Harris and Pence will face off on October 7 in the Utah capital Salt Lake City. Mike Pence vs Kamala Harris Vice Presidential Debate Live updates: Kamala Harris has again tested negative for the coronavirus. The campaign reported her results on Wednesday, less than 12 hours before she is scheduled to debate Vice President Mike Pence. She took the test Tuesday. Pence also tested negative on Tuesday, according to the White House.
This will be for the first time in American history that an Indian origin person will be taking up the podium for a vice presidential debate. Political analysts believe that an aggressive Harris, 55, will easily prevail over Pence, 61, during the only vice-presidential debate and help her running mate Joe Biden, 77, to widen his lead over Trump, 74.
The first presidential match-up, held Tuesday in Cleveland, was widely criticised as chaotic and has prompted the Commission on Presidential Debates to develop what it called “additional structure” for the remaining events. The next presidential debate is scheduled for October 15 in Miami. After last week’s chaotic presidential debate, Biden’s national lead over Trump increased to 14 percentage points, his highest since he entered the race, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
Concerns about the debate have risen after the first presidential debate took place between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on September 29 in Cleveland, Ohio. A statement released by Cleveland city’s government noted that the government was aware of over 11 COVID-19 cases that stemmed from pre-debate planning and set-up.
After last week’s chaotic presidential debate, Biden’s national lead over Trump increased to 14 percentage points, his highest since he entered the race, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
President Donald Trump remained out of sight for a second day on Wednesday as he recovers from COVID-19, with the White House offering scant details about his health and activities.
Lashing out on Twitter, the president remains largely isolated in White House residence, where aides were instructed to take extensive precautions to prevent themselves from catching the coronavirus from the contagious president.
Trump's physicians have not provided a substantive update on his health since Monday afternoon, including his medications and potential long term health impacts from the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans and reached into the upper echelons of the U.S. government.
As Trump convalesced, he again publicly played down the virus on Twitter after his return from a three-day hospitalization, though even more aides tested positive, including one of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller. All told more than a dozen White House staffers have tested positive.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that 2 million Houston voters cannot receive unsolicited mail ballot applications from local elections officials who are dramatically expanding ways to vote in November in the nation's third-largest county, a key battleground in Texas.
The decision by the all-Republican court is the latest defeat in a string of losses for Democrats whose efforts to change Texas voting laws during the coronavirus pandemic have largely failed.
Polls show unusually tight races this year in America's biggest red state, intensifying battles over voting access. Texas is one of just five states not allowing widespread mail-in voting this year. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted calls to expand eligibility and courts have sided with GOP leaders who say fear of catching COVID-19 doesn't qualify voters for mail-in ballots.
In a statement released on September 30, Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) said, “Last night’s debate made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”
According to these new rules, instead of sitting seven feet apart, Pence and Harris will sit 12 feet, 3 inches apart for the duration of the debate. According to a report in The New York Times, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. who is the co-chairman of CPD said that Pence’s aides had recently agreed to accept the placement of plexiglass dividers as he debates with Harris. Pence’s aides had initially shown resistance to this particular measure.
According to news reports, CPD has also made wearing masks compulsory for audience members and will eject audience members who refuse to do so. During the first presidential debate, Trump’s family members and aides removed their masks inside the debate hall, which was against the rules set by the Cleveland Clinic. READ MORE
Vice President Mike Pence and his Democratic challenger, California Sen. Kamala Harris, are poised to meet for a debate that will offer starkly different visions for a country confronting escalating crises. The faceoff Wednesday night in Salt Lake City is the most highly anticipated vice presidential debate in recent memory.
It will unfold while President Donald Trump recovers at the White House after testing positive last week for the coronavirus and spending several days in the hospital, a serious setback for his campaign that adds pressure on Pence to defend the administration's handling of the pandemic.
For Harris, the debate is her highest-profile opportunity to vocalize how the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, would stabilize the U.S., especially when it comes to resolving the pandemic and addressing racial injustice. She will be able to explain her views on law enforcement, an area in which she's viewed warily by some progressives, given her past as a prosecutor.
Prospects for more aid for Americans struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. airlines seeking to avert a wave of layoffs crumbled on Tuesday when President Donald Trump ended negotiations with Congress over a large coronavirus bill."I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business," Trump wrote on Twitter a day after emerging from a hospital stay for COVID-19 treatment.Just days earlier, Trump had urged fast action on a fifth major coronavirus aid bill to augment the more than $3 trillion approved earlier this year.
Four weeks ahead of Election Day, senior national security officials provided fresh assurances about the integrity of the elections in a video message Tuesday, putting them at odds with President Donald Trump's efforts to discredit the vote.
'I'm here to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never been higher,' Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said in the video message.
'That's because of an all-of-nation, unprecedented election security effort over the last several years.'
The video appeared to be aimed at soothing jangled nerves of voters ahead of an election made unique by an expected surge in mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Though Trump was not mentioned during the nine-minute video, the message from the speakers served as a tacit counter to his repeated efforts, including in last week's presidential debate, to allege widespread fraud in the mail ballot process and to preemptively cast doubt in the legitimacy of the election.
White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien said Tuesday the United States will not tolerate any election interference from foreign countries. O'Brien said he told his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, to "stay out" of the November election and that there would be severe consequences for any country that violates that directive. O'Brien spoke to reporters after delivering remarks at a national security summit in Salt Lake City. "The Russians said that they had no plans to do anything of that nature," O'Brien said.
O'Brien said Russia was hit with sanctions following its interference in the 2016 election that he hopes will be a deterrent to other countries. However, there has already been evidence of interference by Russia, China and Iran, O'Brien said, as well as other countries that he declined to name.
"Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of a democracy, and we're not gonna tolerate any foreign adversary or foreign government getting involved," he said about his meeting with Patrushev Friday in Geneva.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered "total declassification" of all the documents related to the alleged interference of Russia in the 2016 presidential elections, which he described as a hoax. "I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!" Trump said in a tweet Tuesday night.
The announcement came hours after the Director of National Intelligence declassified some of the documents. The handwritten documents revealed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Barack Obama on the purported plan of Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, to tie Trump to Russia as ?a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server?, Fox News said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the state's voter registration deadline Tuesday after he said heavy traffic crashed the state's online system and potentially prevented thousands of enrolling to cast ballots in next month's presidential election. Several progressive groups are suing for an additional extension. DeSantis extended the deadline that expired Monday until 7 p.m. Tuesday. In addition to online registration, DeSantis ordered elections, motor vehicle and tax collectors offices to stay open until that hour for anyone who wanted to register in person. He also said any forms postmarked by Tuesday would be accepted.
Voting and minority rights groups responded with a federal lawsuit, saying the confusion required more time, but DeSantis disagreed, saying the seven-hour outage required a comparable extension. The problems began about 5 p.m. Monday and continued until the midnight deadline. (AP)
With polls showing him trailing Democrat Joe Biden with less than a month to go before the U.S. election, President Donald Trump appears to be re-embracing the risky strategy of playing down the coronavirus despite signs it could further diminish his re-election chances.Far from being chastened by his bout with COVID-19, Trump has returned to minimizing the danger from a virus that has already killed more than 210,000 fellow Americans, calling on supporters to be "not afraid of Covid" and "get out there."
In doing so, the president passed up an opportunity to reset his pandemic message and show solidarity with Americans who have suffered. He now risks further alienating the independent and undecided voters - particularly women and seniors - he needs to win on Nov. 3, pollsters and strategists say.After initially appearing humbled by the positive test that landed him at a military hospital for three nights, Trump quickly flouted health and safety protocols.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told coronavirus vaccine developers on Tuesday it wants at least two months of safety data before authorizing emergency use, a requirement that would likely push any U.S. vaccine availability past the Nov. 3 presidential election.A senior administration official confirmed the White House had approved the plan, which undercuts President Donald Trump's hopes of getting a vaccine before voters go to polls.
Trump voiced his displeasure in a Twitter post late on Tuesday: "New FDA Rules make it more difficult for them to speed up vaccines for approval before Election Day. Just another political hit job!"The FDA released the guidance laying out more stringent recommendations for drugmakers hoping to apply for an emergency use authorization (EUA) for their experimental vaccines.
US President Donald Trump, still being treated for COVID-19, abruptly ended talks with Democrats on an economic aid package on Tuesday, drawing criticism from presidential rival Joe Biden that he was abandoning Americans in the midst of a pandemic. Trump’s tweet breaking off talks for a new round of stimulus spooked Wall Street, sending stocks down as much as 2% from their session highs and tarnishing one of the metrics that the Republican president has touted as a sign of his success.
Along with Democrat Biden, the former vice president whom he will face in the Nov. 3 U.S. election, congressional Democrats and some Republicans blasted Trump, saying more was needed to help the millions who have lost their jobs in a crisis in which the United States leads the world in deaths and infections.”The president turned his back on you,” Biden said in a Twitter post. (Reuters)
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Tuesday said he and president Donald Trump should not have their scheduled debate on Oct 15 if Trump still had the coronavirus infection at that time, reported Reuters.
"If he still has COVID we shouldn’t have a debate," Biden told reporters traveling with him.
White House adviser Stephen Miller tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday, Reuters quoted an NBC reporter as saying on Twitter.
Miller's wife, Katie Miller, who is a spokeswoman for Vice President Mike Pence, tested positive in May.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has instructed aides to stop negotiating on another round of COVID-19 relief until after the election.
Trump tweeted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "not negotiating in good faith" and said he's asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to direct all his focus before the election into confirming his US Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
"I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business," Trump tweeted.
Last week, the White House said it was backing a USD 400 per week pandemic jobless benefit and dangled the possibility of a COVID-19 relief bill of USD 1.6 trillion. But that offer was rejected by Pelosi.(AP)
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that he regrets calling President Donald Trump a 'clown' during the first presidential debate, which was marked by angry interruptions and bitter accusations. 'I should have said, this is a clownish undertaking, instead of calling him a clown,' Biden said in response to a question at a town hall organised by NBC News in Miami, Florida.
During the first of the three presidential debates in Cleveland last week, Biden termed Trump a 'liar' and a 'clown' as the two candidates fiercely clashed over a number of issues, including racism, economy and climate.
'It was an ugly debate. And it hit some lows. You called him a clown, a fool. You told him to shut up. I think most people believe that the president was interrupting you. But it seemed to go against some of the language you have said about not being divisive. Do you regret any on your part?' Biden was asked Monday night in Miami. (PTI)
Democrat Joe Biden is expanding his ad buys into every corner of Ohio as early voting begins Tuesday, signaling his campaign's growing hopes that a state Donald Trump won easily four years ago may be within the former vice president's grasp. The new spots will air on radio in rural, traditionally Republican areas of the state, the campaign told The Associated Press, as well as on TV in Dayton.
That adds to television advertising already announced in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati and on Black radio stations. The campaign declined to give specifics on how much the Ohio ad blitz is costing. It's part of Biden's USD 280 million general election ad reservation.
Toni Webb, his Ohio state director, said Biden will use the ads to speak 'directly with hardworking families across the Buckeye State about his positive vision for unifying the country,' including his plans to 'strengthen health care, build our economy back better, and deliver for working families.' Trump carried Ohio over Democrat Hillary Clinton by a comfortable 8 percentage points in 2016. He now finds himself locked in a competitive battle for the Midwestern battleground and its 18 electoral votes.
Former first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday launched a scathing attack at President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a "racist" and not being "up to the job" and urged fellow Americans to make informed and engaged choice in the presidential election to regain stability in the country.
Pitching for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, she made an impassioned plea through a 24-minute video, saying that the country is in chaos and the voters should know what is at stake.