle.

Democratic hopes were riding high that when Biden rose to accept the presidential nomination on Thursday night, he might deliver the kind of speech to get voters nodding their heads instead of nodding off, and cable pundits talking about “momentum”.

Broadcast to tens of millions, Biden’s speech marked the first truly national moment of the 2020 campaign, with the formal conclusion of the Democratic primary on one hand, and the first clear picture of the presidential showdown – Biden v Trump, Uncle Joe v Maga Don – on the other.

At a minimum, Democrats hoped, Biden would avoid the kind of verbal slips the Trump campaign has been using eagerly, if ironically given their own candidate’s cha-chas with incoherence, to attack him.

But when Biden was done speaking on Thursday in Wilmington, Delaware, with one arm around Dr Jill Biden, fireworks in the background and his smile as wide as the country, Democrats were not alone in realizing that their nominee had not only connected – he had nailed it.

“I went in there with expectations of adequate, and he knocked it out of the park,” said longtime Republican strategist Mike Murphy, a harsh Trump critic, on an overnight podcast Hacks on Tap. “It was so authentic to who Biden is, and … it caught the mood of the country, which is unity, steady, competence, ‘We can rise above this’.

“I thought Biden had the moment of his life, and he ought to feel really good about that.”

Trump sought to steal Biden’s big moment with campaign stops outside Biden’s home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, that afternoon. After a speech at an airstrip the president visited a pizza parlor, where he was filmed hoisting a pie, without a face mask, as staff members, all wearing masks, snapped photos and waved excitedly.

“They supposedly have the best pizza,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll let you know in about a half-hour.”

Alert on Friday morning to a need to nip Biden’s moment in the bud, the Trump campaign deployed Vice-President Mike Pence on five morning shows, where he argued that Biden, a known quantity in Washington for 50 years, was a lurking socialist.

“It’s a choice between President Trump’s record and agenda of freedom and opportunity, versus a Democrat agenda driven by the radical left and Joe Biden’s vision that will result in socialism and decline for America,” Pence told Fox News.

In reply to criticism by Biden of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, Pence demonstrated the extraordinary ability of the two parties to talk past one another.

“The president keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear,” Biden said in his speech. “He keeps waiting for a miracle. Well, I have news for him, no miracle is coming.”

Pence told CNN: “We think there is a miracle around the corner.”

The biggest near-term opportunity for Trump and Republicans to draw a contrast with Biden will be through their own convention, which is scheduled to begin on Monday with more in-person, physical elements than the all-virtual Democratic event.

Controversially, Trump plans to accept the nomination on the grounds of the White House on Thursday, in apparent violation of laws requiring that political campaigning be kept separate from the conduct of office.

The president and vice-president are exempt from the law, but broad party participation in such a major campaign event is inevitable. Trump has invited most Republican lawmakers (though not Senator Mitt Romney, who voted for his impeachment and removal from office) to the White House lawn to watch his speech. The campaign plans to set off fireworks on the National Mall.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans also plan to convene delegates in-person in Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump had unconfirmed plans to visit the 336 delegates on Monday, although the Democratic governor of the state has led an effort to ensure that Republicans abide by public health guidelines.

“We were not going to let the governor’s partisan politics come between us and our commitment to North Carolina,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee – and Romney’s niece – told the New York Times.

That commitment had wavered. Trump announced earlier this summer that the convention would be moved to Florida, where a Republican governor had proposed no coronavirus restrictions. A large Covid-19 outbreak in that state returned the event to Charlotte.

With the force of his speech on Thursday night, Biden, 77, was seen as implicitly rebutting Trump’s accusation that he had lost a step. But Biden’s rebuttal of Trump’s other attack – that the former vice-president and six-term senator is a Trojan horse for the terrors of “socialism” – was explicit.

“While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president,” Biden said. “I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did. That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party.”

Biden appeared to have won some converts. “Joe wows critics,” the Drudge Report, usually a clearinghouse for the most astringent conservative messaging, exclaimed on Friday morning.

Its banner headline? “Biden Barn Burner”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/21/fox-news-joe-biden-donald-trump
 
The Times published a long read today on Biden's gaffs and lies, included in his speech too. For instance his claim on visiting Mandela.

The cracks are showing, poor guy couldn't move his eyes from the teleprompter; a prerecorded speech no doubt.

Toast.
 
Technics 1210 said:
The Times published a long read today on Biden's gaffs and lies, included in his speech too. For instance his claim on visiting Mandela.

The cracks are showing, poor guy couldn't move his eyes from the teleprompter; a prerecorded speech no doubt.

Toast.
Click to expand...

Could replace "Biden" with "Trump" and it would still make sense. Shows the state of American politics.
 
Trump campaign fails to show evidence of vote-by-mail fraud, filing reveals

Donald Trump’s campaign failed to produce any evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in Pennsylvania after a federal judge ordered it do so, according to a 524-page court filing obtained by the Guardian.

The order came from US district judge Nicholas Ranjan, a Trump appointee, earlier this month amid a lawsuit in Pennsylvania over several voting policies. The Trump campaign is suing to block the widespread use of official ballot dropboxes in the state in locations other than an election office, and to allow poll watchers to work in counties other than the ones they live in.

The campaign also wants to block election officials from counting mail-in ballots if a voter forgets to put their mail-in ballot in a secrecy sleeve within the ballot return-envelope. The campaign argued in court that the current practices will lead to voter fraud without these changes.

Ranjan last week ordered the campaign to turn over its evidence of the prevalence of fraud in Pennsylvania, including fraud related to dropboxes and vote by mail. While the Trump campaign cited a handful of mail-in ballot fraud cases in its original complaint, the campaign turned over little evidence of pervasive fraud in its partially redacted response. Certain documents in the filing were designated confidential and withheld from the Guardian.

The campaign also offered no evidence of fraud specifically linked to dropboxes or mail-in ballots. The filing was first reported by Type Investigations. Several studies and investigations have shown that voter fraud is extremely rare.

The campaign’s filing consisted of a half-dozen news articles. Two of the stories dealt with the conviction of Domenick DeMuro, a former Philadelphia election judge who pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally taking bribes and ringing up votes at the polls.

A third news story highlighted the conviction of Ozzy Myers, a former congressman who bribed DeMuro. DeMuro and Meyers are both Democrats.

The campaign also included a 2018 news release about four election workers who had been charged in 2017 with intimidating and harassing voters at the polls. It also included a news story about legislative hearing earlier this year that quoted two Republican lawmakers asking questions about how to prevent fraud in mail-in voting, but did not offer evidence of it.

The final piece in the document was a 20 May Fox News story highlighting a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative group, alleging that 800,000 ineligible voters could be on the state’s voting rolls. The group has a reputation for distorting data to make inaccurate claims about voter rolls. Pennsylvania and the counties being sued say Judicial Watch’s claims are inaccurate.

The filing also contains numerous public records requests filed in recent weeks to local election officials in Pennsylvania seeking information about the vote-by-mail process in the state, including security protocols in place for drop boxes and how absentee ballots are processed.

John Powers, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is opposing the Trump campaign in the suit on behalf of civil rights groups, said the evidence the campaign produced was “paltry”.

“The campaign has not provided any meaningful evidence that voter fraud is a widespread problem in Pennsylvania or that there was any intentional misconduct in the state’s June primary election,” he said. “There’s certainly several explosive, salacious claims in the complaint that just aren’t borne out by the facts or what’s been produced. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it seems like a lot of hot air.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the filing.

The effort to limit dropboxes comes as many election officials are eyeing expanding the practice as an alternative for voters to safely return their ballots without having to rely on the United States Postal Service. Trump has also railed against vote-by-mail, a process experts expect Americans to use in record numbers this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/21/trump-campaign-voter-fraud-pennsylvania
 
Biden is no spring chicken, but talk of mental decline coming from Trump supporters is stunningly hypocritical ! Your Dear Leader sounds like a Third Grader who can barely string together a coherent sentence even at the best of times.

Exhibit A - Inject disinfectant fluids into the lungs to treat Coronavirus

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/33QdTOyXz3w" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Exhibit B - The wettest hurricane from the standpoint of...water

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/45X4WvkTK_I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Exhibit C - Those pesky handrails...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x0Yf4UgkXvk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Exhibit D - Shouldn't have skipped English class

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dG8r_z5yukE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Exhibit E - "They spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things" - Trump after California wildfires...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nwL6GWYg34M" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And to think some view this grotesque ignoramus as some sort of role model.
 
The looney snowflake left scraping the barrel. Do not be decieved by their illusions!

Biden will be lucky to survive till inauguration, that is IF he wins! That's how bad his dimentia is.

Remember, there is no bigger test for a President in the USA than an impeachment, and Trump survived in vibrant colours.

Teflon Don 2020!
 
The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would inject $25bn (£19bn) into the Postal Service (USPS) ahead of November's election.

The legislation would also block cuts and changes that critics have said will hamper mail-in voting.

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled lawmakers from the summer recess to vote on the bill, which she said would protect the USPS.

After the vote, President Trump tweeted the measure was a Democrat ballot scam.

"Representatives of the Post Office have repeatedly stated that they DO NOT NEED MONEY, and will not make changes, " said Donald Trump. He has threatened to veto the bill, which is in any case unlikely to make progress in the Republican-controlled Senate.


read more on
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53876958
 
Trump administration considering UK COVID-19 vaccine before election

The Trump administration is considering fast-tracking an experimental COVID-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University for use in the US ahead of the November 3 elections, the Financial Times reported.

One option being explored would involve the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarding "emergency use authorization" in October to the potential vaccine, which was developed by Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca, the FT reported.
 
Technics 1210 said:
The looney snowflake left scraping the barrel. Do not be decieved by their illusions!

Biden will be lucky to survive till inauguration, that is IF he wins! That's how bad his dimentia is.

Remember, there is no bigger test for a President in the USA than an impeachment, and Trump survived in vibrant colours.

Teflon Don 2020!
Click to expand...

Kamala Harris is the Democrat leader, a black woman as president is the Democrats goal.

Harris would never get the votes to be elected but Biden could but he is not going to last the full term opening the door for Harris to become President.
 
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has announced she is leaving the role at the end of August.

The 53-year-old said she was leaving to focus on her family, adding: "This is completely my choice and my voice.
 
RNC 2020: Trump family dominates convention schedule

Members of the Trump family are scheduled to speak each night, and Mr Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr, will kick things off on Monday.

Though he does not hold an official government position, Mr Trump Jr has served as a fervent defender of his father on social media and during his regular appearances on Fox News.

Speeches from South Carolinians Senator Tim Scott - the sole black Republican in the upper chamber - and Nikki Haley, former UN ambassador, are also on the agenda.

Mr Scott has spearheaded Republican police reform efforts in the Senate and has critiqued Mr Trump on racial issues before, recently calling on him to remove a retweeted video of a supporter shouting "white power".

Mrs Haley, who resigned from her post in October 2018, is seen as a potential front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. She was South Carolina's first minority and female governor and during her UN tenure, was an outspoken critic of Russia, Syria and North Korea.

We'll also hear from Mark and Patricia McCloskey - the St Louis couple who made headlines for being filmed pointing guns at racial justice protesters who marched past their mansion.

The McCloskeys were charged over the incident (they maintain they felt threatened), but the state attorney general has said he would dismiss the case. Mr Trump has also defended their actions and the pair have previously appeared at a virtual Trump campaign event.

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, will also speak. Mr Pollack has called for supporting law enforcement and protecting gun rights, telling Fox News ahead of the convention that the Second Amendment allows people to defend their loved ones.

Who are the other speakers this year?

The headliners, apart from Mr Trump himself, will be First Lady Melania Trump on Tuesday, followed by Vice-President Mike Pence on Wednesday.

Tuesday

First Lady Melania Trump
Eric Trump
Tiffany Trump
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Senator Rand Paul
Nicholas Sandmann, who featured in a viral video last year in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital

Wednesday

Vice-President Mike Pence and wife Karen
Eric Trump's wife Lara
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway

Thursday

President Trump
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Ivanka Trump
Alice Johnson, a criminal justice reform advocate whose life sentence was commuted by the president after a campaign led by Kim Kardashian
Parents of Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who was taken hostage and killed in Syria

Mr Pence will accept his running mate role from Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It's a place heavy with historical significance, because it is where US soldiers withstood the might of the British in 1814, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem.

Like its Democratic counterpart, the Republican programme will also be a mix of pre-recorded and live speeches, based in Washington DC.

Each day will follow themes of America as the land of promise, opportunity, heroes and - in a nod to Trump's slogan - greatness.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53612846
 
US President Donald Trump has warned his fellow Republicans their opponents may "steal" November's election, as his party anointed him as their candidate.

"They're using Covid to defraud the American people," Mr Trump told delegates on the first day of the party convention in North Carolina.

Mr Trump repeated his much-disputed claims that mail-in ballots could lead to voter fraud.

Opinion polls suggest he currently trails Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Addressing delegates in person at a party conference that has been dramatically scaled back by Covid-19, Mr Trump accused Democrats of "using Covid to steal an election".

"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," he said. "We're going to win."

Mr Trump also warned of a "rigged" election in 2016, as he trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls.

On Monday, Mr Trump was officially nominated as a formality to be the Republican nominee at his party's convention in the city of Charlotte.

Supporters cheered him, chanting: "Four more years!"

The president is due to give a formal acceptance speech to the party jamboree on Thursday. It is unusual for candidates to address the convention before that point as Mr Trump has done.

Mr Trump has repeatedly asserted that expanded mail-in voting - which is expected to happen at an unprecedented level due the coronavirus pandemic - will lead to "the most corrupt election" in US history.

But there is scant evidence of widespread voter fraud, and very few examples of any related criminal prosecutions.

Ellen Weintraub, commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, has said: "There's simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud. None."

Mail-in voting is used by the US military, and even Mr Trump himself and members of his family.

But a recent slowdown in mail deliveries due to cost-saving measures in the US postal system has fuelled concerns that ballots might not be returned by election day.

Several states have sought to change their election laws to allow ballots to be counted days after the forthcoming presidential vote, which some analysts fear could lead to delays in declaring the presidential victor.

A primary election in New York City this June took weeks to determine a winner after poll officials were deluged with 10 times the normal number of mail-in ballots. There was no allegation of fraud, but the debacle raised fears of a protracted vote count this November.

Earlier this month, a New Jersey judge ordered a new vote after finding evidence of fraud in a May election that was conducted entirely by mail in Paterson. Four people were arrested, including a local city councilman and councilman-elect. The case has been frequently touted by the Trump campaign.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53898142
 
RNC 2020: Trump warns Republican convention of ‘rigged election’

US President Donald Trump has warned his fellow Republicans their opponents may "steal" November's election, as his party anointed him as their candidate.

"They're using Covid to defraud the American people," Mr Trump told delegates on the first day of the party convention in North Carolina.

Mr Trump repeated his much-disputed claims that mail-in ballots could lead to voter fraud.

Opinion polls suggest he is lagging behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Mr Biden, the former vice-president to Barack Obama, has boasted a 10-point lead on occasions.

Addressing delegates in person at a party conference that has been dramatically scaled back by Covid-19, Mr Trump accused Democrats of "using Covid to steal an election".

The US president has repeatedly suggested an unprecedented surge in postal voting could lead to widespread fraud even though experts and voting officials say this is a false conspiracy theory.

"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," he said. "We're going to win."

Mr Trump had also warned of a "rigged" election in 2016, as he trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls.

But in 2016 the polls were far less clear and just a few percentage points separated Mr Trump and his then-rival Hillary Clinton at several points as election day neared.

On Monday, Mr Trump was officially nominated as a formality to be the Republican nominee at his party's convention in the city of Charlotte.

Supporters cheered him, chanting: "Four more years!"

The president is expected to make live television addresses on every day of the convention, leading up to his acceptance speech to the party jamboree on Thursday. It is unusual for candidates to address the convention before that point, as Mr Trump has done.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53898142
 
US First Lady Melania Trump has made a heartfelt plea for racial unity in a live speech from the White House to the Republican party convention.

"Stop the violence and looting," she also said as protests continued over a police shooting in Wisconsin.

Mrs Trump urged Americans to stop making assumptions based on race and reflected candidly on US history.

President Donald Trump currently trails Democratic challenger Joe Biden in opinion polls for November's election.

Mr Trump will address the convention's final night on Thursday.

What did Melania Trump say?
The normally limelight-shunning US first lady delivered Tuesday evening's keynote address before a small audience, including her husband, in the Rose Garden of the White House.

"Like all of you, I have reflected on the racial unrest in our country," she said.

"It is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history. I encourage you to focus on the future while still learning from the past."

She added: "I urge people to come together in a civil manner so we can work and live up to our standard American ideals.

"I also ask people to stop the violence and looting being done in the name of justice, and never make assumptions based on the colour of a person's skin."

Tuesday's convention schedule began with a prayer for Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old black man shot multiple times in the back by police in Wisconsin on Sunday.

Shot US black man 'needs miracle to walk again'
Mr Trump tweeted a call for the Midwestern state's governor to bring in the National Guard as unrest continued following the shooting.

The president has often been accused by opponents of stoking racial tension, though black speakers at the opening night of the Republican convention emphatically denied he was racist.

In her speech, Mrs Trump also expressed compassion for Americans worried about the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 178,000 Americans.

"I know many people are anxious," she said. "Some feel helpless. I want you to know you're not alone."

She praised her husband as a someone who "makes no secrets about how he feels about things".

"Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not you always know what he's thinking."

Her decision to speak from the seat of presidential power has angered Democrats, who said the venue was an inappropriate use of government resources.

If the first night of the Republican National Convention was about addressing the president's perceived weaknesses among American voters - on the coronavirus pandemic, racial issues and overall empathy - Tuesday focused on motivating his base, from anti-abortion activists to Christian conservatives.

Meanwhile, the president flexed his executive powers from the White House in two extraordinary norm-stretching bits of political theatre - issuing a pardon and taking part in a naturalisation ceremony.

First Lady Melania Trump wrapped up the evening from the newly renovated Rose Garden. She was one of the few to directly express sympathy for those who have suffered from Covid-19. It was a stark contrast with White House economist Larry Kudlow, who talked about the pandemic in the past tense earlier in the night.

Unless something changes in the coming months, coronavirus will be at the top of voters' minds when they cast their ballots.

And while red meat for the base is useful, public perception of the president's handling of the virus - and its economic fallout - will factor heavily in deciding his political fate.

Who else spoke on Tuesday?
The second night - which was designed around the theme of "Land of Opportunity" - also heard from the president's children, Eric and Tiffany Trump.

Eric railed against "radical Democrats" - a recurring message of the convention so far.

"They want to disrespect our National Anthem by taking a knee," he said, "while our armed forces lay down their lives every day to protect our freedom."

He accused Mr Biden of planning to defund law enforcement, though the Democratic nominee has unveiled no such proposal.

Tiffany, Mr Trump's daughter with his second wife Marla Maples, accused the media and tech companies of keeping Americans "mentally enslaved".

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a pre-recorded speech from Israel, praising the president's "America First vision".

Normally, the nation's top diplomat does not attend political conventions, and critics called his participation unethical.

Where was President Trump?
Though he is not scheduled to deliver his keynote address to the convention until its final night, Mr Trump played a major role in Tuesday's schedule, just as he did on the opening day.

The conference featured emotional footage of the president earlier on Tuesday pardoning a Nevada bank robber, Jon Ponder, a black man who founded a charity that helps convicts reintegrate into society.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53914757
 
Bette Midler has faced criticism after mocking US first lady Melania Trump’s accent on social media.

The veteran actor made the remarks while Melania appeared on the second night of the Republican National Convention, delivering a speech from the White House’s Rose Garden.

“Oh, God. She still can’t speak English,” Midler tweeted while the speech was taking place.

She then tweeted: “#beBest is back! A UGE bore! She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage!”

Midler also wrote: “You are one lucky Slovenian! And after all that surgery, you hit a kind of horrible jackpot, chained to [a] colossal idiot.”

Read more

Ralph Macchio: ‘The Karate Kid is the best cheeseburger you ever had’

The award-winning singer’s comments were met with backlash from people across the political spectrum, with many describing her comments as “xenophobic”.

One commenter wrote: “This is beyond gross @BetteMidler and I am no fan of the First Lady. You have become what you think you are ‘resisting’.”

Someone else said: “Shame on you. Attacking an immigrant for speaking with an accent is truly immoral.”

Another wrote: “She’s on her fifth language, Bette. I’m not nearly as good in my fifth as I am in English. How’s your first language doing?”

“While I loathe Trump, it’s interesting to see that some on the left in the US seem to think that racism and xenophobia are perfectly fine when directly towards people you don’t like,” wrote another Twitter user.

Trump moved to the US legally in 1996, becoming a citizen in 2006, one year after marrying Donald Trump.

Her Rose Garden speech saw her express support for her husband’s re-election in the forthcoming presidential race.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...-accent-tweet-xenophobic-racist-a9688976.html
 
US Vice-President Mike Pence has warned that violence will spread in American cities if Joe Biden wins the White House in November.

"The hard truth is you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," said President Donald Trump's deputy in a keynote speech to the Republican convention.

Mr Pence depicted the vote as a choice between law-and-order and lawlessness.

He spoke amid nightly protests over the police shooting of a black man in Wisconsin on Sunday.

"The American people know we don't have to choose between supporting law enforcement and standing with African-American neighbours to improve the quality of life in our cities and towns," said Mr Pence.

He blasted Mr Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, for saying there is an "implicit bias" against minorities and "systemic racism" in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53928422
 
Donald Trump has called for himself and Joe Biden to take a drug test ahead of their first debate.

The president claimed he was suspicious of his rival's "sudden" improvement during a debate against Bernie Sanders, who Mr Biden beat to become the Democrats' presidential nominee.


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"I don't know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie," Mr Trump - who is trailing Mr Biden by an average of eight per cent in opinion polls - told the Washington Examiner.

"My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad.

"He wasn't even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we're calling for a drug test."

Mr Trump gave no evidence for his implied accusation, but suggested it was legitimate because he was "pretty good at this stuff... I look".

He likened the televised debate to a "prizefight".

"It's no different from the gladiators, except we have to use our brain and our mouth. And our body to stand. I want all standing; they want to sit down," he added.

The first Trump-Biden debate of the campaign will be held on 29 September at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr Trump has not said when he would request he and Mr Biden take a drug test before the debate - and also said he was not sure if "they'll let me do it".

In 2016, Mr Trump called on then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to take a drug test before their third debate.

The test did not happen.

https://news.sky.com/story/us-elect...s-biden-to-drug-test-ahead-of-debate-12057578
 
He has a point, all of us are subject to drug testing at work, why shouldn't politicians. This is a very important debate and people should have confidence in who they pick.
 
US President Donald Trump has warned his Democratic challenger Joe Biden will "demolish" the American dream if he wins the White House in November.

Speaking on the final night of the Republican convention, the president depicted his opponent as "the destroyer of American greatness".

He said the Democrats would unleash "violent anarchists" upon US cities.

Mr Biden has a steady single-digit lead over Mr Trump with 68 days until voters return their verdict.

The end of the Republican convention heralds a 10-week sprint to election day, and the coming campaign is widely expected to be one of the ugliest in living memory.

On Thursday night, the president asked voters for another four years in office, vowing to dispel the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the US economy and quell civil strife ignited by police killings of African Americans.

What did President Trump say?
Mr Trump accepted his party's renomination on Thursday night from the South Lawn of the White House.

"This election will decide whether we save the American dream," he said, "or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny."

He added: "Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens."

Mr Trump's reference to the sometimes violent racial justice protests that have swept the nation in recent months came as hundreds of Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered outside the White House gates.

Some of their shouts and car horns could be heard on the South Lawn despite new fencing being erected this week along the White House perimeter to keep protesters at a distance.

He said the Democrats at their party convention last week had disparaged America as a place of racial, social and economic injustice.

"So tonight," he said, "I ask you a very simple question - how can the Democrat party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?

"In the left's backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just and exceptional nation on earth. Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins."

In a blistering attack on his opponent's decades-long political life, he continued: "Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars."

While Mr Trump portrayed his challenger as "a Trojan horse for socialism", Mr Biden's lengthy record as a political moderate was a hindrance for him as he competed to capture his party's nomination.

Mr Trump mentioned Mr Biden more than 40 times; the Democrat did not once name Mr Trump in his speech last week, though criticism of the president permeated Mr Biden's remarks.

A political blunderbuss

In a ponderous, hour-long speech more akin to a State of the Union address than a nomination acceptance, Donald Trump alternated between ticking through his record as president and circling around, like a prize fighter, to launch strikes on his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.

It was a blunderbuss of attacks, of varying levels of validity, in the hope that some will draw blood - on trade, immigration, education, energy and foreign policy. But most of all, Mr Trump sought to paint Mr Biden as in league with the protesters on the streets and the more left-wing members of the Democratic party.

The setting of the speech was majestic - on the grounds of the White House and in view of the Washington monument.

The delivery from a president who thrives more on rousing rallies than rhetorical set-pieces, however, frequently landed with a thud.

Mr Biden - who was vice-president under Barack Obama - struck back on Twitter, posting: "When Donald Trump says tonight you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America, look around and ask yourself: How safe do you feel in Donald Trump's America?"

Speaking by video link on Thursday night, Mr Biden said he was planning to hit the campaign trail again.

The Trump campaign has mocked him for running his White House bid during the pandemic mostly from the basement of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, citing coronavirus prevention measures.

Mr Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, delivered a speech half a mile from the White House earlier on Thursday, declaring: "Donald Trump doesn't understand the presidency."

She added: "Donald Trump has failed at the most basic and important job of a president of the United States: He failed to protect the American people, plain and simple."

The California senator did not take questions.

Mr Biden is reportedly to win endorsements on Friday from more than 160 people who worked for former President George W Bush or for past Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Who else spoke at the convention's final night?
Some of the speakers sought to humanise the president, who is sometimes accused of lacking empathy.

His daughter, Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, said: "I've been with my father and seen the pain in his eyes when he receives updates on the lives that have been stolen by this [coronavirus] plague."

Ja'Ron Smith, a White House political aide who has worked on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, said the president "really cares".

The parents of Kayla Mueller, a US hostage of the Islamic State group who was killed in Syria, lauded Mr Trump for ordering the operation, named after their daughter, that killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last year.

"The Trump team gave us empathy we never received from the Obama administration," said grieving father Carl Mueller.

Other speakers touted Mr Trump as a law-and-order strongman - a message hammered home during the previous three nights of the party conference.

The convention heard from the widow of a retired 77-year-old black police captain David Dorn, who was shot dead while reportedly trying to protect his friend's pawn shop during rioting in June in St Louis, Missouri.

Ms Dorn fought back tears as she said: "Violence and destruction are not legitimate forms of protest. They do not safeguard black lives. They destroy them."

Mr Trump's personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York in the 1990s, said: "These continuous riots in Democrat cities gives you a good view of the future under Biden."

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53942667
 
Conventions highlight wildly different Biden, Trump strategies going into final election stretch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The back-to-back presidential nominating conventions that concluded with Donald Trump’s speech showed both sides intend to fight for the sliver of independent and moderate voters who will decide the election, each with a wildly different strategy in the final sprint to Nov. 3.

A self-styled showman, Trump used all of his reality-show talents during the Republican convention this week to try to win back supporters alienated by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with a dire warning on Thursday night of a lawless America if his Democratic rival Joe Biden takes power.

That illustrated the Republican strategy for the next two months: change the subject from a pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans and shackled the U.S. economy, and blame Democrats for the violence on the streets.

Republicans largely abandoned talk of the health crisis as if it had abated, in favor of reminding voters of the robust economy that existed beforehand. During the Democratic convention the previous week, Biden put the focus on holding Trump accountable for his actions during the outbreak.

“These two conventions have offered very different pictures of reality, in terms of where our country is now and what our future may hold,” said Christopher Devine, an expert in U.S. elections at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Trump’s convention depicted the president as a champion of “law and order,” taking aim at voters who do not approve of his divisive and inflammatory rhetoric but may be jittery about months of protests over racial injustice and police brutality that have sometimes turned violent.

“This is their attempt to nail down the base and mobilize them to get out and vote,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“But I do think he is trying to peel away some of those undecided women, the people who he’s calling the ‘suburban women.’”

Biden holds a seven-point lead over Trump nationally, about the same position he held before the conventions, according to the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted Aug. 19-25. But it showed the race for suburban voters narrowing, a worrying sign for the former vice president who had previously expanded his lead with the crucial voting group.

Suburban women - a cohort considered key to the election - have become less critical of Trump than they were in June. Biden’s advantage with this group has narrowed to nine points in the latest poll, compared to a 15-point advantage over Trump in a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll in June.

The August poll also showed Biden with a 5-point lead with college-educated white Americans, compared with his 7-point lead in July and an 11-point advantage in June.

But in reaching out to suburban voters with unapologetic tough-on-crime messages, while showing little empathy for the protesters who demand racial justice, Trump may have further bolstered Black American support for Biden.

The August poll had Biden leading among Black Americans by 62 points, up 6 points from July and the largest advantage for Biden among this group in at least six months.

Trump’s message would have been more powerful before the pandemic, said Kyle Kondik, an analyst for the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“It could be successful if COVID is not as much of a focus in the fall as it is now. That seems hard to imagine, but it’s possible,” he said.

Read more:

PITCH TO THE MIDDLE

While lauding Trump at every turn, his convention was just as much about convincing wavering Republicans or undecided voters that Biden - who ran largely as a centrist candidate in the Democratic primary - would be beholden to the far-left elements of his party.

A bevy of speakers accused Biden of turning a blind eye to the crime and violence that have marred mostly peaceful protests over racial justice, sparked by the police killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis. The latest police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, led to a fresh wave of protests.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican consultant close to the Trump campaign, said much of the convention’s programming was directed at voters who “might have soured” on Trump because of his divisive style or were still looking for reasons to support him.

First lady Melania Trump expressed sympathy for those who had suffered because of the pandemic, a gesture of solace that her husband has rarely shown, and Vice President Mike Pence offered a more statesmanlike critique of Biden that may have appealed to Republicans weary of the president’s invective.

Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Virginia not affiliated with the Trump campaign, said the unrest this week in Wisconsin may bolster Trump in ways other protests have not.

With the pandemic still raging and the economy struggling, “chaos and uncertainty are the best friend he has,” Donovan said.

VIOLENCE AS STRATEGY?

Speaking at a fundraiser on Thursday, Biden too suggested Trump welcomed chaos. “The violence you’re seeing is in Donald Trump’s administration, Donald Trump’s America. Did they forget who’s president?” Biden said. “Violence isn’t a problem in Trump’s eyes. It’s a political strategy.”

The protests have been a thorny issue for Biden, who would rather keep the focus on the virus. While showing solidarity with demonstrators, he has also criticized the destruction of communities and has not backed the de-funding of police departments as called for by activists in his party.

But Jim Messina, who was President Barack Obama’s campaign manager for the 2012 reelection, said Republicans’ fiery rhetoric against protests could turn off independents who want an end to the bitter polarization.

“Trump has gone so far right that he’s left the middle for the taking,” he said.

Biden’s convention underscored profound fears within the Democratic Party that voter turnout may be depressed by the pandemic and Trump’s efforts to limit mail-in voting, which Trump has denounced as prone to fraud despite no such evidence.

Former first lady Michelle Obama urged Americans to “vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ing-into-final-election-stretch-idUSKBN25O1B5
 
One person has been shot dead in Oregon as a large procession of supporters of President Trump clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland.

Images from the scene showed medics trying to save what appeared to be a white man.

Police have not given an identity or specified whether the shooting was directly linked to the clashes which broke out in a downtown area.

Portland's streets have been the scene of frequent protests in recent weeks.

The city has become a focus for demonstrations against police brutality and racism since the police killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May triggered a wave of national and international outrage.

Federal forces were sent by President Trump to Portland in July in what was described as a move to prevent violence.

The latest pro-Trump rally was the third in a row on a Saturday.

In a statement on Saturday evening, Portland police said: "Portland Police officers heard sounds of gunfire from the area of Southeast 3rd Avenue and Southwest Alder Street. They responded and located a victim with a gunshot wound to the chest. Medical responded and determined that the victim was deceased."

Oregon Live reported that camouflage gear with "thin blue line patches" was seen next to the body - a common sign of support for the police.

Another image shows police trying to restrain a man who was apparently with the person who was shot.

The shooting came amid fights between the Trump supporters and BLM protesters in the city centre.

Tension rose after a convoy of some 600 vehicles flying flags and carrying an estimated 1,000 Trump backers gathered at a mall in Clackamas county on the outskirts before entering Portland's downtown.

Video showed some people firing what local media described as pepper spray and pellets at BLM groups who had tried to prevent them entering the city by blocking streets.

Police reported "some instances of violence" between "demonstrators and counter-demonstrators" and said some arrests had been made.

The violence followed last week's Republican convention which formally anointed Mr Trump as the party's presidential candidate.

Accepting the nomination in a speech on the White House lawn, he sought to characterise Portland as another Democratic-run city pray to "rioting, looting, arson, and violence".

The clashes also come in the wake of the shooting by police of a black man in Wisconsin. Jacob Blake was seriously wounded last week after he was shot in the back seven times by an officer in Kenosha as he was getting into a car.

President Trump has said he will visit Kenosha, which has seen widespread violence.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53963625
 
US President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden have clashed over the violence that has erupted at protests in Portland, Oregon.

Mr Trump blamed the Democrat mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, for allowing the "death and destruction of his city".

But Mr Biden said the president was "recklessly encouraging violence".

A man was shot dead in Portland on Saturday as elsewhere in the city a pro-Trump rally clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters.

Portland has become a flashpoint for demonstrations against police brutality and racism since the police killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May triggered a wave of national and international outrage.

Mayor Wheeler warned against people coming to the city to seek revenge amid a flurry of social media posts.

"For those of you saying on Twitter this morning that you plan to come to Portland to seek retribution, I'm calling on you to stay away," he said.

He also hit back at Mr Trump's criticism, saying it was the US president who had "created the hate and the division".

"I'd appreciate it if the president would support us or stay the hell out of the way," he said. Some activists have called for the mayor's resignation, saying he was not capable of resolving the protests.

'This is Trump's America'
In a series of tweets on Sunday, Mr Trump said that "Portland will never recover with a fool for a mayor", and suggested sending federal forces to the city.

He also accused Mr Biden of being "unwilling to lead".

In a statement, Mr Biden said: "[Trump] may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong - but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is."

Law and order is a major theme of President Trump's bid for re-election, painting the Democrats and their candidate Joe Biden as soft on crime.

Earlier, acting US Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Democrats officials in Portland had allowed "lawlessness and chaos" to develop, saying "all options" were on the table to resolve the situation.

Democrats have responded by saying the violence is happening under Mr Trump's presidency, and accuse the US leader of worsening the situation with his rhetoric.

Victim 'supported far-right group'
Police are investigating the shooting in the city, which has seen months of demonstrations.

"Portland Police officers heard sounds of gunfire from the area of Southeast 3rd Avenue and Southwest Alder Street. They responded and located a victim with a gunshot wound to the chest," Portland police said in a statement.

Oregon Live reported that "camouflage gear" with "thin blue line patches" was seen next to the body - a common sign of support for the police.

Another image shows police trying to restrain a man who was apparently with the person who was shot.

Police have not identified the dead man or specified whether the shooting was directly linked to the clashes which broke out elsewhere in the city.

The founder of the far-right group Patriot Prayer identified the victim as Aaron "Jay" Danielson, adding that he was "a good friend and a supporter", the Associated Press news agency reports.

The shooting came amid fights between the Trump supporters and BLM protesters in Portland.

Tension rose after a convoy of some 600 vehicles flying flags and carrying an estimated 1,000 Trump backers gathered at a mall in Clackamas county on the outskirts before entering Portland's downtown.

Ten people were arrested over the clashes, police said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53962363
 
Democrats push to register voters in attempt to rip Texas from Trump

As the United States barrels toward the presidential election in November, could Democrats possibly come out on top simply through a massive effort on voter registration? They think they can, and Texas is key.

“Absolutely, yes,” said Luke Warford, voter expansion director for the Texas Democratic party.

Although Donald Trump is still favored to win the Lone Star state, a number of recent polls show the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, not only in the running but pulling ahead, fanning long-held leftist ambitions of turning the famously red stronghold blue.

“There literally is not a path to the White House for Donald Trump without winning Texas,” Warford said. “So yes, we think we can register [enough] folks and flip the state for Joe Biden, and yes, that would secure a Biden presidency.”

With Texas’s 38 electoral college votes seemingly in play, Monday marks the launch of Texas Voter Registration Week for Democrats, an inaugural event pioneered by the state party in collaboration with major political campaigns and other groups that register young people.

Their combined goal is to contact a million unregistered voters – the most extensive weeklong voter registration push in Texas Democratic party history.

“We’re excited our volunteers are working across Texas to register so many new voters,” MJ Hegar, the Democratic nominee challenging incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn, said in a statement.

“By mobilizing millions of Texans this November we will elect servant leaders up and down the ballot who embody Texas values.”

This week, a legion of phone and text “bank” operators – telephonic campaigners – are reaching out to likely Democrats, focusing especially on communities of color and young people. Unregistered voters in Texas skew disproportionately Democratic, said Warford; according to the party’s internal modeling, there are an estimated 2.6 million to 3.5 million unregistered Democrats statewide.

“I think the rate that the state of Texas is changing is just, like, really hard for anyone outside of Texas to understand,” said Warford. “If the electorate was reflective of the diversity of the state today, Democrats would be in power in Texas.”

Since November 2018, when Beto O’Rourke, from El Paso, the border city in the west of the state, lost a US Senate seat by fewer than 215,000 votes, the state’s electoral rolls have picked up about 600,000 voters, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Texas Democrats have mounted their largest voter registration program to date, and committees dedicated to electing Democrats are funneling unprecedented investments into the state as it becomes noticeably competitive.

“We’re in the battle basically for the soul of America,” said Brooklynne Roulette Mosley, a senior Texas operative in the Biden campaign. “The election’s gonna belong to those who show up.”

Texas has a record of low voter participation; in 2016, only 51.4% of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot, according to the United States Elections Project, one of the most deflated turnouts across the country.

During the 2018 midterms, Texas still ranked among the bottom 10 states in terms of the turnout rate among eligible voters, despite a double-digit spike compared with four years earlier.

Texans also encounter elevated barriers to voting, according to a Guardian analysis. Before even going to the polls, constituents are supposed to procure an acceptable form of identification and register to vote at least a month in advance. Voters either have to register in-person or by mail, despite a recent judicial ruling that lack of access to voter registration while renewing a Texas driver’s license online violates the National Voter Registration Act.

The state’s stringent voting protocols have become even more germane amid the coronavirus pandemic and concerns about the efficacy of the US Postal Service. Despite the public health crisis, attempts by Texas Democrats to expand eligibility for mail-in voting ahead of election day have proved unsuccessful, and meanwhile, critics believe Trump is intentionally handicapping a faltering USPS to sabotage mail-in ballots.

“I think ‘early’ is the theme of the 2020 election, right?” Warford said. “We’re really just encouraging people to try to do everything early, just to make sure there’s enough time.”

Even with an uphill climb to the White House, the race will be tight in Texas this year, Mosley predicted, and reaching out to eligible voters could help to shore up victories for Democrats. Texans are eager to get registered, according to Warford, and a lot of people want to register others as well.

“They’re ready to go to the polls,” he said, “and try to defeat Donald Trump.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ter-voters-in-attempt-to-rip-texas-from-trump
 
US election: Biden accuses 'weak' Trump of stoking violence

US presidential candidate Joe Biden has accused Donald Trump of being a "weak" and "toxic" leader who has "fomented" violence in the country.

Speaking in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Mr Biden said the US was facing multiple crises, which "under Donald Trump, keep multiplying".

The Democrat's comments came amid sharp tensions between the rival candidates over unrest in US cities.

Mr Trump has made "law and order" a major theme of his campaign.

The two candidates have in recent days been trading insults over clashes in the city of Portland. A man linked to a right-wing group was shot dead there on Saturday, as elsewhere in the city a pro-Trump rally clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters.

Portland has become a flashpoint for demonstrations against police brutality and racism since the police killing of African-American man George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May triggered a wave of national and international outrage.

Mr Trump is set to visit the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday amid anger there over the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake.

A teenager has been charged with killing two protesters during the unrest last week. His lawyers said he would fight the charges on the grounds of self-defence.

In his speech on Monday, Mr Biden said the president "long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country".

"He can't stop the violence - because for years he has fomented it," he told supporters, adding: "We need justice in America. And we need safety in America. We are facing multiple crises - crises that, under Donald Trump, keep multiplying."

"Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?" he asked.

The Democratic candidate also called Mr Trump "an incumbent president who sows chaos rather than provides order".

"Donald Trump has been a toxic presence on our nation for four years," he continued. "Poisoning how we talk to one another. Poisoning the way we treat one another. Poisoning the values this nation has always held dear. Poisoning our very democracy."

Mr Trump has sought to project himself as the law and order candidate in November's election, painting the Democrats and Mr Biden as soft on crime and on the violence that has sometimes flared at anti-racism protests.

The Biden's campaign's main line of attack has thus far been focused on the White House's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and on the fact that more than 180,000 people in the US have so far died with Covid-19. But Monday's rare public campaign appearance is being seen as an attempt to fight Mr Trump's law and order message head-on by directly questioning his record on public safety.

Mr Trump has blamed Portland's Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler for unrest in the city, and suggested that he will send in federal forces.

Media reports say a man who calls himself an anti-fascist is being investigated over Saturday's deadly shooting, while the founder of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer identified the victim as a supporter.

Police have not publicly named the suspect or the victim, or specified whether the shooting was directly linked to the clashes in the city between protesters and Trump supporters.

As he threatened to intervene in Portland, Mr Trump on Monday tweeted that if he "didn't INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now."

Unrest broke out in Kenosha last week after Mr Blake was shot seven times in the back. His lawyers say he has been paralysed by the shooting.

A 17-year-old has been charged with killing two people during the subsequent unrest. Kyle Rittenhouse had told journalists it was "his job" to guard buildings in Kenosha against protesters.

Videos on social media showed a man with a rifle being chased by a crowd before he fell to the ground and appeared to fire at them.

Mr Biden's visit to Pennsylvania - an important swing state - marked an unusual trip for the Democratic candidate, who has worked mostly from his home since coronavirus began spreading widely in March.

He has a stable lead over Mr Trump in the national polls.

The US president is due to make an address later on Monday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53975335
 
Most Democrats fear Trump could reject election defeat, poll shows

Three in four supporters of Democratic challenger Joe Biden are worried about the prospect of Donald Trump rejecting the US presidential election result if it goes against him, an Opinium Research poll for the Guardian shows.

The survey underlined fears that the president will not accept the outcome of November’s race, triggering a constitutional crisis. Last week two congressional Democrats wrote to the Pentagon seeking assurance that the military would ensure an orderly transfer of power.

Nearly half of all Americans (47%) say they are worried about the possibility of Trump losing the election but refusing to concede defeat, Opinium found. Among Biden voters, that figure climbs to 75%, whereas for Trump voters it stands at 30%.

Conversely, two in five (41%) Trump voters are worried that Biden will lose but not concede, as opposed to one in four Biden voters (28%).

Trump has spent months spreading disinformation and attacking the integrity of the voting process. He declared in August: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” It appears that he is making some headway in encouraging Americans to distrust their democracy.

Three in five (60%) Trump voters are worried that the election is being rigged, according to the poll. More than half of Biden voters (53%) share the same concern.

The president has repeatedly sought to delegitimise mail-in voting, expected to surge to a record high because of the coronavirus pandemic, making baseless claims that it is prone to irregularities. Despite the lack of evidence, these broadsides appear to have gained some traction.

Three in four (73%) Trump voters are worried about mail-in voting being used to commit fraud, according to Opinium, more than double the share of Biden voters (36%) with the same anxiety.

In addition, a majority of both camps are worried about the beleaguered postal service not being able deliver ballots for mail-in voting in time and that their vote won’t be counted properly. More than a third of citizens are worried that they won’t be able to cast their vote.

Five states already vote almost entirely by mail and the practice has been growing nationally with each presidential election. The pandemic is expected to accelerate that trend, from 20.9% in 2016 to 39% who say they vote by mail in 2020.

There is a stark partisan divide that Trump is apparently seeking to exploit. More than two in three (68%) of the president’s supporters say they intend to vote in person, while just one in four (27%) intend to vote by mail.

By contrast, more than half (56%) of Biden supporters plan to vote by mail and two in five (39%) intend to vote in person. The imbalance has raised fears that media outlets will jump the gun and project a winner based on in-person votes, long before the mail-in ballots are counted. A state such as Virginia might appear to favour Trump on the night but trend towards Biden as the days pass.

A potential scenario was summarised by Crooked Media’s daily newsletter: “We could see election-night results that skew overwhelmingly towards Trump, with days of lag time before all the Biden ballots get counted. It’s a possibility that journalists should be prepared for, in the event that Trump tries to claim victory based on incomplete returns.”

Opinium Research’s poll confirms that many people are braced for a break from the tradition of a winner being declared in the early hours of the morning after election day.

Just 36% of Americans say they expect to know the result the next day, with 23% expecting to know within the next week and 17% saying some time later on in November. The disputed 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore prompted an epic legal battle that was not settled by the supreme court until 12 December.

Opinium surveyed 2,002 American adults between 21 and 25 August, after the Democratic national convention but before the Republican one. The survey was conducted online and weighted to represent the US adult population according to demographics, education and past voting behaviour.

It found Biden leading Trump by a huge 15 points – 56% to 41% – among those who are registered to vote and indicate that they are certain to do so. In swing states Wisconsin and Florida, Biden enjoys leads of 14 points (56% v 42%) and seven points up (53% v 46%) respectively.

Biden has a big advantage over Trump on the issues of healthcare and race relations but trails the president on the economy (42% for Trump v 39% for Biden). This remains one of the Trump campaign’s big hopes, given the importance of the economy in past elections; Trump has been pushing for businesses and schools to reopen despite the persistence of Covid-19.

Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate has also boosted his standing. Americans are more confident that Harris would be ready to take on the presidency if the situation arose (52%) than the current vice-president, Mike Pence (47%).

Opinium Research’s findings come amid growing concerns in some quarters that Trump, who has routinely pushed boundaries and shattered norms, even delivering his Republican national convention acceptance speech at the White House, is determined to cling to power irrespective of the election outcome.

Last week the Washington Post reported that Democratic congresswomen Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey wrote to Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the defense secretary Mark Esper, noting the military’s obligations to follow the orders of the legitimately elected commander in chief.

“The questions would have been almost unthinkable at any time in the nation’s history outside of the civil war,” the Post observed. “The two asked Milley if he was aware that the Uniform Code of Military Justice ‘criminalizes mutiny and sedition’ and if he understood that he was legally bound to follow the lawful orders only of the legitimately elected president.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/02/democrats-fear-trump-reject-election-defeat-poll
 
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has urged charges against police who shot two black Americans, Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor.

Speaking in Delaware, Mr Biden did not specify what counts should be brought in the cases, which have fuelled racial justice protests nationwide.

The Democrat spoke after notching up a record fundraising haul in August.

He has a lead over President Donald Trump, a Republican, in opinion polls ahead of November's election.

During a news conference in his hometown of Wilmington on Wednesday, Mr Biden was asked whether he agreed with his running mate, Kamala Harris, that the officers in the Blake and Taylor cases should be charged.

"I think we should let the judicial system work its way," he said. "I do think at a minimum, they need to be charged, the officers."

Mr Blake, 29, was shot seven times in the back and paralysed during an arrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on 23 August.

No action has so far been taken against the officer involved, pending investigations by the Wisconsin and US departments of justice.

Ms Taylor, 26, was fatally shot in her home during a drug raid in Louisville, Kentucky, on 13 March.

One of the officers is losing his job; two others have been placed on administrative leave as the investigation into their actions proceeds.

Mr Biden also mentioned the gunman, identified in US media as a far-left activist, who fatally shot a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland, Oregon, last weekend.

The Democratic nominee stopped short of calling for charges in that case, but said: "They should be investigated and it should follow through on what needs to be done.

"Let the judicial system work. Let's make sure justice is done."

Mr Biden had been delivering remarks about how to open schools safely in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

His comments came a day before he travels to Kenosha, where he says he wants to help "heal" the city after it was rocked by days of violent protests.

The Joe Biden story
What Biden wants to do

Media captionJoe Biden: Will it be third time lucky in 2020?
Mr Biden said he had received "overwhelming requests" to visit this latest flashpoint in America's racial reckoning over law enforcement shootings.

The Democrat will meet Mr Blake's father and other members of the family during the visit.

US father 'won't play politics' over son's shooting
President Trump, a Republican, did not meet the family during his own visit to Kenosha on Tuesday, saying he decided not to because of plans to have lawyers attend with the relatives.

Mr Biden's visit to Wisconsin comes four years after the previous Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, overlooked the Midwestern state during her campaigning, and it turned out to be pivotal in Mr Trump's against-all-odds 2016 election victory.

Has Trump delivered on his promises?
Republicans scrap party platform. What that means...
At his own event in North Carolina on Wednesday, Mr Trump continued to talk tough about "violent mobs" at protests.

"These people know one thing - strength," he said.

The president also directed his administration to look into stripping federal funding for "anarchist jurisdictions" including New York City, Seattle, Washington DC and Portland, Oregon.

Earlier in the day, the Biden campaign announced a $364m (£272m) fundraising haul for August, more than both he and Mr Trump pulled in in the previous month.

The Democrat will splurge $45m of his war chest on a single ad rebutting opposition claims he will not stand up to rioters and looters.
It will splice clips of him condemning violence at protests, which he has done several times since the demonstrations began with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May.

Mr Trump, meanwhile, will air a duelling ad in Minnesota with the message: "Communities not criminals. Jobs not mobs."

Mr Biden has a clear single-digit lead in opinion polls nationally and is ahead by a somewhat smaller margin in the handful of swing states that will actually decide this election.

A new survey covering the critical state of Pennsylvania, by Monmouth University on Wednesday, showed Mr Biden's lead over Mr Trump had shrunk from 10 points in July to three points now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54007810
 
Facebook bans new political ads before US election as Zuckerberg warns of ‘civil unrest’

Facebook says it will stop accepting political advertisements in the week before the US election, as its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg warned of “an increased risk of civil unrest across the country”.

Explaining the move, Mr Zuckerberg said: “This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy.”

He said he “generally” believed that “the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims”.

In preparation of this, Facebook is going to “block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign”.

“So in the week before the election, we won’t accept new political or issue ads,” Mr Zuckerberg continued, although political and issue ads that had already been running will be allowed to continue.

He said that Facebook was taking steps to encourage voter turn-out as well as tackle misinformation and prepare for candidates prematurely declaring the results.

In particular he warned that the coronavirus pandemic, which was likely to result in an increased number of people voting by mail, could mean delays to vote counting.

“Many experts are predicting that we may not have a final result on election night,” he wrote.

“It’s important that we prepare for this possibility in advance and understand that there could be a period of intense claims and counter-claims as the final results are counted.

“This could be a very heated period, so we’re preparing the following policies to help in the days and weeks after voting ends,” he said.

Facebook will be putting a Voting Information Centre panel at the top of both Facebook and Instagram “almost every day until the election” which will include video tutorials on postal voting and information on registration deadlines.

This panel will also “prepare people for the possibility that it may take a while to get official results [which] will help people understand that there is nothing illegitimate about not having a result on election night”.

In July, Donald Trump refused to state that he would accept the result of the election as he dismissed the validity of polls which showed him behind the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, prompting concerns he and his supporters would not comply with the results.

The US president has previously been sanctioned by Facebook and Twitter for posting false information relating to postal votes, and yesterday encouraged supporters in North Carolina to vote twice in the November election to ensure their ballot is counted.
https://news.sky.com/story/facebook...re-us-election-to-avoid-civil-unrest-12062547
 
US election: Trump tells North Carolina voters to vote twice

US President Donald Trump has told people in the state of North Carolina to vote twice in November’s election, despite this being illegal.

Mr Trump suggested voters send a postal vote and then vote in person in order to test the system.

The president has frequently made false claims that postal votes are vulnerable to significant electoral fraud.

“Let them send it in and let them go vote,” he told North Carolina broadcaster WECT-TV on Wednesday.

“And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote (in person).”

On Thursday, he tweeted that if people vote by post they should also go to the polling station “to see whether or not your mail-in vote has been tabulated” and vote in person if necessary.

After President Trump made the initial comments, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein tweeted that he had “outrageously encouraged” people in the state to “break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election”.

“Make sure you vote, but do not vote twice!” Mr Stein added. “I will do everything in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November.”

Democrats have also accused President Trump and the Republican party of attempting to suppress the vote in order to help their side in the election.

President Trump was in Wilmington, North Carolina, to formally designate the city an American World War Two Heritage City.

What would happen if people tried to vote twice?
The electoral process is run by the individual states.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, has reassured voters that there are numerous measures in place to prevent anyone getting two votes registered.

Someone who has already voted by post would show up in an electronic pollbook used at polling stations, and prevented from voting, she said.

Only the first vote would be recorded, she added. And audits are carried out after each election to check voter history against ballots cast.

Voting twice intentionally is a crime, said Ms Brinson Bell.

When Mr Trump’s comments were put to Attorney General William Barr, he said it was unclear what the president meant.

Why the focus on postal votes for this election?
Several US states have allowed and encouraged postal voting for years.

But the number of people voting by post is expected to vastly increase in 2020 due to fears about gathering at polling stations in a pandemic.

As a result, dozens of US states have expanded postal voting for this election.

There are concerns the large volume of postal ballots may mean it takes days or weeks to count them all, long after Election Day has passed.

What are Trump’s claims about fraud - and is there any truth to them?
This isn’t the first time President Trump has made controversial comments about postal voting.

Speaking at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month, he claimed “there’s tremendous fraud involved” with postal voting and that “we have to be very, very careful”.

But these claims have been strongly and repeatedly debunked by experts.

Ellen Weintraub, commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, responded at the time that “there’s simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud”.

In addition, numerous nationwide and state-level studies over the years have not revealed evidence of major, widespread fraud.

In the 2016 US presidential election, nearly one quarter of votes were cast by post, and that number is expected to rise this time round due to public health concerns over coronavirus.

Individual US states control their own voting rules for federal elections - and many are looking to increase postal voting to prevent large gatherings at polling stations on election day. A number of states are planning to hold “all-mail” ballot elections this November.

The rate of voting fraud overall in the US is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54011022
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Based on the massive number of Unsolicited & Solicited Ballots that will be sent to potential Voters for the upcoming 2020 Election, & in order for you to MAKE SURE YOUR VOTE COUNTS & IS COUNTED, SIGN & MAIL IN your Ballot as EARLY as possible. On Election Day, or Early Voting,..</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1301528521026744322?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 3, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Donald Trump has denied allegations that he referred to American soldiers who lost their lives in war as "losers" and "suckers".

The claims date back to 2018 when the US president cancelled his trip to a cemetery in France, which was blamed on bad weather at the time.

According to The Atlantic, Mr Trump is reported to have asked his aides: "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers."

In a separate conservation, it is alleged that the president branded US marines who lost their lives at the Battle of Belleau Wood in the First World War as "suckers".

The Atlantic said it had spoken to four people with first-hand knowledge of the discussion about the cemetery visit, while the Associated Press news agency said a senior defence department official had confirmed some of the remarks, including the 2018 cemetery comments.

However Mr Trump has insisted the claims are "totally false".

Speaking on Air Force One on Thursday night, the president - who has consistently positioned himself as a supporter of the military and veterans - denied making the comments, calling the site that published the remarks a "terrible magazine".

"What animal would say such a thing?," he added.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters on the flight: "It's sad the depths that people will go to during a lead-up to a presidential campaign to try to smear somebody."

Mr Trump's Democratic rival Joe Biden was quick to jump on the allegations, saying: "If the revelations in today's Atlantic article are true, then they are yet another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the president of the United States.

"Duty, honour, country - those are the values that drive our service members.

Mr Biden added that if he is elected president he "will ensure that our American heroes know that I will have their back and honour their sacrifice - always".

According to The Atlantic, Mr Trump also called Senator John McCain a "loser" upon his death and allegedly refused to support his funeral - claims which the president also denied.

Mr McCain, who was one of the few major Republican figures who refused to back Mr Trump when he was elected, was captured by opposition forces in the Vietnam War.

Responding on Twitter, Mr Trump said he supported Mr McCain's funeral and even sent Air Force One to transport his body.

He added: "Also, I never called John a loser and swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on, that I never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than HEROES.

"This is more made up Fake News given by disgusting & jealous failures in a disgraceful attempt to influence the 2020 election!"

In 2015, Mr Trump criticised Mr McCain, saying he "lost" and that "he never liked him as much after that, because I don't like losers."

He added at the time: "He's not a war hero... I like people that weren't captured."

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-denies-calling-dead-us-soldiers-losers-and-suckers-12063179
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Osama bin Laden's niece says only Trump can prevent another 9/11 <a href="https://t.co/ivDGW42Bx6">https://t.co/ivDGW42Bx6</a> <a href="https://t.co/YPW3KIzznf">pic.twitter.com/YPW3KIzznf</a></p>— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1302243779932499968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Interesting.
 
Abdullah719 said:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Osama bin Laden's niece says only Trump can prevent another 9/11 <a href="https://t.co/ivDGW42Bx6">https://t.co/ivDGW42Bx6</a> <a href="https://t.co/YPW3KIzznf">pic.twitter.com/YPW3KIzznf</a></p>— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1302243779932499968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Interesting.
Click to expand...

If Joe Biden is a pro-war type of a guy then she might be right.

Not saying Trump is a good guy but one thing I'll give credit to him is that his track record of getting into wars overseas wasn't as bad in comparison to his predecessors (Obama and Bush).
 
There is a whole list of people who would like Trump to win another term...

Just a few:-

Putin
Xi
Kim
Salman
Nathanyu
 
United States President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden took rhetorical swipes at each other on Monday as the presidential campaign entered its traditional homestretch on the US Labor Day holiday.

Trump described Biden, whom he trails in national polls, as a threat to the economy and "stupid", while Biden took aim at Trump's reported disparaging of fallen troops.

At a White House news conference, Trump said: "Biden and his very liberal running mate [Senator Kamala Harris], the most liberal person in Congress by the way - is not a competent person in my opinion, would destroy this country and would destroy this economy."

He also called Biden "stupid". Trump has frequently referred to the former vice president as "Sleepy Joe".

Trump pushed back again against a report in The Atlantic magazine that he had referred to fallen US soldiers as "suckers" and "losers," calling it "a hoax". The story has dominated news coverage for days and threatens Trump's support among veterans and military members, a key voting bloc.

"There's nobody that has more respect for not only our military, but for people that gave their lives in the military," Trump said.

Biden cited the reported remarks while campaigning in the electoral battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Referring to his son Beau Biden, who served in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard and died of brain cancer in 2015, he said: “Beau wasn't a loser or a sucker. ... He served with heroes."

Biden's visit to Pennsylvania on Monday kicked off a flurry of travel to battleground states this week by both Biden and Trump as some opinion polls show the race tightening with less than 60 days to go until the November 3 election.

With the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest over racism and police brutality commanding attention in recent months, Biden is seeking to maintain his edge by painting the Republican president as an ineffectual leader who thrives on chaos and has left the working class behind.

Trump has struggled to change the contours of the campaign despite highly charged rhetoric on racial polarisation and "law and order" intended to motivate his base and draw new supporters in suburban parts of key swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Biden, meanwhile, was collecting a trio of endorsements from organised labour as he headed to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for a virtual town hall at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations with AFL-CIO union President Richard Trumka.

Meeting first with local labour leaders in the backyard of a supporter's home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Biden spoke about trade, the coronavirus and the economy as he criticised Trump for "refusing to deal with the problems that affect ordinary people" and called for strengthening unions.

Biden promised to be the "strongest labour president" in the history of the country, vowing to hold executives legally accountable if they interfere with union organising, and to raise the minimum wage and strengthen the National Labor Relations Board.

"Folks have figured out that it’s not the financial wizards of Wall Street that make this country run. It's you, the essential workers," Biden said during the virtual event with Trumka.

Earlier on Monday, Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris met the family of a Wisconsin man shot by police last month to kick off her Labor Day visit to a critical swing state.

Harris gathered with Jacob Blake's father, two sisters and members of his legal team at the airport in Milwaukee while Blake's mother and lawyer Ben Crump joined by phone. Blake also joined the conversation by phone.

Biden met the family last week in Milwaukee before visiting Kenosha, the city where police shot Blake seven times in the back, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

Trump's narrow win in Wisconsin in 2016 helped to send him to the White House.

The state's importance in the 2020 elections was underscored by all four candidates campaigning there over the past week.

The Biden campaign believes its labour support could help get out the vote in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...ne-general-election-kick-200907190911645.html
 
Biden accuses Trump of using vaccine as 'political tool'

Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris have weighed in on the issue of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In a joint statement they accused Republican rivals Donald Trump and Mike Pence of using the vaccine as a "political tool".

"We see it as a product of science and research," they said. "Its timing, approval, and distribution should be without regard to political calculation."
 
US President Donald Trump knew Covid-19 was deadlier than the flu before it hit the country but wanted to play down the crisis, according to a new book.

Bob Woodward, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal, interviewed Mr Trump 18 times from December to July.

Mr Trump is quoted as telling him the virus was "deadly stuff" before the first US death was confirmed.

Responding to the book, the president said he had wanted to avoid causing public panic over the outbreak.

Some 190,000 Americans have been recorded as dying with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, some US media released parts of the interviews between the president and the journalist, revealing his reported remarks on the outbreak as well as race and other issues.
 
MenInG said:
US President Donald Trump knew Covid-19 was deadlier than the flu before it hit the country but wanted to play down the crisis, according to a new book.

Bob Woodward, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal, interviewed Mr Trump 18 times from December to July.

Mr Trump is quoted as telling him the virus was "deadly stuff" before the first US death was confirmed.

Responding to the book, the president said he had wanted to avoid causing public panic over the outbreak.

Some 190,000 Americans have been recorded as dying with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, some US media released parts of the interviews between the president and the journalist, revealing his reported remarks on the outbreak as well as race and other issues.
Click to expand...

A story about nothing, there will be attacks like this on Trump until the elections.

Nothing that was released in the book is new or accurate.
 
Trump has caught up with Biden in Florida. Latino vote heading to Trump.

Why no news of Trump nomination for Nobel Peace prize? Crazy as it sounds, he has hasn't been the warmongering President's we?e come to see. Only yesterday Trump ordered a further reduction of troops in Iraq. Small steps but positive.
 
MenInG said:
US President Donald Trump knew Covid-19 was deadlier than the flu before it hit the country but wanted to play down the crisis, according to a new book.

Bob Woodward, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal, interviewed Mr Trump 18 times from December to July.

Mr Trump is quoted as telling him the virus was "deadly stuff" before the first US death was confirmed.

Responding to the book, the president said he had wanted to avoid causing public panic over the outbreak.

Some 190,000 Americans have been recorded as dying with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, some US media released parts of the interviews between the president and the journalist, revealing his reported remarks on the outbreak as well as race and other issues.
Click to expand...

US President Donald Trump has defended his decision to downplay the risks of Covid-19, saying his answers to journalist Bob Woodward were "proper".

Woodward, known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal, interviewed Mr Trump 18 times from December to July.

Mr Trump said in February he minimised the virus's severity to avoid panic.

He tweeted on Thursday that Woodward did not report his quotes for months. "He knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!"

Some 190,000 Americans have been recorded as dying with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54107677
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) recently alerted one of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s main election campaign advisory firms that it had been targeted by suspected Russian state-backed hackers, according to three people briefed on the matter.

The hacking attempts targeted staff at Washington-based SKDKnickerbocker, a campaign strategy and communications firm working with Biden and other prominent Democrats, over the past two months, the sources said.

A person familiar with SKDK’s response to the attempts said the hackers failed to gain access to the firm’s networks. “They are well-defended, so there has been no breach,” the person said.

SKDK Vice Chair Hilary Rosen declined to comment. A Biden spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations as “nonsense.” Moscow has repeatedly denied using hacking to interfere in other countries’ elections.

U.S. intelligence agencies have raised alarms about possible efforts by foreign governments to interfere in the November presidential election.

Investigations by former special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee both concluded that affiliates of the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to try to help Republican Donald Trump get elected. Mueller has warned that Russia was meddling in the current campaign.

One of the sources said it was not clear whether Biden’s campaign was the target or whether the hackers were attempting to gain access to information about other SKDK clients.

SKDK managing director Anita Dunn was a White House communications director during the Barack Obama presidency and serves the Biden campaign as a senior advisor.

The attempts to infiltrate SKDK were recently flagged to the campaign firm by Microsoft, which identified hackers tied to the Russian government as the likely culprits, according to the three sources briefed on the matter.

Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to the media at the end of his visit, before leaving for Delaware, at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Detroit, Michigan, September 9, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The attacks included phishing, a hacking method which seeks to trick users into disclosing passwords, as well as other efforts to infiltrate SKDK’s network, the three sources said.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

The company, which has extraordinary visibility on digital threats via its widely used Windows operating system and cloud services such as Office 365, has taken an increasingly active role in calling out state-backed cyberespionage. In 2018, the company launched its Defending Democracy initiative, aimed in part at safeguarding campaigns from hackers.

SKDK is closely associated with the Democratic Party, having worked on six presidential campaigns and numerous congressional races. In addition to its current work for Biden, the firm in 2018 worked on successful governors’ races in Kansas and Connecticut.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ing-biden-campaign-firm-sources-idUSKBN2610I4
 
Russian hackers target US election again - Microsoft

Hackers with ties to Russia, China and Iran are attempting to spy on people and groups involved with the US 2020 presidential election, Microsoft says.

The Russian group which hacked the 2016 Democratic campaign is again involved in cyber-attacks, said the tech firm.

Microsoft said it was "clear that foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts" targeting the election.

Both President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden's campaigns are being targeted.

Russian hackers from the Strontium group have targeted more than 200 organisations, many of which are linked to US political parties - both Republicans and Democrats, Microsoft said in a statement.

"Similar to what we observed in 2016, Strontium is launching campaigns to harvest people's log-in credentials or compromise their accounts, presumably to aid in intelligence gathering or disruption operations," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice-president in charge of customer security and trust.

The firm said Chinese hackers had launched attacks targeting individuals connected to Mr Biden's campaign, while Iranian hackers had continued efforts targeting people associated with the Trump campaign.

Most of the cyber-attacks had not been successful, according to Microsoft.

The report comes a day after a whistleblower at the US Department of Homeland Security alleged he was put under pressure to downplay the threat of Russian interference in the election as it "made the president look bad".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54110457
 
Biden backs Trump's push to draw down troops from Iraq and Afghanistan

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he supports President Donald Trump's push to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, though not completely.

"These 'forever wars' have to end. I support drawing down the troops," Biden told the newspaper Stars and Stripes. "But here's the problem, we still have to worry about terrorism and [the Islamic State]."

"I think we need special ops capacity to coordinate with our allies," Biden said, adding that a maximum of "1,500 to 2,000" should remain.
 
Joe Biden and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence start the day in New York City at the 9/11 memorial museum at Ground Zero.

Biden and President Donald Trump will both visit the Shanksville, Pennsylvania memorial site.

Kamala Harris is to speak at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony in Fairfax, Virginia.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will preside over a moment of silence at the US Capitol building.
 
Trump campaign officials are planning rallies in Nevada this weekend.

But state authorities have been trying to stop them.

The state has a directive that allows gatherings of up to 50 people, and the president’s rallies would exceed that.

It is the latest conflict between the president and state officials who are trying to contain the spread of the virus.

Earlier this week a Republican chairman of a county board in North Carolina said that the president should wear a mask when he visited their state, following a directive ordered by the governor.

I travelled with the president to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this week and I never saw him with a facial covering.

Instead he stood mask-less before a crowd of about 15,000 (the number of people at the rally was confirmed by a senior White House official).

His fans were packed together; some wore masks, but many did not. Regardless of what they wore, they cheered as loudly as they could.

The president has upset some state officials. But a lot of people who live in North Carolina and in Nevada, too, adore him.
 
WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China dismissed on Friday allegations by Microsoft Corp MSFT.O that hackers linked to Moscow and Beijing were trying to spy on people tied to both U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Advisers to both presidential campaigns are assessing risks from digital spies around the globe, as the two candidates face off on Nov. 3 in one of the most consequential U.S. presidential elections in decades.

The Microsoft report, which also mentioned Iran, came as Reuters revealed one of Biden’s main campaign advisory firms had been warned by the software giant that it was in the crosshairs of the same Russian hackers who intervened in the 2016 U.S. election.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China has never meddled in U.S. affairs. Lavrov, in turn, said accusations of Russia using hackers to meddle in the United States’ internal affairs were “unsubstantiated”.

“Russia has not interfered, is not interfering and does not intend to interfere in anyone’s internal affairs, or electoral processes,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters separately on Friday.

The announcement by Microsoft’s vice president for customer security, Tom Burt, said the group accused of breaching Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails in 2016 - a Russian military intelligence-linked unit widely known as Fancy Bear - had spent the past year trying to break into accounts belonging to political consultants serving both Republicans and Democrats as well as advocacy organizations and think tanks.

Burt also said Chinese hackers had gone after people “closely associated with U.S. presidential campaigns and candidates” - including an unnamed Biden ally who was targeted through a personal email address and “at least one prominent individual formerly associated with the Trump Administration.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber official, Christopher Krebs, said Microsoft’s warning was consistent with earlier statements issued by the intelligence community about Russian, Chinese, and Iranian spying on election-related targets.

China’s foreign affair ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said earlier on Friday that China has no interest in the U.S. election and has never interfered in it. The U.S. was an “empire of hackers,” he said at his daily news briefing in Beijing.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-to-hack-biden-and-trump-camps-idUSKBN2621U5
 
Trump uses Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs

Fox News broadcast an interview on Saturday night in which Donald Trump without any evidence accused Joe Biden of taking drugs to get him through debates.

“I think there’s probably – possibly – drugs involved,” Trump told Jeanine Pirro. “That’s what I hear. I mean, there’s possibly drugs. I don’t know how you can go from being so bad where you can’t even get out a sentence … ”

Trump did not finish his own sentence, but he went on to say he was referring to the Democratic presidential nominee’s hesitant performances in early primary debates, before his surge to victory on the back of a win in South Carolina.

“You saw some of those debates with the large number of people on the stage,” Trump said. “He was, I mean, I used to say, ‘How is it possible that he can go forward?”

According to the president, Biden won the nomination because the progressive vote was split.

“And he only won because Elizabeth Warren didn’t drop out,” he said. “Had she dropped out Bernie [Sanders] would’ve won Super Tuesday, every state, and you would’ve had Bernie instead of Biden.”

Trump’s claim came not long after his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, denied claims he used cocaine before speaking at the Republican convention. Remarkably enough, it was also not the first time Trump, 74, has accused Biden, 77, of taking drugs. Speaking to the Washington Examiner last month, the president said: “We’re going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie [in the final debate] … It wasn’t that he was Winston Churchill because he wasn’t, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test because there’s no way – you can’t do that.”

In the Fox interview broadcast told Fox News he would happily “put down very quickly” any leftwing protests. “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”

Trump has sent federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland. In the Fox interview Trump said it was “retribution” when US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the Portland killing of a member of a rightwing group.

Trump and Biden are due to debate in Cleveland on 29 September, in Miami on 15 October and in Nashville on 22 October. The vice-presidential nominees Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will meet in Salt Lake City on 7 October.

Trump is famously teetotal and disapproving of drug use but his political rise has been fueled by a well-documented love for Diet Coke and junk food. Beset by speculation about his physical and cognitive health, earlier this month the president was moved to deny rumours that a “series of ministrokes” prompted a short-notice visit to hospital in Washington last November.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/12/trump-biden-drugs-fox-news-interview.
 
Racial inequality in the United States came into sharp focus this year, and became a defining topic of the national debate, after police killings of Black Americans ignited months of widespread protests and galvanised the nation to demand racial justice and police reforms.

The unrest has forced US President Donald Trump, a Republican who is running for re-election on a "law and order" platform, and his main challenger, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, to wrestle with the complicated issue of race in America, and try to appeal to Black voters.

But with less than two months before the election, in the middle of a pandemic and record-high unemployment rates, whether Black Americans will be energised to come out in large numbers to vote remains uncertain - potentially defining the outcome of the 2020 election.

A recent poll shows Biden by far outperforming Trump among Black voters, with 78 percent support.

"Most Black voters are going to support Joe Biden," said Ravi Perry, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University, a historically Black university.

"But there are differences in enthusiasm," Perry tells Al Jazeera, "where Black women, for instance, have far more enthusiasm towards Biden, and many young people, support him but with far less enthusiasm."

Trump 2
President Donald Trump touring an area damaged during demonstrations after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
Earlier this month, both candidates visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, a battleground state, and the site of the most recent turmoil following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who remains hospitalised after being shot in the back seven times by a white police officer while authorities were trying to arrest him in late August.

Speaking at a local church in Kenosha after a private meeting with Blake and his family, Biden said the latest events would help Americans confront centuries of systemic racism.

In contrast, Trump did not mention Blake by name, refused to acknowledge systemic racism and instead blasted the protesters and offered his unequivocal support to law enforcement.

'Leaning into it'
Data shows that Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party since at least the 1960s, when the party passed civil rights legislation that outlawed racial segregation and prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

But Black turnout, which rose in the 2008 and 2012 elections when the US elected and then re-elected the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama, waned in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee.

More profoundly, there is a growing level of cynicism among Black voters, pollsters have argued, particularly among young and male voters, and point to 2016 - when Clinton lost to Trump amid a six percentage points decline among Black voters - which proved critical in battleground states.

Trump's campaign this year has been trying to appeal to Black voters, particularly Black male voters and improve on his 2016 results, when 8 percent of Black people voted for him.

Tim Scotts speaks at Republican convention
US Senator Tim Scott speaking to the largely virtual 2020 Republican National Convention in a live address from the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, US [Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]
According to a recent poll, 13 percent of Black voters said they plan to vote for Trump this election.

Democratic pollster Terrance Woodbury said, according to recent data he compiled, about half of Black voters believe the Democratic Party takes Black voters for granted and may choose to stay home or vote for Trump.

"What we saw at the Republican National Convention was a very overt attempt to speak directly to the issues that are most important to Black men: criminal justice reform and unemployment," Woodbury said.

On the first night of the convention in August, the only Black Republican US senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, relayed his personal success story, "Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime," he said. And Trump gave a full pardon to Jon Ponder, a Black convicted felon turned criminal justice activist.

Several other Black speakers took the stage during the four-day event, including NFL players and a civil rights activist, and some touted Biden's gaffe when he said that "if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black."

"The course of this election year will show that Black men are not a marginal part of his (Trump's) strategy, but a path to victory," Woodbury told Al Jazeera, "and he's leaning into it."

Defund the police 2
Protesters in New York City holding a 'defund the police' sign during a protest [AP Photo/Ragan Clark]
And yet for many, voting Trump out of office, is a motivation on its own.

Trump promoted the "birther movement", alleging that Obama was not born in the US. He refused to condemn white supremacists and more recently, he allegedly called Black people "too stupid" to vote for him, according to his estranged former lawyer Michael Cohen.

James Lance Taylor, a professor at the University of San Francisco, said many Black people will vote for Biden for no other reason than "to deal with the emergency of removing Donald Trump from office".

'Defund the police'
Many of the demonstrators who took to the streets after the police killing of George Floyd in May were making calls to "defund the police," which would divert funds away from police departments and prisons in favour of investments in social services and re-examine what offences require a militarised response.

Biden has said, "I don't support defunding the police." Instead, he has proposed a $300m investment in policing, contingent on officers mirroring the diversity of their communities.

According to a Gallup survey taken in July, 70 percent of Black Americans support or strongly support reducing police department budgets. But despite its popularity among Black Americans, strategists said if Biden backed the idea, he would run the risk of losing the support of moderate older white voters, a key demographic.

"Defund the police may sound pretty good on Twitter, but to an awful lot of voters, including African Americans, it doesn't make much sense," Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist told Al Jazeera.

"They want better policing, they want smarter policing, they don't want the police defunded," Manley said.

Kamala Harris speaks
Democratic US vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris delivering a campaign speech in Washington, US [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]
Instead of embracing "defund the police," Biden nodded to Black voters by choosing Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black woman to be nominated on a major party's ticket.

"Black folks noticed and were excited by it," said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund.

"There is a segment of our community that thinks Kamala Harris' record as district attorney and attorney general is shaky," he said in reference to her years as a prosecutor when she embraced a "top cop" label. "But the overall feeling is definitely that is a step in the right direction, a sense that he recognises us."

'Now we know better'
The coronavirus pandemic, a disease which has killed more than 192,000 Americans and disproportionately affected Black communities, has added an additional layer of uncertainty regarding how many and who will be able to cast their vote in November.

Most states said they will expand their mail-in voting systems amid health concerns about crowds and long lines. It remains unclear how turnout will be affected.

But for most, Albright says, the desire to see Trump out of office, casts an urgency on the importance of voting this year that will outweigh all other considerations.

"Even among people who are not enthusiastic about Biden, people are more clear, now we know better," he said, "We see what a Trump presidency looks like and how it is impacting our lives and our health."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...-enthusiasm-black-voters-200911180922552.html
 
Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election

Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.

The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.

In turn, special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee suspected Trump lied when he said he could not recall discussing the leaks with Stone.

Stone did not turn on Trump and had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of attorney general William Barr. But he still faced prison before Trump acted. His conviction stands.

Both men were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to raise money for himself. He outlined his advice to Trump should he lose in a call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show, on Thursday.

Citing widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and voting by mail, Stone said Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.

Stone also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”

Nevada has not gone to a Republican since 2004 but is shaping up to be a crucial contest this year. Biden leads there, but polls have tightened.

Trump’s own rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison. In Nevada on Saturday, the president continued to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.

After a planned airport rally in Reno was cancelled because of coronavirus restrictions, Trump staged an event which disregarded such strictures in Minden.

Attacking the Nevada governor, Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, he said: “This is the guy we are entrusting with millions of ballots, unsolicited ballots, and we’re supposed to win these states. Who the hell is going to trust him? The only way the Democrats can win the election is if they rig it.”

Stone said: “Governor Sisolak is a punk. He should not face down the president of the United States.”

Trump and his campaign have also consistently claimed without evidence that “antifa”, or anti-fascist, activists represent a deadly threat to suburban voters that will be unleashed should Biden win.

Commenting on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump refuses to recognize”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.

“If the Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities,” he said, “their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut down. They wanna play war, this is war.”

Stone also advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity”.

In an interview broadcast on Saturday night, Trump told Fox News he would happily “put down” any leftwing protests.

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that,” he told Jeannine Pirro.

“We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal law. Last used in 1992, it was much discussed this summer, amid protests over racism and police brutality arising from the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis.

Ultimately Trump chose simply to send federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland, Oregon, a move which proved hugely controversial.

In his interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.

“There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

He also said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ump-bring-in-martial-law-if-you-lose-election
 
US election 2020: Bloomberg donates $100m for Biden in Florida

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg has pledged at least $100m (£78m) to help Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign in Florida.

Of the battleground states Florida offers the biggest share of the electoral college votes needed to win.

Mr Bloomberg already spent $1bn this year trying to defeat Mr Biden to become the Democratic challenger.

Donald Trump has hinted he will spend his own money in the state ahead of early voting opening on 24 September.

Both campaigns are keen to appeal to voters who may be casting their votes early by post and set the tone of the final weeks of their campaigns.

Postal voting is expected to be double that seen in 2016 as the coronavirus pandemic spurs voters to avoid polling stations.

Florida offers 29 of the 270 electoral college voters needed to win the election. Only California (55) and Texas (38) offer more but are seen as safe Democrat and Republican territory respectively. President Trump won Florida in 2016, while Democrat Barack Obama took the state in 2012.

"Mike Bloomberg is committed to helping defeat Trump, and that is going to happen in the battleground states," Kevin Sheekey, an adviser to Mr Bloomberg, told Reuters.

In a tweet, Donald Trump reacted by criticising Mr Bloomberg's own run to become the Democratic candidate for president in which he reportedly spent $409m (£313m).

"I thought Mini Mike was through with Democrat politics," he wrote about the former mayor of New York City. "Save NYC instead."

Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrumpEnd of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
Earlier this week when asked by journalists if he was considering spending his own money in Florida, Mr Trump told reporters "If I have to, I will. Whatever it takes, we have to win."

The president initially had a significant financial advantage over his rival but Mr Biden's successful fundraising has closed the gap.

A Cook Political Report poll this week suggested that the contest in Florida is narrowing, with Mr Trump improving his standing in the race there.

Nationally Mr Biden is leading in the polls.

Mr Bloomberg endorsed Mr Biden after failing to win the Democratic nomination and spoke in a prime-time slot at the Democratic convention in August.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54140308.
 
As the November presidential election approaches, US President Donald Trump has held his first indoor campaign rally in three months.

But the event angered local officials, who said the size of the crowd violated state rules banning gatherings of more than 50 people.

Participants at the rally in Henderson, Nevada, were seated close together and most did not appear to be wearing face masks. A number of media outlets, including CNN, did not send their crews for safety reasons.

The president's last major indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June caused controversy, with a number of staffers testing positive for coronavirus just hours before the event began.

The US has confirmed almost 200,000 Covid-19 deaths since the pandemic began, the highest figure in the world.
 
US West Coast fires: Trump fans flames of climate row in California

President Trump has dismissed concerns over climate change on a visit to fire-ravaged California, telling an official there it would "start getting cooler".

Blazes in California, Oregon and Washington state have burned almost 2m hectares (5m acres) of land and killed at least 35 people since early August.

Climate change sceptic Mr Trump blames the crisis on poor forest management.

Earlier on Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called Mr Trump "a climate arsonist".

He told an event in Delaware that four more years of his opponent in the White House would see "more of America ablaze".

During his visit to the US West Coast, Mr Trump repeated his argument that poor forest management was to blame as he met Californian officials involved in the battle against the wildfires at a stop near Sacramento, in the centre of the state.

Dismissing one official's plea to not "ignore the science" on climate change, Mr Trump said: "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch... I don't think science knows actually."
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54144651.
 
US 2020 election: Climate change takes centre stage amid wildfires

Climate change, a topic seldom debated during the 2020 US presidential campaign, is having a moment in the spotlight due to severe wildfires raging along the US West Coast.

While touring fire-ravaged California, Donald Trump downplayed the role a warming planet could have in the devastation, suggesting temperatures will "start getting cooler" and that the recent conflagrations was a lack of proper forest management.

"I don't think science knows actually," he said when told that science didn't agree with his conclusions

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Joe Biden went on the attack, accusing Trump of ignoring a "central crisis" facing the nation.

"If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?" he asked. "If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?"

The environment has largely been a sideline issue in the race for the White House, getting scant attention even during the Democratic primary campaign, when questions on the topic during candidate debates were few and far between.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who made climate change the focus of his presidential bid, was one of the first to drop out of the race. Tom Steyer, a billionaire who self-funded his campaign, also made the issue a priority, but his campaign also never gained significant traction.

The topic, however, is on one on which Trump and Biden have sharp and substantive disagreements.

Trump has previously dismissed the notion of manmade climate change as a "hoax" perpetrated by China and, while he's backed away from such rhetoric, his comments on Monday were reflective of the lack of attention he devotes to the issue.

Instead, his administration has focused on promoting US manufacturing and the energy industry, rolling back more than 70 environmental regulations - many of which deal with climate change.

He eased regulation on methane produced by oil and gas wells, reduced fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles and rescinded Obama-era rules on greenhouse gas emissions by electrical power plants.

Trump also followed through on a campaign promise to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement in the sixth month of his presidency.

"The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States' economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense," he said at the time.

Biden, on the other hand, says he would rejoin the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency and reinstate many of the environmental regulations Trump has rescinded.

He surprised many in the political world when he moved to the left on the environment since the end of the Democratic primary campaign, expanding on his original plan for spending $1.7tn infrastructure and green jobs over 10 years to $2tn over four years. He also pledged to make the US power supply carbon-free in 15 years.

"We have a choice," Biden said in his speech on Monday. "We can invest in our infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient, improving the health of Americans and creating millions of good paying jobs while at the same time tackling the root causes of climate change. Or we can continue down the path Donald Trump has us on - a path of indifference, costing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild."

There could be a political calculation behind Biden's move, as climate change is an area of concern for many younger voters - a demographic that supported other candidates over Biden in the primaries and has been the key to general-election victories by Democratic candidates in the past.

Trump, however, won the White House in 2016 in part because of support from white working-class voters in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. His electoral strategy has been to emphasis jobs and manufacturing over climate concerns, while making the occasional rhetorical nod to maintaining "crystal clean" air and water.

Even though the environment still ranks behind issues like healthcare and the economy for a majority of Americans, if the presidential race is close, the how - or whether - to address climate change in a substantive fashion could make the difference between victory and defeat.

On Monday, climate change took centre stage in the US presidential campaign - and the contrast between the two candidates couldn't have been more stark.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54156598.
 
US election 2020: Could Biden's Latino problem lose him the White House?

Few observers of US politics will be surprised to hear that recent opinion polls show a tightening presidential race in Florida.

This crucial swing state is used to dramatic electoral disputes, a result of its extreme political polarisation.

With the Florida vote often divided almost exactly in half between Democrats and Republicans, election outcomes may depend on small variations of support for either candidate among the multiple groups of the state's vast and diverse electorate.

This year, three of these groups are attracting particular attention. Voting patterns among Cuban-Americans, senior citizens and former felons could well define who wins in Florida, and have an outsized influence on deciding who will be in the White House next year.

1. Trump advances with Miami Cubans
Many residents of Miami, Florida's largest metropolitan area, will have noticed a recent uptick in the number of Spanish-language ads from Joe Biden's campaign showing up in their computer or TV screens.

The barrage of Democratic ads is part of a late-game push to win Hispanic votes in this part of the state. But to some observers, this effort comes across as too little, too late.

"This is something the Democrats should have been doing months and years ago, not days ago", Miami pollster and Democratic strategist Fernand Amandi tells the BBC.

A survey published in early September by his company, Bendixen & Amandi, shows President Donald Trump's campaign making inroads among citizens of Cuban heritage, who make up around one third of Miami-Dade county's population.

According to the poll, 68% of Cuban Americans in Miami say they would vote in 2020 for the president and only 30% for Biden. In 2012, nearly half of their votes had gone for Barack Obama, and in 2016, 41% of them voted for Hillary Clinton.

Polls still show an overall Biden advantage in Miami-Dade county. The Bendixen-Amandi survey presents him as being ahead of Trump by 55% to 38%.

But Amandi points out that Biden can't afford to just win in Miami. He needs to win big. A narrow margin in favour of Biden here means Trump would need a smaller advantage in the rural and overwhelmingly Republican north of the state to obtain an overall victory in Florida. So conceding even some Miami Latino votes in Miami can become a big problem for Biden.

Some might be surprised by Trump's standing with Latinos here, particularly after his controversial statements about Mexican undocumented immigrants. In fact, Cuban Americans have tended to vote Republican since the 1960s, an outlier among the mostly Democratic-leaning US Hispanic vote.

Trump has also campaigned hard in this region, frequently meeting with Cuban-American leaders. Many of these voters, whose family history was defined by their fleeing Communist Cuba, have been moved by the Trump campaign's characterisation of Democrats as extremist left-wing radicals.

"The fearmongering they are doing around socialism and accusing all of the Democrats of being quasi-Communists, apparently is having an impact", Amandi told the BBC.

Florida's nearly 5.8 million-strong Hispanic community is itself becoming more diverse. Democrats hope that in the future, a growing Puerto Rican community in Orlando might counter the Cuban Republican bastion in Miami.

But among the more than 1 million Puerto Ricans of Florida, most of them are relatively recent arrivals to the US mainland, and many still show little allegiance to either Democrats or Republicans.

2. The pandemic may convince older people to back Biden
Nearly 20% of Floridians are 65 or over, according to the US Census Bureau. Maine is the only state with more senior citizens as a percentage of total population.

GOP presidential candidates often campaign in places like The Villages, a sprawling, affluent retirement community near Orlando, where they have traditionally been offered a warm welcome.

This summer, however, local media carried stories of Biden supporters holding golf cart parades to compete with the campaign events traditionally staged by their Republican rivals in The Villages.

Polls suggest that the pandemic, and the way the Trump administration has responded to the emergency, may be eroding the Republican's position among older voters.

An NBC/Marist poll released on 8 September showed Biden besting Trump by 49% to 48% among seniors in Florida.

Exit polls in 2016 showed Trump won this age group by 57% to 40%.

3. Convicts voting for first time could help Democrats
On 11 September, a ruling by a federal court of appeals made it harder, if not impossible, for many of Florida's 1.4 million former felons to vote in the November election.

The judicial ruling has powerful electoral consequences in this state.

"A lot of these former felons are African American - around 90% of the time African Americans register with the Democratic party and vote for Democratic candidates", Professor Kathryn DePalo-Gould, an expert at Miami's Florida International University, told the BBC in an interview last March.

Until 2018, Florida was one of a handful of states that imposed lifetime voting bans on felons. A statewide referendum in that year overturned the prohibition.

But shortly after, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill adding the requirement that in order to vote, former felons had to first pay off all the monetary obligations imposed as part of their sentences, which could reach thousands of dollars.

Despite earlier legal challenges by civil rights groups, the court of appeals ruling of 11 September decided that the measure would remain in place.

The Democrats might now obtain the vote of many ex-felons who manage to pay off their monetary obligations before November, but most likely in far less numbers than they once expected.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54162722.
 
Trump is closing the gap. 2 reasons:

1. The economy (more accurately the stock market) is nearing all time highs again. Easy win for Trump. (Even though most people know stock market is not true reflection). None the less, if you have Pensions, 401Ks, investments etc, the stock market had served well since the lows in March.

2. Withdrawing troops from the ME, and orchestrating a peace deal between Israel and UAE etc. You may not agree with this, but from a political pov this is a heavyweight punch.

If we have learned anything in the past 4 years it is not to trust the polling data.
 
Trump denies minimising Covid risk: I 'up-played' it

US President Donald Trump has denied downplaying the seriousness of Covid-19, despite admitting in a recorded interview to having done that.

At a televised event with voters, Mr Trump said he had "up-played" it.

The claim contradicts comments Mr Trump made to journalist Bob Woodward earlier this year, when he said he minimised the virus's severity to avoid panic.

Mr Trump also repeated on Tuesday that a vaccine could be ready "within weeks" despite scepticism from health experts.

No vaccine has yet completed clinical trials, leading some scientists to fear politics rather than health and safety is driving the push for a vaccine before the 3 November presidential elections.

More than 195,000 people have died with Covid-19 in the US since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins university.

Meanwhile, the magazine Scientific American on Tuesday endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its 175-year history, backing Democrat Joe Biden for the White House.

The magazine said Mr Trump "rejects evidence and science" and described his response to the coronavirus pandemic as "dishonest and inept".

What did Trump say?

At Tuesday's town hall meeting held by ABC News in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mr Trump was asked why he would "downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities".

Mr Trump responded: "Yeah, well, I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action."

"My action was very strong," he said, citing a ban imposed on people travelling from China and Europe earlier this year.

"We would have lost thousands of more people had I not put the ban on. We saved a lot of lives when we did that," Mr Trump said.

The US ban on foreign travellers who were recently in China came into force in early February, while a ban on travellers from European countries was introduced the following month.

But Mr Trump has been accused of being slow implementing measures to curtail the virus.

In its statement on Tuesday, Scientific American said despite warnings in January and February, Mr Trump "did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54172311
 
Biden assembles army of attorneys for post-election legal fight

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign says it is amassing an unprecedented army of attorneys for an expected legal brawl over whether ballots will count in the weeks after the election. The effort will involve several other top Democratic voting rights and election law attorneys as well as Eric Holder, the former attorney general.

Americans are unlikely to know the winner of the presidential election on election night, in large part because of an expected surge in mail-in votes amid the coronavirus . Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – key swing states – all prohibit election officials from beginning to process mail-in votes until election day, meaning there will be a wait until the final results are tallied.

This wouldn’t be the first time America saw a protracted legal battle after election day. During the 2000 presidential elections, Americans became fixated on “hanging chads” and whether punch-card ballots were sufficiently punctured to count.

The chads are long gone, but this year the Biden and Trump campaigns are expected to aggressively contest technicalities states use to verify ballots – issues such as postmarks (some states require ballots to be postmarked by election day to count, but the markings can be illegible or missing) and whether a voter’s signature matches the one on file with election officials.

For months, Trump has been sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election, falsely saying it will be rigged and stolen. Election experts are deeply worried about the chaos from a scenario in which Trump leads in-person voting on election night, claims victory, only to see his lead evaporate as more mail-in votes are counted. Election law experts are already warning that the 19th-century law that would guide how a disputed electoral college vote is decided is incredibly vague, and could lead to chaos as well as further high-stakes legal fighting in the courts.

“If it’s close and the courts get drawn in on potentially decisive issues, Bush v Gore will look like a walk in the park compared to what [this] would be like,” said Richard Pildes, a professor at NYU Law School who studies election law. “Social media and cable television will inflame with sinister spin any problems in the process, no matter how legitimate or normal those problems might be; many on both sides are primed already to believe the election is being stolen if their candidate loses.”

The Biden campaign says its massive voter protection effort, which it described as the biggest in modern campaign history, will be led by Dana Remus, the campaign’s general counsel, and Bob Bauer, who served as general counsel on both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. The effort has thousands of lawyers, the campaign said, including several working in a special litigation unit under Donald Verrilli Jr and Walter Dellinger, two former solicitor-generals of the United States. Holder will serve as a liaison between the campaign and voting rights stakeholders.

“We can and will be able to hold a free and fair election this November, and we’re putting in place an unprecedented voter protection effort with thousands of lawyers and volunteers around the country to ensure that voting goes smoothly,” Remus said in a statement. The details of the Biden campaign’s post-election operation were first reported by the New York Times.

The program will aggressively respond to reports of voter suppression and have strong programs for countering both misinformation and disinformation. It will also work closely with the law firm Perkins Coie, led by Marc Elias, a top Democratic voting rights attorney, who has led a blitz of lawsuits around the country challenging voting issues like extending ballot receipt deadlines, requiring election officials to prepay postage, allowing third parties to collect mail-in ballots and requiring officials to give voters a chance to cure any defect with their mail in ballot before it gets rejected.

In a close election, the initial round of litigation would likely focus on the unique procedures voters have to go through to ensure their ballots are counted, Pildes said. Suits could also focus on discrepancies among different counties in a state on how ballots were counted. A worse case scenario, he added, would be if states did not resolve election disputes by the time the electoral college meets in December and state legislatures and parties are divided about which slates of electors to use.

“The courts have come to be seen in much more partisan terms. I am concerned if we got to that point that half the country would not accept the outcome as legitimate,” Pildes said.

The Trump campaign did not provide details on its plans for after election day, but pointed to a list of voting cases it is already involved in. The Republican National Committee has pledged to spend $20m on voting rights suits. The Trump campaign also has active lawsuits around the country to block a range of voting practices, including allowing third parties from collecting ballots and stopping election officials from counting ballots that arrive after election day, and from using ballot dropboxes, among other issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/16/biden-attorney-legal-fight-election
 
I like Trump and probably vote for him. However I am a little concerned about the rise of right wing groups. Not to forget, Mike Pence is a Bible thumper.
 
Technics 1210 said:
Trump is closing the gap. 2 reasons:

1. The economy (more accurately the stock market) is nearing all time highs again. Easy win for Trump. (Even though most people know stock market is not true reflection). None the less, if you have Pensions, 401Ks, investments etc, the stock market had served well since the lows in March.

2. Withdrawing troops from the ME, and orchestrating a peace deal between Israel and UAE etc. You may not agree with this, but from a political pov this is a heavyweight punch.

If we have learned anything in the past 4 years it is not to trust the polling data.
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We're a in a K shaped recession, this recession will result in Trump losing in november. These stock market gains won't save Trump. Tump won't win the swing states that he helped him become Pres in 2016.
 
Sleepy Joe has no chance.

Probably the most boring or weakest candidate in recent memory.

2012 Romney was boring as hell as well.
 
US election 2020: When will we get a result for the US election?

Twenty years have passed since Americans woke up on an autumn morning after Election Day and did not know who would next lead the country.

It took 36 more days to resolve the contest between Al Gore and George W Bush as the country held its breath.

That prospect could happen again in 2020.

Why?

Well, the pandemic has many people fearful of voting in person because in the US that often means waiting for hours in a queue.

So millions more will vote by post and there are fears it could take days or weeks to count them all, leaving the outcome on a knife-edge.

What usually happens on a normal election night?
Different states stop voting at different times.

The first polls to close are on the East Coast, at about 1900 ET (midnight GMT), and after that you start getting a running total as votes in those states are counted.

Presidents are not picked by winning a national vote. No, instead it's a series of state-wide races with the winner in each state taking a certain number of what's called electoral college votes.

A state is "called" for a candidate when a media outlet believes one candidate has an insurmountable lead. It is a projection not a final result.

Similarly, when the whole election is "called" for a candidate, it is not the official result because there are still lots of votes to count.

An election is usually called on the night. And what follows is a choreographed response including a concession speech from the losing candidate. Perhaps not this year - more on that later.
In 2016 the election was called for Donald Trump at about 0230 EST (0730 GMT) after winning Wisconsin put him over the 270 threshold of electoral college votes.

In the days and weeks that followed, more and more Democratic votes were counted which meant Hillary Clinton stretched her lead in the popular votes but the electoral college was already lost.

An unprecedented volume of postal ballots
Standing in a queue at a polling station on Election Day is the most common way American voters cast ballots, but in recent years, voting by mail has risen in popularity.

Whereas it was previously not uncommon for states to restrict voting by post to special circumstances - such as being a soldier who was serving abroad - now the practice is widely permitted in a majority of states, whether one is an "absentee voter" or for any other reason.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has prompted an unprecedented number of requests from voters to cast ballots by post.

Some 80 million mail-in ballots are predicted to be cast - double the number in 2016 and more than any other election year.

The concern, then, is whether that volume of ballot deliveries will delay everything.

That fear is not just due to the large volume of ballots to count.

It is also due to the US Postal Service undergoing cutbacks at a time when it has a big responsibility.

First it has to post ballot papers out to people, and then it has to send them back again to election authorities, all before deadlines set by the states.

How are postal votes counted?
States have wide latitude over determining election rules, including setting deadlines for a postal vote to qualify.

Pennsylvania will only include those received by 20:00 local time on Election Day, while California accepts votes as long as they are postmarked by the date, even if they arrive weeks later. That's why counting in the huge West Coast state always takes a long time.

Postal ballot counting takes longer because each vote must have a signature that is matched with a separate autograph on a registration card.

With double the number of postal ballots expected, that process alone will add time to the count.

Some states like Florida will begin processing the postal votes before Election Day, like verifying signatures, and start actually counting them on the morning of the election.

But most states and Washington DC do not start counting them until all the in-person voting is over and polls have closed.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has a full list of when each state counts postal votes.

What about in-person voting? Will that take longer?
The 2020 primary elections also gave voters a preview of problems that could mar in-person voting on Election Day. States from New York to Alaska struggled with running this traditional and still most common method of casting ballots.

This year, perennial issues like faulty voting machines were compounded by worker shortages and longer than usual queues due to social distancing concerns.

These led to changes that protracted the process.

Kentucky sharply cut the number of polling stations and had to order polls to stay open longer, so people in lower-income areas had to travel much further to cast a vote.

That was hugely controversial, sparking accusations that the pandemic was being used as a way to suppress minority votes.

Alaska forced all voters in some areas to use postal ballots because no polling station could be opened and Georgia was faced with lawsuits over malfunctioning polling machines.

How one key state is preparing for the avalanche of postal votes
By Laura Trevelyan, North Carolina

New Hanover County in Wilmington is the quintessential swing district in a battleground state. And the election is under way here.

Scenic and affluent, it hasn't voted for a Democratic President since Jimmy Carter. Barack Obama came close in 2008, just losing the county though he won the state - and Donald Trump won narrowly in 2016, carrying the state too.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, people in North Carolina have been able to request mail-in ballots for months and can do so until 9 October. They began receiving them at the start of September.

The enthusiasm has been off the charts - 813,014 voters had requested mail in ballots by 14 September, out of seven million registered voters in the state.

And here in picture-perfect New Hanover County, where 24.4K have requested mail in ballots, Democrats have the edge, with 12.4K requests, while 7.8K unaffiliated or independent voters are opting to vote by mail, compared to just 3.9K Republicans.

We will catch up come in-person voting, Chase Horton of the New Hanover County Republican Party tells me. Anything Donald Trump is against, like mail in voting, Democrats are for, says Richard Poole, the party chairman in the county.

Kathryn Hedgepeth, of the non-partisan League of Women Voters which represents three counties, is delighted to see so much enthusiasm for voting. She has her absentee ballot already - but she wants to watch the first presidential debate before deciding how to vote.

Candidates have an incentive to delay concession
With passions running so high on both sides, Donald Trump and Joe Biden could be even more determined than usual presidential contenders not to admit defeat.

For Mr Biden, the contours of this year's voting pattern point to a strategic reason for him to delay conceding if he appears behind in the count on election night.

In the past voting by mail was more popular among older people, and it generally skewed Republican. But in recent years, the trend has shifted toward working people who cannot take time away from work to turn up at the polls, and they skew Democratic.

As a result, there is reason to believe that postal votes counted later will favour Mr Biden. So you could have President Trump ahead on the night but his opponent narrowing the gap in the days that follow.

For months, the president has claimed that illicit forces are threatening to "steal" the election from him - either by methods to under-count his support or over-count ballots for Mr Biden. No small part of his political message has been about rejecting "coastal elites" who do not represent the American heartlands and rural West.

Expect such messages to amplify if he is narrowly ahead on the night of the election, with more drama to follow.

What about poll watchers?
Another factor that may prolong events is the extra scrutiny being paid to voting this year.

The veracity of a ballot can be subject to challenges by volunteer "poll watchers" who look over the shoulders of officials verifying the legitimacy of a ballot.

Ballots that are challenged by a poll watcher are put aside to be checked again before being counted or rejected.

Poll watchers are a legitimate part of the democratic process, but experts warn that campaigns could manipulate their function to delay counts.

The Trump campaign is recruiting "Trump poll watchers", whom critics fear will contest ballots to get them thrown out and delay the count.

Will there be legal challenges too?
All this change and confusion mean that legal disputes are all but inevitable.

More than 190 election lawsuits have already been filed in 2020, contesting everything from identification requirements for postal voting to the legality of Covid-related changes to primary voting dates.

It is anyone's guess what legal challenges could emerge that delay voting beforehand or reporting a definitive result afterwards.

But 2020 is shaping up to be the most litigious election in US history, according to Richard Hasen, a legal scholar at the University of California Irvine.

In the 2000 election, Mr Gore initially conceded and then retracted his concession after believing that his margin of loss in Florida should trigger a recount.

It took a Supreme Court decision over the legality of a recount to settle the contest.
Click to expand...

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54096399.
 
‘Steady drumbeat of misinformation’: FBI chief warns of Russian interference in US elections

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, on Thursday warned that Russia is interfering in the 2020 US presidential elections with a steady stream of misinformation aimed at undermining Democrat Joe Biden as well as sapping Americans’ confidence in the election process.

Moscow is also attempting to undercut what it sees as an anti-Russian US establishment, Wray told the Democratic-led House of Representatives’ homeland security committee in a hearing on Capitol Hill.

He said his biggest concern was a “steady drumbeat of misinformation” that he said he feared could undermine confidence in the result of the 2020 election.

Wray repeatedly addressed election meddling in his testimony to the House committee, saying the bureau is committed to blocking such interference efforts in this year’s elections.

He specifically said the bureau has witnessed “very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020”.

Russian agents, Wray said, were mainly trying to affect the election through “malign foreign influence”, such as social media, state media and the use of proxies.

He noted the Russians’ efforts were meant “primarily to denigrate vice-president Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment”.

Wray’s testimony follows a 7 August warning by the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center that Russia, China and Iran were all trying to interfere in the 3 November election.

Multiple reviews by US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia acted to boost Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and damage his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. The Republican president has long bristled at that finding, which Russia officially denies despite special counsel Robert Mueller indicting Russian operatives for meddling in order to help Trump.

Trump himself has repeatedly and without evidence questioned the increased use of mail-in ballots, a long established method of voting in the United States which are expected to see a surge in use this election cycle because of the risks of the coronavirus. On Thursday Trump wrote on Twitter, without evidence, that they could make it impossible to know the election’s true outcome.

After a series of wild tweets about election chaos, Twitter slapped a label on one of the president’s tweets about voting by mail, which the president has falsely claimed is particularly vulnerable to voter fraud.

On China, Wray said that the FBI is so active in monitoring Chinese efforts to acquire US technology and other sensitive information that it is opening a new counterintelligence investigation related to China “every 10 hours”.

Wray said the FBI is conducting multiple investigations into violent domestic extremists. He said the largest “chunk” of investigations were into white supremacist groups.

The director took a question about threats of domestic terrorism, specifically about anti fascist radical activists known collectively as Antifa, which the president has repeatedly denigrated.

Wray emphasized that the FBI did not view threats in terms of liberal or conservative politics. “We’re focused on the violence, not the ideology,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/misinformation-us-elections-2020-russia
 
How is arguing with Trump voters working out for you?

If you want to stop authoritarianism, the efficient mission is not to attack the opposing side – but rather to stay firm in your principles and open in your heart

by Sarah Smarsh

Their children hold signs that read, “God hates fags.”

I was a child when their family, the extremist group called Westboro Baptist church, began picketing in Kansas in 1991. Driven by patriarch Fred Phelps’s homophobic interpretation of the Bible, they quickly became infamous for wielding shocking slogans and shouting lurid insults in public spaces.

It would be easy to write them off as monsters – a familiar impulse in today’s political climate, particularly toward supporters of Donald Trump. But, with democracy itself on the line this election year, we must remain open to the possibility of transformation.

I saw Westboro for the first time in the late 90s at the University of Kansas. I was a first-generation college student who had inherited no family political tradition. We were working in wheat fields when better-off families were attending civic events or reading opinion pages. In that void, I had absorbed a vague, moderate conservatism from the prevailing culture of my Reagan-era childhood and adolescence at the dawn of conservative talk radio.

On the typically liberal campus that was challenging my ideas, Westboro was a frequent, well-organized presence at the LGBTQ+ pride parade, music concerts or lectures. Over the previous decade, they had traversed the country to disrupt all manner of events, including the funerals of American soldiers and the murdered gay man Matthew Shepherd. But KU – “gay U”, some Kansas conservatives liked to call it – was just down the road from their home in Topeka, so students like myself saw them often.

“Fags die, God laughs,” read one sign. Later, in response to the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center– deemed punishment for a culture increasingly accepting of queerness – “Planes crash, God laughs.”

The content of their message was horrifying, but the tone with which they shared it – smiling, smug self-righteousness, casting pity on us who weren’t saved – was repugnant, as well. Their vitriol had the opposite of its intended effect, raising my awareness as a heterosexual, cis-gender woman of the trials faced by my LGBTQ+ peers.

By the time I graduated in 2002, my politics had significantly altered. I arrived deeming affirmative action unfair; after a sociology class for which I researched the impact of one’s race, gender and economic status on life outcomes, I concluded that affirmative action was right as rain. I arrived with no concept of worker rights, all but erased from consciousness in my union-busted state; after reading early 20th-century documents of the labor movement for an American literature class, I realized that I had been born near the bottom of a socioeconomic ladder my country kept insisting didn’t exist. I arrived believing I could be at once socially liberal and fiscally conservative; after excelling on campus while paying my own way through school and then graduating into poverty for lack of social capital – while watching less motivated, less capable children of affluence walk into prestigious internships and lucrative jobs – I viewed the so-called free market, welfare reform and low taxes as a thoroughly rigged system that only progressive measures could remedy.

To be clear, for all the claims to the contrary about universities, there was no agenda to convert me to liberalism. The professors who questioned my conservative ideas did so respectfully and gave me As. Organizations such as the College Republicans were a visible presence.

Rather, my information sources and environment expanded. Upon reviewing these new discoveries, I converted myself.

Plenty of students make no such shift. Conservatism remains ever-available for those attending universities, as evidenced by the countless far-right college graduates currently running this country. According to Pew Research Center, 51% of men who voted for Republican congressional candidates in 2018 held college degrees. While the Westboro group is hard to pin along modern party lines, their signature argument is decidedly far-right – and most of its leaders are credentialed attorneys. Conversely, millions of Americans without college degrees develop progressive views by way of informal education: reading, observing, life experience. It was not higher education that changed me but my willingness to change.

Among those born to bad or limited information – the flawed narratives of history books, the blinders of privilege, or propaganda on their parents’ televisions and car radios—there are those who will stick with existing beliefs regardless of what they are shown. But there are those who would reconsider, and we need them more than ever.

Megan Phelps-Roper would have been in her early teens, holding one of those hateful signs, when I passed her family on the way to class. Like me, she attended public schools and consumed popular culture. But, where my formative years were carved by mainstream influences – Catholicism, the nightly news, waiting tables – hers was the stuff of cults.

Her grandfather was the charismatic, zealous leader demanding commitment and claiming a monopoly on truth. Doubt and dissent were discouraged, sometimes through abuse. Shame and guilt were devices of control, and those who left were cut off from communication. Phelps-Roper participated in a family protest against homosexuality for the first time at age five.

As she came of age, Phelps-Roper’s ability to assess information had been thoroughly perverted. Westboro acted not out of hate but out of love, her elders taught her, to warn mortals of their sins so that they might repent and avoid eternal damnation.

At the age of 26, however, Phelps-Roper would make a much larger and braver leap than my political shift from center-right to solid left. In 2012, she left Westboro – her lifelong idea system, her only identity and nearly her entire family.

Just as the cruel signs she once held probably convinced few who saw them, it was not angry condemnations of her ideas that moved her toward the truth. It was, rather, a handful of friendly strangers on Twitter, including a Jewish man who responded to Phelps-Roper’s antisemitic provocation. Sensing the humanity beneath her inhumane behavior, they thoughtfully pressed her with intellectual and philosophical debate over the course of several years.

“People had grace for me when I seemed not to deserve it the most,” Phelps-Roper told PBS’s Amanpour & Co. last year after the release of her memoir, Unfollow. “The fact that they were able to suspend their judgments long enough to have those conversations with me completely changed my life. So now instead of me being out there with Westboro creating new victims, I’m working for healing and change to try to repair some of that damage.”

I noticed that, in her writings and interviews about her experience, Phelps-Roper does not favor the term “cult”. I asked her whether, perhaps, she found the descriptor accurate but not constructive.

Phelps-Roper conceded that the term is accurate enough, even though some common features of cults are not true of Westboro, such as money-making schemes or sexual ownership of women by the leader.

“‘Cult’ is definitely a convenient shorthand that rapidly conveys the gist of the situation at Westboro and communities like it: a small, fringe group that exerts an inordinate amount of control over its members, exalting itself to special status via claims of unique access to truth,” Phelps-Roper told me via online message.

All the same, she confirmed that she doesn’t use the term because it shuts down communication channels.

“People tend to dismiss cult members as crazy or stupid, rather than complex human beings like everyone else,” she said. “That makes compassion and real understanding more difficult, and it can give us a false sense of security that we’re not subject to the same kinds of forces that draw people into these groups and keep them there.”

Plus, Phelps-Roper explained, she can’t get through to her family by lobbing labels that make them bristle.

“I want to reach Westboro members – to help convince them that there are other, better ways of living in the world,” she said. “If I use a needlessly pejorative word like that to describe people who are earnestly trying to do what they believe is right, I’m throwing obstacles in my own path and making change even more difficult than it naturally is.”

There has been much discussion in recent years about the extent to which liberal America should or should not have empathy for, say, economically distressed Trump voters. Some encourage compassion about the hard lives that made some of them vulnerable to political fearmongering. Others might point out that plenty of Trump voters are doing just fine in the coddled world of whiteness and that, regardless of their reasons, we should practice zero tolerance toward agents of oppression.

The strongest position contains both truths. We can acknowledge that destructive ideas have roots deeper than the individuals who hold them and yet firmly denounce such ideas. To hear Mary Trump tell it in her new memoir, her uncle is severely dysfunctional in part because of his upbringing. But the purpose of her story is not to engender sympathy for our current president, “the world’s most dangerous man”. It is to show how he was made – revealing that the problem is not the current president but, rather, what patriarchy, corporate greed and white supremacy can make out of an innocent child born in the belly of all three.

You can be intellectually woke without being awakened to the largest truth: that we are all connected, enemies and allies alike. The United States is teetering toward authoritarianism. Are you still lecturing strangers on social media? Are you still shouting at a family member that they’re wrong? How is that working out?

If you want to stop fascism, the efficient mission is not to attack the opposing side. It is, rather, to be the opposite of Donald Trump: a defiantly open heart who protects and bolsters valid information systems required for people to truly decide for themselves about all that he and his movement represent.

If you think such information is a given in the world we are living in, you are mistaken.

Many white people believe the current president is a good man. Are they irrational, some perhaps even disturbed? If they have valid news sources, then by my estimation, yes.

But many do not. They live in spaces inundated by decades of rightwing propaganda and intentional manipulation of their fears.

Not everyone targeted by disinformation falls for it, and such experiences are not an excuse for racist, sexist, xenophobic views and political choices. But they are a reason.

In March, 63% of Fox News regulars, polled by the non-partisan Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathways Project said the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was “excellent”. Just 23% of average Americans – and a mere 2% of MSNBC regulars – agreed.

MSNBC and Fox News’ treatment of facts is not analogous. The former comments with a liberal slant, while the latter now amounts to state television for a Republican White House. But both sides of the American political divide have allegiances to information sources that affirm their existing beliefs.

Meanwhile, false information masquerading as fact is a common feature of our times. Most misinformation disseminated online during the 2016 election had a pro-Trump slant, and recent research studies have suggested that misinformation is most concentrated among conservative media consumers. However, researchers at the University of Colorado published a report last May indicating that a substantial number of leftists share false or misleading information, too.

Let’s acknowledge that today’s cultural chasm is driven by social media streams and cable “news” programs. It is easy, in such a splintered media ecosystem, to maintain a closed system of unfalsifiable beliefs in which inconvenient facts become “fake news”.

Some of today’s most dangerous misinformation concerns a public health crisis. What accounts for those who, say, insist that the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax and thus refuse to wear a mask?

According to a research report from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the strongest predictors of belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories are not educational attainment or political affiliation but, along with partisan and ideological motivations, “a psychological predisposition” to dismiss experts and doubt mainstream narratives about major events.

But to what is this predisposition owed? We enter treacherous territory when we diagnose something inherent about a person to explain her partisan leanings. A major research study in 2016 debunked oft-cited studies claiming causality between personality and politics. It is self-aggrandizing for the well-informed, though, to declare that gullibility is innate and that proponents of misinformation are just dumb. Here we find the fatal flaw of self-congratulatory liberalism.

When presented with evidence of, say, lower salaries for women and higher incarceration among people of color, liberals rightly reject the notion that these outcomes result from innately lower aptitude, laziness and corrupt character. We rightly point to the oppressive conditions of a racist, sexist state to explain such data. In other words, we understand that the system failed the person, not the other way around. Yet we place ideological identities in no such environmental context.

What if our systems failed the media consumers who are, for myriad reasons, easily taken by political lies? Underfunded public schools could be teaching media literacy and civics but are forced to prioritize testing-driven curricula while providing basic needs such as food and healthcare. Underregulated, profit-driven social media companies have focused on mining user data rather than stopping malicious spread of false information on their platforms. Understaffed publications of the free press have, amid efforts to adapt to the digital media economy, turned news into salacious, conflict-driven clickbait to maintain the bottom line.

We must approach the current political crisis less like a valid debate and more like the treatment of a toxic stream along which extremist factions swirl into themselves like eddies. You and the person you’re arguing with don’t even share a common set of definitions, let alone discussion frameworks or worldviews. No movement can win in the 21st century without this understanding as a foundation.

To clear that toxic stream, we need robustly funded schools with civics curricula that activate participation in democracy, tell the story of all peoples, admit our often brutal history as a nation, and incorporate 21st-century media literacy as an essential tool of citizenship. We need government crackdowns on big tech’s complicity in the spread of misinformation. We need new, less compromised business models encouraging media members to be government watchdogs rather than generators of advertising revenue.

But information is only part of the solution for what ails our country. Political scientists have long noted the role of emotion in political behavior, and logic will not sway positions that were not formed through logic. Many Trump voters were moved not by facts but by the feelings their outrageous leader incites. As conservative analyst Bill Kristol recently tweeted, reacting to news that the Republican National Committee will merely endorse “the President’s America-first agenda” in lieu of any new platform, “It’s no longer the Republican party. It’s a Trump cult.”

Here we can learn from those like Phelps-Roper, who have freed themselves from irrational worldviews. Reaching past someone’s biased influences, as her story of unlikely Twitter friendships reveals, requires not just better information but a non-confrontational, even respectful tone in conveying it.

Members of oppressed groups should not be expected to do this work, of course, which is at best emotional labor and at worst physically dangerous. But what about would-be cultural bridge-builders protected by privileges such as whiteness and wealth? Should they bother?

Yes. Nationally, voters are breaking ranks from “Trumpism”, disavowing their lifelong party or finding belonging with “never Trump” Republican groups like the Lincoln Project.

My state government contains several elected officials who left the Republican Party and became Democrats in recent years—including a viable 2020 candidate for a U.S. Senate seat held by Republicans since 1919.

From 2014 to 2018, during which the Black Lives Matter movement successfully forced a national reckoning about race, the portion of white Republicans who said government spends too little on improving conditions for Black Americans more than doubled, rising from 14 to 33%, according to a report from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

We should value justice over unity. But there is more unity to be had than you might think from watching the news. People change, and privileged Americans who can help them do so play an important role in this pivotal moment.

As Phelps-Roper says in her much-viewed Ted Talk, the Twitter friends who helped her see the light “didn’t abandon their beliefs or their principles – only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being – and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain and violence.”

If someone who dislikes this notion has changed someone’s mind through contempt and condescension, I’d love to hear about it. The opposite is more likely to be true, in my experience. The confronted person digs in, defends, doubles down.

In a July opinion piece for the New York Times, Charlie Warzel described a Senegalese medical anthropologist sent by the World Health Organization to Guinea, where residents were resisting public health guidance during the Ebola epidemic in 2014. He spent a long time listening, rather than lecturing, and realized that the people “weren’t selfish or anti-science. They were scared and felt stripped of dignity by officials who didn’t respect them or understand their traditions.”

While US “anti-maskers” of the Covid-19 pandemic are a different bunch, understanding their motives is necessary to successfully reach them.

“You cannot force public trust,” Warzel wrote of the current health crisis. “You have to earn it by being humble and transparent, and by listening.”

Is such humility warranted in the face of terrible actors, those who not only refuse to wear a mask but refuse to accept the value of entire groups of human beings?

If an equitable, non-violent society is our goal, ideologies that seek to dismantle unjust power structures such as white supremacy and patriarchy are unequivocally better than those that do not. There is no moral equivalence between the neo-Nazi and the Black Lives Matter protester, or the feminist marcher and the men’s rights activist. Some ideas are superior to others.

But even if your ideas are superior, I am asking you to consider that you did not arrive at them because of your innate superiority. Depending on your level of social and racial privilege, you arrived at them because of your life experiences, your information sources, your community influences. Even a psychological predisposition toward rational thinking, if this a valid possibility, is just a bit of good fortune you did nothing to earn.

If you had been born into the Phelps family, would you have thought your way out of Westboro? At what age? Twelve? Eighteen, when you left home? Twenty-six, by way of social media? Forty-four, better late than never? How about never? For many the answer thus far is never.

That’s an extreme example, I hear you say. Children of cults are one thing, but a Trump voter has free will in their decisions.

True. Yet if you’d been born white, in a homogeneously white place, with Fox News on every television and Rush Limbaugh on every car radio for your entire life, would you be a liberal or even a centrist today? Maybe, but not without knowing the hard truth that people who think monstrous things often are not, at their core, monsters.

Nope, I hear you say. I am better than a Trump voter. I’m sure as hell better than a Nazi.

On the level of ideas, well, yes. But why? Is it because something about them is naturally defective? You yourself would have been one of the good ones in Germany, correct? Because something about you is inherently better?

If that all sounds right, be careful. The seed of everything you’re fighting is inside you.

Sarah Smarsh’s new book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, will be published in October 2020. She lives in Kansas
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/how-is-arguing-with-trump-voters-working-out-for-you.
 
A former White House aide who helped co-ordinate the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic has heavily criticised the president and said she plans to vote for Democrat Joe Biden.

Olivia Troye, a one-time aide to Vice President Mike Pence, said in a video released by the group Republican Voters Against Trump that the government knew by mid-February it was facing a pandemic.

"But the president didn't want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success," she said.

Source SKY
 
Biden hits out at Barr 'slavery' comments - plus other US news

US presidential candidate Joe Biden has hit out at Attorney General William Barr for remarks he made comparing lockdown orders to slavery.

Mr Barr drew condemnation for his remarks on Wednesday, in which he criticised stay-at-home orders. “Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, it’s the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” he said.

Mr Biden, addressing a CNN "Town Hall" gathering outside his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, called the comments "outrageous" and "sick".

In other US news:

Outgoing US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad criticised Beijing's handling of the initial outbreak. "They covered it up and even penalised the doctors who pointed it out at the beginning," he told CNN

The US House of Representatives passed a resolution denouncing anti-Asian rhetoric related to Covid-19. The resolution says the use of terms such as "Chinese Virus" and "China virus" - often used by President Trump - has "perpetuated anti-Asian stigma”

The US is nearing the milestone of 200,000 deaths linked to Covid-19. It has the highest number of confirmed cases globally, with more than 6.6 million infections
 
Twitter has automatically activated extra account protection for politicians and key figures in the forthcoming US election.

A select group of election-related accounts will have to make immediate changes to improve their security.

Twitter was the victim of one of the most significant hacks of a social network in history, in June.

It said it had learned "from the experience of past security incidents" and was focused on election security.

Twitter said that in the coming weeks, it would be adding "proactive internal security safeguards" for a much wider range of high-profile election-related accounts.

They include:

The Executive Branch (including the president and vice-president)
Congress (The House of Representatives and the Senate)
US governors and secretaries of state
Presidential campaigns, political parties and candidates
Significant news outlets and political journalists
Starting this week, those accounts will start receiving in-app notifications of immediate changes on the user's side.
Under the new rules, they will need to use a strong password - those that do not meet Twitter's standards will be required to change it the next time they log in.
All the accounts have had password reset protection enabled by default - a safety measure that requires the account holder to confirm the email address and password on file if they want to reset their password.
And they will also be encouraged - but not required - to enable two-factor authentication.

Hack history

The June hack saw some of the world's most notable celebrities - such as Bill Gates, Joe Biden and Kanye West - have their accounts seized by the attacker to tweet an apparently simple Bitcoin scam.

But one of Twitter's most-followed accounts - US President Donald Trump - was unaffected. It later emerged that this was because the president's account had extra security protections in place internally.

The change comes at a time when Twitter is locked in a battle against electoral misinformation on the platform - one that has put it at odds with President Trump.

The social network has labelled some of the president's tweets as misleading - particularly his unsubstantiated claims around postal voting fraud.

It had previously tagged some of the tweets for breaching policies on glorifying violence and abusive behaviour.

But the wider concern about the role of the social media companies in the election stems from the 2016 presidential campaign, which saw President Trump win his first term in office.

In the wake of the election, the US Senate and others said that Russian operatives had tried to leverage all major social media outlets to influence the outcome.
 
i only recently started looking at polling and tbh i dont see how trump can cover a 6% gap to biden. i fully see him doing 2 to 3% better than polls but 6% seems a very tough gap to cover. he needs to pull a rabbit out the hat and soon, altho i still dont put it past him, but if this gap persists for another few weeks it seems like the writing will be on the wall.
 
ElRaja said:
i only recently started looking at polling and tbh i dont see how trump can cover a 6% gap to biden. i fully see him doing 2 to 3% better than polls but 6% seems a very tough gap to cover. he needs to pull a rabbit out the hat and soon, altho i still dont put it past him, but if this gap persists for another few weeks it seems like the writing will be on the wall.
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These are national polls which don’t take the electoral college into account. Granted, polling at the state level also points to a Biden triumph, with him leading in several swing states, but the point is these national polls don’t necessarily point to the outcome.
 
Trump says Joe Biden 'will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp'

President Trump told a crowd of supporters in Bemidji, Minnesota that Joe Biden "will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp."

The president hit refugees, in particular Somali nationals, who committed crimes in the U.S. There are 43,000 Somalis living in Minnesota.

“Biden has promised a 700 percent increase in the importation of refugees from the most dangerous places in the world,” Trump remarked. “Biden will overwhelm your children's schools, overcrowd their classrooms, and inundate your hospitals in the middle of a global pandemic. Biden has even pledged to terminate our travel ban on jihadist regions - opening the floodgates to radical Islamic terrorism.”

"My Administration is keeping terrorists, extremists and criminals OUT of our country. Just today, we deported dozens of Somali nationals charged or convicted for grave crimes - including rape, assault, robbery, terrorism charges, and MURDER,” he continued.

Trump also described his opponent Joe Biden as “wholly-owned and controlled by the left-wing mob,” noting that he’d opposed sending in the National Guard.

“Biden said nothing when the Minneapolis City Council voted to abolish its police Department,” Trump told the crowd. “After Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the Minneapolis Police a ‘cancer’ that is ‘rotten to the root,’ Biden proudly accepted her endorsement."

Minneapolis City Council members, who just two months ago moved to eliminate the police department, sounded the alarm during a Wednesday meeting about a surge in crime seen by their constituents.

"These are Democrat-run disasters. Look at Chicago, look at Portland, look at you with Minneapolis," Trump said. "Are they still trying to get rid of their police force in Minneapolis? They never learn."

Trump accused Biden of supporting “every disastrous global sellout for half-a-century - including NAFTA, TPP, South Korea, and China's entry into the World Trade Organization.”

“If it were up to Joe, bin Laden and Soleimani would still be alive, ISIS would still be on the rampage, Iran would control the Middle East, and China would now be the dominant power in the world,” Trump continued. In his next term, he promised to make the U.S. the “manufacturing superpower of the world” and end reliance on China.

Trump made the lofty promise to “provide school choice to every parent in America.” Expansion of vouchers, tuition tax credits or similar forms of choice have thus far in his presidency failed to make it out of Congress.

Trump said Biden is "too weak to control his people," and "couldn't put two sentences together.

He hit his opponent for spending much of the pandemic at home, and holding small, socially distanced events when he's in public.

"You know why he does the circles? He can't draw a crowd he has like four or five people in a circle that way he doesn't have to be embarrassed."

Trump pivoted to his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a "lock her up chant broke out amongst the crowd. "She deletes her emails aoc gets rid of $2 million nothing happens," the president said. "Pelosi goes out says you know i think ill have my hair done," he added, referring to the San Francisco hair salon controversy.

A solidly blue state for the past half century, Minnesota became an unquestioned presidential battleground on Friday as President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden fought for working-class voters in dueling events that marked the beginning of early voting.

Trump touted that he had “rescued” the Minnesota Range after his opponent “wiped out” and gave the jobs to foreign countries.

The candidates steered clear of the state’s most populated areas near Minneapolis to focus on blue-collar voters, some of whom shifted to Republicans for the first time in 2016.While Trump was in Bemidji, Biden campaigned in a suburb of Duluth, on the banks of Lake Superior and close to the Wisconsin border.

“Seven plants were idled and more than 2,000 workers were laid off. After I put tariffs on foreign steel, the Iron Range came roaring back to life,” he said. “Our miners are back on the job - and wages have increased by as much as 50 percent. Nine Democrat mayors of cities in the Iron Range have endorsed me over Joe Biden-because they know Biden will shut down the Iron Range forever.”

Biden, in addition to hitting Trump over his coronavirus response, emphasized his plans to boost American manufacturing.

“It’s time to reward hard work in America and not wealth,” he said at a carpenter’s union training hall.

“When the government spends taxpayers’ money, we should spend that money to buy American products made by American workers and American supply chains to generate American growth,” Biden said. He promised to invest $400 billion in federal money over his first term to ensure more products are made in America.”

Since narrowly losing Minnesota in 2016, Trump has emphasized the state in hopes that a victory this year could offset losses in other states. He has visited regularly and kept a close eye on issues of particular importance to rural corners of the state. He’s reversed an Obama administration policy prohibiting the development of copper-nickel mining and has bailed out soybean, corn and other farmers who have been hurt by trade clashes with China.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rally-minnesota.
 
Ricin: Letter containing poison addressed to Trump at White House

A package containing ricin poison that was addressed to US President Donald Trump has been intercepted before it reached the White House, officials told US media.

The letter was discovered at a screening facility for White House mail earlier this week, the officials said.

They said a substance found inside the envelope was identified as ricin, a poison found naturally in castor beans.

The Trump administration is yet to comment on the reports.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Secret Service are investigating where the package came from and whether others have been sent through the US postal system.

"At this time, there is no known threat to public safety," the FBI told CNN in a statement on Saturday.

One official told the New York Times that investigators believe the package was sent from Canada. Reports say the presence of ricin was confirmed after tests by the FBI.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on Saturday it was working with the FBI to investigate the "suspicious letter sent to the White House".

Ricin is produced by processing castor beans. It is a lethal substance that, if swallowed, inhaled or injected, can cause nausea, vomiting, internal bleeding and ultimately organ failure.

No known antidote exists for ricin. If a person is exposed to ricin, death can take place within 36 to 72 hours, depending on the dose received, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC said the poison - which has been used in terror plots - can be manufactured into a weapon in the form of a powder, mist or pellet.

The White House and other federal buildings have been the target of ricin packages in the past.

In 2014, a Mississippi man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for sending letters dusted with ricin to former President Barack Obama and other officials.

Four years later, in 2018, a former Navy veteran was charged with sending toxic letters to the Pentagon and White House.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54221893.
 
Revealed: evidence shows huge mail slowdowns after Trump ally took over

The United States Postal Service (USPS) saw a severe decline in the rate of on-time delivery of first-class mail after Louis DeJoy took over as postmaster general, according to new data obtained by the Guardian that provides some of the most detailed insight yet into widespread mail delays this summer.

Shortly after taking the helm, DeJoy - a major Republican donor with no prior USPS experience - implemented operational changes he said were intended to make the financially beleaguered agency more efficient. Those changes, which included an effort to get postal trucks to run on time, led to severe delays and widespread public outcry this summer.

In late August, DeJoy announced he was putting the changes on hold until after the election, and last week a federal judge in Washington blocked USPS from implementing them. The changes were clearly aimed at “voter disenfranchisement”, given the increased role USPS will play in this year’s presidential election, the US district judge Stanley Bastian wrote in his ruling.

“It is easy to conclude that the recent Postal Services’ changes is an intentional effort on the part the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections,” Bastian wrote.

Describing the data, Philip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T university who is also a former postal worker, said: “This is a remarkable graphic illustration that reveals the decline of on-time first-class mail from the very first day after Postmaster General DeJoy’s policies were announced and implemented.”

“Not only do we see the national picture for first-class mail delivery worsening over time after DeJoy’s policies become effective, but we also see locally conditions varying and even emerging for the worse.”

Of note, some areas in key swing states saw significant declines in on-time delivery rates of first-class mail. In the postal district for northern Ohio, on-time delivery rates dropped as low as 63.60% in mid August. In the Detroit postal district, on-time delivery fell to 61.01% the same month.

USPS has pledged to facilitate timely delivery of mail-in ballots for the election and work closely with election officials to ensure that happens. But the relationship has been rocky recently; some election officials fumed when the agency sent out a mailing to every household with information about mail-in voting without thoroughly consulting with them. The generalized mailer was misleading for voters in the handful of US states that automatically mail all registered voters a ballot.

Although DeJoy’s changes have been paused until after the election, the new data shows that first class mail continued to be delivered late across the country after his reversal. In the Baltimore postal district, for example, the on-time delivery rate remained at less than 60% at the end of August.

“Unfortunately, even though on-time performance improved after those changes were put on pause, delivery speed is still well below normal and far below the postal service’s own targets,” said Steve Hutkins, a professor at New York University who runs Save The Post Office, a blog that monitors the agency.

“The harms that were done have not yet been undone.”

David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, declined to comment specifically on the data, citing ongoing litigation. USPS released a statement on Friday saying that on-time delivery for first class mail continued to improve in September and that on time departures for trucks continued to improve.

“The improvements are a result of the Postmaster General’s commitment to drive operational discipline and improve efficiencies across processing, transportation and delivery,” the agency said in its statement.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/usps-post-office-mail-slowdowns-louis-dejoy
 
Moderator Chris Wallace selects topics for first Trump-Biden presidential debate

Supreme Court battle, coronavirus pandemic, economy, unrest in cities are among the topics for first showdown

The brutal Supreme Court nomination battle, the worst pandemic to strike the globe in a century, a national economy flattened by the coronavirus, and the protests and violence that have flared in cities across the nation this summer will be some of the major topics Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Trump will debate next week as they face off for the first time in the 2020 general election.

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates on Tuesday announced the issues that the moderator of the first debate – "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace – has selected as topics for the showdown.

Wallace also included the Biden and Trump records and the integrity of the election – another crucial issue considering the president for months has railed against expanded voting by mail amid the pandemic, repeatedly charging that it would lead to a “rigged election.”

The nonpartisan commission – which has organized and conducted the presidential and vice presidential general election debates for more than three decades – cautioned that the topics listed are “subject to possible changes because of news developments.”

The first debate between the former vice president and the GOP incumbent in the White House will take place Tuesday, Sept. 29, at Case Western University and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The format for the first showdown calls for six 15-minute long segments – with each segment dedicated to a particular topic.

The commission explained that topics were “announced in advance in order to encourage deep discussion of the leading issues facing the country.”

Biden and Trump will debate twice more – on Oct. 15 in Nashville, Tenn., and Oct. 22 in Miami, Fla. Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Vice President Mike Pence will debate once – in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 7.

All four showdowns will start at 9 pm ET and will run for 90 minutes without any commercial interruption
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Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mo...ics-for-first-trump-biden-presidential-debate.
 
Trump's former national security adviser: The President is 'making it easy' for Putin by promoting election conspiracies

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Tuesday that the President and other lawmakers are "making it easy" for Russian President Vladimir Putin by promoting conspiracy theories about US election integrity and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

"It's just wrong," McMaster told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "It's making it easy for Vladimir Putin. And I think it's really important for leaders to be responsible about this because, really, as you know Putin doesn't create these divisions in our society, he doesn't create these doubts, he magnifies them."
"And we just have to be really careful not to be our own worst enemies," McMaster added.
Despite repeated warnings from intelligence officials and his own FBI director that Russia is carrying out a blatant attack on American democracy, Trump summed up his views at a rally on Monday in very simple terms: "I like Putin, he likes me."
The President has consistently expressed a personal affinity for his Russian counterpart since taking office nearly four years ago. But the fact that his latest comments come as US intelligence agencies are sounding the alarm about Moscow's ongoing interference in the 2020 election offers a stark reminder that Trump has no problem with foreign meddling if it appears to help him politically.
Now on his fourth national security adviser, the President's approach to Russia has faced some fierce criticism from those that used to hold the position.
Along with McMaster, former national security adviser John Bolton has repeatedly assailed Trump's Russia strategy, telling CNN in July that "everybody understood the nature of Russia's activities -- with the possible exception of the President." Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned abruptly in 2017 amid claims he misled the administration over his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US before Trump took office.
And while Trump and several top Republican allies have recently sought to cast China as the greatest threat to the election, evidence continues to emerge suggesting Russia is not only already interfering, as FBI Director Christopher Wray explicitly told House lawmakers last week, but it is doing so at the direction of Putin and other senior Kremlin officials, according to a Washington Post report published Tuesday.
Asked about Russia's reported interference, McMaster said: "This is what they do."
"Really what they're trying to do overall, Jake, is reduce our confidence in our Democratic processes. And this is what they did obviously in 2016 and it's really part of a sustained campaign of political subversion," he told Tapper.
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned the public Tuesday that foreign actors might spread disinformation about the results of the 2020 election and encouraged voters to be patient with delayed results. The warning advised Americans to get information from "trustworthy sources" like official government election websites. The warning also said Americans, when dealing with reports of problems with voting or results, should "verify though multiple reliable sources" and think twice before sharing unverified material on social media.
McMaster assessed that Putin was "happy" that Trump did not condemn the Kremlin over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny -- even though leaders from around the world have pinned the blame on the Russians.
"He's happy about it," McMaster said of the President's response, adding, "I think it's immensely important for us to be responsible, to pull the curtain back on their activity and not buy into the Russia narrative when it might be convenient to do so from a partisan political perspective."
McMaster served under Trump as national security adviser from early 2017 until April 2018, when he was replaced by Bolton.
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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/mcmaster-trump-putin-cnntv/index.html.
 
Donald Trump has referred to the death of 200,000 people from coronavirus in the US - the highest figure of any country in the world - as "a shame".

The president insisted the number of Americans who had died from COVID-19 could have been far higher had it not been for the actions of his administration, without providing evidence for his claim.

Trump had initially ignored a question from the media about the US death toll as he was leaving the White House for an election rally in Pennsylvania.

He then said: "I think it's a shame. I think if we didn't do it properly and do it right, you'd have 2.5 million deaths. You could have a number that would be substantially more.

"It's a horrible thing. Should have never, ever happened."

He also repeated his previous criticisms of China, where the coronavirus first emerged at the end of 2019.

He said: "China should have stopped it at their border. They should have never let this spread all over the world. It's a terrible thing."

Mr Trump has been criticised for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, having repeatedly sought to downplay the disease as it began to spread through the US.

There are continuing fears among health experts that the high level of infections in the country will make the virus more difficult to control during the winter months.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US has seen nearly 6.9 million cases and 200,818 deaths.

The figures account for more than 20% of the cases worldwide, despite the US having just over 4% of the world's population.

Brazil has the second worst toll with 138,105 recorded deaths. The global figure for deaths from the coronavirus is 971,483.
 
US election: Trump won't commit to peaceful transfer of power

US President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses November's election.

"Well, we'll have to see what happens," the president told a news conference at the White House. "You know that."

Mr Trump also said he believed the election result could end up in the US Supreme Court, as he again cast doubt on postal voting.

More states are encouraging mail-in voting, citing the need to keep voters safe amid the coronavirus pandemic.

What did Trump say?
Mr Trump was asked by a reporter on Wednesday evening if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power "win, lose or draw" to Democrat Joe Biden.

"I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots," Mr Trump, a Republican, said. "And the ballots are a disaster."

When the journalist countered that "people are rioting", Mr Trump interjected: "Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very - you'll have a very peaceful - there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation."

Back in 2016, Mr Trump also refused to commit to accepting the election results in his contest against the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, which she characterised as an attack on American democracy.

He was eventually declared the winner, although he lost the popular vote by three million, an outcome on which he still cast doubt.

What have Democrats said?
Last month, Mrs Clinton urged Mr Biden this time not to concede defeat "under any circumstances" in a close race on election night.

She raised the scenario that Republicans would try "messing up absentee balloting" and mobilise an army of lawyers to contest the result.

Conservatives have accused Mr Biden himself of stoking unrest over the election by saying in August: "Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?"

What did Trump say about the Supreme Court?
Earlier on Wednesday, the US president defended his decision to seek the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice before the vote to fill the vacancy left by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, saying he expects the election results to end up before the court.

"I think this [the election] will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it's very important that we have nine justices," the president said.

"I think it's better if you go before the election, because I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling, it's a scam, the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court."

Mr Trump was apparently referring again to his much-disputed claims that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to fraud.

The president has said he will name a female nominee for the court this Saturday. She would replace Justice Ginsburg, who died last Friday.

Mr Trump's supporters hope his nominee, if confirmed by the US Senate, will cement a 6-3 conservative ascendancy on the nation's highest court for the forseeable future.

Every losing US presidential candidate in modern times has conceded, even in very tight electoral results.

These include 1960 when John F Kennedy narrowly beat Richard Nixon and in 2000 when George W Bush beat Al Gore in Florida.

Is postal voting vulnerable to fraud?
The number of postal votes is expected to rise significantly this time round due to public health concerns over coronavirus.

But Ellen Weintraub, commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, has said: "There's simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud."

There have been isolated cases of postal ballot fraud, such as in the 2018 North Carolina primary, which was re-run after a consultant for the Republican candidate tampered with voting papers.

There was also a case this year in New Jersey which saw two Democratic councillors charged with alleged fraud in relation to postal voting, after hundreds of ballots were found stuffed in a post box.

But the rate of voting fraud overall in the US is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Postal ballots are more likely to go missing, however, according to research by Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He calculated that the number of votes lost through the vote-by-mail system in the 2008 election may have been as many as 7.6 million, or one in five individuals who attempted to post their ballots.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54274115.
 
US election: McConnell promises an 'orderly' transition of power

Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said there will be an "orderly" post-election transition after the president questioned the process's integrity.

The top US senator said that, regardless of who wins the 3 November presidential election, there will be a peaceful inauguration on 20 January.

A day earlier, President Donald Trump refused to commit to this, saying "we'll have to see what happens".

He has cast doubt on postal voting, but election officials insist it is safe.

The president currently trails his challenger, Democrat Joe Biden, in national opinion polls with 40 days to go until the election.

Many more Americans than usual will be casting their votes by post this year, due to the pandemic, and Mr Trump has been questioning the security of this mail-in ballot system.

Every losing presidential candidate has conceded. If Mr Trump were to refuse to accept the result of the election, it would take the country into uncharted territory.

Mr Biden has suggested that should this happen, the military could remove Mr Trump from the White House.

What have Republicans said?
"The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th," Mr McConnell tweeted on Thursday.

"There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792."

Other Republican lawmakers, including vocal Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, have similarly promised a safe and fair election.

"I can assure you it will be peaceful," Mr Graham told Fox News, but suggested a decision could go to the nation's top court. "If Republicans lose we will accept the result. If the Supreme Court rules in favour of Joe Biden, I will accept that result."

Senator Mitt Romney offered a more critical response on Wednesday, saying "any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable".

What did Trump say?
On Thursday, Mr Trump again cast doubt on the integrity of the election, saying he was not sure it could be "honest" because, he claimed, postal ballots are "a whole big scam".

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Mr Trump "will accept the results of a free and fair election".

The president sparked the controversy on Wednesday evening when he was asked by a reporter if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power "win, lose or draw" to Mr Biden.

"I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots," Mr Trump said. "And the ballots are a disaster."

When the journalist countered that "people are rioting", Mr Trump interjected: "Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very - you'll have a very peaceful - there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation."

Back in 2016, Mr Trump also refused to commit to accepting the election results in his contest against the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, which she characterised as an attack on democracy.

He was eventually declared the winner, although he lost the popular vote by three million, an outcome he still questioned.

What have Democrats said?
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the third most powerful politician in Washington, told reporters on Thursday that she was not surprised at Mr Trump's earlier remarks.

Mrs Pelosi added that the president "admires people who are perpetuating their role in government", citing Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"But I remind him: you are not in North Korea, you are not in Turkey, you are not in Russia, Mr President... so why don't you just try for a moment to honour your oath of office."

Speaking to reporters in Delaware, Mr Biden said Mr Trump's comments on the transition of power were "irrational".

The Democrat's team also said "the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House".

On Thursday, a Biden spokesman told Politico the former vice-president "obviously, has participated in a peaceful transition of power before" and will do so after the 2020 election as well.

Mr Biden has himself been accused by conservatives of stoking unrest over the election by saying in August: "Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?"

Last month, Mrs Clinton urged Mr Biden to not concede defeat early on election night. "I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch."

She raised the scenario that Republicans would try "messing up absentee balloting" and mobilise an army of lawyers to contest the result.

Doubts about the fairness of November's vote come as another high-stakes political battle is fought - on whether or not to appoint a new Supreme Court justice before the election.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54285869.
 
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