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    'Trump isn't going to protect us': Obama returns to campaign trail for Biden

    US elections 2020

    Former president told voters in swing state Pennsylvania: ‘What we do now these next 13 days will matter for decades to come’

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    Barack Obama likens Donald Trump to ‘crazy uncle’ in Joe Biden rally speech – video

    Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday to deliver a scathing – and occasionally humorous – condemnation of his successor while envisioning an America led by his former vice-president, Joe Biden.
    Sleeves rolled and wearing a black mask that read VOTE, Obama assailed Donald Trump over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president.
    “Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country” Obama said at a drive-in rally in Philadelphia less than two weeks before election day. “Donald Trump isn’t suddenly going to protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself.”
    Declaring this “the most important election of our lifetime”, Obama pleaded with Americans to deliver Biden a victory so overwhelming that Trump cannot seriously dispute the result. “What we do now these next 13 days will matter for decades to come,” he said.
    Obama, who swept to the White House on an optimistic message of “hope and change,” acknowledged that progress was not always a straight line. “The fact that we don’t get 100% of what we want right away is not a good reason not to vote,” he implored.
    His visit to Pennsylvania, one of three traditionally Democratic Rust Belt states that he won twice and Trump won in 2016, underscored its significance this cycle. Both candidates have lavished the state with frequent visits and a blitz of advertising. Biden holds a narrow lead in Pennsylvania, according to a RealClearPolitics average of state polls.
    Seizing on a comment Trump made during a rally in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday, when he told supporters that he would not have been there if his campaign wasn’t trailing, Obama smiled mischievously: “Poor guy. I don’t feel that way. I love coming to Pennsylvania.”
    Waving away the polls and punditry that have shown Biden widening his lead in recent weeks, Obama urged Black men and young progressives not to sit out this cycle.
    “I don’t care about the polls. There were a whole bunch of polls last time,” he said. “Didn’t work out because a whole bunch of folks stayed at home.” More

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    Florida accused of sowing confusion with last-minute voting changes

    Florida’s top election official is facing accusations of voter suppression after two last-minute moves critics say will lead to intimidation and confusion.Alarm bells went off last week after the office of Florida’s secretary of state, Laurel Lee, abruptly notified election officials the state was beginning to flag voters for potential removal from the voter rolls if they owed money related to a felony conviction. In a second letter, the state offered an extremely restrictive view on how localities needed to operate ballot drop boxes, which voters are increasingly turning to this year amid United States Postal Service delays.Both notices threaten confusion and chaos in one of the most important swing states in the 2020 election. Mail-in voting started weeks ago and in-person early voting started on Monday. Polls show an extremely tight race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in Florida, a state where elections are routinely decided by just thousands of votes.‘This is just to create fearmongering’In 2018, Florida voters repealed the state’s longstanding lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions, a move estimated to affect up to 1.4 million people. But Republicans in the state legislature quickly undercut the reform by passing a law in 2019 that requires people to repay all financial obligations associated with their sentence before they can vote again. Civil rights groups sued the state over the measure, saying it amounted to an unlawful tax on the right to vote. A federal appeals court upheld the law in September, saying Florida did not even have to tell people how much they owed before they could vote.Florida does not have a centralized system for keeping track of how much people with felony convictions owe and it can be nearly impossible for even trained officials to figure it out. And under state law, no one can be removed ahead of the November election – state law gives local election officials seven days to notify a voter and then gives the voter 30 days to respond.Still, critics are worried that voters with felony convictions could receive notices suggesting they are ineligible to vote, dissuading them from casting votes, even though they are legally entitled to do so.“If you’re not able to put a system together to let people know what they owe, how can we even trust that you have any kind of legitimate system to determine whether people should be taken off of the roster,” said Desmond Meade, the executive director of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), an advocacy group for people with felony convictions. He was concerned the state would wrongly flag people who were eligible to vote because they had been granted clemency, even though they still owed money to the state. More

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    Broken promises and alternative facts: how Donald Trump failed Ohio – video

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    10:44

    After winning the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to deliver new jobs and economic prosperity to Youngstown, Ohio, a city suffering from decades of decline. But four years on those promises never manifested. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone meet residents who lost their jobs and had their families split by economic necessity, and witness how the demise of the city’s only newspaper made it harder to hold politicians accountable for their failures
    More from the Anywhere but Washington series:
    Civil rights and QAnon candidates: the fight for facts in Georgia – video
    Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video
    Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video

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    US elections 2020

    Anywhere but Washington

    Ohio

    Donald Trump

    Joe Biden

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    Republican senator tries to distance himself from Trump: 'He is who he is'

    A member of Republican leadership in the US Senate has likened his relationship with Donald Trump to a marriage, and said that he was “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well”.The Texas senator John Cornyn’s comments, to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, are the latest instance of a Republican under electoral pressure seeking to distance himself from an unpopular president, however gingerly, as polling day looms. Democrats are favoured to take the Senate, potentially leading to unified government in Washington.“I think what we found is that we’re not going to change President Trump,” Cornyn said. “He is who he is. You either love him or hate him, and there’s not much in between.“What I tried to do is not get into public confrontations and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”Trump spent some of the weekend in a public fight with Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Sasse criticised Trump in a call with constituents, lamenting among other things his treatment of women and the way he “kisses dictators’ butts” and “flirts with white supremacists”.Trump fired back with insults, forcing Republican National Committee chair, Ronna McDaniel, on to the defensive on the Sunday talkshows.Sasse is more or less assured of re-election in two weeks’ time but his prediction of a “bloodbath” for Senate Republicans with an unpopular president at the top of ticket may have stung Trump – and McDaniel – the most.Cornyn, a former Senate majority whip, certainly knows what Sasse meant. He leads his Democratic challenger in the usually safe Republican state – but not by much, some polls showing MJ Hegar within the margin of error.Cornyn told the Fort Worth paper that “when I have had differences of opinion” with Trump, “which I have, [I] do that privately. I have found that has allowed me to be much more effective, I believe, than to satisfy those who say I ought to call him out or get into a public fight with him.”Cornyn said he was happy to praise Trump publicly when they agreed, such as on judicial nominations and tax cuts. Subjects of disagreement included Covid-19 response; efforts to secure another relief bill; and the use of defense funds for border security.On trade policy, Cornyn added: “I applaud him for standing up to China but, frankly, this idea that China is paying the price and we’re not paying the price here at home is just not true.”The comment was mild enough not to immediately rile Trump, who was campaigning in battleground states. The Star-Telegram described Cornyn’s caution, saying he “noted that his friend, former [senator] Bob Corker [of Tennessee], who initially was on cordial terms with Trump’s White House, opted not to run for re-election in 2018 after clashing with Trump on issues such as a border wall.”Corker was once considered as a running mate or secretary of state. Exasperated to the point of saying the White House was being run like an “adult daycare centre”, he retired in 2018.Blasting back at Sasse, Trump showed he never forgets a slight. The Nebraska senator, the president tweeted, “seems to be heading down the same inglorious path as former senator Liddle’ Bob Corker”, who became “totally unelectable” because of his criticism “and decided to drop out of politics and gracefully ‘RETIRE’”.Cornyn, 68, is hoping to defeat his 44-year-old opponent and secure a fourth six-year-term. More

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    in Elections

    Pelosi: biggest antidote to Trump's 'poison' is the vote – live

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