US elections 2020

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      Trump to return to public events with 'law and order' address at White House

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      Defiant in the face of slipping opinion polls, and determined to justify his implausible claim of a full recovery from his encounter with Covid-19, Donald Trump will return to public events on Saturday with a “law and order” address to 2,000 invited guests from the White House balcony.Questions about the president’s health are still swirling following the refusal of doctors or aides to reveal when Trump last tested negative for coronavirus, and today’s lunchtime in-person event – just six days after he left Walter Reed medical center following a three-night stay – appears to counter his own government’s health guidelines over large gatherings and social distancing.But after another tumultuous week in which Trump lost further ground to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and with the 3 November general election little more than three weeks away, the president is seizing an opportunity to try to reposition himself in the race, despite the apparent health risk to attendees from a man likely to still be contagious.In a Friday night interview on Fox News, Trump, who was given a cocktail of antiviral drugs and strong steroids during his hospital stay, insisted he was “medication-free”.“We pretty much finished, and now we’ll see how things go. But pretty much nothing,” Trump said when Fox medical analyst Dr Marc Siegel asked the president what medications he was still taking.Earlier in the day, Dr Sean Conley, Trump’s personal physician, issued a letter clearing the president to return to in-person campaign events, but omitting any medical justification, including crucial information about any negative coronavirus tests.In the Friday interview, Trump said he had been tested, but gave a vague answer about it. “I haven’t even found out numbers or anything yet,” he said. “But I’ve been retested and I know I’m at either the bottom of the scale or free.”Trump’s speech today at the White House South Lawn will address “law and order” and protests around the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd and racial issues, sources revealed on Friday. More

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      Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites

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      On Friday evening, US federal judge Robert Pitman blocked Texas governor Greg Abbott’s order to shut down mail-in ballot drop-off sites across the state as the election is currently under way.Last week, Abbott issued a proclamation limiting each county to only one ballot drop-off site, regardless of size or population. This decision would have led to the closure of drop-off sites across the state, including 11 in Harris county and three in Travis county. A lawsuit was immediately filed by civil right organizations.Critics argued Abbott’s order to close drop-off sites would disproportionately affect larger, more diverse counties and hit communities of color, making it more difficult for them to vote. Harris county has more than 4.7 million residents and is the most populous county in the nation and home to the city of Houston. Travis county is home to Texas’s capital city, Austin. By comparison, smaller counties like Brewster county in west Texas, which has a population of just under 10,000, would remain unaffected by the ruling as it has always only had one drop-off site.Requests for absentee ballots in Texas are higher than previous elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, but concerns of mail slowdowns presented a need for drop-off locations. The ruling by Pitman blocking Abbott’s move is a victory for those deemed eligible to vote by mail in the state, including the elderly and disabled who would have had to travel farther distances to drop off their ballot and risk exposure to Covid-19.Statement from Harris County Clerk @CGHollins:Tonight’s injunction reinstating Harris County voters’ ability to hand-deliver their ballots at 12 county offices is a victory for voting rights. (1/3) https://t.co/t5v4Zb9g6h— Harris County Clerk (@HarrisVotes) October 10, 2020
      In a statement, the Harris county clerk, Chris Hollins, said: “Tonight’s injunction reinstating Harris county voters’ ability to hand-deliver their ballots at 12 county offices is a victory for voting rights. The governor’s suppressive tactics should not be tolerated, and tonight’s ruling shows that the law is on the side of Texas voters.” More

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      Trump has made fracking an election issue. Has he misjudged Pennsylvania?

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      In early August, Ginny Kerslake’s lush green yard in a middle-class Pennsylvania suburb turned into a muddy river, thanks to another spill at the pipeline drilling site opposite her house. A couple of days later, 10,000 gallons of drilling mud, or bentonite clay, contaminated a popular recreational lake that also provides drinking water for residents of Chester county.The spills are down to construction of the Mariner East (ME) pipelines – a beleaguered multibillion-dollar project to transport highly volatile liquids extracted by fracking gas shale fields in western Pennsylvania to an export facility in Delaware county in the east, ready to ship to Europe to manufacture plastics.In Pennsylvania, four years after Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 44,292 votes to win the state, the controversial pipeline project has helped make fracking a political flashpoint in the debate over energy, the climate crisis, environmental inequalities and the influence of big business.Fracking was a hot topic in this week’s vice-presidential debate, and the Republican party has blanketed the state with ads falsely claiming a Biden administration would ban the practice. Kerslake was unimpressed by the debate, but like many local anti-fracking voters she is hopeful that a Democratic administration might, at least, be persuadable on the issue.“The direct impact in our township has opened our eyes to how elected officials and government agencies we expect to protect us but don’t … Without fracking, there are no pipelines and vice versa,” said Kerslake, speaking in front of the noisy, unsightly drilling site, which can operate from 7am to 7pm six days a week.The ME horizontal directional drilling (HDD) project – which is subject to multiple criminal and regulatory investigations – has caused major disruption to dozens of suburban and rural communities, contaminated surface and groundwater sources in hundreds of mud spills, and created countless sinkholes in parks, roads and yards since construction began in early 2017.At least 105,000 people live within a half-mile blast radius of the ME pipeline system, which carries highly flammable, odourless and colourlessgases in liquified form; many more Pennsylvanians attend schools, libraries and workplaces in close proximity.Pennsylvanians suffer the country’s second-worst air quality, thanks to greenhouse-gas-emitting industries, and according to one recent poll, 83% of voters in the state think climate change is a serious problem and 58% look unfavourably at lawmakers who oppose strong action to combat it. More

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      Second presidential debate canceled but Trump plans in-person events

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      The second presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has been cancelled, the Commission on Presidential Debates confirmed Friday, a move that came as the president announced his first in-person events since being diagnosed with Covid-19.The decision by the nonpartisan commission follows a public disagreement between the two candidates over the debate’s format. The commission had previously announced the debate would take place “virtually” due to Trump’s diagnosis. Trump, however, said he would refuse to participate in a virtual event, while Biden advocated for it for safety reasons.But the commission said it would not reverse its decision, citing an abundance of caution and health concerns, particularly for the town-hall-style debate that was to feature questions from voters.“It is now apparent there will be no debate on October 15, and the CPD will turn its attention to preparations for the final presidential debate scheduled for October 22,” the commission said in a statement.The third and final debate, scheduled for 22 October in Nashville, Tennessee, is still on.The move came shortly after Trump announced his first in-person events since his Covid-19 diagnosis, including a speech at the White House on Saturday and a campaign rally in Florida on Monday, even as he remains potentially contagious for the virus.The White House event will see Trump discuss “law and order”, and he is expecting to address a crowd from the White House balcony.The White House physician, Sean Conley, said on Thursday in a press release that “based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the president’s safe return to public engagements” on Saturday, eight days after Trump announced his positive test early last Friday.Trump had initially indicated he hoped to hold a rally on Saturday night. “I think I’m going to try doing a rally on Saturday night if we can, if we have enough time to put it together,” Trump said on Thursday. The event did not materialize.At least one Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been linked by a local health official to an increase in coronavirus cases. Most supporters at recent Trump events have eschewed masks and social distancing measures.While Trump has been doing hours-long interviews with conservative hosts, it has only been just over a week since he announced his diagnosis. Medical experts have voiced concerns that, because the White House has refused to show results of Trump’s chest x-rays and lung scans, the public does not have a complete picture of whether the president has fully recovered from the virus. More

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      Faith leaders back Biden in sign that evangelical support for Trump is waning

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      More than 1,600 faith leaders in the US have publicly backed Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election, amid signs that some evangelical voters are turning away from Donald Trump.The Biden endorsements mainly come from Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants. They include Jerushah Duford, the granddaughter of Billy Graham; Susan Johnson Cook, a former US ambassador for religious freedom; Michael Kinnamon, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches; and Gene Robinson, a former bishop in the Episcopal church.“This record-breaking group of endorsers shows that President Trump’s lack of kindness and decency is energizing faith communities and will cost him this election,” said Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Christian campaign organisation Vote Common Good, which compiled the endorsements.The organisation said the announcement represents the largest group of clergy to endorse a Democratic candidate for president in modern history.“Four years ago, many religious voters decided to look the other way and give Trump a chance, but after witnessing his cruelty and corruption, a growing number of them are turning away from the president.”In the 2016 election, more than 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, with many taking the view that his pledge to make conservative and pro-life appointments to the supreme court outweighed unease about his personal behaviour. White evangelicals make up about a quarter of the US electorate.But some surveys have suggested an erosion of support for Trump among white evangelicals. A poll conducted last month on behalf of Vote Common Good in five key battleground states found an 11-point swing among evangelical and Catholic voters towards Biden.In July the Public Religion Research Institute found a seven-point drop in white Christian support for Trump, and a Fox News survey in August showed 28% of white evangelicals backed Biden, compared with 16% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.A group called Pro-life Evangelicals for Biden said that, despite disagreeing with the Democratic candidate’s stance on abortion, “we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore … we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”Biden, a Catholic who has frequently spoken of how his faith has sustained him through challenging times, is hoping to win over undecided Catholic voters with a series of ads broadcast in battleground states.Some Catholic bishops have issued statements criticising Trump’s policies. Last month, more than 150 Catholic theologians, activists and nuns signed an open letter to Catholic voters urging them to oppose Trump, saying he “flouts core values at the heart of Catholic social teaching”.Responding to the Christian leaders’ endorsement of Biden, Josh Dickson, faith engagement director of the Democratic candidate’s campaign, said: “The common good values of the Biden-Harris agenda are resonating with voters motivated by faith. We know that Joe Biden and [running mate] Kamala Harris are the clear moral choice in this election. We hope this show of support will encourage other voters of faith to make their values, not party affiliation, their primary voting criteria this year.”One of those publicly backing Biden, Ronald Sider, president emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action, said: “I urge everyone, especially evangelicals, to support Joe Biden as president. Poverty, racism, lack of healthcare and climate change are all ‘pro-life’ issues. On those and many other issues, Biden is much closer than Trump to what biblical values demand.”Belinda Bauman, the author of Brave Souls: Experiencing the Audacious Power of Empathy, said: “In all my years I’ve never publicly endorsed a candidate. But this year is different – very different. This year we don’t just face a political choice, we face a moral one.” More