President Donald Trump and Joe Biden during a town-hall-style event on Thursday.(The New York Times)US Presidential Elections 2020 LIVE news updates: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to include Muslim Americans in every social and political aspect in his administration as well as repeal President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” if voted to power.
In a video message to Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organisation, on Thursday, Biden also promised to push lawmakers for legislation to fight the growing spike in hate crimes in the US. “As president, I’ll work with you to rip the poison of hate from our society to honour your contributions and seek your ideas. My administration will look like America, with Muslim Americans serving at every level,” he said.
President Trump has imposed a controversial travel ban, often referred to by critics as a “Muslim ban”, on several Muslim majority countries, including Iran and Syria, through a series of executive orders. In February, the travel ban was expanded to include six additional countries, including Nigeria.
Meanwhile, Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s team member tested positive for coronavirus Thursday. ‘I will cancel travel through Sunday and continue to campaign virtually,’ she tweeted. The covid-19 pandemic once again was elevated to a central theme in the Nov elections after Trump tested positive on October 2.
Both candidates have been visiting crucial states this week, with Trump holding rallies in Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa and Biden traveling to Ohio and Florida.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the first 2020 presidential campaign debate with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, held on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., September 29, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Defending holding public events during the coronavirus pandemic, US President Donald Trump, who tested positive for COVID-19 early this month, has said that as a president he cannot remain locked in a basement and he has to meet people despite the risks.
Trump, responding to a question at a townhall organised by the NBC News, also defended not wearing a mask as much as his own administration’s public health experts recommend and said that lockdowns imposed by various states across the country to curb the coronavirus cases were “unconstitutional”.
He said he is not averse to wearing a mask, but “people with masks are catching it all the time.” (PTI)
Twitter said late Thursday it was changing its policy on hacked content after an outcry about its handling of an unverified political story that prompted cries of censorship from the right.
The social media company will no longer remove hacked material unless it's directly shared by hackers or those working with them, the company's head of legal, policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, said in a Twitter thread. And instead of blocking links from being shared, tweets will be labeled to provide context, Gadde said. "We want to address the concerns that there could be many unintended consequences to journalists, whistleblowers and others in ways that are contrary to Twitter's purpose of serving the public conversation," she said.
Twitter and Facebook had moved quickly this week to limit the spread of the story published by the conservative-leaning New York Post, which cited unverified emails from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's son that were reportedly discovered by President Donald Trump's allies. (AP)
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to include Muslim Americans in every social and political aspect in his administration as well as repeal President Donald Trump's "Muslim ban" if voted to power.
In a video message to Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organisation, on Thursday, Biden also promised to push lawmakers for legislation to fight the growing spike in hate crimes in the US.
"As president, I'll work with you to rip the poison of hate from our society to honour your contributions and seek your ideas. My administration will look like America, with Muslim Americans serving at every level," he said. "On day one, I'll end Trump's unconstitutional Muslim ban. I'll push Congress to pass hate crimes legislation. I'll implement the national strategy I've laid out since March to be COVID. I'll end the deadly inequities in health care, education, and opportunity that this crisis has amplified. And together, we'll rebuild the criminal justice system focused on redemption, not retribution," Biden added. (AP)
Instead of coming together for the presidential debate, Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden clashed in duelling town halls that were separately televised. While Trump focused on coronavirus, defending his administration’s mishandling of the pandemic and questioning whether masks can offer protection from infection, Biden used to platform to attack the Trump administration’s policies that had resulted in the deaths of at least 216,000 Americans and has resulted in the country having one of the highest rates of infection globally. The third presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 22, approximately one week before election results will be declared.
Read the latest developments in the last 24 hours here.
US President Donald Trump has extended his best wishes to Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris as two of her staffers tested positive for COVID-19, following which she suspended her campaign travel. Harris was scheduled to campaign in the battleground state of North Carolina on Thursday. Addressing his supporters at an election rally in North Carolina's Greenville city on Thursday, Trump said he has extended his best wishes to Harris. "We extend our best wishes. We extend our best wishes, more than they did to me but that's Ok," he said. (PTI)
More than 17 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2020 election, a record-shattering avalanche of early votes driven both by Democratic enthusiasm and a pandemic that has transformed the way the nation votes. The total represents 12 per cent of the all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, even as eight states are not yet reporting their totals and voters still have more than two weeks to cast ballots. Americans' rush to vote is leading election experts to predict that a record 150 million votes may be cast and turnout rates could be higher than in any presidential election since 1908. (PTI)
Every four years, the US has an “Election Day” on the first Tuesday after November 1, with the result usually called by the end of the day. But this year, election officials are speaking of an “Election Week”, cautioning Americans not to expect an immediate result. The reason for that is the unprecedented surge in what was once an uneventful process — mail-in voting. With Covid and social distancing the new normal, a record number of American voters have opted to mail in their voting preferences.
Of the 78 million mail-in votes requested this year, 9.3 million had been submitted by the beginning of this week, according to the University of Florida’s US Elections Project. By this point in 2016, with three weeks still to go for the election, only about 1.4 million people had voted. This year, some states — Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia — have already received more mail-in ballots than their total mail-in ballots in 2016. (Read more here)
President Donald Trump's re-election campaign's Twitter account was briefly restricted from tweeting on Thursday, spurring an outcry from Republican lawmakers who accused social media companies of acting like "speech police" and vowing to hold Twitter responsible.
Twitter temporarily blocked the @TeamTrump account from sending tweets after it posted a video about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son that it said violated its rules.The video referred to a New York Post story from Wednesday that contained alleged details of Hunter Biden's business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company and said the former vice president had met with an adviser of the company.Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement that Republican-led Senate committees have previously concluded that Joe Biden engaged in no wrongdoing related to Ukraine. He also denied such a meeting had taken place.
Joe Biden Thursday said that under the Trump administration, America is not "trusted" around the world and that the country is more isolated than it ever was. "America first" is actually "America alone", Biden remarked.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday criticized what he called President Donald Trump's "panicked" response to the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump defended his handling of a crisis that has killed more than 216,000 Americans. The rivals spoke in simultaneous town halls broadcast on separate television networks after a debate originally scheduled for Thursday was called off following Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis. (Reuters)
President Donald Trump on Wednesday sought to shore up support from constituencies that not so long ago he thought he had in the bag: big business and voters in the red state of Iowa.
In a morning address to business leaders, he expressed puzzlement that they would even consider supporting his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, arguing that his own leadership was a better bet for a strong economy.
The president was set to campaign later in the day in Iowa, a state he won handily in 2016 but where Biden is making a late push.
Biden, for his part, held a virtual fundraiser from Wilmington, Delaware, and was delivering pretaped remarks to American Muslims in the evening. He did not have any public campaign events scheduled, unusual for just 20 days out from Election Day.
Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris's team member tested positive for coronavirus Thursday. 'I will cancel travel through Sunday and continue to campaign virtually,' she tweeted.
After the second debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic contender Joe Biden was called off by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the two candidates are now holding competing, nationally televised town hall events on Friday, where they will face a slew of tough questions from the American voters.
Trump and Biden were originally slated to square off in the second of three presidential debates in Miami on Friday. However, chaos ensued soon after President Trump and several other top White House officials tested positive for Covid-19, throwing the entire election schedule into limbo. READ MORE
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to provide citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants if voted to power in the November 3 presidential elections. Biden identified this as one of his priorities in addition to beating the virus, rebuilding the economy and figuring out how to restore American leadership around the world.
Responding to a question at a virtual fund raiser on Wednesday, Biden said there is a need to deal with what’s going on at the border. “We’re going to have to deal with the immigration crisis we have. I’m going to send the House and Senate an immigration bill that''s going to provide access to citizenship to 11 million people,” he said.
According to the campaign, there were 37 attendees and the event was hosted by Jane Hartley, former US Ambassador to France and Monaco and current Chairman, Sesame Workshop; Blair Effron, Founder & Partner, Centerview Partners; Indian American Deven Parekh, Managing Director, Insight Partners and Roger Altman, Founder & Senior Chairman, Evercore.
When asked how he would envision his first 30 days in office in terms of both domestic and foreign policy, Biden said: “A lot more can go wrong between now and January 21, and I’m not being facetious. Four more years, we’re not going to have the country we have now”. “If the American people elect me, we’re going to have an enormous task in repairing the damage he’s done,” he added of Trump.
“We have to be beating the virus, rebuilding the economy and figuring out how to restore American leadership around the world,” Biden said.
Four years ago, U.S. President Donald Trump rode a wave of late-deciding voters to a shocking election victory. But those voters are unlikely to rescue him again, new Reuters/Ipsos polling shows. With less than three weeks to go until the Nov. 3 vote, and Republican Trump trailing his Democratic rival Joe Biden nationally and in battleground states, his campaign is counting on a surge of last-minute votes to reverse the tide and give him a second term. But Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted between Oct. 9-13 shows there are far fewer undecided voters this year, and they are just as likely to pick Biden as they are Trump.