"We will not give up, and we will not give in," the Democratic vice presidential nominee said. (Reuters/File)US Presidential Elections 2020 Highlights: Twitter on Thursday said that starting next week, it will label or remove misleading claims that try to undermine public confidence in elections. The policy will apply to tweets that attempt to undermine people’s faith in the electoral process itself, such as false claims about election rigging or ballot tampering, or about the outcome of the vote, Twitter said. The policy goes into effect September 17, a few weeks before the November 3 US presidential election.
Last week, Facebook had said that it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting. It will also attach links to official results to posts by candidates and campaigns that prematurely declare victory.
Meanwhile, soon after Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris as his running mate, some conservatives began trying to portray her as anti-Catholic – a line of attack that President Donald Trump’s campaign continues to amplify as Democrats court Roman Catholic voters. The charge stems in part from questions Harris posed in 2018 to a federal judicial nominee about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a lay Catholic fraternal organisation. Harris asked the nominee if he agreed with the anti-abortion views of the group’s leader, views that broadly align with the church’s stance. It inflamed Republicans at the time, with one senator authoring a resolution to affirm the constitutional ban on religious tests for federal officials and state that membership in the Catholic group is not “disqualifying.”
Trump-Biden
The same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has renewed vigorous US election-related targeting, trying to breach computers at more than 200 organisations including political campaigns and their consultants, Microsoft said Thursday. The intrusion attempts reflect a stepped up effort to infiltrate the U.S. political establishment, the company said. 'What we've seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues,' Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post. (AP)
Democratic Party members have released a musical video remix of popular "Chale Chalo" song from the superhit Bollywood movie, 'Lagaan', to woo Indian-American voters ahead of the US presidential election. In the November 3 election, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his Indian-American running mate Kamala Harris will challenge incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
"Chale Chalo, Chale Chalo, Biden ko Vote do, Biden ki Jeet Ho, Unki Haar Haan," says the lyrics of the song sung by Silicon Valley-based Bollywood Singer Titli Banerjee and released by entrepreneur couple Ajay and Vinita Bhutoria. "It is a warfighting song, drawing from the energy of Indian celebrations, inspiring our community to awaken and vote for Biden-Harris in November," Bhutoria said after the video was released on various social media platforms on Thursday. (PTI)
Historic fires are raging across the western United States ahead of what scientists say is the typical peak of wildfire season. Hurricane Laura devastated parts of the Gulf Coast last month, while swaths of Iowa are recovering from a derecho that brought hurricane force winds to the Midwest. The streak of disasters has left millions of Americans reeling. But it's barely had an impact on the campaign for the White House, in part because of the vulnerabilities it highlights for President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
The president is already facing multiple challenges, including the pandemic, joblessness and social unrest, and can ill afford another one. When he talks about California, where fires have killed at least a dozen people and threatened thousands of homes, it's mostly to blast the state's Democratic leaders. And for Biden, the spreading fires are a reminder to the party's progressive base that he doesn't embrace some of the most liberal elements of the Green New Deal, the grand plan for tackling climate change.
Twitter said Thursday that starting next week it will label or remove misleading claims that try to undermine public confidence in elections. The policy will apply to tweets that attempt to undermine people's faith in the electoral process itself, such as false claims about election rigging or ballot tampering, or about the outcome of the vote, Twitter said. The policy goes into effect September 17, a few weeks before the November 3 US presidential election.
Facebook said last week it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting. It will also attach links to official results to posts by candidates and campaigns that prematurely declare victory.
The same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has attempted similar intrusions into the computer systems of more than 200 organisations including political parties and consultants, Microsoft said Thursday. Those efforts appear to be part of a broader increase in targeting of US political campaigns and related groups, the company said.
"What we've seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues," Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post. Most of the infiltration attempts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian agents were halted by Microsoft security software and the targets notified, he said.
Reeling from another crisis of his own making, President Donald Trump tried to refocus attention on his Democratic rival at a rally in battleground Michigan Thursday as he pushed to move past revelations that he purposefully played down the danger of the coronavirus last winter. But the virus controversy followed him as he faced new pushback from local officials worried about the growing size of his rallies and his campaign's repeated flouting of public health guidelines intended to halt the COVID-19 spread. That includes Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who raised alarms about Thursday's event, warning it would make recovery harder.
Trump, however, reveled in the crowd of several thousand, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a cavernous airport hangar, mostly without masks with Air Force One on display as his backdrop. "This is not the crowd of a person who comes in second place," Trump declared to cheers as he railed against Whitmer for current state restrictions. "Tell your governor to open up your state!" he demanded, saying Michigan would be better if it "had a governor who knew what the hell she was doing." (AP)
he Trump administration on Thursday charged a Russian national in a sweeping plot to sow distrust in the American political process and imposed sanctions against a Russia-linked Ukrainian lawmaker accused of interfering in the US presidential election. Those actions, combined with a Microsoft announcement on hacking attempts targeting US political campaigns, parties and consultants, underscore the extent to which the same cyber intrusions and foreign influence operations that defined the 2016 White House race remain a persistent concern today.
They also reflect a dichotomy in the administration, with officials taking aim at Russian interference in the political process even as President Donald Trump expresses doubt about Russian meddling.
In the case of the sanctions, officials denounced audio recordings that had been released by the Ukrainian parliamentarian and promoted by Trump on Twitter. The criminal charges accuse Artem Mikhaylovich Lifshits of serving as a translation manager in a Russian effort that since at least 2014 has tried to disrupt the political system in the United States and other countries and spread distrust about candidates.
In a year when the coronavirus pandemic has reshaped countless American rituals, even the commemoration of 9/11 could not escape unchanged. The 19th anniversary of the terror attacks will be marked by dueling ceremonies at the Sept. 11 memorial plaza and a corner near the World Trade Center, reflecting a divide over the memorial's decision to suspend a cherished tradition of relatives reading victims' names in person. Vice President Mike Pence is expected at both those remembrances in New York, and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the observance on the memorial plaza.
President Donald Trump and Biden both plan to go to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania at different times. Trump is speaking at a morning ceremony, with Biden paying respects in the afternoon.
In New York, the double beams of light that evoke the fallen twin towers were nearly canceled in the name of virus safety, until an uproar restored the tribute. The Fire Department has cited the virus in urging members to skip observances of the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, among them almost 350 firefighters.
The Trump administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Russian-linked Ukrainian lawmaker for interfering in the US presidential election by releasing edited audio recordings designed to denigrate Democrat Joe Biden.
Those recordings have been promoted by President Donald Trump. The action by the Treasury Department is the second time in as many months that the administration has called out Andrii Derkach by name. US intelligence officials said in a statement last month that Derkach's disclosure of the recordings, which capture conversations between Biden and Ukraine's then-president, were part of a broader Russian effort to disparage Biden before the November 3 election.
The same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has attempted similar intrusions into the computer systems of more than 200 organisations including political parties and consultants, Microsoft said Thursday.
Those efforts appear to be part of a broader increase in targeting of US political campaigns and related groups, the company said. "What we've seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues," Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post.
Most of the infiltration attempts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian agents were halted by Microsoft security software and the targets notified, he said. The company would not comment on who may have been successfully hacked or the impact. Microsoft did not assess which foreign adversary poses the greater threat to the integrity of the November presidential election. (AP)
Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden slams Trump for his adminisiration's mishandling of the Covid-19 response
The nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the landmark Israel-UAE deal is a "hard-earned and well-deserved honour," the White House has said, underlining that the US President has made peace a cornerstone of his foreign policy efforts.
Far-right Norwegian lawmaker Christian Tybring-Gjedde on Wednesday nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in mediating the deal between Israel and the UAE which is seen as a historic step towards peace in the Middle East.
Israel and the UAE announced on August 13 that they were establishing full diplomatic relations. The first commercial direct flight between Israel and the UAE landed in Abu Dhabi on August 31 after both countries announced normalisation of relations.
The deal would be signed on September 15 at the White House. The UAE is only the third Arab country to establish diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Israel's neighbours, Egypt and Jordan, being the other two Arab states to recognise Israel.
Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended the Justice Department's move to intervene in a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, even as experts were skeptical of the federal government's effort to protect the president in a seemingly private dispute. The Justice Department's action is "a normal application of the law. The law is clear. It is done frequently," Barr said at an unrelated news conference in Chicago.
He added, "The little tempest that is going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live.? But experts said it's far from clear that the conduct at issue -- whether Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll, a writer who accused him of raping her at a New York luxury department store in the 1990s -- has anything to do with the scope of his White House duties. The department's move is likely to have an ancillary benefit for Trump in delaying the case, but administration lawyers have a tough task at hand trying to argue that the president was acting in his official capacity when he denied Carroll's allegations last year, experts say.
Hoping to replicate a strategy long seen as key to his appeal among conservative voters, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he is adding 20 names to a list of Supreme Court candidates he's pledged to choose from if he has future vacancies to fill. The list includes a trio of conservative Republican senators: Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri -- all buzzed-about potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates -- as well as Christopher Landau, the current ambassador to Mexico, and Noel Francisco, who argued 17 cases as the Trump administration's top Supreme Court lawyer. Every one of these individuals will ensure equal justice, equal treatment and equal rights for citizens of every race, color, religion and creed," Trump said as he made his announcement at the White House.
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. 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.(Reuters)
U.S. President Donald Trump's pick to run Latin America's main financing institution appears poised to win the top job in this weekend's election amid faltering regional opposition to having a U.S. citizen run the bank for first time in 61 years.Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump's senior Latin America adviser known for his hardline stance on Venezuela and Cuba, has majority support to head the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). But a group of countries, including Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica, had appeared close to having the 25% vote needed to block the election.Some countries that had opposed Claver-Carone's candidacy now privately concede they do not have the backing they had sought.
President Donald Trump acknowledged to journalist Bob Woodward that he had knowingly played down the coronavirus earlier this year even though he was aware it was “deadly” and vastly more serious than the seasonal flu.
“This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on Feb. 7 in one of a series of interviews he conducted with the president for his upcoming book, “Rage.”
The Washington Post and CNN were given advance copies of the book and published details Wednesday.
Georgia's top elections official said Tuesday that his office has identified about 1,000 cases of "potential double voting" in the June primary election a felony he's determined to see prosecuted.
These voters submitted absentee ballots but also voted in person, a problem that happened across 100 Georgia counties, and election officials didn't catch them in time to keep the second votes from being tallied, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. "No one gets to vote twice. Everyone gets one vote," Raffensperger said.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the outcome of any races may have been affected. The revelation follows a suggestion last week by President Donald Trump that people who vote early by mail should show up at their local polling places on Election Day and vote again if their ballots haven't been counted. (AP)
President Donald Trump seemed to understand the severity of the coronavirus threat even as he was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu and insisting that the US government had it totally under control, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
"You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed," Trump said in a February 7 call with Woodward. "And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." "This is deadly stuff," the president repeated for emphasis. Trump told Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimised the danger. "I wanted to always play it down," the president said. (AP)
Georgia's top elections official said Tuesday that his office has identified about 1,000 cases of "potential double voting" in the June primary election - a felony he's determined to see prosecuted.
These voters submitted absentee ballots but also voted in person, a problem that happened across 100 Georgia counties, and election officials didn't catch them in time to keep the second votes from being tallied, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. "No one gets to vote twice. Everyone gets one vote," Raffensperger said.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the outcome of any races may have been affected. The revelation follows a suggestion last week by President Donald Trump that people who vote early by mail should show up at their local polling places on Election Day and vote again if their ballots haven't been counted.
The president said in a series of tweets Thursday that voters who submitted absentee ballots should go to their polling site to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted). (AP)
Soon after Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris as his running mate, some conservatives began trying to portray her as anti-Catholic - a line of attack that President Donald Trump's campaign continues to amplify as Democrats court Roman Catholic voters.
The charge stems in part from questions Harris posed in 2018 to a federal judicial nominee about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a lay Catholic fraternal organisation.
Harris asked the nominee if he agreed with the anti-abortion views of the group's leader, views that broadly align with the church's stance. It inflamed Republicans at the time, with one senator authoring a resolution to affirm the constitutional ban on religious tests for federal officials and state that membership in the Catholic group is not "disqualifying."
Now that Harris is Biden's running mate, conservatives are replaying the moment to try to chip at the pro-abortion-rights Democratic ticket's appeals to religious voters. As Biden's campaign launched its Catholic voter outreach effort last week, the Trump campaign blasted Harris' questioning as "anti-Catholic bigotry" and said the Democrats' stance on abortion "clashes strongly with Catholic pro-life beliefs." It used similar language to refer to Harris alongside an online ad it rolled out last month. (AP)
Democractic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris slammed Trump for "failing to lead on every significant aspect of US Covid-19 response"
A Norwegian lawmaker has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 for helping broker a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the second time he has put forward the U.S. president for the honor.
In 2016, Donald Trump tore down Democrats' "blue wall," winning the White House with surprise victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
This year, Joe Biden is trying to rebuild.
The Democratic presidential nominee's first pandemic-era campaign trips beyond his home in Delaware are taking him to all three states, an indication of how closely Biden's electoral prospects are tied to his ability to flip those political battlegrounds. Last week, Biden traveled to Wisconsin and was followed quickly by running mate Kamala Harris, who held her own events there on Labor Day.
On Wednesday, Biden heads to Michigan to tout a plan for boosting U.S. manufacturing. He also has two stops scheduled this week in Pennsylvania. Though the Biden campaign often emphasises that it sees multiple ways to secure the 270 Electoral College votes they need to win in November, the quickest path runs through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"If Biden wins any of them - but particularly any two, with some of the other states that are in play - it's pretty impossible for Trump to win the Electoral College," said veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. "It makes tremendous sense to make those three states the base foundation of any strategy to win. If Biden wins all three, it's over." (AP)
A Republican campaign video comprising of visuals from the two historic rallies of President Donald Trump and PM Narendra Modi in the last one year - "Howdy, Modi!" and "Namaste Trump" - is making waves in the US ahead of the November 3 Presidential elections, particularly among Indian-Americans, whose votes may be the deciding factor in some of the battleground states, reported PTI.
Titled "4 More Years", the 107-second video begins with the footage of Modi and Trump walking hand-in-hand at the NRG Stadium in Houston during PM Modi's visit to the US last year.
The video then cuts to the two leaders, along with US First Lady Melania Trump, waving at a massive crowd in Ahmedabad during the Namaste Trump event in February this year.
It ends with Trump pledging American loyalty to India. "America loves India. America respects India. America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people," Trump is heard saying in the video.
US President Donald Trump basked in a largely maskless crowd of several thousand supporters during a Tuesday rally in North Carolina, where a cap of 50 people has been placed on outdoor gatherings to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the Associated Press reported.
"As far as the eye can see", Trump said, reveling at the sight of people flouting public health guidelines. "I really believe that these crowds are bigger than they were four years ago."
Trump's Democratic challenger Joe Biden, meanwhile, held a socially distanced meeting in a backyard a day earlier in Pennsylvania. His team has been attentive to local regulations, with some staffers even leaving the room if they risked breaking the rules on crowd limits.
"I really miss being able to, you know, grab hands and shake hands," Biden recently told reporters. "You can't do that now."
Kanye West will appear as a presidential candidate on Mississippi's ballot in November, after being approved as a qualified candidate by the State Board of Election Commissioners on Tuesday.
The rapper has already qualified to appear on the ballot as an independent candidate in several states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Utah. To qualify in Mississippi, he was required to pay a USD 2,500 fee to the Secretary of State's Office and get the signatures of at least 1,000 Mississippi voters.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, under pressure from GOP senators in tough reelection races, said Tuesday the Senate would vote on a trimmed-down Republican coronavirus relief package, though it has a slim chance of passage in the face of Democrats' insistence for more sweeping aid.
"The Senate Republican majority is introducing a new targeted proposal, focused on some of the very most urgent healthcare, education, and economic issues," McConnell said in a statement.
The GOP leader acknowledged the package he will be putting forward "does not contain every idea our party likes." And he said it was far less than what Democrats are seeking. (AP)
Taking a jibe at US President Donald Trump, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden said that the current economy can only work for "Trump and his wealthy friends."
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, while President Donald Trump assailed the Democratic ticket and tried to put the halting economic recovery under the best light. 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 attorney Ben Crump joined by phone. Blake joined the conversation by phone from his hospital bed, and Harris told him she was proud of him for how he was working through his pain, his attorneys said in a statement. Harris also spoke individually to each member of the family and discussed Biden's police reform agenda, they said.
The prospect of a vaccine to shield Americans from coronavirus infection emerged as a point of contention in the White House race as President Donald Trump accused Democrats of "disparaging: for political gain a vaccine he repeatedly has said could be available before the election.
"It's so dangerous for our country, what they say, but the vaccine will be very safe and very effective," the president pledged Monday at a White House news conference. Trump leveled the accusation a day after Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate, said she would not trust his word on getting the vaccine. "I would trust the word of public health experts and scientists, but not Donald Trump," Harris said.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden amplified Harris' comments Monday after he was asked if he would get a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Biden said he would take a vaccine but wants to see what the scientists have to say, too. Biden said Trump has said so many things that aren't true, I'm worried if we do have a really good vaccine, people are going to be reluctant to take it. So he's undermining public confidence."
Trump supporters rally near Portland and at Oregon's Capitol Salem (US), Sep 8 (AP) Hundreds of people gathered Monday afternoon in a small town south of Portland for a pro-President Donald Trump vehicle rally - just over a week after member of a far-right group was fatally shot after a Trump caravan went through Oregon's largest city.
Later, pro-Trump supporters and counter-protesters clashed in Oregon's Capitol city of Salem. Vehicles waving flags for Trump, the QAnon conspiracy theory and in support of police gathered at about noon at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City.
The rally's organisers said they would drive to toward Salem and most left the caravan before that. A smaller group of members of the right-wing group the Proud Boys went on to Salem, where a crowd of several dozen pro-Trump supporters had gathered. At one point Monday afternoon, the right-wing crowd rushed a smaller group of Black Lives Matters counter-demonstrators, firing paint-gun pellets at them.
Videos on social media showed right-wing protesters chasing, tackling and assaulting left-wing protestors with weapons, their fists and with pepper spray, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Paintballs were also fired between the two groups. (AP)
House Democrats said Tuesday they will investigate whether Postmaster General Louis DeJoy encouraged employees at his former business to contribute to Republican candidates and then reimbursed them in the guise of bonuses, a violation of campaign finance laws.
Five people who worked for DeJoy's former company, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy's aides or by DeJoy himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina,
The Washington Post reported. Two former employees told the newspaper that DeJoy would later give bigger bonuses to reimburse for the contributions. It's not illegal to encourage employees to contribute to candidates, but it is illegal to reimburse them as a way of avoiding federal campaign contribution limits.
Republican Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that if the allegations are true, "DeJoy could face criminal exposure" not only for his actions in North Carolina, but also for lying to our Committee under oath." She was referring to DeJoy's testimony before her committee last month, when he forcefully denied that he had repaid executives for contributing to Trump's campaign. (AP)
The prospect of a vaccine to shield Americans from coronavirus infection emerged as a point of contention in the White House race as President Donald Trump accused Democrats of "disparaging" for political gain a vaccine he repeatedly has said could be available before the election.
"It's so dangerous for our country, what they say, but the vaccine will be very safe and very effective," the president pledged Monday at a White House news conference.
Trump leveled the accusation a day after Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate, said she "would not trust his word" on getting the vaccine. "I would trust the word of public health experts and scientists, but not Donald Trump," Harris said. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden amplified Harris' comments Monday after he was asked if he would get a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Biden said he would take a vaccine but wants to see what the scientists have to say, too. (AP)