US Elections 2020: Donald Trump is trailing Joe Biden in most national polls. US ELECTIONS highlights: US President Donald Trump has accused his rival and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of being a corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betray the Americans for the last 47 years.
Trump is known to make unsubstantiated allegations against his rival, often making untrue claims. There is no evidence of Biden ever being tainted by corruption. Addressing a rally in Rochster in Minnesota on Friday, Trump, 74, said Biden has obsession for power.
“Biden is a grimy, sleazy and corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betrayed you for 47 long years. He will look you in the eyes, and then turn right around and stab you in the back. The only thing he cares about is political power,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, as part of their last leg of campaigning, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden focused on seeking support in the vital Midwestern states where Covid-19 once again took centre-stage. Biden highlighted Trump’s constant ignorance and the failure to handle the ongoing pandemic while the president focused on reviving the economy. Trump through his speeches has made it clear that more lockdowns due to coronavirus are not an option anymore.
The focus on Midwestern region is crucial as in 2016, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three historically democratic states narrowly voted for Trump. As of now, in the national opinion polls by Reuters Biden leads Trump 52% to 42%.
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at HoverTech International, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020, in Allentown, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Barack Obama plans to campaign in Georgia on Monday in an election-eve push to shift the traditionally Republican into the Democratic column.
Obama will be in Atlanta for a rally to boost Joe Biden and the two leading Democratic Senate candidates in the state. Jon Ossoff is challenging GOP Sen. David Perdue, and fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock is running in a special election against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
Georgia hasn't voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since 1992. But the Biden campaign is looking to capitalize on the favourable political environment in the state as the coronavirus pandemic drags down President Donald Trump in typically GOP-leaning states. (Reuters)
More than 90 million Americans have cast ballots in the US presidential election, according to a tally on Saturday from the US Elections Project at the University of Florida, setting the stage for the highest participation rate in over a century.
The record-breaking pace, about 65% of the total turnout in 2016, reflects intense interest in the vote, in which incumbent Donald Trump, a Republican, is up against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a former vice president.
Huge numbers of people have voted by mail or at early in-person polling sites amid concerns about exposure to the coronavirus at busy Election Day voting places.
Trump trails Biden in national opinion polls amid criticism of the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19, which has killed nearly 229,000 people in the United States, with numbers of new infections once again breaking daily records as Election Day nears on Tuesday. (Reuters)
Millions of Americans who have lost health insurance in an economy shaken by the coronavirus can sign up for taxpayer-subsidized coverage starting Sunday.
It's not a new COVID relief program from the government but the return of annual sign-up season under the Affordable Care Act, better known as "Obamacare." Open enrollment runs through December 15.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs HealthCare.gov, says premiums are down slightly on average for 2021 and most people will have at least three insurers from which to pick plans. Lower-income people and even middle-class families may qualify for tax credits that can greatly reduce what they pay monthly for premiums.
But President Donald Trump, unrelenting in his opposition to President Barack Obama's signature domestic programme, is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the entire law. (AP)
After a year of deep disruption, America is poised for a presidential election that renders a verdict on the nation's role in the world and the direction of its economy, on its willingness to contain an escalating pandemic and its ability to confront systemic racial inequity.
But the two men on the ballot, President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, offer more than just differing solutions for the country's most pressing problems. The choice before voters is a referendum on the role of the presidency itself and a test of the sturdiness of democracy, with the president challenging the legitimacy of the outcome even before Election Day and law enforcement agencies braced for the possibility of civil unrest.
"There's more than just your standard ideological difference between the two candidates. There's a fundamentally different view of what the presidency is and what leadership means for the nation," said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.
Voters appear to recognize the moment: More than 86 million people have already cast ballots, shattering records for early voting.
Expect to see a lot more of the same if there's a second Trump administration. President Donald Trump has consistently pointed to tax cuts and regulatory relief as key successes of his first four years in office.
He has repeatedly pushed for the end of the Obama-era health law but has yet to deliver a plan to replace it. And he has spent most of this year defending his response to the coronavirus pandemic while fighting openly with scientists and medical experts about vaccines, treatments and more. If he gets another four years in office, there's no indication of any big policy shift.
US President Donald Trump has accused his rival and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of being a corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betray the Americans for the last 47 years.
Trump is known to make unsubstantiated allegations against his rival, often making untrue claims. There is no evidence of Biden ever being tainted by corruption. Addressing a rally in Rochster in Minnesota on Friday, Trump, 74, said Biden has obsession for power. "Biden is a grimy, sleazy and corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betrayed you for 47 long years. He will look you in the eyes, and then turn right around and stab you in the back. The only thing he cares about is political power," Trump said.
A Democratic stronghold, Trump is seeking to wrest Minnesota for the Republicans for decades. He is currently trailing behind Biden with five percentage points.(PTI)
While the coronavirus and battered economy have overtaken issues of race as the focal points in presidential and congressional campaigns, despite the disproportionate impact of both on communities of color, systemic racism and police reform have emerged as dominant themes in a number of local elections. In states across America, from California to Kentucky to New York, many voters said they saw the races for sheriffs, prosecutors and council representatives as having more consequence to their lives. (Read full analysis here)
Joe Biden says he has learned from the mistakes that Hillary Clinton's campaign made four years ago in the Midwest. At an event Friday in Milwaukee, Biden recounted campaigning for Clinton in 2016 and added, "For a whole lot of reasons _ not all of which were her fault _ ended up not taking it as seriously. We thought it was different.'' Clinton was criticized for not campaigning enough in Midwestern states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
Addressing a rally in Rochster in Minnesota, US President Donald Trump Friday accused his rival and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of being a corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betrayed the Americans for the last 47 years.
As part of their last leg of campaigning, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden focused on seeking support in the vital midwestern states where Covid-19 once again took centerstage. Biden highlighted Trump's constant ignorance and the failure to handle the ongoing pandemic while the president focused on reviving the economy. Trump through his speeches has made it clear that more lockdowns due to coronavirus are not an option anymore. Trump criticized Democratic governors who have imposed restrictions that aim to slow the virus's spread, and said Biden would prohibit Americans from gathering for holidays or other special occasions if elected.
Researchers in the US have voiced concern over the spread of disinformation on social media platforms about US President Donald Trump, his Democratic rival Joe Biden and their poll campaigns, threatening the integrity of the November 3 presidential elections.
Researchers at the University of Southern California released a study this week that said that thousands of automated accounts, or "bots," on Twitter and conspiracy theorists are sowing disinformation around the upcoming elections. "The state of social media manipulation during the 2020 election is no better than it was in 2016. We are very concerned by the proliferation of bots used to spread political conspiracies and the widespread appeal that those conspiracy narratives seem to have on the platform," the study's lead author Emilio Ferrara, associate professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said.
"The combination of automated disinformation and distortion on social media continue to threaten the integrity of US elections," Ferrara, who is also the associate professor of communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said. (AP)
There are no crowds at Disneyland, still shut down by the coronavirus. Fewer fans attended the World Series this year than at any time in the past century. Big concerts are cancelled.
But it's a different story in Trumpland. Thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters regularly cram together at campaign rallies around the country - masks optional and social distancing frowned upon. Trump rallies are among the nation's biggest events being held in defiance of crowd restrictions designed to stop the virus from spreading.
This at a time when public health experts are advising people to think twice even about inviting many guests for Thanksgiving dinner.
"It doesn't matter who you are or where you are, when you have congregate settings where people are crowded together and virtually no one is wearing a mask, that's a perfect setup to have an outbreak of acquisition and transmissibility," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, recently told Yahoo News. "It's a public health and scientific fact."
The Trump campaign, which distributes masks and hand sanitizer at its rallies, says those who attend are peaceful protesters who, just like Black Lives Matter demonstrators, have a right to assemble. The president says he wants to get the country back to normal. (AP)
President Donald Trump has described the November 3 election as the "most important" in US history. For the influential 1.8 million Indian-Americans, it is much more so as they hold unprecedented sway in key battleground states and could be what a top Democratic lawmaker termed "an absolute difference maker".
There are more than 257 million people in the US who are 18 or older, and nearly 240 million citizens are eligible to vote this year, according to an American daily.
More than 80 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to a tally on Thursday from the US Elections Project at the University of Florida, setting the stage for the highest participation rate in over a century.
"We're seeing a very energised, interested electorate, and we're seeing a public that is responding to a message that you need to cast that ballot early this year," said Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College who runs the Early Voter Information Center.
The influential Indian-American community is finding itself increasingly wooed by both parties through a series of ads, speeches and exhortations of community leaders. (PTI)
Top Trump administration officials visited Texas five days before Election Day to announce they have nearly completed 400 miles of US-Mexico border wall, trying to show progress on perhaps the president's best-known campaign promise four years ago.
While most of the wall went up in areas that had smaller barriers, the government built hundreds of miles of fencing as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in a short amount of time - most of it this year. But crews blasted hills and bulldozed sensitive habitats in national wildlife refuges and on American Indian land to do it, prioritizing areas where they could build more quickly.
The Department of Homeland Security waived environmental and other reviews to expedite construction. And despite President Donald Trump's repeated promises that Mexico would pay for the wall, the construction has been funded by U.S. taxpayers for at least USD 15 billion, two-thirds coming from military funding.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said steps taken by the social media giant have helped protect the integrity of more than 200 different elections around the world, including in India, and have also played an important role in stopping abuse ahead of US elections.
Noting that next week will certainly be a "test" for Facebook, Zuckerberg said the company will continue "fighting to protect the integrity of the democratic process". "These are all changes we've made in the last four years -- and they've helped us protect the integrity of more than 200 different elections around the world, including in the EU, India and Indonesia. And they've been important for stopping abuse ahead of next week's vote in the US," Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call and outlined some of the steps that have been taken.
He added that the company has focused on issues like voter suppression, and has worked closely with experts in the space, including civil rights leaders.
Photos AP
In three days, the US will either have Joe Biden as its new president or Donald Trump will continue to serve for four more years. The dominating talking point in this year’s elections has been the coronavirus outbreak and both presidential candidates have clashed over the issue several times over the past few months.
Now, in the battleground state of Florida, the virus outbreak and Trump’s handling of the pandemic has again become a point of contention between the two candidates and the topic of discussion in their campaign rallies. Reuters reported that Trump “downplayed the pandemic, as he has done throughout the year, telling people that if they contracted the virus, they would “get better,” just as he did after his own diagnosis.”
Read all the developments from the last 24 hours here
Ahead of the final weekend before Election Day on Tuesday,Trump and Joe Biden will barnstorm across battleground states in the Midwest, including Wisconsin, where the coronavirus pandemic has exploded.
Trump, a Republican, is scheduled to campaign on Friday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while Biden has planned stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Iowa.
Michigan and Wisconsin were two of the three historically Democratic industrial states, along with Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, delivering him an upset victory. Minnesota, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, is one of the few Democratic states that Trump is trying to flip this year.
Overall, the map looks ominous for Trump, who has consistently trailed Biden in national polls for months because of widespread disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus.
Be it the Trump or the rival Biden campaign, "Get out to Vote" is the common theme driving all the rallies and meetings for the November 3 US presidential elections. President Donald Trump, a Republican who is seeking a second term, and his Democratic rival and former vice president Joe Biden make it a point in their public remarks to emphasise to their supporters how important it is for them to go out and vote next Tuesday. "Whatever you do, you have to go out and vote," Trump said at an election rally in the Bullhead City of Arizona on Wednesday. The Democrats and the Biden Campaign have been aggressive in urging their supporters to mail in their votes or do early voting.(PTI)
If 2008 showed that America could live up to its political creed of equality, we now have grave threats to that foundational principle. Given Donald Trump’s barely disguised racism, his victory will be viewed as America’s regress into White primacy, an unfortunate historical reality which began to lose its sting after the mid-1960s. And his defeat will be welcomed by those who want Blacks and other racial minorities to reclaim the push for equality. The results will be viewed through a racial lens even if Trump’s handling of the pandemic, rather than his treatment of race relations, causes his defeat. (Read more here)
Addressing a rally in Florida, Trump said that unlike countries like France, who imposed a nationwide lockdown, America will never lockdown again due to the coronavirus pandemic. "We understood the disease, and now we are open for business," Trump remarked.
Campaigning hours away in the battleground state of Florida, President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden highlighted their contrasting approach towards the coronavirus pandemic. Trump's dismissal of the virus was evident through the massive rallies featuring largely unmasked crowds and the lack of social distancing. Biden, on the other hand, held a drive in rally where supporters remained in or near their cars to avoid the spread of covid-19.Biden attacked the president for holding a "super-spreader event" and said that Trump had "waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus."
Long before Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced her as his running mate, Kamala Harris was the target of widespread online misinformation. Social media posts included racist claims that she was ineligible to serve in the White House or that she was lying about her Black and Indian heritage. Her mother is from India and her father from Jamaica. (AP)
Trump administration officials on Thursday stripped Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in most of the US, ending longstanding federal safeguards and putting states and tribes in charge of overseeing the predators. The US Department of Interior announcement just days ahead of the November 3 election could lead to resumption of wolf hunts in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin -- a crucial battleground in the campaign between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.It's the latest in a series of administration actions on the environment that appeal to key blocs of rural voters in the race's final days, including steps to allow more mining in Minnesota and logging in Alaska. (AP)
An ad on Twitter, that shows an 'interviewer' evaluating Donald Trump for a job, is going viral on social media. The ad, created by Win America Back...PAC, has been tweeted with the caption, 'Remember, the election is a job interview'. Take a look here:
Trying to pull back the veil on health care costs to encourage competition, the Trump administration on Thursday finalised a requirement for insurers to tell consumers up front the actual prices for common tests and procedures.
The late-innings policy play comes just days ahead of Election Day as President Donald Trump has been hammered on health care by Democratic challenger Joe Biden for the administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its unrelenting efforts to overturn "Obamacare," the 2010 law providing coverage to more than 20 million people.
A related Trump administration price disclosure requirement applying to hospitals is facing a federal lawsuit from the industry, alleging coercion and interference with business practices.
The idea behind the new regulations on insurers is to empower patients to become better consumers of health care, thereby helping to drive down costs.
But the requirements would take effect gradually over a four-year period, and patients face a considerable learning curve to make cost-versus-quality decisions about procedures like knee replacements or hernia repairs. (AP)
Hackers stole USD 2.3 million from the Wisconsin Republican Party's account that was being used to help reelect President Donald Trump in the key battleground state, the party's chairman told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The party noticed the suspicious activity on October 22 and contacted the FBI on Friday, said Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt.
Hitt said the FBI is investigating. FBI spokesman Leonard Peace did not immediately return a message seeking comment. "There's no doubt RPW is now at a disadvantage with that money being gone," Hitt said.
The party and campaign needs money late in the race to make quick decisions, he said. Hitt said the hackers were able to manipulate invoices from four vendors who were being paid to send out direct mail for Trump's reelection efforts and to provide pro-Trump material such as hats that could be handed out to supporters. (AP)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a scolding assessment of COVID-19 relief talks on Thursday, blaming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for failing to produce answers to her demands for Democratic priorities as part of an almost USD 2 trillion aid package.
Pelosi lobbed her latest public relations volley with a letter to Mnuchin that blames Republicans for the failed talks, which ground on for three months only to crater in the final days before the election. Where the talks go after the election is wholly uncertain.
Pelosi says remaining obstacles to an agreement include more than half a dozen big-ticket items, including a testing plan, aid to state and local governments, funding for schools, jobless benefits and a GOP-sought shield against coronavirus-related lawsuits.
Republicans, who will control the White House and the Senate until January regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's election, have pressed for a more targeted aid package that ignores key Pelosi demands, saying items like refundable tax credits for the working poor and families with children aren't directly related to fighting COVID-19. (AP)
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 751,000, the lowest since March, but it's still historically high and indicates the viral pandemic is still forcing many employers to cut jobs.
Rising confirmed virus cases in nearly every state, along with a cutoff in federal aid, are threatening to weaken the economy in the coming months. As temperatures fall, restaurants and bars will likely serve fewer customers outdoors. And many consumers may increasingly stay home to avoid infection. Those trends could force employers to slash more jobs during the winter.
The seven-day rolling average for confirmed new cases in the U.S. soared over the past two weeks from 51,161 to 71,832, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Under fire from President Donald Trump and his allies, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google rebuffed accusations of anti-conservative bias at a Senate hearing and promised to aggressively defend their platforms from being used to sow chaos in next week's election.
Lawmakers of both parties, eyeing the companies' tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech - the stated topic for the hearing but one that was quickly overtaken by questions related to the presidential campaign.
With worries over election security growing, senators on the Commerce Committee extracted promises from Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai that their companies will be on guard against meddling by foreign actors or the incitement of violence around the election results.
Testifying via video on Wednesday, the executives said they are taking several steps, including partnerships with news organisations, to distribute accurate information about voting. Dorsey said Twitter was working closely with state election officials. "We want to give people using the service as much information as possible," he said. (AP)
Focused firmly on COVID, Joe Biden vowed Wednesday not to campaign in the election homestretch "on the false promises of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch."
President Donald Trump, under attack for his handling of the worst health crisis in more than a century, breezily pledged on his final-week swing to "vanquish the virus."
The Democratic presidential nominee also argued that a Supreme Court conservative majority stretched to 6-3 by newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett could dismantle the Obama administration's signature health law and leave millions without insurance coverage during the pandemic.
He called Trump's handling of the coronavirus an "insult" to its victims, especially as cases spike dramatically around the country.
"Even if I win, it's going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic," Biden said during a speech in Wilmington, Delaware. "I do promise this: We will start on day one doing the right things." (AP)
In the most litigious presidential election in memory, court fights are even happening over where poll watchers may stand as the votes as tallied. Lawsuits by the hundreds already have been filed -- with the prospect of many more before and after Tuesday's voting -- as both Democrats and Republicans try to settle in court a process that is usually determined by citizens simply casting ballots.
The legal action runs along a broad spectrum, from a dispute over whether guns are allowed near polling places to more complicated matters that already have reached the Supreme Court. "The level of litigation has just been so unprecedented," said Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project.
"It does feel like there's a desire to elevate any possible thing. Possible misunderstandings or just disagreements with what the rules are is somehow ending up in court. It feels very different." Roughly 300 lawsuits have been filed over the election in dozens of states across the country, and still scores remain unsettled just days before Election Day. Many involve changes to normal procedures given the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 227,000 people in the U.S. and sickened more than 8.8 million. (AP)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis couldn't initially cast his ballot this week because someone illegally changed his address online, a complication that resulted in a suspect's arrest on felony charges and raised questions about the security of the state's online registration system.
DeSantis went to an early voting site in Tallahassee on Monday to cast his ballot, but was told his address had been changed from the governor's mansion to 2185 Pretty Lane, a small apartment complex in West Palm Beach, 420 miles (675 kilometers) away.
The problem was quickly fixed and the Republican governor and close ally of President Donald Trump was allowed to vote. He then contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which determined the record had been changed online from a house in Naples, Florida.
Election Day in the United States is only four days away and both presidential candidates are busy on the campaign trail, trying to get in as many last-minute votes as possible. This comes at a time when coronavirus infections across the country have rapidly increased, and large gatherings of supporters can be seen at campaign rallies, many without masks at Trump’s.
A Reuters report suggested that Joe Biden’s lead in national polls indicate that many have been illusioned by Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and his attempts to deflect responsibility and criticism. Despite the US having recorded some of the world’s highest infection rates and related death rates, at the campaign rallies, Trump has repeatedly denounced the imposition of stricter regulations to curb the spread of coronavirus.
US President Donald Trump has accused both the mainstream and social media companies of blocking serious charges of corruption against his rival and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying the situation was causing America to experience suppression of the press.
Trump said the media was not willing to write against Biden and his family. "Here is a guy who gets caught and the media doesn't want to write about it. You know what they call it not freedom of the press but suppression of the press," Trump said during his election allies on Wednesday in the battle ground State of Arizona.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has said that she is a proud and patriotic American who loves her country as she rejected the Republicans' charge that she was pressing a "socialist" agenda, asserting that her values reflect the values of the US.
In a final campaign push in Arizona on Wednesday, Harris told a drive-in rally in Tucson that "everything is at stake" as she focused her speech on criticising the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, The New York Times reported.
The California Senator also spoke out against charges from the Republicans that she is pressing a "socialist" agenda. "You know, there has been some talk about my values. Well, let me just tell you -- I am a proud, patriotic American. I love my country and our values reflect the values of America," she told her supporters. (PTI)
Drive-thru polling places. Candidates trying to sell themselves to voters on Zoom. Canvassers in masks and gloves knocking on doors and then scurrying 6 feet back.
The coronavirus has upended the 2020 election season at nearly every turn: emerging as the dominant issue among candidates up and down the ballot, scrambling U.S. campaign traditions and complicating the way that votes are cast. And as Election Day nears, the country is in the grip of the pandemic like never before.
“All we’re missing is the asteroid landing with flesh-eating zombies, and our year will be complete,” said Paul Lux, the supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County, Florida, and one of the nearly 9 million Americans to contract the virus.
Lux once worked long hours from his office in his mostly Republican county in the Florida Panhandle. With the election season nearing an end, he found himself in isolation last week, trying to oversee the entire voting apparatus for the county’s 210,000 residents on an iPad from the recliner in his den.
His elections office was shuttered for deep cleaning. Some of his colleagues also tested positive. And Lux was monitoring early voting as best he could, between checking his temperature every two hours. (NYT)
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has sought the creation of a national registry of police officers with records of misconduct, amidst the ongoing protest following the shooting of a black man by police officers in Philadelphia earlier this week. Police said Walter Wallace Jr, 27, was wielding a knife and ignored orders to drop the weapon before officers fired shots Monday afternoon. But his parents said that officers knew their son was in a mental health crisis.
Responding to a question over the issue after her rallies in Arizona on Wednesday, Harris said she has discussed and supports creating a national registry of police officers with records of misconduct. Harris, 56, also called for creating national standards on use of force, decriminalising marijuana and expunging the criminal records of people convicted of marijuana offenses, according to a report. (PTI)
The 2020 Presidential election is turning out to be the most expensive election in history and twice as expensive as the previous presidential election cycle, with the total cost of the election expected to reach an unprecedented USD 14 billion, a research group said.
The Center for Responsive Politics said that an "extraordinary influx" of political donations in the final months -- driven by a Supreme Court battle and closely watched races for the White House and Senate -- pushed total spending in the election past the previously estimated 11 billion dollars figure.
The Center said that the 2020 election will cost USD 14 billion, shattering spending records. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be the first candidate in history to raise USD 1 billion from donors. His campaign brought in a record-breaking USD 938 million through October 14, riding Democrats' enthusiasm to defeat Trump. (PTI)
There is a grim familiarity to it all. In the final days of a bitter election, it is a reprise of the terrible images that the country has come to know all too well this year: the shaky cellphone video, the abrupt death of a Black man at the hands of police. The howls of grief at the scene. The protests that formed immediately. The looting of stores that lasted late into the night.
It began Monday, when two officers confronted Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old with a history of mental health problems. A lawyer for the family said that he was experiencing a crisis that day and that the family told officers about it when they arrived at the scene.
In an encounter captured in video that appeared on social media, Wallace is seen walking into the street in the direction of the officers, who back away and aim their guns at him. Someone yells repeatedly at Wallace to “put the knife down.” The officers then fire multiple rounds. After Wallace falls to the ground, his mother screams and rushes to his body.
Wallace later died of his wounds at a nearby hospital, and the neighborhood exploded in rage. In the days since, dozens have been arrested, cars have been burned, and 53 officers have been hurt. On Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf called in the National Guard. On Wednesday, the city declared a 9 p.m. curfew.
As an immense new surge in coronavirus cases sweeps the country, President Donald Trump is closing his reelection campaign by pleading with voters to ignore the evidence of a calamity unfolding before their eyes and trust his word that the disease is already disappearing as a threat to their personal health and economic well-being.
The president has continued to declare before large and largely maskless crowds that the virus is vanishing, even as case counts soar, fatalities climb, the stock market dips, and a fresh outbreak grips the staff of Vice President Mike Pence. Hopping from one state to the next, he has made a personal mantra out of declaring that the country is “rounding the corner.”
Trump has attacked Democratic governors and other local officials for keeping public health restrictions in place, denouncing them as needless restraints on the economy. And venting self-pity, the president has been describing the pandemic as a political hindrance inflicted on him by a familiar adversary.
“With the fake news, everything is COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID,” Trump complained at a rally in Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday, chiding the news media and pointing to his own recovery from the illness to downplay its gravity: “I had it. Here I am, right?”
Just days before the presidential election, millions of mail ballots have yet to be returned in key battleground states, and election officials warn that time is running out for voters who want to avoid a polling place on Election Day. At least 35 million mail ballots had been returned or accepted as of early Wednesday, according to data collected by The Associated Press. That surpasses the 33.3 million total mail ballots returned during the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Yet an estimated 1.9 million ballots were still outstanding in Florida, along with 962,000 in Nevada, 850,000 in Michigan and 1 million in Pennsylvania. In most states, the deadline for ballots to be received is Election Day.
Nine military ballots that authorities said were mistakenly discarded by a contracted elections worker in a northeastern Pennsylvania county have been linked to specific voters and can be considered for counting in the November 3 presidential election. Luzerne County Manager David Pedri said the ballot envelopes contained identifying information that enabled officials to figure out who cast them.
The ballots will not automatically be tabulated, however. Pedri said the local elections board will give them 'close and careful consideration' to make sure they are filled out properly. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, whose office oversees voting in Pennsylvania, described the discarded ballots as a "bad error" but not a matter of intentional fraud. (AP)
President Donald Trump held an in-person campaign rally in Arizona on Wednesday despite a U.S. surge in COVID-19 cases and criticism he is prioritizing his re-election above the health of his supporters.
The pandemic that has upended life across the United States this year, killing more than 227,000 people, is roaring back in the days leading up to Tuesday's contest between Republican Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
At a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, Trump said again that a vaccine would be available soon. 'If I weren’t president, if you had Sleepy Joe as your president, it would have taken you four years to have a vaccine. You would have never had a vaccine,' Trump said. (Reuters)
Focused firmly on COVID, Joe Biden vowed Wednesday not to campaign in the election homestretch "on the false promises of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch." President Donald Trump, under attack for his handling of the worst health crisis in more than a century, breezily pledged on his final-week swing to "vanquish the virus."
The Democratic presidential nominee also argued that a Supreme Court conservative majority stretched to 6-3 by newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett could dismantle the Obama administration's signature health law and leave millions without insurance coverage during the pandemic. He called Trump's handling of the coronavirus an "insult" to its victims, especially as cases spike dramatically around the country.
Foreign governments will be more willing to cooperate with the United States if Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden wins the 2020 election than if President Donald Trump is reelected, a survey of international relations scholars found. Results from a Teaching, Research, & International Policy (TRIP) survey of 708 international relations scholars at US universities found that international relations scholars are far more likely to support Biden than Trump for president and overwhelmingly agree that Biden will be better able to achieve his foreign policy agenda.
Experts who identify themselves as Republicans and Independents are far more skeptical of Trump's approach to foreign policy than are their co-partisans in the US population at large, the survey found. Respondents to the survey overwhelmingly said that foreign governments will be more willing to cooperate with the United States if Biden (92 per cent) wins the election than if Trump (2 per cent) wins. (AP)
Throngs of people who attended a campaign rally held by President Donald Trump at a Nebraska airport had to wait around in frigid weather for hours after it ended before they could get back to their cars.
Thousands attended the Tuesday night rally at Omaha's Eppley Airfield. Most parked in designated lots a mile or two from the airport and were shuttled into the 7:30 pm event on buses. Social media and police scanner reports indicate shuttle buses were unable to return to the airport as traffic snarled and hundreds of people wandered into the streets around the airport as they tried to walk to their cars.
The last of the rally-goers left the area by around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. (AP)
The first day of Facebook Inc’s effort to stop new political advertising being introduced in the final stretch of US election campaigning was marked by complaints that the planned moratorium was beset by glitches.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s digital director Rob Flaherty slammed the social media giant on Tuesday, saying on Twitter its systems broke “within seconds of launching the silly, performative pre-election hoop-jumping exercise.”
Under pressure to crack down on misinformation and other abuses, Facebook said last month it would impose a moratorium – or temporary ban – on new political ads in the week before Nov. 3 in an attempt to tamp down on misinformation on social media as Election Day approached. Read more
Remembering the victims of 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tweeted: "Two years ago, a white supremacist entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and perpetrated the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. May the memories of those we lost be a blessing — and may we never stop fighting the scourges of anti-Semitism and gun violence."
Upping his rhetoric against the allegations of mismanagement of coronavirus pandemic by his government, US President Donald Trump said, "Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people."
'As a developer long ago, and continuing to this day, the politicians ran Chicago into the ground. I was able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders on a large and very beautiful tower. Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?' Donald Trump tweeted.
Less than a week before Election Day, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are set to be grilled by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. Democrats want to expand the discussion to include issues such as the companies’ impact on local news.
The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives have agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas.
Donald Trump’s campaign has slashed its advertising budget in Florida, relying on the Republican National Committee to carry the message there as the president’s re-election effort moves resources to the industrial northern states that carried him to victory in 2016.
Since Labor Day, Trump has cut $24 million from his national ad budget, while former Vice President Joe Biden has added $197 million. Biden has outspent Trump three-to-one over that time nationally, according to data compiled from ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics.
The president’s campaign still has $350,275 budgeted to spend on ads in Florida through Election Day, but has canceled $5.5 million in the final two weeks of the campaign, the data showed. Read more
US President Donald Trump’s push for a second poll-defying victory is relying on a hallmark of his first — raucous campaign rallies that Trump sees as a crucial sign of voter enthusiasm but that pollsters say may only be cementing his defeat.
Trump held three rallies Monday, all in Pennsylvania, with three more scheduled Tuesday and as many as five or six a day expected by the weekend. The rallies befit the showman with roots in reality television: blaring music, slick production, video montages, warm-up speeches, Air Force One as a backdrop and the president himself as the headline attraction. Attendees erupt in screams and cheers at his arrival, and local Republicans say it’s unlike any political event they’ve seen. Read more