US Elections 2020 Live updates: Wisconsin Republican Party says hackers stole USD 2.3 million

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)