The presidential debate commission said it will mute candidates during parts of the event this week, allowing both Trump and Biden two minutes of uninterrupted time to answer each moderator question. Both candidates will be unmuted for open discussion afterward. The rule change comes after a chaotic first debate during which Trump, especially, interrupted and talked over Biden and the debate moderator
The supreme court blocked Republican efforts to stop an absentee ballot deadline extension in Pennsylvania. The ruling will likely mean thousands more votes are counted in one of the most critical swing states in the election. Republicans in the swing state had tired to stay an order from the Pennsylvania supreme court allowing ballots postmarked by election day to be counted even if the arrive up to three days later.
Trump attacked Dr Anthony Fauci as a “disaster” on a call with campaign staff. “People are tired of coronavirus,” the president said. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” The comments came one day after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Fauci, in which the infectious disease expert said he was not surprised Trump caught coronavirus because of the president’s activities in the days before he developed symptoms.
Joe Biden criticized Trump for attacking Fauci, arguing Americans are “tired of your lies about this virus.” Biden said of Trump in a statement, “We need a leader to bring us together, put a plan in place, and beat this virus — but you have proven yourself yet again to be incapable of doing that.”
Russian intelligence agents were planning a cyber-attack on the Tokyo Olympics, the UK National Cyber Security Centre revealed, as part of a joint operation with the US intelligence agencies. The UK also confirmed details of a Russian attempt to disrupt the 2018 winter Olympics.
The supreme court agreed to hear two cases involving Trump’s controversial immigration policy. One case centers on Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico as their claims are processed. The other focuses on government funding of the US-Mexican border wall.
In-person early voting begins today in the crucial swing state of Florida. Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris held events in Orlando and Jacksonville today.
Kelly Loeffler, the Republican US senator from Georgia who has embraced a follower of the toxic rightwing conspiracy theory QAnon in a desperate bid to hang on to her seat, squared off with her Trump-supporting rival and the leading Democratic candidate in their first debate today.
The virtual debate, staged through separate video links to ensure safety amid the pandemic, was a chance for voters to get to grips with one of the most volatile and chaotic races in the nation. Some 20 candidates are standing in a race which, as a special election, had no primary.
Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat in January following the resignation of Johnny Isakson, is having to fend off a fierce challenge from Doug Collins, an avidly Trump-supporting congressman. The pair have been scrambling over each other in a rapid dash to the right, trying to outdo the other in their radical conservative credentials.
An exchange between Collins and Loeffler featured sparring on a personal angle.
“You’ve attacked my hair, my makeup, how I talk, my clothes, where I’m from,” Loeffler said, adding: “I am the true conservative. I don’t have to have a record I have to lie about,” the Gainesville Times reported.
Collins shot back: “I’ve never mentioned anything personally – her fixtures, hair or anything else. But it’s amazing what she [says] about me.”
Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King preached for eight years, asked Collins if he would condemn QAnon.
That is the virulent conspiracy theory rapidly which claims a cabal of Democrats and billionaires is running a pedophile and human trafficking ring and which the FBI has warned is a domestic terrorism threat.
“I don’t agree with QAnon … and don’t support them,” Collins said.
Loeffler said: “I don’t know anything about QAnon.”
The World Health Organization’s emergency director, Michael Ryan, has linked soaring transmission rates in the northern hemisphere to the failure to quarantine people exposed to the virus.
He said if he could have one wish, it would be to ensure “every contact of a confirmed case is in quarantine for the appropriate period”.
“I do not believe that has occurred systematically, anywhere,” Ryan said, adding it was “a good part of the reason why we’re seeing such high numbers”.
Ryan said that about half of the 48 countries in the UN health agency’s European region had seen roughly 50% increases in cases within the past week – and hospitalizations and death rates were beginning to track those rises.
Some moderately good news is that the average age of sufferers was now much younger, treatment has improved and those infected may have been exposed to lower doses of the virus because of physical distancing and mask-wearing.
Worldwide cases of the virus passed 40 million on Monday.
The WHO says 42 potential vaccines are now being tested on humans, of which 10 have reached the third and final stage. A further 156 are being worked on in laboratories with a view to human testing.
But the WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said that while one or two trials may report data by the end of the year, most would start to do so in early 2021.
The Trump campaign said the president will participate in the debate this week despite the rule change. Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said: “President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
Here are the highlights from the first debate:
'Will you shut up, man?': Biden and Trump clash in first US presidential debate – video
The debate rule change allowing for microphones to be muted is likely to anger the Trump campaign.
In a statement, the non-partisan commission noted: “We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today. One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”
Both campaigns had agreed to a format in which each candidate would have two minutes to answer a question from the moderator, before launching into back and forth open discussion.
“The Commission is announcing today that in order to enforce this agreed upon rule, the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules,” it said in a statement. Both mics will be unmuted for open discussion.
Analysis: Supreme court ruling on Pennsylvania's deadline for absentee ballots
Sam Levine
The US supreme court decision to not pause a ruling from the Pennsylvania supreme court extending the deadline for absentee ballots in the state is a hugely consequential ruling that will likely mean thousands more votes are counted in one of the most critical swing states in the election.
Chief justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in the ruling, producing a 4-4 deadlock. The even split means that a September ruling from the Pennsylvania supreme court ordering ballots to count as long as they are postmarked by election day and received in the days after will stand. The ruling is a win for Democrats, who sought the extension in state court, and a loss for Republicans, who had asked the US supreme court to intervene. Nearly 900,000 voters in Pennsylvania have already returned their ballots, according to state data collected by Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida.
The justices made the ruling on an emergency request from Pennsylvania Republicans and, as is customary in similar cases, offered no explanation for their ruling. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all said they would have granted the Republican request.
Pennsylvania typically requires mail-in ballots to arrive by election night in order to count. But last month, the Pennsylvania supreme court, citing potential postal service delays amid the Covid-19 pandemic, extended the deadline by 3 days last month, saying ballots should count as long as they are postmarked by election day. The court also required election officials to count ballots with no postmark or an illegible one.
In a typical election, only around 1% of mail-in ballots are rejected, but that number is expected to rise this year as more people vote by mail for the first time. One of the top reasons mail-in ballots get rejected is because they arrive after election day. The decisions from the Pennsylvania supreme court and US supreme court offer important insurance against that kind of disenfranchisement.
The ruling is a break from a string of rulings this year in which the US supreme court has upheld a swath of voting restrictions across the country, even amid the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Pennsylvania case had an important distinction; while all the voting cases that have reached the supreme court this year have been from federal courts, the Pennsylvania case came from a state court. The supreme court may have been more hesitant to overrule a state court on a manner of election law, which the constitution specifically authorizes the states to set.
The presidential debate commission has adopted rules to mute microphones
When Trump and Biden face off on Thursday for a final televised debate, each candidate will have their microphones cut off while the other is delivering responses to questions.
During the 90-min debate, each candidate will have two minutes of uninterrupted time to respond to questions before they move on to open debate. The rule change from the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) comes after a chaotic first debate during which the presidential conductors spoke over each other, and Trump, especially, interrupted his opponent.
Republicans and Trump have already been sour at the CPD after it canceled the second debate due to safety concerns after Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19, and earlier today contested the topics the commission had chosen for the debate this week.
Justice Department lawyers argued that Trump was addressing his fitness for office and speaking in an official capacity when he called E Jean Carroll – who has accused him of rape – a politically-motivated liar.
From the AP:
The lawyers argued in papers in Manhattan federal court that the president should be replaced as the defendant in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit by the Justice Department because he was acting in an official capacity when he made his statements.
They said he was entitled to refute Carroll’s claims because she was trying to call “into question the president’s fitness for office and a response was necessary for the president to effectively govern.”
The lawyers had made similar arguments before and were replying to written arguments submitted to a judge by lawyers for Carroll, a media figure who hosted an advice show in the mid-1990s when she says she was attacked.
Earlier this month, Carroll’s attorneys argued the opposite, saying Trump can’t insult their client and then cite his job as reason to remove himself as a defendant. “Only in a world gone mad could it somehow be presidential, not personal, for Trump to slander a woman who he sexually assaulted,” they said.
Carroll has said Trump raped her in a department store dressing room a quarter century ago after they randomly crossed paths and engaged in conversation as each recognized the other’s measure of fame.
Her lawyers argued that defamatory attacks by the president included assertions that Carroll had falsely accused other men of rape, that she lied about him to advance a secret political conspiracy and sell books and that he had never met her even though they’d been photographed together. The lawyers noted that Trump also had said: “She’s not my type.”
After Donald Trump said at his Prescott, Arizona rally that he could raise more campaign money than he had, by hypothetically calling the head of Exxon and offering permits in exchange for $25m, the energy company has issued a statement clarifying that no such exchange occured.
"I call the head of Exxon. I'll use a company. 'How, how are you doing, how's energy coming? When are doing the exploration? Oh, you need a couple of permits, huh?' But I call the head of Exxon, I say, 'you know, I'd love you to send me $25m for the campaign'" - Trump #QuidProQuopic.twitter.com/Tr1ccpyMzw
Offering political favors in exchange for campaign donations is illegal. Staging a mick phone call, Trump said, “I call the head of Exxon... ‘How, how are you doing, how’s energy coming? When are doing the exploration? Oh, you need a couple of permits, huh?’”
We are aware of the President’s statement regarding a hypothetical call with our CEO…and just so we’re all clear, it never happened.
Supreme court blocks Republican efforts to stop mail-in voting expansion
Republicans and the state GOP had asked the supreme court to stay a Pennsylvania supreme court order extending the ballot receipt deadline in the state.
In a 4-4 vote, justices Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas voted against the order. The court took a while to issue this ruling - it seems chief justice Roberts was unable to win over any of the opposers. Because the supreme court is missing a justice, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a 4-4 means a loss for Republicans. A majority is needed to grant a stay.
Breaking news: The US Supreme Court said it would not halt a ruling from the PA Supreme Court extending the ballot receipt deadline in the state. This is one of the most significant rulings of the 2020 election cycle
Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were due by the time polls close on election day, but the Pennsylvania supreme court’s order allowed officials to count ballots postmarked by 8pm on election day to be counted even if they arrive up to three days later.
The ruling was celebrated by voting rights advocates, who cited postal services delays and other concerns as millions vote by mail due to the pandemic.
A fire inside an official election drop box in Los Angeles county has damaged voters’ ballots and is under investigation for arson, officials said.
The blaze Sunday night in the city of Baldwin Park appeared to be intentional, according to authorities, though the cause and the extent of the destruction were still under investigation. The fire required firefighters to spray water into the box to extinguish the flames, likely causing significant damage. Video from the scene showed dozens of wet and burnt ballots.
“The arson of an official ballot drop box … has all the signs of an attempt to disenfranchise voters and call into question the security of our elections,” Hilda L Solis, LA county supervisor, said in a statement, adding that the county has asked the state attorney general and FBI to investigate.
The LA county registrar’s office, which oversees the elections in the state’s largest county, has not responded to questions about how many ballots were affected, but said officials had last collected ballots from the site at 10am on Saturday. The fire was reported around 8pm on Sunday, and the damaged drop box location has since remained closed.
A fire department spokeswoman said three arson investigators were dispatched to the scene, and that the fire department spent nearly two hours on site responding to the blaze.
George Silva, a local resident who saw the fire on Sunday night while on a bike ride, told the Guardian firefighters initially struggled to put out the blaze.
“I felt a sense of broken-heartedness and disappointment,” said Silva, who runs a local air conditioning business. “I can’t believe somebody would do this.” He hasn’t voted yet and said he now planned to cast his ballot in person when early voting begins later this month. “I’m waiting until I know my vote will be safe and secure.”
The incident comes one week after California’s Republican party sparked confusion by placing their own unauthorized ballot boxes in several counties, prompting state election officials to send a cease-and-desist order demanding their removal. The state warned that the GOP boxes could mislead voters and violate the law.
The Senate Judiciary Committee – led by Republican Lindsey Graham - will consider authorizing subpoenas for testimony from the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook, “regarding the platforms’ censorship of New York Post articles,” the committee said.
“Committee staff continues to negotiate with both Twitter and Facebook to allow for voluntary testimony. If an agreement for voluntary testimony is not reached, the committee will vote on authorizing the subpoenas at a date to be determined,” the statement reads.
Here’s background on the NY Post articles, and social media companies response, from my colleague Kari Paul:
Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.
In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.
Twitter said it was limiting the article’s spread due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which contained material supposedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. Twitter policies prohibit “directly distribut[ing] content obtained through hacking that contains private information”.
Republicans accused the companies of protecting Biden.
