President Donald Trump, who loves to boast of doing anything his predecessors have never done, pulled off such a historic first Monday. He won confirmation of a Supreme Court justice only eight days before a presidential election, rushing his choice through the Senate before voters decide whether to give him four more years or kick him out of office.

Trump then did something else no other president has done. He hosted a nighttime ceremony on the White House lawn to swear in Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a virtual do-over of the superspreader event blamed for infecting multiple people with the coronavirus a month ago to the day, including the president himself, who was forced to spend three nights in the hospital.

To Trump, the first history-maker outweighed the second, a chance to celebrate a landmark political victory regardless of the risk. It was, in effect, the triumph of defiance over experience, a stubborn gesture by a president who refuses to acknowledge the continuing threat of a pandemic that has killed more than 225,000 people in the United States even after it has swept through his own circle of aides, advisers and allies. Undaunted and unbowed, Trump hosted the event even as five people working for Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive in recent days.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/judge-rejects-us-request-to-shield-trump-from-rape-accusers-defamation-lawsuit-338376" hreflang="en">Judge rejects US request to shield Trump from rape accuser's defamation lawsuit</a>

This time, at least, the White House made some concessions to the virus. Unlike the Rose Garden event on Sept. 26 when Trump announced his nomination of Barrett, apparently leading to a raft of infections, the ceremony Monday night marking her confirmation was held on the roomier South Lawn, with folding chairs seated several feet apart and guests required to wear masks.

Neither Trump nor Barrett wore masks, perhaps owing to the fact that both have already had the virus and therefore presumably could be immune. Melania Trump, the first lady, who also was infected after the last event, likewise attended without a mask. Justice Clarence Thomas, who was on hand to swear in his new colleague, wore no mask either, even though he is not known to have been previously infected. None of the other seven justices attended.

Neither the president nor the new justice made any reference to the virus or what happened the last time the two gathered supporters at the White House. Instead, they congratulated themselves on the superquick confirmation process that has now put her on the court just in time to rule on any of Trump’s challenges emerging from next week’s election.

Trump praised Barrett’s “deep knowledge, tremendous poise and towering intellect,” calling her a suitable replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal stalwart who died last month, even though she is the ideological polar opposite.

“It is highly fitting that Justice Barrett fills the seat of a true pioneer for women, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” the president told the crowd. “Tonight, Justice Barrett becomes not only the fifth woman to serve on our nation’s highest court, but the very first mother of school-aged children to become a Supreme Court justice.”

Barrett, 48, who has seven children, will be the current court’s youngest member, its third woman, its sixth Catholic and its only jurist from outside the Ivy League. A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, where she later taught, she has served on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since Trump appointed her in 2017 and has become a favorite of conservatives. Her appointment to the Supreme Court was Trump’s third, the most any president has had in a single term since Richard Nixon and an important credential for Republican voters who care about the judiciary.

In her own remarks Monday, Barrett, whose short-sleeve black dress contrasted with the president’s heavy, black overcoat on a crisp, 55-degree evening, referred to the speedy Senate approval as “a rigorous confirmation process,” a characterization Democrats strenuously disputed.

But she seemed intent on sending the message that she would not simply do Trump’s bidding, using the words “independent” or “independence” three times, even though he has said explicitly that he wanted her seated before the election so she could lend her vote in case of a legal dispute over the balloting.

“A judge declares independence not only from the Congress and the president but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her,” Barrett said after being sworn in. “The oath I have solemnly taken tonight,” she added, “means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor and that I will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences.”

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed to believe that, instead commending or condemning her confirmation as a victory for conservatives and a defeat for liberals. Her replacement of Ginsburg means that the conservative wing now controls the Supreme Court 6-3, heralding a new era of jurisprudence not only on the forthcoming election, but on hot-button issues like abortion, gay rights and health care.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Trump’s most outspoken allies, taunted Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, after the Senate’s evening vote.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/how-trump-and-bolsonaro-broke-latin-americas-covid-19-defenses-338261" hreflang="en">How Trump and Bolsonaro broke Latin America’s COVID-19 defenses</a>

“Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed,” said a message posted on the committee’s Twitter account at 8:03 p.m. “Happy Birthday, @HillaryClinton!”

Clinton posted her own message six minutes later, suggesting that Republicans may pay a political price in just a week. “Senate Republicans just pushed through a Supreme Court justice who will help them take away Americans’ health care in the middle of a pandemic,” she wrote. “For them, this is victory. Vote them out.”

The nomination ceremony a month ago undercut the political message Trump wanted to send when he, Trump and others who were in attendance later tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump emerged from his sickness as uncowed as ever, insisting that the virus could be beaten and telling Americans not to let it dominate their lives.

Many of those who were infected that day stayed away Monday night. Among those who were back for more was Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who tested positive for the virus after the announcement ceremony where he had gone maskless and hugged others in the crowd. “Tonight’s vote was a huge win for the American people,” Lee said on Twitter without referring to the virus.

Democrats were flabbergasted that the White House would replicate the event a month later.

“They shame mask wearing,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said on Twitter earlier in the day. “They hold super spreader events daily. They discourage testing. They pretend like a vaccine is days away so that people will let down their guard. The biggest threat to America’s public health isn’t the virus, it’s the Trump White House.”

But Trump relished the theatricality of the moment, escorting Barrett up the stairs to the balcony off the Blue Room that he has now used several times in recent days. From there, the two looked out on the crowd as the president applauded his new appointee; then the two were joined by their spouses, Melania Trump and Jesse Barrett, before all four along with Thomas slipped back into the White House again.

President Donald Trump, who loves to boast of doing anything his predecessors have never done, pulled off such a historic first Monday. He won confirmation of a Supreme Court justice only eight days before a presidential election, rushing his choice through the Senate before voters decide whether to give him four more years or kick him out of office.

President Donald Trump, who loves to boast of doing anything his predecessors have never done, pulled off such a historic first Monday. He won confirmation of a Supreme Court justice only eight days before a presidential election, rushing his choice through the Senate before voters decide whether to give him four more years or kick him out of office. Trump then did something else no other president has done. He hosted a nighttime ceremony on the White House lawn to swear in Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a virtual do-over of the superspreader event blamed for infecting multiple people with the coronavirus a month ago to the day, including the president himself, who was forced to spend three nights in the hospital. To Trump, the first history-maker outweighed the second, a chance to celebrate a landmark political victory regardless of the risk. It was, in effect, the triumph of defiance over experience, a stubborn gesture by a president who refuses to acknowledge the continuing threat of a pandemic that has killed more than 225,000 people in the United States even after it has swept through his own circle of aides, advisers and allies. Undaunted and unbowed, Trump hosted the event even as five people working for Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive in recent days. Also read: Judge rejects US request to shield Trump from rape accuser's defamation lawsuit This time, at least, the White House made some concessions to the virus. Unlike the Rose Garden event on Sept. 26 when Trump announced his nomination of Barrett, apparently leading to a raft of infections, the ceremony Monday night marking her confirmation was held on the roomier South Lawn, with folding chairs seated several feet apart and guests required to wear masks. Neither Trump nor Barrett wore masks, perhaps owing to the fact that both have already had the virus and therefore presumably could be immune. Melania Trump, the first lady, who also was infected after the last event, likewise attended without a mask. Justice Clarence Thomas, who was on hand to swear in his new colleague, wore no mask either, even though he is not known to have been previously infected. None of the other seven justices attended. Neither the president nor the new justice made any reference to the virus or what happened the last time the two gathered supporters at the White House. Instead, they congratulated themselves on the superquick confirmation process that has now put her on the court just in time to rule on any of Trump’s challenges emerging from next week’s election. Trump praised Barrett’s “deep knowledge, tremendous poise and towering intellect,” calling her a suitable replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal stalwart who died last month, even though she is the ideological polar opposite. “It is highly fitting that Justice Barrett fills the seat of a true pioneer for women, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” the president told the crowd. “Tonight, Justice Barrett becomes not only the fifth woman to serve on our nation’s highest court, but the very first mother of school-aged children to become a Supreme Court justice.” Barrett, 48, who has seven children, will be the current court’s youngest member, its third woman, its sixth Catholic and its only jurist from outside the Ivy League. A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, where she later taught, she has served on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since Trump appointed her in 2017 and has become a favorite of conservatives. Her appointment to the Supreme Court was Trump’s third, the most any president has had in a single term since Richard Nixon and an important credential for Republican voters who care about the judiciary. In her own remarks Monday, Barrett, whose short-sleeve black dress contrasted with the president’s heavy, black overcoat on a crisp, 55-degree evening, referred to the speedy Senate approval as “a rigorous confirmation process,” a characterization Democrats strenuously disputed. But she seemed intent on sending the message that she would not simply do Trump’s bidding, using the words “independent” or “independence” three times, even though he has said explicitly that he wanted her seated before the election so she could lend her vote in case of a legal dispute over the balloting. “A judge declares independence not only from the Congress and the president but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her,” Barrett said after being sworn in. “The oath I have solemnly taken tonight,” she added, “means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor and that I will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences.” Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed to believe that, instead commending or condemning her confirmation as a victory for conservatives and a defeat for liberals. Her replacement of Ginsburg means that the conservative wing now controls the Supreme Court 6-3, heralding a new era of jurisprudence not only on the forthcoming election, but on hot-button issues like abortion, gay rights and health care. The House Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Trump’s most outspoken allies, taunted Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, after the Senate’s evening vote. Also read: How Trump and Bolsonaro broke Latin America’s COVID-19 defenses “Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed,” said a message posted on the committee’s Twitter account at 8:03 p.m. “Happy Birthday, @HillaryClinton!” Clinton posted her own message six minutes later, suggesting that Republicans may pay a political price in just a week. “Senate Republicans just pushed through a Supreme Court justice who will help them take away Americans’ health care in the middle of a pandemic,” she wrote. “For them, this is victory. Vote them out.” The nomination ceremony a month ago undercut the political message Trump wanted to send when he, Trump and others who were in attendance later tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump emerged from his sickness as uncowed as ever, insisting that the virus could be beaten and telling Americans not to let it dominate their lives. Many of those who were infected that day stayed away Monday night. Among those who were back for more was Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who tested positive for the virus after the announcement ceremony where he had gone maskless and hugged others in the crowd. “Tonight’s vote was a huge win for the American people,” Lee said on Twitter without referring to the virus. Democrats were flabbergasted that the White House would replicate the event a month later. “They shame mask wearing,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said on Twitter earlier in the day. “They hold super spreader events daily. They discourage testing. They pretend like a vaccine is days away so that people will let down their guard. The biggest threat to America’s public health isn’t the virus, it’s the Trump White House.” But Trump relished the theatricality of the moment, escorting Barrett up the stairs to the balcony off the Blue Room that he has now used several times in recent days. From there, the two looked out on the crowd as the president applauded his new appointee; then the two were joined by their spouses, Melania Trump and Jesse Barrett, before all four along with Thomas slipped back into the White House again.

In swearing in Barrett, Trump defiantly mimics ‘superspreader’ Rose Garden ceremony

With only eight days to go until the U.S. election, Los Angeles residents are taking advantage of early voting and turning out to cast their ballots before Election Day.

US Election 2020: Record overall turnout expected in 2020 polls

With the<a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election"> US elections</a> just a week away already over 64 million Americans have exercised their democratic right creating a new record in the US polls.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-election-2020-record-overall-turnout-expected-in-2020-polls-338171/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

According to US Elections Project, there have been 43,798,191 mail ballots and 20,916,166 in-person votes already cast ahead of the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/twitter-flags-trump-tweet-on-mail-in-ballots-over-disputed-content-338207">US elections</a> on November 3.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-polling-guru-who-forecasted-donald-trumps-2016-win-reveals-this-years-winner-338228">Also Read:&nbsp;Polling guru who forecasted Donald Trump's 2016 win, reveals this year's winner</a>

Texas and Florida have been leading the pack with over 7 million voters having cast their votes followed by Florida where over 6 million votes have already been set in the ballot boxes.

In Ohio, there have been over 2 million votes cast with over 3 million in North Carolina and just over 2 million in the nation's capital in Washington including in New Jersey.

According to experts, at the present rate, it could be the highest US voter turnout by percentage in more than a century.

Amid the voting, President Trump addressed rallies in <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-calls-for-investigation-of-biden-heads-to-pennsylvania-336714">Pennsylvania </a>on Monday as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden also turned up in the state to grab last-minute votes.

"We win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ballgame," President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/us-elections-look-at-russia-china-and-india-its-filthy-says-trump-on-carbon-emissions-337317">Trump</a> said a rally in Martinsburg. "He wants to go with windmills that are made in Germany and China," Trump said at the rally, adding,"Biden's plan is an economic death sentence for Pennsylvania's energy sector."

Meanwhile, Biden pointing at the battleground states, said: "I think we're going to win Michigan, I think we're going to win Wisconsin. I think we're going to win Minnesota. I think we have a fighting chance in Ohio. I think we have a fighting chance in North Carolina. We have a fighting chance in Georgia."

As the US voters turn up in huge numbers, US President Donald Trump once again turned the heat on mail-in ballots, saying: "Big problems and discrepancies with mail-in ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd."

With the US elections just a week away already over 64 million Americans have exercised their democratic right creating a new record in the US polls. Watch: According to US Elections Project, there have been 43,798,191 mail ballots and 20,916,166 in-person votes already cast ahead of the US elections on November 3.

With the US elections just a week away already over 64 million Americans have exercised their democratic right creating a new record in the US polls. Watch: According to US Elections Project, there have been 43,798,191 mail ballots and 20,916,166 in-person votes already cast ahead of the US elections on November 3. Also Read: Polling guru who forecasted Donald Trump's 2016 win, reveals this year's winner Texas and Florida have been leading the pack with over 7 million voters having cast their votes followed by Florida where over 6 million votes have already been set in the ballot boxes. In Ohio, there have been over 2 million votes cast with over 3 million in North Carolina and just over 2 million in the nation's capital in Washington including in New Jersey. According to experts, at the present rate, it could be the highest US voter turnout by percentage in more than a century. Amid the voting, President Trump addressed rallies in Pennsylvania on Monday as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden also turned up in the state to grab last-minute votes. "We win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ballgame," President Trump said a rally in Martinsburg. "He wants to go with windmills that are made in Germany and China," Trump said at the rally, adding,"Biden's plan is an economic death sentence for Pennsylvania's energy sector." Meanwhile, Biden pointing at the battleground states, said: "I think we're going to win Michigan, I think we're going to win Wisconsin. I think we're going to win Minnesota. I think we have a fighting chance in Ohio. I think we have a fighting chance in North Carolina. We have a fighting chance in Georgia." As the US voters turn up in huge numbers, US President Donald Trump once again turned the heat on mail-in ballots, saying: "Big problems and discrepancies with mail-in ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd."

US elections: Over 64 million votes cast, will voter turnout percentage be the highest ever?

As Cher closed Sunday Night’s I Will Vote concert, she did something unique.&nbsp;

Cher took a classic song and changed the lyrics to sway her fans to vote for Joe Biden who is currently in the running for the position of the US President in 2020 elections.&nbsp;

Cher sang a song that goes like: "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe." It was basically a performance of ‘Happiness’ ahead of its official release on Monday (today) according to Billboard.&nbsp;

The song was originally composed by Harold Arlen for the 1943 film musical ‘Cabin in the Sky’, earning an Oscar nomination for best original song.

Among other star performers were John Legend, Pink and Andra Day. They all performed in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his VP candidate Kamala Harris.

Watch Cher's performance below:

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As Cher closed Sunday Night’s I Will Vote concert, she did something unique. Cher took a classic song and changed the lyrics to sway her fans to vote for Joe Biden who is currently in the running for the position of the US President in 2020 elections.

As Cher closed Sunday Night’s I Will Vote concert, she did something unique. Cher took a classic song and changed the lyrics to sway her fans to vote for Joe Biden who is currently in the running for the position of the US President in 2020 elections. Cher sang a song that goes like: "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe." It was basically a performance of ‘Happiness’ ahead of its official release on Monday (today) according to Billboard. The song was originally composed by Harold Arlen for the 1943 film musical ‘Cabin in the Sky’, earning an Oscar nomination for best original song. Among other star performers were John Legend, Pink and Andra Day. They all performed in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his VP candidate Kamala Harris. Watch Cher's performance below:

Cher sings 'Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe' at I Will Vote concert for Joe Biden

As the opinion polls show that Democratic nominee Joe Biden holds substantial lead, US President Donald Trump's campaign is now trying to appeal to independent and this affected Republican voters.

US Election 2020: Opinion polls show Joe Biden holding substantial lead

As the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election?page=1">US election</a>&nbsp;is coming near, the country is being bombarded with advertisements by the&nbsp;US President&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;Democratic nominee and former Vice President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>.&nbsp;Things are heating up in the White House and the authorities are running to complete all the due processes.

However, the election is not the only thing that the White House is preparing for right now. The authorities have also started planning and preparing for the&nbsp;inauguration ceremony of the next to-be President of the United States. The local media reported the White House has started preparing for the January 20 ceremony.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-how-the-states-vote-for-the-presidential-elections-335430">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: How the States vote for the Presidential elections</a>

Low-flying helicopters can, now, be often spotted flying around the area as a part of the heightened security precautions.

The&nbsp;Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has started to decide and vote on decisions. The spokesperson for the committee told Associated Press that the construction work has already begun for the stage area. however, the construction is being done keeping in mind that they might have to scale down the event due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

As per the committee's decision, the ceremony will be taking place on the&nbsp;West Front of the Capitol, and the architects will be rebuilding the stage from the scratch. This&nbsp;inaugural platform usually holds 1,600 people — which includes the President and&nbsp;Vice President (elected and outgoing),&nbsp;members of Congress and the&nbsp;Supreme Court justices. An additional attendance of 1,000 can be adjusted in the bleachers above the platform.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-how-are-votes-counted-in-the-presidential-election-335422">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: How are votes counted in the presidential election?</a>

The six-member committee will also be making a decision soon on whether or not the attendees will be asked to compulsorily wear a mask — a decision&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;has often opposed — or will they be asked to go through temperature checks and maintain social distance. The decision is not being finalised right away as the ceremony is three months away, and the decision is sensitive to the time frame.

“Traditionally, a second-term inauguration is not as big as the first, and if we have a new president taking office, numbers are typically larger,”&nbsp;Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO of Destination DC, the district’s marketing organization told Associated Press. “However, visitation to Washington, DC, during inauguration will depend on what people are able to do in the city based on Covid-19’s impact this winter, which remains to be seen.”

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-republicans-clash-with-california-officials-over-ballot-boxes-335425">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: Republicans clash with California officials over ballot boxes</a>

A spokesperson for the committee said, they are&nbsp;“committed to traditional, inclusive, and safe ceremonies and will continue to monitor the situation and provide information as it comes available.”

As the custom goes, the elected President and Vice President will be directed to a&nbsp;luncheon in National Statuary Hall where they will meet and greet their well-wishers and indulge in speeches, toasts to success and gifts. The luncheon will be followed by&nbsp;the parade and Presidential inaugural ball.

More decisions will be soon made by the time the elections conclude on November 03 — after which the White House will be preparing be vote calculation and announcement.

As the US election is coming near, the country is being bombarded with advertisements by the US President Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden.

As the US election is coming near, the country is being bombarded with advertisements by the US President Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden. Things are heating up in the White House and the authorities are running to complete all the due processes. However, the election is not the only thing that the White House is preparing for right now. The authorities have also started planning and preparing for the inauguration ceremony of the next to-be President of the United States. The local media reported the White House has started preparing for the January 20 ceremony. Also read| US election 2020: How the States vote for the Presidential elections Low-flying helicopters can, now, be often spotted flying around the area as a part of the heightened security precautions. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has started to decide and vote on decisions. The spokesperson for the committee told Associated Press that the construction work has already begun for the stage area. however, the construction is being done keeping in mind that they might have to scale down the event due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As per the committee's decision, the ceremony will be taking place on the West Front of the Capitol, and the architects will be rebuilding the stage from the scratch. This inaugural platform usually holds 1,600 people — which includes the President and Vice President (elected and outgoing), members of Congress and the Supreme Court justices. An additional attendance of 1,000 can be adjusted in the bleachers above the platform. Also read| US election 2020: How are votes counted in the presidential election? The six-member committee will also be making a decision soon on whether or not the attendees will be asked to compulsorily wear a mask — a decision Trump has often opposed — or will they be asked to go through temperature checks and maintain social distance. The decision is not being finalised right away as the ceremony is three months away, and the decision is sensitive to the time frame. “Traditionally, a second-term inauguration is not as big as the first, and if we have a new president taking office, numbers are typically larger,” Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO of Destination DC, the district’s marketing organization told Associated Press. “However, visitation to Washington, DC, during inauguration will depend on what people are able to do in the city based on Covid-19’s impact this winter, which remains to be seen.” Also read| US election 2020: Republicans clash with California officials over ballot boxes A spokesperson for the committee said, they are “committed to traditional, inclusive, and safe ceremonies and will continue to monitor the situation and provide information as it comes available.” As the custom goes, the elected President and Vice President will be directed to a luncheon in National Statuary Hall where they will meet and greet their well-wishers and indulge in speeches, toasts to success and gifts. The luncheon will be followed by the parade and Presidential inaugural ball. More decisions will be soon made by the time the elections conclude on November 03 — after which the White House will be preparing be vote calculation and announcement.

As US election near, White House starts preparations for presidential inauguration

United States national security officials has warned of foreign influence in ongoing US Election. According to the national intelligence body, Iran and Russia have obtained voter registration information to threat in and interfere in the election.

US national security officials warn of foreign influence in ongoing US Election

US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden squared off against each other in second presidential debate on Friday. This was their last one-on-one debate before November 3 polls.

<h2>Here are some of the&nbsp;quotes from the presidential debate</h2>

On coronavirus pandemic

Donald Trump: "We're fighting it and we're fighting it hard… We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away"

Joe Biden:&nbsp;"This is the same fellow told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This is the same fellow who told you that, don't worry, we're going to end this by the summer. We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan."

Joe Biden: "(Trump) says, we're learning to live with it (coronavirus). People are learning to die with it,"

Donald Trump on Dr Fauci: "I think he's a Democrat, but that's OK"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"I don't know if we're going to have a dark winter, and at all. We're opening up our country. We've learned and studied and understand the disease."

On Russia and Iran

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"You are getting a lot of money from Russia. You owe an explanation to the American people, you have to clean it up,

Joe Biden: "I haven't taken a single penny from any foreign country whatsoever"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"Joe got three and a half million dollars from Russia,"

Joe Biden: ""Russia does not want me to be elected,"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;&nbsp;"Nobody is tougher on Russia than me,"

&nbsp;

On Affordable healthcare

Donald Trump: "No matter how well you run (the Affordable Care Act), it's no good. What we'd like to do is terminate it. We have the individual mandate done. I don't know that it's going to work. If we don't win (in court) ... we'll have Obamacare but it will be better run."

Donald Trump: "Always protect people with pre-existing conditions"

Joe Biden: "We will make sure we reduce healthcare insurance premiums"

Joe BIden:&nbsp;"I am not against private insurance."

Joe Biden:&nbsp;"Healthcare is not a privilege, it's a right"

&nbsp;

On North Korea

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"When I met with Obama, he said our biggest problem is North Korea. He indicated that we will have a war with North Korea. We have a different kind of relationship with the guy and there is no war. He is not going to do that,"

DonaldTrump: "You know what? North Korea - we're not in a war. We have a good relationship."

Joe Biden: "We had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe. Come on." 
&nbsp;

On racism

Joe Biden:&nbsp;"There is institutional racism in America"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"I am the least racist person in this room."

Donald Trump: "He called black community 'super predators'"

Joe Biden: "I did not say anything he is accusing me of"

&nbsp;

On immigration

Donald Trump: "Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels..We let people in but they have to come in legally."

Joe Biden on children separated at the border: “It makes us a laughingstock and it violates every notion of who we are.” 
 
Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-joe-biden-calls-donald-trumps-immigration-policies-criminal-337306">US election 2020: Joe Biden calls Donald Trump's immigration policies 'criminal'</a> 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-joe-biden-calls-donald-trumps-immigration-policies-criminal-337306">On Climate change</a>

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"We have the best carbon emission numbers we've had in 35 years under this administration. Look&nbsp;how 'filthy'&nbsp;are Russia and China, look at India...the air is so filthy".

Donald Trump: "We have done an incredible job environmentally"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"(Wind energy) is very expensive, kills a lot of birds,"

Joe Biden: "Climate change global warming is&nbsp;existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it"

Donald Trump:&nbsp;"I will not sacrifice tens and millions of jobs, thousands and thousands of companies because of the Paris accords,"

&nbsp;

US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden squared off against each other in second presidential debate on Friday. This was their last one-on-one debate before November 3 polls.

US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden squared off against each other in second presidential debate on Friday. This was their last one-on-one debate before November 3 polls. Here are some of the quotes from the presidential debate On coronavirus pandemic Donald Trump: "We're fighting it and we're fighting it hard… We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away" Joe Biden: "This is the same fellow told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This is the same fellow who told you that, don't worry, we're going to end this by the summer. We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan." Joe Biden: "(Trump) says, we're learning to live with it (coronavirus). People are learning to die with it," Donald Trump on Dr Fauci: "I think he's a Democrat, but that's OK" Donald Trump: "I don't know if we're going to have a dark winter, and at all. We're opening up our country. We've learned and studied and understand the disease." On Russia and Iran Donald Trump: "You are getting a lot of money from Russia. You owe an explanation to the American people, you have to clean it up, Joe Biden: "I haven't taken a single penny from any foreign country whatsoever" Donald Trump: "Joe got three and a half million dollars from Russia," Joe Biden: ""Russia does not want me to be elected," Donald Trump: "Nobody is tougher on Russia than me," On Affordable healthcare Donald Trump: "No matter how well you run (the Affordable Care Act), it's no good. What we'd like to do is terminate it. We have the individual mandate done. I don't know that it's going to work. If we don't win (in court) ... we'll have Obamacare but it will be better run." Donald Trump: "Always protect people with pre-existing conditions" Joe Biden: "We will make sure we reduce healthcare insurance premiums" Joe BIden: "I am not against private insurance." Joe Biden: "Healthcare is not a privilege, it's a right" On North Korea Donald Trump: "When I met with Obama, he said our biggest problem is North Korea. He indicated that we will have a war with North Korea. We have a different kind of relationship with the guy and there is no war. He is not going to do that," DonaldTrump: "You know what? North Korea - we're not in a war. We have a good relationship." Joe Biden: "We had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe. Come on." On racism Joe Biden: "There is institutional racism in America" Donald Trump: "I am the least racist person in this room." Donald Trump: "He called black community 'super predators'" Joe Biden: "I did not say anything he is accusing me of" On immigration Donald Trump: "Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels..We let people in but they have to come in legally." Joe Biden on children separated at the border: “It makes us a laughingstock and it violates every notion of who we are.” Also Read | US election 2020: Joe Biden calls Donald Trump's immigration policies 'criminal' On Climate change Donald Trump: "We have the best carbon emission numbers we've had in 35 years under this administration. Look how 'filthy' are Russia and China, look at India...the air is so filthy". Donald Trump: "We have done an incredible job environmentally" Donald Trump: "(Wind energy) is very expensive, kills a lot of birds," Joe Biden: "Climate change global warming is existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it" Donald Trump: "I will not sacrifice tens and millions of jobs, thousands and thousands of companies because of the Paris accords,"

US Elections 2020: Quotes from Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the presidential debate

US director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe said today that Russian and Iran have obtained US voter information and taken actions to influence public opinion ahead of <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/us-election">US elections</a> on November 3.

Watch:

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Ratcliffe said both countries seek to "to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine confidence in American democracy," adding,"these actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/octopuses-predictions-us-elections-2020-where-are-the-octopuses-335387">Also Read -&nbsp;US Elections 2020: Where are the Octopuses?</a>

FBI director Christopher Wray who was present with Ratcliffe asserted that US election systems were "safe" and "resilient".

Ratcliffe informed that Iran had distributed a video implying people could send fraudulent ballots, even from outside the United States. THE US director of national intelligence said that Iran sought "to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump."

Ratcliffe's revelation comes as the Justice Department 92 web domains used by Iran.

"The domain names "newsstand7.com" "usjournal.net" "usjournal.us" and "twtoday.net" were operated by or on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to influence United States domestic and foreign policy," the Justice Department said.

The other 88 domains "spread Iranian propaganda" targeted at Western Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, it added.

"We will continue to use all of our tools to stop the Iranian Government from misusing US companies and social media to spread propaganda covertly, to attempt to influence the American public secretly, and to sow discord," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said.

US director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe said today that Russian and Iran have obtained US voter information and taken actions to influence public opinion ahead of US elections on November 3.

US director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe said today that Russian and Iran have obtained US voter information and taken actions to influence public opinion ahead of US elections on November 3. Watch: Ratcliffe said both countries seek to "to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine confidence in American democracy," adding,"these actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries." Also Read - US Elections 2020: Where are the Octopuses? FBI director Christopher Wray who was present with Ratcliffe asserted that US election systems were "safe" and "resilient". Ratcliffe informed that Iran had distributed a video implying people could send fraudulent ballots, even from outside the United States. THE US director of national intelligence said that Iran sought "to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump." Ratcliffe's revelation comes as the Justice Department 92 web domains used by Iran. "The domain names "newsstand7.com" "usjournal.net" "usjournal.us" and "twtoday.net" were operated by or on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to influence United States domestic and foreign policy," the Justice Department said. The other 88 domains "spread Iranian propaganda" targeted at Western Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, it added. "We will continue to use all of our tools to stop the Iranian Government from misusing US companies and social media to spread propaganda covertly, to attempt to influence the American public secretly, and to sow discord," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said.

Iran, Russia obtained voter registration information, says US intelligence director John Ratcliffe

In a fresh step in its confrontation with China, US has designated operations of six China-based media companies as foreign missions. Such a designation requires the outlets to inform the US State Department of their personnel rosters and real-estate holdings. US Secretary of Stae Mike Pompeo said that the fresh step was taken to resist communist propoganda. Pompeo also said that the US is going to start a dialogue with European Union on China.

The State Department named the newly designated publications as the Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, the Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, the Beijing Review, and the Economic Daily. It brought to 15 the number of Chinese media outlets so designated this year.

It was the latest U.S. step to curb Chinese activity in the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump has made a tough approach to China a key foreign policy theme.

Pompeo said the move was part of efforts to push back against "Chinese communist propaganda efforts" in the United States.

"They are also substantially owned, or effectively controlled by a foreign government," he said.

Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-what-to-expect-as-donald-trump-joe-biden-gear-up-for-final-presidential-debate-337034">What to expect as Donald Trump, Joe Biden gear up for final debate</a>

"We are not placing any restrictions on what these outlets can publish in the United States; we simply want to ensure that American people, consumers of information can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself. Not the same thing."

The editor-in-chief of Chinese state-backed Global Times newspaper said in a tweet that the U.S. had "gone too far" and that China would retaliate.

"As long as Chinese media outlets suffer actual harm, Beijing will definitely retaliate, and US media outlets' operation in HK could be included in retaliation list," Hu Xijin said.

The State Department has required Chinese media outlets to register as foreign missions and announced in March it was cutting the number of journalists allowed to work at U.S. offices of major Chinese media outlets to 100 from 160.

In response, China expelled about a dozen American correspondents with the New York Times, News Corp's Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The United States also said last month it would require senior Chinese diplomats to get State Department approval before visiting U.S. university campuses or holding cultural events with more than 50 people outside mission grounds.

China's embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington designated four major Chinese media outlets as foreign embassies in June and five in February.&nbsp;

(With Reuters inputs) 
&nbsp;

In a fresh step in its confrontation with China, US has designated operations of six China-based media companies as foreign missions. Such a designation requires the outlets to inform the US State Department of their personnel rosters and real-estate holdings.

In a fresh step in its confrontation with China, US has designated operations of six China-based media companies as foreign missions. Such a designation requires the outlets to inform the US State Department of their personnel rosters and real-estate holdings. US Secretary of Stae Mike Pompeo said that the fresh step was taken to resist communist propoganda. Pompeo also said that the US is going to start a dialogue with European Union on China. The State Department named the newly designated publications as the Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, the Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, the Beijing Review, and the Economic Daily. It brought to 15 the number of Chinese media outlets so designated this year. It was the latest U.S. step to curb Chinese activity in the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump has made a tough approach to China a key foreign policy theme. Pompeo said the move was part of efforts to push back against "Chinese communist propaganda efforts" in the United States. "They are also substantially owned, or effectively controlled by a foreign government," he said. Also Read: What to expect as Donald Trump, Joe Biden gear up for final debate "We are not placing any restrictions on what these outlets can publish in the United States; we simply want to ensure that American people, consumers of information can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself. Not the same thing." The editor-in-chief of Chinese state-backed Global Times newspaper said in a tweet that the U.S. had "gone too far" and that China would retaliate. "As long as Chinese media outlets suffer actual harm, Beijing will definitely retaliate, and US media outlets' operation in HK could be included in retaliation list," Hu Xijin said. The State Department has required Chinese media outlets to register as foreign missions and announced in March it was cutting the number of journalists allowed to work at U.S. offices of major Chinese media outlets to 100 from 160. In response, China expelled about a dozen American correspondents with the New York Times, News Corp's Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The United States also said last month it would require senior Chinese diplomats to get State Department approval before visiting U.S. university campuses or holding cultural events with more than 50 people outside mission grounds. China's embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington designated four major Chinese media outlets as foreign embassies in June and five in February. (With Reuters inputs)

Days ahead of elections, US designates six Chinese firms as foreign missions

Joe Biden's not-so-secret weapon Barack Obama to make his debut at the campaign trail. The former Commander-in-chief will headline a drive-in rally in the key swing state of Pennsylvania. Can Obama end trump's presidency?

Biden's former boss comes to the rescue

After casting doubts about Joe Biden's standing with China & cornering Hunter Biden, is now hit by another bombshell report. From trade war to constant barbs over the origin of Pandemic, was everything a cover up? WION reports on Trump's link with CHINA.

Donald Trump: China crusader or covert ally?

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

But Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.

The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.

The tax records do not include details on how much money may have passed through the overseas accounts, though the Internal Revenue Service does require filers to report the portion of their income derived from other countries. The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China.

In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.”

“No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Garten said. “Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.”

Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president.

China continues to be an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, from the president’s trade war to his barbs over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. His campaign has tried to portray Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office.

“He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Trump said recently, referring to Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”

In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the president has said the younger Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fundraising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10% stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fundraising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout.

As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them.

As with Russia, where he explored hotel and tower projects in Moscow without success, Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.)

In 2008, Trump pursued an office tower project in Guangzhou that never got off the ground. But his efforts accelerated in 2012 with the opening of a Shanghai office, and tax records show that one of Trump’s China-related companies, THC China Development LLC, claimed $84,000 in deductions that year for travel costs, legal fees and office expenses.

After effectively planting his flag there, Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corp., one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities.

It is difficult to determine from the tax records precisely how much money Trump has spent trying to land business in China. The records show that he has invested at least $192,000 in five small companies created specifically to pursue projects there over the years. Those companies claimed at least $97,400 in business expenses since 2010, including some minor payments for taxes and accounting fees as recently as 2018.

But Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account.

The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses.

In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Trump from the company’s capital account.

On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.” One significant event for the company that is known to have occurred in 2017 was the buyout of its management contract for the Soho Hotel in New York, which Bloomberg reported to have cost around $6 million.

Garten would not comment on the specific amount cited by Bloomberg, but said that the contract buyout represented a “significant portion” of the company’s revenue and that the remaining money was not related to China.

Outside of China, Trump has had more success attracting wealthy Chinese buyers for his properties in other countries. His hotels and towers in Las Vegas and Vancouver, British Columbia — locales known for drawing Chinese real estate investors — have found numerous Chinese purchasers, and in at least one instance drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units, for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two FBI agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry.

Garten said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and has no knowledge of any investigation.”

In Vancouver, numerous Chinese buyers of units in Trump’s hotel and tower helped increase licensing fees from that project to $5.8 million in 2016, the year it was completed, according to tax records. The project was built by a Canadian-based firm controlled by the family of Malaysia’s richest man, Tony Tiah Thee Kian, who operates hotels in China and elsewhere. CNN reported in 2018 that the Vancouver operation was the subject of a counterintelligence review related to Ivanka Trump’s need for a security clearance.

And not long after winning the 2016 election, Trump reported selling a penthouse in one of his Manhattan buildings for $15.8 million to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen, who bought the unit, previously occupied by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in an off-market transaction. Chen runs an international consulting firm and reportedly has high-level connections to government and political elites in China.

Trump’s tax records show that he reported a capital gain of at least $5.6 million from the penthouse sale in 2017, his first year as president.

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there. Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.” But Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company. And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear. The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015. The tax records do not include details on how much money may have passed through the overseas accounts, though the Internal Revenue Service does require filers to report the portion of their income derived from other countries. The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China. In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.” “No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Garten said. “Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.” Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president. China continues to be an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, from the president’s trade war to his barbs over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. His campaign has tried to portray Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office. “He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Trump said recently, referring to Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.” In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the president has said the younger Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fundraising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10% stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fundraising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout. As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them. As with Russia, where he explored hotel and tower projects in Moscow without success, Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.) In 2008, Trump pursued an office tower project in Guangzhou that never got off the ground. But his efforts accelerated in 2012 with the opening of a Shanghai office, and tax records show that one of Trump’s China-related companies, THC China Development LLC, claimed $84,000 in deductions that year for travel costs, legal fees and office expenses. After effectively planting his flag there, Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corp., one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities. It is difficult to determine from the tax records precisely how much money Trump has spent trying to land business in China. The records show that he has invested at least $192,000 in five small companies created specifically to pursue projects there over the years. Those companies claimed at least $97,400 in business expenses since 2010, including some minor payments for taxes and accounting fees as recently as 2018. But Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account. The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses. In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Trump from the company’s capital account. On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.” One significant event for the company that is known to have occurred in 2017 was the buyout of its management contract for the Soho Hotel in New York, which Bloomberg reported to have cost around $6 million. Garten would not comment on the specific amount cited by Bloomberg, but said that the contract buyout represented a “significant portion” of the company’s revenue and that the remaining money was not related to China. Outside of China, Trump has had more success attracting wealthy Chinese buyers for his properties in other countries. His hotels and towers in Las Vegas and Vancouver, British Columbia — locales known for drawing Chinese real estate investors — have found numerous Chinese purchasers, and in at least one instance drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units, for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two FBI agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry. Garten said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and has no knowledge of any investigation.” In Vancouver, numerous Chinese buyers of units in Trump’s hotel and tower helped increase licensing fees from that project to $5.8 million in 2016, the year it was completed, according to tax records. The project was built by a Canadian-based firm controlled by the family of Malaysia’s richest man, Tony Tiah Thee Kian, who operates hotels in China and elsewhere. CNN reported in 2018 that the Vancouver operation was the subject of a counterintelligence review related to Ivanka Trump’s need for a security clearance. And not long after winning the 2016 election, Trump reported selling a penthouse in one of his Manhattan buildings for $15.8 million to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen, who bought the unit, previously occupied by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in an off-market transaction. Chen runs an international consulting firm and reportedly has high-level connections to government and political elites in China. Trump’s tax records show that he reported a capital gain of at least $5.6 million from the penthouse sale in 2017, his first year as president.

Trump records shed new light on Chinese business pursuits

US election 2020 - While the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden gets intenser by day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came up with a new way to promote voting among the masses.

AOC, as she is commonly known as, the US Congresswoman from New York’s 14th congressional district has always stirred up a storm&nbsp;- be it during her speeches, or on social media.

Recently, the Congresswoman took up a new challenge - video games! Ocasio-Cortez played the game “Among Us” on Twitch, a video game sharing platform, to raise awareness about the upcoming elections in the US, and to urge viewers to vote as the November 3 nears.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/culture-of-sexism-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-hits-back-at-republican-ted-yohos-derogatory-slur-315649" hreflang="en">'Culture of sexism': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hits back at Republican Ted Yoho's derogatory slur</a>

She was joined by a fellow Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and YouTubers like Pokimane, Hasanabi, and Jack Septic Eye.

On Monday night, AOC had tweeted out her plans to play the game. "Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote?"&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1318276809977434112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

AOC added that was unfamiliar with the game, and that she had never played it, while saying that it looks like a “lot of fun”.

Later on the same say, she tweeted the following - "Spent tonight setting up accounts, mods, streaming &amp; run throughs. Hoping to go live tomorrow night”.

Take a look below:&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> is playing Among Us with <a href="https://twitter.com/pokimanelol?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@pokimanelol</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hasanthehun?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@hasanthehun</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/DrLupo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DrLupo</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IlhanMN</a> to help people make voting plans. <a href="https://t.co/SJq9TZzv7B">pic.twitter.com/SJq9TZzv7B</a>
— B/R Gaming (@BRGaming) <a href="https://twitter.com/BRGaming/status/1318722398099628032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

Even before going live, she had amassed over 220,000 followers. AOC received praise from gamers for playing as well as she did, considering she had never played the game before. In the game, she played the role of an “imposter”. Their job is basically… killing! And that she did!

At least 700,000 people tuned into the live stream, according to Forbes.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-policemen-fired-for-suggesting-democratic-lawmaker-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-be-shot-237858" hreflang="en">US policemen fired for suggesting Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be shot</a>

“Among Us” is inspired by space, and developed by InnerSloth. Out of the ten people playing at once, three are assigned “imposters”. The other crew mates have to protect the spaceship and prevent imposters from sabotaging their goals.

Here are some Twitter reactions!

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AOC just did the most amateur kill ever and im howling laughing at the fact she got away with it <a href="https://t.co/NV01ZJf5Bt">pic.twitter.com/NV01ZJf5Bt</a>
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) <a href="https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/1318724905207214080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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highlights from the <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> among us stream - my love for this woman knows no bounds 💖 <a href="https://t.co/aZErKVAlVw">https://t.co/aZErKVAlVw</a> <a href="https://t.co/OCa06KMuob">pic.twitter.com/OCa06KMuob</a>
— lindsay (@levlinds) <a href="https://twitter.com/levlinds/status/1318801851375099904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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US election 2020 - While the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden gets intenser by day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came up with a new way to promote voting among the masses.

US election 2020 - While the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden gets intenser by day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came up with a new way to promote voting among the masses. AOC, as she is commonly known as, the US Congresswoman from New York’s 14th congressional district has always stirred up a storm - be it during her speeches, or on social media. Recently, the Congresswoman took up a new challenge - video games! Ocasio-Cortez played the game “Among Us” on Twitch, a video game sharing platform, to raise awareness about the upcoming elections in the US, and to urge viewers to vote as the November 3 nears. Also read: 'Culture of sexism': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hits back at Republican Ted Yoho's derogatory slur She was joined by a fellow Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and YouTubers like Pokimane, Hasanabi, and Jack Septic Eye. On Monday night, AOC had tweeted out her plans to play the game. "Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote?" Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 19, 2020 × AOC added that was unfamiliar with the game, and that she had never played it, while saying that it looks like a “lot of fun”. Later on the same say, she tweeted the following - "Spent tonight setting up accounts, mods, streaming & run throughs. Hoping to go live tomorrow night”. Take a look below: .@AOC is playing Among Us with @pokimanelol, @hasanthehun, @DrLupo and @IlhanMN to help people make voting plans. pic.twitter.com/SJq9TZzv7B — B/R Gaming (@BRGaming) October 21, 2020 × Even before going live, she had amassed over 220,000 followers. AOC received praise from gamers for playing as well as she did, considering she had never played the game before. In the game, she played the role of an “imposter”. Their job is basically… killing! And that she did! At least 700,000 people tuned into the live stream, according to Forbes. Also read: US policemen fired for suggesting Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be shot “Among Us” is inspired by space, and developed by InnerSloth. Out of the ten people playing at once, three are assigned “imposters”. The other crew mates have to protect the spaceship and prevent imposters from sabotaging their goals. Here are some Twitter reactions! AOC just did the most amateur kill ever and im howling laughing at the fact she got away with it pic.twitter.com/NV01ZJf5Bt — Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) October 21, 2020 × highlights from the @AOC among us stream - my love for this woman knows no bounds 💖 https://t.co/aZErKVAlVw pic.twitter.com/OCa06KMuob — lindsay (@levlinds) October 21, 2020 ×

Internet in splits after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays 'Among Us' to urge viewers to vote

US election 2020: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? 15 days to go for the big election day, and faith has now taken the centre stage. Both the president and his challenger are eager to showcase how their campaigns are guided by faith.

All of a sudden, the US president loves going to churches. His rival Joe Biden is attending mass ceremonies. The US president attended a church services at the International Church of Las Vegas, an evangelical mega-church with contemporary musical programmes.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-religion-takes-centerstage-in-us-election-336537/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Trump has always worked closely with evangelical Christians and has put their causes of restricting abortion and preserving gun ownership on top of his political agenda.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-election-2020-trump-and-biden-finally-agree-on-something-as-november-3-nears-336482" hreflang="en">US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as November 3 nears</a>

Addressing the gathering, one of the pastors said that at 4:30 the lord told her that Trump was going to be the president again.

“At 4.30 (am), the Lord said to me,Ii am going to give your president a second win. (cheering) this has three meanings, a win. And you will be the president again”, Denise Goulet, Senior Associate Pastor, International Church of Las Vegas.

The congregation then began praying for their president. As they prayed, Donald Trump kept himself busy counting money before he donated it.

After much deliberation, Trump settled for 20 dollars and dropped them in a bucket titled “change for change”. His critics say, the billionaire president should have donated more. Trump's supporters say - they couldn't care less.

“Everything he has promised to do, he has taken care of. The best economy that we have had in quite a while, he has built the wall, umm....What am I missing?”, David Tainowitz, a Trump supporter said.

“I do honestly feel that what's happening now, with the most corrupt man to ever have run for president, in John, Joe, John, I’m getting like him, Joe Biden, then you deserve to vote for him and you get what you get. I think Trump is the best man we have ever had”, another supporter said.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-election-2020-key-states-that-will-likely-decide-fate-of-donald-trump-and-joe-biden-336311" hreflang="en">US election 2020: Key states that will likely decide fate of Donald Trump and Joe Biden</a>

Last week, Joe Biden was spotted leaving a mass ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden has frequently stressed on how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official. On Sunday, he participated in a virtual event with African-American faith leaders. He asked the leaders to pray for him to have the capacity to carry out his job when he becomes the president.

“Pray I have the capacity to step up and do this job, because four more years of Donald Trump will fundamentally change the nature of this country for several generations”, Biden was heard saying.

Donald Trump is trying to woo white evangelicals., Biden is catering to black protestants. Both their campaigns are working hard to court other key religious blocks.

But how much of a role does religion really play in the US election?

The Pew Research Centre recently conducted a survey of the key religious blocks. 78 per cent of white evangelical protestants said they will vote for Trump if the election were held today. Only 17 per cent prefer Biden.&nbsp;

White non-evangelical protestants:&nbsp;53 per cent said they would vote for Trump. 43 per cent said they lean towards the Democrats.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-election-donald-trump-claims-his-campaign-is-doing-very-very-well-336290" hreflang="en">US election: Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well'</a>

Among white catholic voters, Trump is again ahead by 8 percentage points. 52 per cent in this group said they would vote for Trump and 44 per cent favoured Biden. Among black protestant voters, 90 per cent favour Biden, while only 9 per cent say they would vote for Trump. Among hispanic&nbsp;catholics too, Biden leads with 67 per cent favouring him, and 26 per cent saying they would vote for Trump. Among Jewish Americans, 27 per cent say they will vote for Trump, and over 70 per cent say they prefer Biden.

Among atheist and agnostic voters, only 11 per cent say they will vote for Trump, while 83 per cent say they prefer Biden.

What do the figures tell?

There are deep divisions among white Christians and almost everybody else. Most of them support Donald Trump, and they account for roughly 44 per cent of registered American voters.

Will they manage to give their president another term?

US election 2020: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? 15 days to go for the big election day, and faith has now taken the centre stage. Both the president and his challenger are eager to showcase how their campaigns are guided by faith.

US election 2020: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? 15 days to go for the big election day, and faith has now taken the centre stage. Both the president and his challenger are eager to showcase how their campaigns are guided by faith. All of a sudden, the US president loves going to churches. His rival Joe Biden is attending mass ceremonies. The US president attended a church services at the International Church of Las Vegas, an evangelical mega-church with contemporary musical programmes. Trump has always worked closely with evangelical Christians and has put their causes of restricting abortion and preserving gun ownership on top of his political agenda. Also read: US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as November 3 nears Addressing the gathering, one of the pastors said that at 4:30 the lord told her that Trump was going to be the president again. “At 4.30 (am), the Lord said to me,Ii am going to give your president a second win. (cheering) this has three meanings, a win. And you will be the president again”, Denise Goulet, Senior Associate Pastor, International Church of Las Vegas. The congregation then began praying for their president. As they prayed, Donald Trump kept himself busy counting money before he donated it. After much deliberation, Trump settled for 20 dollars and dropped them in a bucket titled “change for change”. His critics say, the billionaire president should have donated more. Trump's supporters say - they couldn't care less. “Everything he has promised to do, he has taken care of. The best economy that we have had in quite a while, he has built the wall, umm....What am I missing?”, David Tainowitz, a Trump supporter said. “I do honestly feel that what's happening now, with the most corrupt man to ever have run for president, in John, Joe, John, I’m getting like him, Joe Biden, then you deserve to vote for him and you get what you get. I think Trump is the best man we have ever had”, another supporter said. Also read: US election 2020: Key states that will likely decide fate of Donald Trump and Joe Biden Last week, Joe Biden was spotted leaving a mass ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden has frequently stressed on how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official. On Sunday, he participated in a virtual event with African-American faith leaders. He asked the leaders to pray for him to have the capacity to carry out his job when he becomes the president. “Pray I have the capacity to step up and do this job, because four more years of Donald Trump will fundamentally change the nature of this country for several generations”, Biden was heard saying. Donald Trump is trying to woo white evangelicals., Biden is catering to black protestants. Both their campaigns are working hard to court other key religious blocks. But how much of a role does religion really play in the US election? The Pew Research Centre recently conducted a survey of the key religious blocks. 78 per cent of white evangelical protestants said they will vote for Trump if the election were held today. Only 17 per cent prefer Biden. White non-evangelical protestants: 53 per cent said they would vote for Trump. 43 per cent said they lean towards the Democrats. Also read: US election: Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well' Among white catholic voters, Trump is again ahead by 8 percentage points. 52 per cent in this group said they would vote for Trump and 44 per cent favoured Biden. Among black protestant voters, 90 per cent favour Biden, while only 9 per cent say they would vote for Trump. Among hispanic catholics too, Biden leads with 67 per cent favouring him, and 26 per cent saying they would vote for Trump. Among Jewish Americans, 27 per cent say they will vote for Trump, and over 70 per cent say they prefer Biden. Among atheist and agnostic voters, only 11 per cent say they will vote for Trump, while 83 per cent say they prefer Biden. What do the figures tell? There are deep divisions among white Christians and almost everybody else. Most of them support Donald Trump, and they account for roughly 44 per cent of registered American voters. Will they manage to give their president another term?

US election 2020: Biden-Trump campaigns and the role of faith in American elections

Joe Biden holds a 9-point lead over President Donald Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

With just two weeks left in the campaign, Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Biden to manage the economy.

On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Biden over Trump by modest or wide margins. Biden, the former vice president, is favored over Trump to lead on the coronavirus pandemic by 12 points, and voters trust Biden over Trump to choose Supreme Court justices and to maintain law and order by 6-point margins. Americans see Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-elections-mics-to-be-muted-in-next-us-presidential-debate-between-trump-and-biden-to-stop-interruptions-336543" hreflang="en">US elections: Mics to be muted in presidential debate to stop interruptions</a>

Overall, Biden is backed by 50% of likely voters, the poll showed, compared with 41% for Trump and 3% divided among other candidates.Most of all, the survey makes clear that crucial constituencies are poised to reject Trump because they cannot abide his conduct, including 56% of women and 53% of white voters with college degrees who said they had a very unfavorable impression of Trump — an extraordinary level of antipathy toward an incumbent president.

His diminished standing on economic matters and law and order is a damaging setback for the president, who for much of the general election has staked his fortunes on persuading Americans that a Biden administration will leave them impoverished and unsafe. But that argument has not managed to move the electorate in his direction.

Nor, according to the poll, have Trump’s efforts to tarnish Biden’s personal image and make him unacceptable to swing voters. Fifty-three percent of voters said they viewed Biden in somewhat or very favorable terms, compared with 43% who said the same of Trump.

A majority of voters said they saw Trump unfavorably, with 48% viewing him very unfavorably.

The margin of sampling error for the poll, which was conducted from Oct. 15 to 18, was 3.4 percentage points.

Part of the shift away from Trump on the economy may stem from voters’ urgent hunger for new relief spending from the federal government — which Trump has nominally endorsed but which he has not sought actively to extract from congressional Republicans.

Seven in 10 voters, including more than half of Republicans, said they wanted to see a new multitrillion-dollar stimulus program that includes government support for citizens and emergency help for state and local governments. There is also widespread public support for a $2 trillion renewable energy and infrastructure package that Biden has proposed as a form of economic stimulus.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-trump-and-biden-finally-agree-on-something-as-november-3-nears-336482" hreflang="en">US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as Nov 3 nears</a>

Michael Zemaitis, an independent voter in Minnesota, said that he did not have complete confidence in Biden but that he saw him as a clearly superior option to Trump when it came to the pandemic and the economy.

“I guess I would say I have 70% confidence in him,” said Zemaitis, 49, who said he believed a Democratic administration would better handle the coronavirus pandemic. “Once that is dealt with, the economy will fall back into line.”

Voters have also been unpersuaded by Trump’s insistence, in defiance of public facts, that the coronavirus is receding as a problem. A slim majority of voters said they believed that the worst of the pandemic was yet to come, compared with 37% who said the worst was over.

But many voters also seem to be separating their personal well-being from their views on the state of the country. About half said that they were personally better off than they were four years ago, compared with 32% who said they were worse off. However, a clear majority of voters — 55% — said the country as a whole was doing worse than in 2016.

Trump retains a few important bastions of support, most notably among white voters without college degrees, who continue to favor him over Biden by 23 percentage points. But that lead is far narrower than the advantage Trump held among less-educated whites in 2016, when those voters preferred him over Hillary Clinton by 37 points.

Biden is on track to win with the overwhelming support of women, people of color and whites with college degrees. If women alone voted, the election would be a landslide of epic proportions: Biden is ahead of Trump among female voters by 23 points, 58% to 35%. And unlike four years ago, the Democratic nominee is leading Trump among white women by a formidable margin, 52% to 43%.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-prepared-are-these-7-battlegrounds-for-the-election-a-readiness-report-336489" hreflang="en">How prepared are these 7 battlegrounds for the election? A readiness report</a>

Kathryn Jorgensen, 51, a registered Republican in Brookfield, Wisconsin, said that she did not vote for Trump in 2016 and would not do so this year. Trump, she said, has been “so divisive” throughout his tenure as president.

“The important thing is bringing the country back together and addressing the divisions affecting people like racial equity,” Jorgensen said.

A rare spot of welcome news for Republicans came on the subject of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court: While more voters said they would like to see Biden choose future justices, rather than Trump, a plurality of voters also said that the Senate should vote on Barrett’s nomination before the election.

Voters were about evenly split on Barrett as a nominee, indicating that the Supreme Court fight had not given a clear electoral advantage to either party. But a sizable number of voters — about 1 in 7 — gave no opinion, suggesting the court fight had not become an all-consuming issue. Forty-four percent of voters supported Barrett’s nomination, 42% opposed it, and the remainder declined to take a position.

If Biden win the election, it remains to be seen whether he will be a compelling enough president to meld a broad array of anti-Trump constituencies into a sturdy governing alliance.

Cassandra Williams, 21, of Greenville, North Carolina, said she saw Biden as a flawed candidate who might nevertheless be sufficient for the moment. A college student majoring in chemistry, Williams said she hoped he would focus on the coronavirus and climate change at the outset of his presidency.

“If his opponent wasn’t President Trump, he would be a subpar candidate,” said Williams, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary race.

The poll shows that Trump is facing widespread rebuke because he has not met the great challenge of his presidency.

Voters remain deeply concerned about the virus, with 51% of those sampled saying they feared the worst of COVID-19 was still to come, and just 37% saying they believed the worst was over. Among voters over 65, a bloc that has drifted away from Trump, the difference was even starker: Fifty-six percent said they worried the worst was still to come, and only 29% said the opposite.

Even more striking was the disconnect between Trump’s cavalier approach toward wearing a mask to guard against the virus and the broad support to mandate the practice in public.

Voters supported mandatory mask-wearing, 59% to 39% overall, and among women support for a mandate grew to 70%. Among voters over 65, 68% favored it, and even about 30% of Republicans said they backed a nationwide requirement.

There was also hesitation on taking an eventual vaccine for the coronavirus, with 33% saying they would definitely or probably not take a vaccine after it was approved by the FDA.

Joe Biden holds a 9-point lead over President Donald Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

Joe Biden holds a 9-point lead over President Donald Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. With just two weeks left in the campaign, Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Biden to manage the economy. On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Biden over Trump by modest or wide margins. Biden, the former vice president, is favored over Trump to lead on the coronavirus pandemic by 12 points, and voters trust Biden over Trump to choose Supreme Court justices and to maintain law and order by 6-point margins. Americans see Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points. Also read: US elections: Mics to be muted in presidential debate to stop interruptions Overall, Biden is backed by 50% of likely voters, the poll showed, compared with 41% for Trump and 3% divided among other candidates.Most of all, the survey makes clear that crucial constituencies are poised to reject Trump because they cannot abide his conduct, including 56% of women and 53% of white voters with college degrees who said they had a very unfavorable impression of Trump — an extraordinary level of antipathy toward an incumbent president. His diminished standing on economic matters and law and order is a damaging setback for the president, who for much of the general election has staked his fortunes on persuading Americans that a Biden administration will leave them impoverished and unsafe. But that argument has not managed to move the electorate in his direction. Nor, according to the poll, have Trump’s efforts to tarnish Biden’s personal image and make him unacceptable to swing voters. Fifty-three percent of voters said they viewed Biden in somewhat or very favorable terms, compared with 43% who said the same of Trump. A majority of voters said they saw Trump unfavorably, with 48% viewing him very unfavorably. The margin of sampling error for the poll, which was conducted from Oct. 15 to 18, was 3.4 percentage points. Part of the shift away from Trump on the economy may stem from voters’ urgent hunger for new relief spending from the federal government — which Trump has nominally endorsed but which he has not sought actively to extract from congressional Republicans. Seven in 10 voters, including more than half of Republicans, said they wanted to see a new multitrillion-dollar stimulus program that includes government support for citizens and emergency help for state and local governments. There is also widespread public support for a $2 trillion renewable energy and infrastructure package that Biden has proposed as a form of economic stimulus. Also read: US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as Nov 3 nears Michael Zemaitis, an independent voter in Minnesota, said that he did not have complete confidence in Biden but that he saw him as a clearly superior option to Trump when it came to the pandemic and the economy. “I guess I would say I have 70% confidence in him,” said Zemaitis, 49, who said he believed a Democratic administration would better handle the coronavirus pandemic. “Once that is dealt with, the economy will fall back into line.” Voters have also been unpersuaded by Trump’s insistence, in defiance of public facts, that the coronavirus is receding as a problem. A slim majority of voters said they believed that the worst of the pandemic was yet to come, compared with 37% who said the worst was over. But many voters also seem to be separating their personal well-being from their views on the state of the country. About half said that they were personally better off than they were four years ago, compared with 32% who said they were worse off. However, a clear majority of voters — 55% — said the country as a whole was doing worse than in 2016. Trump retains a few important bastions of support, most notably among white voters without college degrees, who continue to favor him over Biden by 23 percentage points. But that lead is far narrower than the advantage Trump held among less-educated whites in 2016, when those voters preferred him over Hillary Clinton by 37 points. Biden is on track to win with the overwhelming support of women, people of color and whites with college degrees. If women alone voted, the election would be a landslide of epic proportions: Biden is ahead of Trump among female voters by 23 points, 58% to 35%. And unlike four years ago, the Democratic nominee is leading Trump among white women by a formidable margin, 52% to 43%. Also read: How prepared are these 7 battlegrounds for the election? A readiness report Kathryn Jorgensen, 51, a registered Republican in Brookfield, Wisconsin, said that she did not vote for Trump in 2016 and would not do so this year. Trump, she said, has been “so divisive” throughout his tenure as president. “The important thing is bringing the country back together and addressing the divisions affecting people like racial equity,” Jorgensen said. A rare spot of welcome news for Republicans came on the subject of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court: While more voters said they would like to see Biden choose future justices, rather than Trump, a plurality of voters also said that the Senate should vote on Barrett’s nomination before the election. Voters were about evenly split on Barrett as a nominee, indicating that the Supreme Court fight had not given a clear electoral advantage to either party. But a sizable number of voters — about 1 in 7 — gave no opinion, suggesting the court fight had not become an all-consuming issue. Forty-four percent of voters supported Barrett’s nomination, 42% opposed it, and the remainder declined to take a position. If Biden win the election, it remains to be seen whether he will be a compelling enough president to meld a broad array of anti-Trump constituencies into a sturdy governing alliance. Cassandra Williams, 21, of Greenville, North Carolina, said she saw Biden as a flawed candidate who might nevertheless be sufficient for the moment. A college student majoring in chemistry, Williams said she hoped he would focus on the coronavirus and climate change at the outset of his presidency. “If his opponent wasn’t President Trump, he would be a subpar candidate,” said Williams, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary race. The poll shows that Trump is facing widespread rebuke because he has not met the great challenge of his presidency. Voters remain deeply concerned about the virus, with 51% of those sampled saying they feared the worst of COVID-19 was still to come, and just 37% saying they believed the worst was over. Among voters over 65, a bloc that has drifted away from Trump, the difference was even starker: Fifty-six percent said they worried the worst was still to come, and only 29% said the opposite. Even more striking was the disconnect between Trump’s cavalier approach toward wearing a mask to guard against the virus and the broad support to mandate the practice in public. Voters supported mandatory mask-wearing, 59% to 39% overall, and among women support for a mandate grew to 70%. Among voters over 65, 68% favored it, and even about 30% of Republicans said they backed a nationwide requirement. There was also hesitation on taking an eventual vaccine for the coronavirus, with 33% saying they would definitely or probably not take a vaccine after it was approved by the FDA.

Voters prefer Biden over Trump on almost all major issues, poll shows

As the United States prepares to go to the polls on <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/us-election">November 3</a>, President Donald Trump called on his supporters to deliver Democrats "a thundering defeat" at a campaign rally in Tuscon, Arizona.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/can-you-do-the-trumpdancechallenge-us-election-2020-new-york-direct-336521/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

"We are rounding the turn. We have the vaccines coming and all, but even without. We're rounding the turn. People are pandemic-ed out. You know that their pandemic-ed out," Trump said.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-calls-coronavirus-expert-anthony-fauci-a-disaster-336526">Also Read:&nbsp;Trump calls coronavirus expert Anthony Fauci a 'disaster'</a>

"And by the way, you get it. You know, like I say, here I am. I'm here. I'm here. And now I'm immune. I can jump into this audience and kiss every man and woman.I'm immune Right? They say," the US president said.

Amid the raging poll campaign, the US Commission on Presidential Debates said it will mute the microphones of President Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden when they are not answering questions during their final TV debate.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-trump-and-biden-finally-agree-on-something-as-november-3-nears-336482">Also Read: US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as November 3 nears</a>

Each candidate will be allotted two minutes to answer the moderator's questions and the other contender's mic will be shut off at that time.

However, Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepie 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 an advantage to their favoured candidate."

According to news site Axios, Trump had interrupted Biden 71 times compared to Biden who interrupted the US president 22 times. Trump and Biden are due to debate for the last time on Thursday before the November 3 election.

As the United States prepares to go to the polls on November 3, President Donald Trump called on his supporters to deliver Democrats "a thundering defeat" at a campaign rally in Tuscon, Arizona.

As the United States prepares to go to the polls on November 3, President Donald Trump called on his supporters to deliver Democrats "a thundering defeat" at a campaign rally in Tuscon, Arizona. Watch: "We are rounding the turn. We have the vaccines coming and all, but even without. We're rounding the turn. People are pandemic-ed out. You know that their pandemic-ed out," Trump said. Also Read: Trump calls coronavirus expert Anthony Fauci a 'disaster' "And by the way, you get it. You know, like I say, here I am. I'm here. I'm here. And now I'm immune. I can jump into this audience and kiss every man and woman.I'm immune Right? They say," the US president said. Amid the raging poll campaign, the US Commission on Presidential Debates said it will mute the microphones of President Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden when they are not answering questions during their final TV debate. Also Read: US election 2020: Trump and Biden finally agree on something as November 3 nears Each candidate will be allotted two minutes to answer the moderator's questions and the other contender's mic will be shut off at that time. However, Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepie 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 an advantage to their favoured candidate." According to news site Axios, Trump had interrupted Biden 71 times compared to Biden who interrupted the US president 22 times. Trump and Biden are due to debate for the last time on Thursday before the November 3 election.

US elections: Mics to be muted in next US presidential debate between Trump and Biden to stop interruptions

The final presidential debate between Donald Trump & his Democratic rival Joe Biden will feature a 'mute button' to allow each candidate to speak uninterrupted.

US Election 2020: Final Trump-Biden Presidential debate will feature 'mute button'

Early voting has begun in Florida, a 'battleground' state, which could decide the outcome of the November 03, Presidential election.

US Election 2020: Early voting underway in 'battleground' Florida

US President Donald Trump lashed out at the government's top infectious disease expert that is Dr Anthony Fauci, referring to Fauci & other health officials as 'idiots'.

US Election 2020: Trump lashes out at NIAID Director Dr Anthony Fauci

In Georgia, the state’s voting machines have malfunctioned in three consecutive elections this year alone.

In Pennsylvania, election officials are staring down possibly the biggest ballot processing backlog in the country, with no means of even touching the ballots until polls open on Election Day.

And in North Carolina, thousands of submitted absentee ballots are currently in purgatory, neither rejected nor accepted but “under review,” amid a back-and-forth court battle over so-called ballot curing.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-trump-and-biden-finally-agree-on-something-as-november-3-nears-336482">US election 2020: Trump and Trump finally agree on something as Nov 3 nears</a>

Short on money, overworked and under enormous pressure, many battleground states are still in the process of standing up their electoral systems, a building-a-plane-midflight reality for a democratic process that is being challenged daily by court cases, new laws and surges in the coronavirus.

The New York Times assessed the readiness of seven battleground states, and will continue to do so up to Nov. 3. Each of these states was won by Donald Trump in 2016. Joe Biden is now ahead or effectively tied with Trump in most polls in all seven.

After spring and summer primary elections that were undermined by a host of issues — ballot delays in the mail, polling location consolidation resulting in long lines, voter confusion and lengthy lags in counting — officials have mounted a fall sprint to recruit poll workers, scout safe poll locations, seek more time to process ballots, and start a significant education campaign to help voters navigate the pandemic-muddled process.

Now, the readiness of states chiefly involves two distinct challenges: processing the tens of millions of absentee ballots that are already flooding election offices, and maintaining an Election Day operation that as closely as possible resembles normalcy.

Here’s where the seven states stand with just 15 days before Election Day, ranked in order of preparedness.

1. Arizona

Of all the battleground states, none is expected to have as smooth an election as is Arizona. In the midterm elections in 2018, 79% of Arizonans voted before Election Day — a figure that jumped to 88% for the primary this August.

After 2018, when it took a week for Arizona to count enough ballots for a winner to be declared in its Senate race, the state changed its laws to allow absentee ballots to be counted beginning 14 days before Election Day.

Maricopa County, which includes 60% of Arizona’s population, acquired new ballot-counting machines that officials expect will allow the vast majority of the voting results to be known on election night.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-donald-trump-claims-his-campaign-is-doing-very-very-well-336290" hreflang="en">Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well'</a>

“I somewhat jokingly say that we are prepared for everything except Godzilla,” said Adrian Fontes, the Maricopa County recorder, who is responsible for running the county’s elections. “Nowadays that includes a global pandemic and possible terrorism.”

Fontes and other Arizona officials have more experience with absentee ballots than any other battleground state in the country. Arizona created a permanent absentee voter list in 2007, and by 2010, 60% of the state’s voters cast ballots before Election Day, a figure that has increased every two years since.

2. Michigan

Michigan has had a successful poll worker recruitment program, with more than 30,000 having signed up and no regional restrictions preventing them from going anywhere in the state.

That same pool of workers could also be asked to serve on the counting boards, which are the election workers assigned to sift through, verify and tally the absentee ballots. While thousands will be needed for the task, which Michigan law allows to start only 10 hours before Election Day, the secretary of state’s office is confident that staffing will not be a problem.

Because of that late start to counting, Michigan anticipates being one of the last states to report full results, with election officials estimating that the vast majority will be announced through Nov. 6. An appeals court ruled Friday that ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, though it is possible the decision is appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The secretary of state’s office has begun a voter education campaign as if it has lost the decision in court, telling voters that the last day to safely mail back their ballots is Oct. 19. After that, they should be hand-delivered to an election office or one of the state’s 1,000 drop boxes.

Also weighing on the minds of election officials is the threat of polling place intimidation. Armed right-wing protesters entered the Statehouse earlier this year to denounce the coronavirus lockdowns of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and law enforcement officials are anticipating a similar presence at the polls.

On Friday, the secretary of state in Michigan issued an order banning firearms at polling places and any areas within 100 feet of a voting center.

3. Wisconsin

In the past decade, Wisconsin Republicans enacted laws that have made voting tougher:

— It now has one of the nation’s strictest voter-identification mandates. Voters who apply for an absentee ballot online or through the mail must include a photograph for their identification, which requires both equipment and technical sophistication.

— They also must have a witness sign their ballots, a hurdle made more difficult by a pandemic that is hitting Wisconsin nearly as hard as anywhere in the country.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-key-states-that-will-likely-decide-fate-of-donald-trump-and-joe-biden-336311" hreflang="en">US election 2020: Key states that will likely decide fate of Trump and Biden</a>

Some Wisconsinites have taken it upon themselves to help their neighbors navigate an absentee voting process that is new for the vast majority of voters. Lori Miller, a retired dietitian from rural Arkansaw, Wisconsin, spent $59 on eBay for a portable photocopy machine to tote to tables set up this summer by the League of Women Voters so she could make copies of people’s driver’s licenses for them to include in absentee ballot applications.

“What used to be a fairly simple process now has new steps to it,” Miller said. “With every election, and especially this year, there have been proposals made to change deadlines and then those get challenged and changed and appealed. People lose track.”

Unlike most states, Wisconsin does not have a single office responsible for voting statewide, nor do county officials oversee elections. Instead, more than 1,800 municipalities manage their own elections. In scores of rural townships, a part-time town clerk is responsible for conducting elections and counting the votes.

The municipal clerks are forbidden from feeding the ballots through counting machines until the polls open Nov. 3. But Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday that he expects the state to have its results completed by the end of Election Day or, at the latest, by the day after.

4. Florida

On Sept. 30, Peter Antonacci, the elections supervisor in Broward County, was scrambling: The vendor his office had hired to pick up and drop off voting equipment to the polls had canceled the county’s order, leaving Broward hunting for trucks 34 days before Election Day.

It was one of the myriad challenges faced daily by the 67 county supervisors in Florida, who run elections in the nation’s largest and often closest presidential battleground. Winning by “1.5% in the state of Florida is a landslide,” said Wesley Wilcox, the elections supervisor in Marion County.

The supervisors say they are ready to handle problems small and large. Of utmost concern is the crush of mail ballots already arriving. More than 2.4 million ballots had been returned as of Sunday afternoon, led by a stunning return rate from Democrats, who are typically outpaced by Republicans in mail voting. So far, 400,000 more Democrats have returned mail ballots than Republicans, though Republicans are expected to turn out en masse to vote in person.

Florida has years of experience with voting by mail — an effort led largely by Republicans — which should mean the state is better positioned to deal with this year’s surge. State law allows counties to start processing mail ballots 22 days before Election Day. An executive order signed during the pandemic by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, allowed for the processing to begin even sooner: 30 days before Election Day once counties had conducted public tests of their voting equipment.

Supervisors in the state’s largest counties say their goal is to process the ballots — remove them from the envelopes, verify signatures and tabulate the vote — on the day they arrive, to avoid a backup building up as Election Day nears. That would leave only the mail ballots that arrive on Nov. 3 to be processed that day.

“Our focus is getting it right,” said Mark Earley, the elections supervisor in Leon County, home to Tallahassee, the state capital. “Not getting it done as fast as possible.”

5. North Carolina

Election officials in North Carolina were increasingly confident in the state’s electoral apparatus earlier in the fall, with no reported poll worker shortages in any county and more than 500,000 absentee ballots already returned and being processed.

But two forthcoming court decisions threaten to disrupt the elections. In one, the state Republican Party is pushing to be allowed to send partisan citizen inspectors into the county boards of elections before absentee ballots are approved by election officials, with the ability to start challenging those ballots that they see as potentially not meeting requirements.

If the court sides with the Republicans, it could severely delay the counting of absentee ballots to well beyond Election Day. And with officials estimating that roughly 25% of the vote in North Carolina will be cast through absentee ballots, a lengthy delay would most likely mean no statewide results in the presidential election or the contested Senate race for days, if not weeks.

In the second case, the state is keeping at least 7,000 absentee ballots with potential issues in limbo while a court sorts out a legal challenge on whether the North Carolina State Board of Elections can contact voters and allow them to fix, or “cure,” any issues with their ballots.

In that case, a federal judge on Wednesday blocked officials from allowing voters to “cure,” or address a missing witness signature but said that deficient information, like a missing or incomplete address, could still be cured. Appeals from both sides are pending. So now, thousands of voters whose ballots are in limbo — roughly about 40% of which belong to Black voters statewide — are awaiting word from county election officials as to how to proceed.

While that ruling is likely to draw an appeal, any prolonged legal uncertainty for the absentee ballots could threaten a voter’s opportunity to cure the ballot in time.

“The longer a voter says, ‘Oh I turned in my ballot, it must be good,’ when they do finally hear from the county, they might be more suspicious about it, considering how much disinformation there is going around,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group.

6. Georgia

No state had a worse voting experience in the 2020 election primaries than Georgia.

Absentee ballots either failed to arrive on time or showed up damaged. Poll workers, scared by the virus, bailed at the last minute, forcing the consolidation of thousands of voters into a single location in Midtown Atlanta. Lines stretched for hours, with some voters not able to cast ballots until nearly 1 a.m. And sometimes the state’s new voting machines malfunctioned.

When Georgia’s in-person early voting began Oct. 12, voters and elections officials braced for a repeat. Lines stretched for hours in suburban Gwinnett County, a predicament the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially attributed to high turnout but later admitted was because of technical difficulties related to the state’s new machines. As wait times fell, Raffensperger’s office took credit, saying it had requested the state’s elections software vendor increase bandwidth to its devices.

By Sunday, more than 1.4 million Georgians had voted, a figure that accounts for more than 34% of the state’s 2016 turnout. Lines on Friday still stretched for up to three hours at some locations in Cobb County, a rapidly diversifying suburb that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 but is still run by Republican officials.

In Fulton County, which experienced the worst delays during the June primary, wait times have largely been alleviated by opening Atlanta’s pro basketball arena as a mega early-voting site. With more than 300 voting machines, the facility has managed to move voters through without a delay.

Election Day, which will require far more poll workers given the larger number of voting locations, will present another stress test for the state’s voting system.

7. Pennsylvania

Few states are still facing more litigation-driven uncertainty than Pennsylvania.

The state has had its plans to install drop boxes hung up in the courts for months. The question of whether it will be able to accept ballots that arrive after Election Day has been similarly stalled. The state Legislature still hasn’t decided on allowing election officials to begin processing ballots early. And Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of state, is still awaiting guidance from the state Supreme Court as to whether election officials have to perform signature matching checks on absentee ballots.

“Pennsylvania is the one everyone is worried about,” said Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who runs the university’s Election Data and Science Lab.

While all of this uncertainty might seemingly depress enthusiasm for mail ballots, Pennsylvania voters are still requesting them at a record clip. More than 2.7 million ballots have been requested, and about 683,000 have been returned. Yet at the moment, election officials in the state’s 67 counties cannot touch the ballots until Election Day, raising the likelihood that full results will not be known for days.

By law, Pennsylvania does not offer any form of in-person early voting. But Boockvar has worked with county officials to set up satellite elections offices where voters can come and vote by absentee ballot in person (as in, request a ballot in person, receive it, fill it out there and then drop it off). The offices are intended to expand voting options and help decrease an expected surge on Election Day. But so far, only five of the state’s 67 counties — Philadelphia, Centre, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery — have set up offices.

The lack of true in-person voting means Pennsylvania will most likely have a large Election Day turnout. Though the statewide poll worker recruitment effort was successful — more than 56,000 raised their hands — Pennsylvania has strict rules stating that a poll worker can serve only in the county in which they are registered to vote.

The city is also bracing for a potentially contentious Election Day, and Lawrence S. Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, is expanding the regular Election Day task force.

“We have probably at this point over 60 of our 300 attorneys who are volunteering to handle these duties on top of their other duties,” Krasner said. “And it’s my expectation, in light of the conversation I’ve had with the Philadelphia Police Department, that they are going to ramp that up for Election Day.”

In Georgia, the state’s voting machines have malfunctioned in three consecutive elections this year alone. In Pennsylvania, election officials are staring down possibly the biggest ballot processing backlog in the country, with no means of even touching the ballots until polls open on Election Day.

In Georgia, the state’s voting machines have malfunctioned in three consecutive elections this year alone. In Pennsylvania, election officials are staring down possibly the biggest ballot processing backlog in the country, with no means of even touching the ballots until polls open on Election Day. And in North Carolina, thousands of submitted absentee ballots are currently in purgatory, neither rejected nor accepted but “under review,” amid a back-and-forth court battle over so-called ballot curing. Also read: US election 2020: Trump and Trump finally agree on something as Nov 3 nears Short on money, overworked and under enormous pressure, many battleground states are still in the process of standing up their electoral systems, a building-a-plane-midflight reality for a democratic process that is being challenged daily by court cases, new laws and surges in the coronavirus. The New York Times assessed the readiness of seven battleground states, and will continue to do so up to Nov. 3. Each of these states was won by Donald Trump in 2016. Joe Biden is now ahead or effectively tied with Trump in most polls in all seven. After spring and summer primary elections that were undermined by a host of issues — ballot delays in the mail, polling location consolidation resulting in long lines, voter confusion and lengthy lags in counting — officials have mounted a fall sprint to recruit poll workers, scout safe poll locations, seek more time to process ballots, and start a significant education campaign to help voters navigate the pandemic-muddled process. Now, the readiness of states chiefly involves two distinct challenges: processing the tens of millions of absentee ballots that are already flooding election offices, and maintaining an Election Day operation that as closely as possible resembles normalcy. Here’s where the seven states stand with just 15 days before Election Day, ranked in order of preparedness. 1. Arizona Of all the battleground states, none is expected to have as smooth an election as is Arizona. In the midterm elections in 2018, 79% of Arizonans voted before Election Day — a figure that jumped to 88% for the primary this August. After 2018, when it took a week for Arizona to count enough ballots for a winner to be declared in its Senate race, the state changed its laws to allow absentee ballots to be counted beginning 14 days before Election Day. Maricopa County, which includes 60% of Arizona’s population, acquired new ballot-counting machines that officials expect will allow the vast majority of the voting results to be known on election night. Also read: Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well' “I somewhat jokingly say that we are prepared for everything except Godzilla,” said Adrian Fontes, the Maricopa County recorder, who is responsible for running the county’s elections. “Nowadays that includes a global pandemic and possible terrorism.” Fontes and other Arizona officials have more experience with absentee ballots than any other battleground state in the country. Arizona created a permanent absentee voter list in 2007, and by 2010, 60% of the state’s voters cast ballots before Election Day, a figure that has increased every two years since. 2. Michigan Michigan has had a successful poll worker recruitment program, with more than 30,000 having signed up and no regional restrictions preventing them from going anywhere in the state. That same pool of workers could also be asked to serve on the counting boards, which are the election workers assigned to sift through, verify and tally the absentee ballots. While thousands will be needed for the task, which Michigan law allows to start only 10 hours before Election Day, the secretary of state’s office is confident that staffing will not be a problem. Because of that late start to counting, Michigan anticipates being one of the last states to report full results, with election officials estimating that the vast majority will be announced through Nov. 6. An appeals court ruled Friday that ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, though it is possible the decision is appealed to the state Supreme Court. The secretary of state’s office has begun a voter education campaign as if it has lost the decision in court, telling voters that the last day to safely mail back their ballots is Oct. 19. After that, they should be hand-delivered to an election office or one of the state’s 1,000 drop boxes. Also weighing on the minds of election officials is the threat of polling place intimidation. Armed right-wing protesters entered the Statehouse earlier this year to denounce the coronavirus lockdowns of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and law enforcement officials are anticipating a similar presence at the polls. On Friday, the secretary of state in Michigan issued an order banning firearms at polling places and any areas within 100 feet of a voting center. 3. Wisconsin In the past decade, Wisconsin Republicans enacted laws that have made voting tougher: — It now has one of the nation’s strictest voter-identification mandates. Voters who apply for an absentee ballot online or through the mail must include a photograph for their identification, which requires both equipment and technical sophistication. — They also must have a witness sign their ballots, a hurdle made more difficult by a pandemic that is hitting Wisconsin nearly as hard as anywhere in the country. Also read: US election 2020: Key states that will likely decide fate of Trump and Biden Some Wisconsinites have taken it upon themselves to help their neighbors navigate an absentee voting process that is new for the vast majority of voters. Lori Miller, a retired dietitian from rural Arkansaw, Wisconsin, spent $59 on eBay for a portable photocopy machine to tote to tables set up this summer by the League of Women Voters so she could make copies of people’s driver’s licenses for them to include in absentee ballot applications. “What used to be a fairly simple process now has new steps to it,” Miller said. “With every election, and especially this year, there have been proposals made to change deadlines and then those get challenged and changed and appealed. People lose track.” Unlike most states, Wisconsin does not have a single office responsible for voting statewide, nor do county officials oversee elections. Instead, more than 1,800 municipalities manage their own elections. In scores of rural townships, a part-time town clerk is responsible for conducting elections and counting the votes. The municipal clerks are forbidden from feeding the ballots through counting machines until the polls open Nov. 3. But Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday that he expects the state to have its results completed by the end of Election Day or, at the latest, by the day after. 4. Florida On Sept. 30, Peter Antonacci, the elections supervisor in Broward County, was scrambling: The vendor his office had hired to pick up and drop off voting equipment to the polls had canceled the county’s order, leaving Broward hunting for trucks 34 days before Election Day. It was one of the myriad challenges faced daily by the 67 county supervisors in Florida, who run elections in the nation’s largest and often closest presidential battleground. Winning by “1.5% in the state of Florida is a landslide,” said Wesley Wilcox, the elections supervisor in Marion County. The supervisors say they are ready to handle problems small and large. Of utmost concern is the crush of mail ballots already arriving. More than 2.4 million ballots had been returned as of Sunday afternoon, led by a stunning return rate from Democrats, who are typically outpaced by Republicans in mail voting. So far, 400,000 more Democrats have returned mail ballots than Republicans, though Republicans are expected to turn out en masse to vote in person. Florida has years of experience with voting by mail — an effort led largely by Republicans — which should mean the state is better positioned to deal with this year’s surge. State law allows counties to start processing mail ballots 22 days before Election Day. An executive order signed during the pandemic by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, allowed for the processing to begin even sooner: 30 days before Election Day once counties had conducted public tests of their voting equipment. Supervisors in the state’s largest counties say their goal is to process the ballots — remove them from the envelopes, verify signatures and tabulate the vote — on the day they arrive, to avoid a backup building up as Election Day nears. That would leave only the mail ballots that arrive on Nov. 3 to be processed that day. “Our focus is getting it right,” said Mark Earley, the elections supervisor in Leon County, home to Tallahassee, the state capital. “Not getting it done as fast as possible.” 5. North Carolina Election officials in North Carolina were increasingly confident in the state’s electoral apparatus earlier in the fall, with no reported poll worker shortages in any county and more than 500,000 absentee ballots already returned and being processed. But two forthcoming court decisions threaten to disrupt the elections. In one, the state Republican Party is pushing to be allowed to send partisan citizen inspectors into the county boards of elections before absentee ballots are approved by election officials, with the ability to start challenging those ballots that they see as potentially not meeting requirements. If the court sides with the Republicans, it could severely delay the counting of absentee ballots to well beyond Election Day. And with officials estimating that roughly 25% of the vote in North Carolina will be cast through absentee ballots, a lengthy delay would most likely mean no statewide results in the presidential election or the contested Senate race for days, if not weeks. In the second case, the state is keeping at least 7,000 absentee ballots with potential issues in limbo while a court sorts out a legal challenge on whether the North Carolina State Board of Elections can contact voters and allow them to fix, or “cure,” any issues with their ballots. In that case, a federal judge on Wednesday blocked officials from allowing voters to “cure,” or address a missing witness signature but said that deficient information, like a missing or incomplete address, could still be cured. Appeals from both sides are pending. So now, thousands of voters whose ballots are in limbo — roughly about 40% of which belong to Black voters statewide — are awaiting word from county election officials as to how to proceed. While that ruling is likely to draw an appeal, any prolonged legal uncertainty for the absentee ballots could threaten a voter’s opportunity to cure the ballot in time. “The longer a voter says, ‘Oh I turned in my ballot, it must be good,’ when they do finally hear from the county, they might be more suspicious about it, considering how much disinformation there is going around,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group. 6. Georgia No state had a worse voting experience in the 2020 election primaries than Georgia. Absentee ballots either failed to arrive on time or showed up damaged. Poll workers, scared by the virus, bailed at the last minute, forcing the consolidation of thousands of voters into a single location in Midtown Atlanta. Lines stretched for hours, with some voters not able to cast ballots until nearly 1 a.m. And sometimes the state’s new voting machines malfunctioned. When Georgia’s in-person early voting began Oct. 12, voters and elections officials braced for a repeat. Lines stretched for hours in suburban Gwinnett County, a predicament the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially attributed to high turnout but later admitted was because of technical difficulties related to the state’s new machines. As wait times fell, Raffensperger’s office took credit, saying it had requested the state’s elections software vendor increase bandwidth to its devices. By Sunday, more than 1.4 million Georgians had voted, a figure that accounts for more than 34% of the state’s 2016 turnout. Lines on Friday still stretched for up to three hours at some locations in Cobb County, a rapidly diversifying suburb that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 but is still run by Republican officials. In Fulton County, which experienced the worst delays during the June primary, wait times have largely been alleviated by opening Atlanta’s pro basketball arena as a mega early-voting site. With more than 300 voting machines, the facility has managed to move voters through without a delay. Election Day, which will require far more poll workers given the larger number of voting locations, will present another stress test for the state’s voting system. 7. Pennsylvania Few states are still facing more litigation-driven uncertainty than Pennsylvania. The state has had its plans to install drop boxes hung up in the courts for months. The question of whether it will be able to accept ballots that arrive after Election Day has been similarly stalled. The state Legislature still hasn’t decided on allowing election officials to begin processing ballots early. And Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of state, is still awaiting guidance from the state Supreme Court as to whether election officials have to perform signature matching checks on absentee ballots. “Pennsylvania is the one everyone is worried about,” said Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who runs the university’s Election Data and Science Lab. While all of this uncertainty might seemingly depress enthusiasm for mail ballots, Pennsylvania voters are still requesting them at a record clip. More than 2.7 million ballots have been requested, and about 683,000 have been returned. Yet at the moment, election officials in the state’s 67 counties cannot touch the ballots until Election Day, raising the likelihood that full results will not be known for days. By law, Pennsylvania does not offer any form of in-person early voting. But Boockvar has worked with county officials to set up satellite elections offices where voters can come and vote by absentee ballot in person (as in, request a ballot in person, receive it, fill it out there and then drop it off). The offices are intended to expand voting options and help decrease an expected surge on Election Day. But so far, only five of the state’s 67 counties — Philadelphia, Centre, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery — have set up offices. The lack of true in-person voting means Pennsylvania will most likely have a large Election Day turnout. Though the statewide poll worker recruitment effort was successful — more than 56,000 raised their hands — Pennsylvania has strict rules stating that a poll worker can serve only in the county in which they are registered to vote. The city is also bracing for a potentially contentious Election Day, and Lawrence S. Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, is expanding the regular Election Day task force. “We have probably at this point over 60 of our 300 attorneys who are volunteering to handle these duties on top of their other duties,” Krasner said. “And it’s my expectation, in light of the conversation I’ve had with the Philadelphia Police Department, that they are going to ramp that up for Election Day.”

How prepared are these 7 battlegrounds for the election? A readiness report

It is a phrase that has been constantly invoked by Democratic and Republican leaders. It has become the clearest symbol of the mood of the country, and what people feel is at stake in <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election?page=1">November</a>. Everyone, it seems, is fighting for it.

“This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart and, yes, the soul of America,” Joe Biden said in August at the Democratic National Convention, not long after the phrase “battle for the soul of America” appeared at the top of his campaign website, right next to his name.

Picking up on this, a recent Trump campaign ad spliced videos of Democrats invoking “the soul” of America, followed by images of clashes between protesters and police and the words “Save America’s Soul,” with a request to text “SOUL” to make a campaign contribution.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/i-may-have-to-leave-country-donald-trump-says-about-losing-to-biden-in-us-election-336195">Also read|&nbsp;'I may have to leave country': Donald Trump says about losing to Biden in US election</a>

That the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election?page=1">election</a> has become a referendum on the soul of the nation, suggests that in an increasingly secular country, voting has become a reflection of one’s individual morality — and that the outcome hinges in part on spiritual and philosophical questions that transcend politics: What, exactly, is the soul of the nation? What is the state of it? And what would it mean to save it?

The answers go beyond a campaign slogan, beyond politics and November, to the identity and future of the American experiment itself, especially now, with a pandemic that has wearied the country’s spirit.

“When I think of soul of the nation,” Joy Harjo, the U.S. poet laureate and a Muscogee (Creek) Nation member, said, “I think of the process of becoming, and what it is we want to become. That is where it gets tricky, and that is where I think we have reached a stalemate right now. What do people want to become?”

Harjo said the country’s soul was “at a crucial point.”

“It is like everything is broken at once,” she said. “We are at a point of great wounding, where everyone is standing and looking within themselves and each other.”

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-sets-fundraising-record-with-383-mn-in-september-336026">Also read|&nbsp;Biden sets fundraising record with $383 mn in September</a>

In Carlsbad, California, Marlo Tucker, the state director for Concerned Women for America, has been meeting regularly to pray with a group of a dozen or so women about the future of the country. The group has been working with other conservative Christian women to register voters.

“It really comes down to what do you stand for, and what do you not stand for,” she said.

“I know this is a Christian nation, the Founding Fathers were influenced by the biblical values,” she said. “People are confused, they are influenced by this sensationalism, they are angry, they are frustrated. They are searching for hope again in government, they are searching for leaders who actually care for their problems.”

Framing an entire campaign explicitly around a moral imperative — with language so rooted in Christianity — has been a standard part of the Republican playbook for decades. But it is a more unusual move for Democrats, who typically attract a more religiously diverse coalition.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-trump-golf-course-in-scotland-gets-go-ahead-despite-environmental-fears-336118">Also read|&nbsp;New Trump golf course in Scotland gets go ahead despite environmental fears&nbsp;</a>

The soul, and the soul of the body politic, is an ancient philosophical and theological concept, one of the deepest ways humans have understood their individual identity, and their life together.

In biblical Hebrew the words translated as soul, nefesh and neshama, come from a root meaning “to breathe.” The Genesis story describes God breathing into the nostrils of man, making him human.

The meaning echoes through today, in a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system and in police violence against Black people crying out, “I can’t breathe.”

Homeric poets saw the soul as the thing humans risk in battle, or the thing that distinguishes life from death. Plato wrote of Socrates exploring the connection between the soul and the republic in creating the virtue of justice. For St. Augustine, who wrote “The City of God,” the city could be judged by what it loves.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/why-trumps-supporters-loved-him-336262">Also read|&nbsp;Why Trump’s supporters loved him</a>

The soul of the nation is “a very ancient trope that is revived when all sorts of cultural ideas are in flux,” Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University, said. “It reveals something about the current political conversation, in times of crisis and change, a corruption of sickness.”

Often we stress systems and institutions, he said, but in the Trump era there has been a return to ancient concepts about the welfare of the city, where politics is about right relationships. “In ancient politics the health of society had a lot to do with the virtue of the ruler,” Gregory said.

In the United States, the question of who could define the soul of the nation was fraught from the start, from the forced displacement of native people to the enslavement of Africans.

And the state of the soul of the nation has often been tied to the country’s oppression of Black people. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass fought for an “invincible abhorrence of the whole system of slaveholding” to be “fixed in the soul of the nation.” Lyndon B. Johnson said the country found its “soul of honor” on the fields of Gettysburg. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders formed what is now the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, they made their founding motto “to save the soul of America.”

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-and-biden-to-court-early-voters-as-us-campaign-gathers-steam-336224">Also read|&nbsp;Trump and Biden to court early voters as US campaign gathers steam</a>

This year President Donald Trump has positioned himself as the defender of a threatened Christian America under siege. “In America, we don’t turn to government to restore our souls, we put our faith in Almighty God,” he said at the Republican National Convention. Franklin Graham, one of his evangelical supporters, wrote last year that this age is “a battle for the soul of the nation,” as the original “moral and spiritual framework, which has held our nation together for 243 years, is now unraveling.”

For Biden, the soul of the nation came into focus after the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, three years ago. “We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light,” he wrote at the time.

From the start, his campaign message has been one of broader morality, versus specific policy or ideology. When Biden says this is a battle for the soul of the nation, he is not using it religiously but as a synonym for character, said presidential historian Jon Meacham, who has spoken often with Biden about the soul.

“People hear it as light versus dark, service versus selfishness, Trump versus the rest of the world,” he said.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/avengers-team-to-reunite-for-joe-biden-virtual-campaign-hosted-by-russo-brothers-336208">Also read|&nbsp;'Avengers' team to reunite for Joe Biden virtual campaign hosted by Russo Brothers</a>

“My sense is, it is much less about an Elizabeth Warren 10-point plan, or a Bernie Sanders revolution than it is a restoration of a politics that is more familiar and not so agitating,” he said. Voters “just want somebody to run the damn thing with a modicum of efficiency and sanity.”

But even amid the lofty questions of the soul, voters have problems they want solved, and systems they want changed.

North of Boston, Andrew DeFranza, executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, an organization that develops affordable housing, reflected on the disastrous impact of the coronavirus pandemic for many people, from essential workers to people with disabilities. The country’s soul is disoriented, adversarial and tired, he said.

“I don’t think Group A is going to beat Group B and everything is going to be fine,” he said of the election. “We are eager to see political leaders at every level regardless of party demonstrate concrete, actionable plans to address these issues of inequity around health and race, and to do so in a way that is concrete and has outcomes to which they can be accountable.”

In East Harlem, Dorlimar Lebrón Malavé leads First Spanish United Methodist Church, a congregation that serves many immigrants and Puerto Rican families.

“Does this country even have a soul?” she asked. “For me, I think the soul of this country has been lost for a long time.”

Though the current moment seems so dystopian, she said, it felt like a new spirit was emerging. She remembered the creation story in Genesis.

“From a religious standpoint, God created out of chaos. There wasn’t something that was existing before and was reformed,” she said. “When people talk about reforming police, there is no reforming police, there is an opportunity to abolish it and to create something new, from scratch.”

Lebrón Malavé sighed when she thought of Biden’s emphasis on restoring the soul with little concrete discussion of policies.

“People want to hear that there is something left to fight for because it is so hard for us to imagine what it would have to be like to dismantle the whole thing,” she said. “He is appealing to a particular mindset of people who were not taught to fathom a possibility of a new world outside of what we already know.”

For others, the soul is where it all begins.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, not long after a police officer shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralyzed, a group of interfaith clergy held a prayer service in a parking lot, under a clear blue sky.

“The soul of Kenosha is at stake,” Patrick Roberts of First Baptist Church said to the gathering.

He shared his rare experience of being a Black pastor of a majority-white congregation. Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours in the country, he said, and healing the soul of the community would require more than simply a social program or a jobs program for the unemployed.

You would know the soul was healed, he said, when a person of any race could walk anywhere in Kenosha and feel safe.

Later, in an interview, he reflected on Biden’s campaign promise.

“We don’t know the policies he will come up with,” he said. “I think he is just talking on basic terms, getting back to terms of human decency, interaction that is respectable, regardless of your income, your ideology, your color.”

“For me,” he said, “that is good enough.”

It is a phrase that has been constantly invoked by Democratic and Republican leaders. It has become the clearest symbol of the mood of the country, and what people feel is at stake in November.

It is a phrase that has been constantly invoked by Democratic and Republican leaders. It has become the clearest symbol of the mood of the country, and what people feel is at stake in November. Everyone, it seems, is fighting for it. “This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart and, yes, the soul of America,” Joe Biden said in August at the Democratic National Convention, not long after the phrase “battle for the soul of America” appeared at the top of his campaign website, right next to his name. Picking up on this, a recent Trump campaign ad spliced videos of Democrats invoking “the soul” of America, followed by images of clashes between protesters and police and the words “Save America’s Soul,” with a request to text “SOUL” to make a campaign contribution. Also read| 'I may have to leave country': Donald Trump says about losing to Biden in US election That the election has become a referendum on the soul of the nation, suggests that in an increasingly secular country, voting has become a reflection of one’s individual morality — and that the outcome hinges in part on spiritual and philosophical questions that transcend politics: What, exactly, is the soul of the nation? What is the state of it? And what would it mean to save it? The answers go beyond a campaign slogan, beyond politics and November, to the identity and future of the American experiment itself, especially now, with a pandemic that has wearied the country’s spirit. “When I think of soul of the nation,” Joy Harjo, the U.S. poet laureate and a Muscogee (Creek) Nation member, said, “I think of the process of becoming, and what it is we want to become. That is where it gets tricky, and that is where I think we have reached a stalemate right now. What do people want to become?” Harjo said the country’s soul was “at a crucial point.” “It is like everything is broken at once,” she said. “We are at a point of great wounding, where everyone is standing and looking within themselves and each other.” Also read| Biden sets fundraising record with $383 mn in September In Carlsbad, California, Marlo Tucker, the state director for Concerned Women for America, has been meeting regularly to pray with a group of a dozen or so women about the future of the country. The group has been working with other conservative Christian women to register voters. “It really comes down to what do you stand for, and what do you not stand for,” she said. “I know this is a Christian nation, the Founding Fathers were influenced by the biblical values,” she said. “People are confused, they are influenced by this sensationalism, they are angry, they are frustrated. They are searching for hope again in government, they are searching for leaders who actually care for their problems.” Framing an entire campaign explicitly around a moral imperative — with language so rooted in Christianity — has been a standard part of the Republican playbook for decades. But it is a more unusual move for Democrats, who typically attract a more religiously diverse coalition. Also read| New Trump golf course in Scotland gets go ahead despite environmental fears The soul, and the soul of the body politic, is an ancient philosophical and theological concept, one of the deepest ways humans have understood their individual identity, and their life together. In biblical Hebrew the words translated as soul, nefesh and neshama, come from a root meaning “to breathe.” The Genesis story describes God breathing into the nostrils of man, making him human. The meaning echoes through today, in a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system and in police violence against Black people crying out, “I can’t breathe.” Homeric poets saw the soul as the thing humans risk in battle, or the thing that distinguishes life from death. Plato wrote of Socrates exploring the connection between the soul and the republic in creating the virtue of justice. For St. Augustine, who wrote “The City of God,” the city could be judged by what it loves. Also read| Why Trump’s supporters loved him The soul of the nation is “a very ancient trope that is revived when all sorts of cultural ideas are in flux,” Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University, said. “It reveals something about the current political conversation, in times of crisis and change, a corruption of sickness.” Often we stress systems and institutions, he said, but in the Trump era there has been a return to ancient concepts about the welfare of the city, where politics is about right relationships. “In ancient politics the health of society had a lot to do with the virtue of the ruler,” Gregory said. In the United States, the question of who could define the soul of the nation was fraught from the start, from the forced displacement of native people to the enslavement of Africans. And the state of the soul of the nation has often been tied to the country’s oppression of Black people. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass fought for an “invincible abhorrence of the whole system of slaveholding” to be “fixed in the soul of the nation.” Lyndon B. Johnson said the country found its “soul of honor” on the fields of Gettysburg. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders formed what is now the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, they made their founding motto “to save the soul of America.” Also read| Trump and Biden to court early voters as US campaign gathers steam This year President Donald Trump has positioned himself as the defender of a threatened Christian America under siege. “In America, we don’t turn to government to restore our souls, we put our faith in Almighty God,” he said at the Republican National Convention. Franklin Graham, one of his evangelical supporters, wrote last year that this age is “a battle for the soul of the nation,” as the original “moral and spiritual framework, which has held our nation together for 243 years, is now unraveling.” For Biden, the soul of the nation came into focus after the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, three years ago. “We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light,” he wrote at the time. From the start, his campaign message has been one of broader morality, versus specific policy or ideology. When Biden says this is a battle for the soul of the nation, he is not using it religiously but as a synonym for character, said presidential historian Jon Meacham, who has spoken often with Biden about the soul. “People hear it as light versus dark, service versus selfishness, Trump versus the rest of the world,” he said. Also read| 'Avengers' team to reunite for Joe Biden virtual campaign hosted by Russo Brothers “My sense is, it is much less about an Elizabeth Warren 10-point plan, or a Bernie Sanders revolution than it is a restoration of a politics that is more familiar and not so agitating,” he said. Voters “just want somebody to run the damn thing with a modicum of efficiency and sanity.” But even amid the lofty questions of the soul, voters have problems they want solved, and systems they want changed. North of Boston, Andrew DeFranza, executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, an organization that develops affordable housing, reflected on the disastrous impact of the coronavirus pandemic for many people, from essential workers to people with disabilities. The country’s soul is disoriented, adversarial and tired, he said. “I don’t think Group A is going to beat Group B and everything is going to be fine,” he said of the election. “We are eager to see political leaders at every level regardless of party demonstrate concrete, actionable plans to address these issues of inequity around health and race, and to do so in a way that is concrete and has outcomes to which they can be accountable.” In East Harlem, Dorlimar Lebrón Malavé leads First Spanish United Methodist Church, a congregation that serves many immigrants and Puerto Rican families. “Does this country even have a soul?” she asked. “For me, I think the soul of this country has been lost for a long time.” Though the current moment seems so dystopian, she said, it felt like a new spirit was emerging. She remembered the creation story in Genesis. “From a religious standpoint, God created out of chaos. There wasn’t something that was existing before and was reformed,” she said. “When people talk about reforming police, there is no reforming police, there is an opportunity to abolish it and to create something new, from scratch.” Lebrón Malavé sighed when she thought of Biden’s emphasis on restoring the soul with little concrete discussion of policies. “People want to hear that there is something left to fight for because it is so hard for us to imagine what it would have to be like to dismantle the whole thing,” she said. “He is appealing to a particular mindset of people who were not taught to fathom a possibility of a new world outside of what we already know.” For others, the soul is where it all begins. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, not long after a police officer shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralyzed, a group of interfaith clergy held a prayer service in a parking lot, under a clear blue sky. “The soul of Kenosha is at stake,” Patrick Roberts of First Baptist Church said to the gathering. He shared his rare experience of being a Black pastor of a majority-white congregation. Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours in the country, he said, and healing the soul of the community would require more than simply a social program or a jobs program for the unemployed. You would know the soul was healed, he said, when a person of any race could walk anywhere in Kenosha and feel safe. Later, in an interview, he reflected on Biden’s campaign promise. “We don’t know the policies he will come up with,” he said. “I think he is just talking on basic terms, getting back to terms of human decency, interaction that is respectable, regardless of your income, your ideology, your color.” “For me,” he said, “that is good enough.”

Biden and Trump say they’re fighting for America’s ‘soul.’ What does that mean?

A day after the&nbsp;Republican Senator&nbsp;David Perdue mispronounced the Democratic VP elect Kamala Harris' name, Twitter slammed the Senator by starting a unique campaign against the Senator.

The incident happened when&nbsp;Perdue spoke ahead of US President Donald Trump in his rally in Georgia on Friday. He was caught on tape making sun of Harris' name by pronouncing her name in a weird exaggerated manner and then ending it by saying "I don`t know, whatever".

When the video surfaced in the popular social media platform&nbsp;Twitter, people of colour started a campaign in which several users came forward and explained their name and the meaning behind it.

Several South Asian-origin users came forward claiming that their grandmothers mothers were also named Kamala, and not "Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever.”

One such user, Gautam Raghavan, tweeted, "#MyNameIs Gautam. It means bright light. The kind of bright light a Biden-Harris Administration will represent. And that is why #IWillVote."

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My great grandmother’s name was Kamala. Not “Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever.”<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Gautam. It means bright light. The kind of bright light a Biden-Harris Administration will represent. And that is why <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/IWillVote?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#IWillVote</a>. 
 
Join me &amp; make a plan at <a href="https://t.co/M8JYgEwDe2">https://t.co/M8JYgEwDe2</a>. <a href="https://t.co/B1JTEbaEYx">https://t.co/B1JTEbaEYx</a>
— Gautam Raghavan (@gauragDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/gauragDC/status/1317505114752638976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The campaign was joined by Maya Harris' daughter and Kamala Harris' relative, Meena Harris, who tweeted, "#MyNameIs Meenakshi. I'm named after the Hindu goddess, as well as my great great grandmother. I come from a long line of strong women who taught me to be proud of my heritage and to demand respect—especially from racist white men like&nbsp;@sendavidperdue who are threatened by us."

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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Meenakshi. I'm named after the Hindu goddess, as well as my great great grandmother. I come from a long line of strong women who taught me to be proud of my heritage and to demand respect—especially from racist white men like <a href="https://twitter.com/sendavidperdue?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sendavidperdue</a> who are threatened by us. <a href="https://t.co/Bonzz5n3Xu">https://t.co/Bonzz5n3Xu</a>
— Meena Harris (@meenaharris) <a href="https://twitter.com/meenaharris/status/1317524204376354816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Scrolling through <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> at the end of a long day &amp; it’s giving me life.💜 
 
My name is Maya (magic/illusion) Lakshmi (goddess of beauty &amp; wealth). 
 
People mispronounce my names all the time, but you can’t tell me nothin’. I know who I am. 
 
Show these folks who we are. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VOTE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VOTE</a>
— Maya Harris (@mayaharris_) <a href="https://twitter.com/mayaharris_/status/1317648140930109442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2020</a></blockquote>
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African-Americans and people of colour also joined in and said they are thankful to their parents for giving them a name that represents their&nbsp;ancestral birthplace.

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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyName?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyName</a> is Oni Jahi. My parents gave my sister and me <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WestAfrican?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WestAfrican</a> first names &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EastAfrican?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EastAfrican</a> middle names. 
 
Oni means “desired” in Yoruba; Jahi means “dignity” in Swahili. 
 
I’m grateful that my parents gave me names that tie me to my ancestral birthplace. <a href="https://t.co/mHr08Yz87u">https://t.co/mHr08Yz87u</a>
— Oni #BraylaStone Blackstock (@DrOniBee) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrOniBee/status/1317661784376070145?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Take a look at some of the other Twitter users who joined the campaign to amplify the fight against 'white priviledge'.

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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Ted W. Lieu. The “W” is short for “Win-Ping” which in Mandarin means Cloud of Peace. 
 
Also, make sure you vote. And if you are voting by mail, don’t forget the stupid secrecy envelope if your state requires it.
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1317614327478644737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Malcolm Kenyatta. My father named me to honor the legacy of two giants in the black diaspora: Malcolm X and Jomo Kenyatta. <a href="https://twitter.com/sendavidperdue?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sendavidperdue</a> might not care, but my name reminds me everyday the systems of discrimination we must uproot. <a href="https://t.co/vY5JwuYXbz">https://t.co/vY5JwuYXbz</a>
— Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (@malcolmkenyatta) <a href="https://twitter.com/malcolmkenyatta/status/1317575057611366403?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Sikanyiselwe. Its Xhosa meaning is “we have been shone upon” or, “the light at the end of the tunnel”. 
 
My parents chose it believing they had better times ahead — just as so many of us do now. Go vote and make it true. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BidenHarris2020?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BidenHarris2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI">https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI</a>
— Kanyi Maqubela (@km) <a href="https://twitter.com/km/status/1317555638608617472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Sikanyiselwe. Its Xhosa meaning is “we have been shone upon” or, “the light at the end of the tunnel”. 
 
My parents chose it believing they had better times ahead — just as so many of us do now. Go vote and make it true. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BidenHarris2020?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BidenHarris2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI">https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI</a>
— Kanyi Maqubela (@km) <a href="https://twitter.com/km/status/1317555638608617472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyNameIs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyNameIs</a> Chris, but my middle name is Pey-Ning. In Chinese, it means abundance of peace. It's the kind of peace we'll all feel with Joe Biden as president 
 
This country belongs as much to me, <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> and every kid with an ethnic name - as it does to David Perdue <a href="https://t.co/4mkUCq1aic">https://t.co/4mkUCq1aic</a>
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLu44/status/1317586103172517896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Gautam Raghavan, a user who participated in the campaign, also retweeted an old video posted by Kamala Harris in 2016 captioned, "People pronounce my name many different ways. Let #KidsForKamala show you how it’s done."

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People pronounce my name many different ways. Let <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KidsForKamala?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KidsForKamala</a> show you how it’s done. <a href="https://t.co/7QoQGN0B4k">pic.twitter.com/7QoQGN0B4k</a>
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/735197253153914881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2016</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

A day after the Republican Senator David Perdue mispronounced the Democratic VP elect Kamala Harris' name, Twitter slammed the Senator by starting a unique campaign against the Senator.

A day after the Republican Senator David Perdue mispronounced the Democratic VP elect Kamala Harris' name, Twitter slammed the Senator by starting a unique campaign against the Senator. The incident happened when Perdue spoke ahead of US President Donald Trump in his rally in Georgia on Friday. He was caught on tape making sun of Harris' name by pronouncing her name in a weird exaggerated manner and then ending it by saying "I don`t know, whatever". When the video surfaced in the popular social media platform Twitter, people of colour started a campaign in which several users came forward and explained their name and the meaning behind it. Several South Asian-origin users came forward claiming that their grandmothers mothers were also named Kamala, and not "Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever.” One such user, Gautam Raghavan, tweeted, "#MyNameIs Gautam. It means bright light. The kind of bright light a Biden-Harris Administration will represent. And that is why #IWillVote." My great grandmother’s name was Kamala. Not “Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever.”#MyNameIs Gautam. It means bright light. The kind of bright light a Biden-Harris Administration will represent. And that is why #IWillVote. Join me & make a plan at https://t.co/M8JYgEwDe2. https://t.co/B1JTEbaEYx — Gautam Raghavan (@gauragDC) October 17, 2020 × The campaign was joined by Maya Harris' daughter and Kamala Harris' relative, Meena Harris, who tweeted, "#MyNameIs Meenakshi. I'm named after the Hindu goddess, as well as my great great grandmother. I come from a long line of strong women who taught me to be proud of my heritage and to demand respect—especially from racist white men like @sendavidperdue who are threatened by us." #MyNameIs Meenakshi. I'm named after the Hindu goddess, as well as my great great grandmother. I come from a long line of strong women who taught me to be proud of my heritage and to demand respect—especially from racist white men like @sendavidperdue who are threatened by us. https://t.co/Bonzz5n3Xu — Meena Harris (@meenaharris) October 17, 2020 × Scrolling through #MyNameIs at the end of a long day & it’s giving me life.💜 My name is Maya (magic/illusion) Lakshmi (goddess of beauty & wealth). People mispronounce my names all the time, but you can’t tell me nothin’. I know who I am. Show these folks who we are. #VOTE — Maya Harris (@mayaharris_) October 18, 2020 × African-Americans and people of colour also joined in and said they are thankful to their parents for giving them a name that represents their ancestral birthplace. #MyName is Oni Jahi. My parents gave my sister and me #WestAfrican first names & #EastAfrican middle names. Oni means “desired” in Yoruba; Jahi means “dignity” in Swahili. I’m grateful that my parents gave me names that tie me to my ancestral birthplace. https://t.co/mHr08Yz87u — Oni #BraylaStone Blackstock (@DrOniBee) October 18, 2020 × Take a look at some of the other Twitter users who joined the campaign to amplify the fight against 'white priviledge'. #MyNameIs Ted W. Lieu. The “W” is short for “Win-Ping” which in Mandarin means Cloud of Peace. Also, make sure you vote. And if you are voting by mail, don’t forget the stupid secrecy envelope if your state requires it. — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) October 17, 2020 × #MyNameIs Malcolm Kenyatta. My father named me to honor the legacy of two giants in the black diaspora: Malcolm X and Jomo Kenyatta. @sendavidperdue might not care, but my name reminds me everyday the systems of discrimination we must uproot. https://t.co/vY5JwuYXbz — Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (@malcolmkenyatta) October 17, 2020 × #MyNameIs Sikanyiselwe. Its Xhosa meaning is “we have been shone upon” or, “the light at the end of the tunnel”. My parents chose it believing they had better times ahead — just as so many of us do now. Go vote and make it true. #BidenHarris2020 https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI — Kanyi Maqubela (@km) October 17, 2020 × #MyNameIs Sikanyiselwe. Its Xhosa meaning is “we have been shone upon” or, “the light at the end of the tunnel”. My parents chose it believing they had better times ahead — just as so many of us do now. Go vote and make it true. #BidenHarris2020 https://t.co/RYB2KfASHI — Kanyi Maqubela (@km) October 17, 2020 × #MyNameIs Chris, but my middle name is Pey-Ning. In Chinese, it means abundance of peace. It's the kind of peace we'll all feel with Joe Biden as president This country belongs as much to me, @KamalaHarris and every kid with an ethnic name - as it does to David Perdue https://t.co/4mkUCq1aic — Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) October 17, 2020 × Gautam Raghavan, a user who participated in the campaign, also retweeted an old video posted by Kamala Harris in 2016 captioned, "People pronounce my name many different ways. Let #KidsForKamala show you how it’s done." People pronounce my name many different ways. Let #KidsForKamala show you how it’s done. pic.twitter.com/7QoQGN0B4k — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) May 24, 2016 ×

Twitter reacts with '#MyNameIs' after Senator mispronounces Kamala Harris' name

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a> marched into adulthood in Bass Weejuns penny loafers.

He was known around the University of Delaware campus as the teetotaling semi-jock with a sweater around his neck — the type who seemed more consumed with date nights than civil rights and expected a certain standard of decorum from his companions, once threatening to break off an evening with a woman who lit a cigarette in his borrowed convertible.

And when Biden and his friends from Syracuse University law school happened upon anti-war protesters at the chancellor’s office — the kind of Vietnam-era demonstration that galvanized so much of their generation — his group stepped past with disdain. They were going for pizza.

More than a half-century later, as Biden seeks the White House with a pledge to soothe the nation’s wounds and lower its collective temperature, he has been left to deflect a curious charge at the center of President Donald Trump’s reelection effort: Biden, the president insists, is eager to do the far-left bidding of violent agitators and other assorted radicals.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-harris-wish-hindu-americans-on-the-occasion-of-navratri-336070">Also read|&nbsp;Biden, Harris wish Hindu-Americans on the occasion of Navratri</a>

“They’ve got you wrapped around their finger, Joe,” Trump taunted at their first debate.

Biden, a 77-year-old moderate who cites John Wayne movies and long-dead Senate peers, has generally defaulted to a visceral defense: Look at me.

“Ask yourself,” he implored voters in a recent address. “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?”

He does not now, friends from his youth say, and he did not then — in spite of, and perhaps partly because of, the decade in which he came of age.

Amid simmering protests, generational division and defining disputes about the course of American life, Biden was a young man keen on bringing a bit of a 1950s sensibility into the 1960s — a nice-house-on-a-cul-de-sac kind of guy who spent his weekends as a 20-something husband scouting available real estate from his Corvette.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-sets-fundraising-record-with-383-mn-in-september-336026">Also read|&nbsp;Biden sets fundraising record with $383 mn in September</a>

There is a version of these years that Biden prefers to share publicly: how he was captivated by the civil rights movement, coming to understand the racial divide as a teenage lifeguard in a Black neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware; how he was brokenhearted by the murder of his heroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers; how he was motivated chiefly by an altruistic call to service.

If much of this accounting is plainly true in the abstract, those who knew him say, it also elides some finer points of Biden’s arc: his boundless personal ambition, his canny relationship-building as a political novice and, quite often, his conspicuous psychic distance from the activist fervor of the times as he plotted a path to office.

“He had other priorities,” Gilbert J. Sloan, a longtime supporter who was active in Delaware’s 1960s protest movements, said of Biden’s outlook then. “He was very young and ambitious.”

A review of how Biden navigated this period of national upheaval — drawn from interviews with more than a dozen friends, classmates and others who have known the Democratic nominee across the decades — at once lays bare the implausibility of Trump’s attack and supplies an enduring window into Biden’s own theories of social movements. Incremental progress is still progress, he has long believed, and within-the-system change is still change.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-how-the-states-vote-for-the-presidential-elections-335430">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: How the States vote for the Presidential elections</a>

If today’s activists have at times viewed Biden skeptically through this season of unrest, questioning whether he can connect with the passion in the streets when he has rarely shown passion in the streets himself, his early history would appear to reinforce their doubts.

This is a man whose institutionalist instincts seemed to harden even before he belonged to any political institutions — and who has never shown much patience for protests that turn destructive or unruly.

“That’s the way he views activism,” said Bob Markel, a friend since the 1950s. “Occupying an office of a dean or something like that is not his style.”

It never has been. As the Vietnam War reshaped lives across many less-than-affluent families like his own, with casualties and moral outrage mounting especially among young adults a few years behind him, Biden eluded both the conflict and the attendant anger. He received five student draft deferments during the war and was kept from service after a physical exam in 1968 because he had asthma as a teenager, according to his campaign. (Trump, now 74, received five deferments in all, including a medical deferment for bone spurs.)

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/jim-carrey-plays-joe-biden-in-the-most-anticipated-season-premiere-of-snl-332612">Also read|&nbsp;Jim Carrey plays Joe Biden in the most anticipated season premiere of 'SNL'</a>

Biden has said he viewed the Vietnam War “in terms of stupidity, not morality,” doubting its wisdom but never feverishly enough to chant about it.

“I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dye shirts,” he told reporters in 1987, distinguishing himself from some politically minded contemporaries. “Other people marched. I ran for office.”

‘Average Irish Guy’

It can be almost impossible now to imagine Biden as a young man — or, at least, a younger man than he was when he first reached Washington, as a 30-year-old senator shattered by the car crash that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter.

But to those who met him before his best-known trials and triumphs, the Joe Biden who wandered campus in a tasteful button-down and chinos remains an indelible character, settling into the identity that would become his self-styled political brand: polished but unpretentious, a natural leader with few obvious preternatural gifts.

“He was an average Irish guy. His father was a car salesman, for God’s sake,” said Fred Sears, a friend from the University of Delaware. “A good-looking guy with a gift of gab.”

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/us-election-2020-last-five-presidents-of-the-united-states-of-america-335804">Have a look| US election 2020: Last few Presidents of the United States of America</a>

The glad-handing started early.

An aspiring football running back and amiable freshman in 1961, Biden was elected president of his class, moving quickly to flatter his constituents.

“He came up to me, shook my hand,” recalled Brian Barrabee, a football player who lived in the same dorm, “and he said, ‘Brian, I’d like to thank you for not running for class president because if you had, you would have beaten me.’ It was his way of getting people to feel good.”

By his own account, Biden’s most resonant exposure to the dominant political issues of the day came well off campus. He has said he once walked out of a Wilmington restaurant that refused to serve a Black student from his high school, a recollection that Markel corroborated.

And at 19, Biden worked as a lifeguard in a largely Black section of Wilmington in 1962.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/democrats-have-nothing-but-disdain-for-your-values-says-trump-in-florida-rally-as-crowd-chants-lock-up-bidens-335925">Also read|&nbsp;Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump in Florida rally as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens'</a>

He has said he took the job after absorbing images of the civil rights fight on television and realizing he had few relationships with Black people, suggesting he came to understand injustice most acutely by speaking to swimmers about the prejudices they faced.

“What he learned from us is that we didn’t have what everybody else had,” said Richard Smith, a longtime civil rights activist who met Biden that summer as an adolescent. “He got his schooling at the swimming pool.”

Biden’s formal schooling, friends say, could feel less connected to the wider national tumult.

Barrabee said the campus was not a “hotbed of political activity,” describing much of the student body as “suburban kids from Wilmington, Delaware, southern Delaware area, who just wanted to go to college.”

Biden did not drink — “there are enough alcoholics in my family,” he has said — and he did not smoke. But he had a way of finding trouble.

He has said he was placed on probation for hosing down a resident adviser with a fire extinguisher. He once paid a covert visit to a romantic interest and left a friend, his lookout, to take the fall with the campus police, according to a transcript of Biden’s eulogy for the man in 2004.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-how-are-votes-counted-in-the-presidential-election-335422">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: How are votes counted in the presidential election?</a>

Biden has said his worrisome grades sidelined his football career. Academic struggles kept him from sticking with student government as well, Sears said.

But Biden’s father perhaps inadvertently assisted in his distracting social agenda: Cars were not permitted on campus, Sears said, but the elder Biden’s job allowed his son easy access to loaner vehicles for weekend excursions.

“Every weekend, somehow, Joe ended up with a car,” Sears said of his friend’s advantages in courtship. “It was always a convertible. Besides being very cool and dressing right, showing up in a convertible he had us all beat eight ways from Sunday.”

‘I Wore Sport Coats’

The tilt of Biden’s life changed for good with a last-minute flight to the Bahamas.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/in-record-turnout-over-16-million-americans-vote-ahead-of-election-day-on-november-3-335400">Also read|&nbsp;In record turnout, over 16 million Americans vote ahead of election day on November 3</a>

He had driven down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the spring of 1964 for a couple of days with friends when boredom compelled them to consider a more daring beach destination. They booked a round trip to Nassau for about $25.

While there, Biden met Neilia Hunter poolside at an exclusive hotel he had sneaked into by wrapping a guest towel around his waist and walking past the guards with confidence.

“I’ve got the blonde,” he told his friends, beelining to Hunter, an attractive sunbather from a well-to-do family near Syracuse.

She liked him back. And when they returned stateside, the fresh clarity in Biden’s personal life seemed to sharpen his focus on other endeavors, coaxing him to fits of big-picture dreaming.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-indian-americans-overwhelmingly-support-joe-biden-new-poll-shows-335285">Also read|&nbsp;US election 2020: Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Joe Biden, new poll shows</a>

He would apply to law school at Syracuse to be near Hunter. He would make sure he was studying enough to get in.

They would get married, have kids (“she wanted five”), buy a house (“a big Tudor-style house with real trees, what the real estate professionals call ‘mature plantings’”). He would work as a trial lawyer, start his own practice, run for office.

“Once I had Neilia with me, it became more of a plan than a daydream,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir. “Now I could see the picture whole.”

The early goals in this timeline were accomplished apace: He got into Syracuse. He and Hunter were married in 1966.

Markel, one of Biden’s groomsmen, said Biden’s seriousness extended even to his own bachelor party. The group had rented a motel room around New Castle, Delaware, he recalled, growing rowdier by the hour, with the exception of the non-drinking groom.

“We got kind of sloppy drunk,” Markel said. “Toward the end of the evening, I remember him giving us a lecture: ‘You guys are a disgrace.’”

But Biden was still liable to lose interest in academics quickly, prizing football tailgates or social engagements with Hunter and often copying class notes from a friend. Sometimes, Hunter prepared Biden’s study sheets, inventing mnemonic devices for him to memorize.

In his most damaging bit of carelessness, Biden lifted chunks of a law review article without proper citation — a blemish that damaged his 1988 presidential campaign amid other accusations of plagiarism at the time. Biden has said he did nothing “malevolent” at Syracuse but simply did not understand citation standards because he had not been to class often enough.

“He found out it wasn’t that easy,” said Mike Gelacak, a friend who later worked as a Senate aide to Biden. “His wife explained to him that he had to knuckle down.”

And if the country’s volatility in those years seeped into campus life, classmates say that Biden never much grappled with it in their company.

“I was married,” Biden told reporters during the 1988 campaign, declaring himself “out of sync” with anti-war zeal. “I was in law school. I wore sport coats.”

'The World Had Changed'

His wardrobe remained conservative upon graduation, befitting his new employer: a Wilmington law firm representing insurance companies, railroads and other well-resourced clients.

It was prestigious work, Biden told friends. He was making it. He was on schedule.

In public remarks through the years, Biden has tended to dwell more often on the broader historical record of this period than his own.

During a 2009 speech, he said the violence in Vietnam “pierced America’s consciousness,” recounting a student occupation of the Syracuse chancellor’s office. He did not tell his audience what he thought of those doing the occupying at the time.

In a 2016 address, Biden explained that once he graduated, “the world had changed.”

“Dr. King had been assassinated,” he said. “There were riots throughout America. A significant part of my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, was burned to the ground.”

This localized distress had perhaps the most lasting effect on Biden. Wilmington was home to a notoriously lengthy National Guard occupation: Troops continued patrolling predominantly Black neighborhoods well after initial unrest following King’s death.

Biden has described the episode, combined with his lifeguard experience, as central to his early understanding of race relations.

He began working as a public defender part time and signed on with another practice that often represented the less prosperous.

“If you’re interested in a political career, you do what he did rather than take a job at a white-shoe law firm,” Markel said.

The less subtle giveaway came during a visit to the Biden residence around this time.

“We sat down in his living room, and two dogs pop out,” Markel remembered. “I said, ‘What are their names?’ He said, ‘Senator and Governor.’”

Steeped in the “Truman Democrat” leanings of his relatives from an early age and repulsed, he has said, by the politics of Richard Nixon, Biden joined a local Democratic group, implicitly (and, often enough, explicitly) announcing himself as a prospective force in the party.

Even then, “he was an institutionalist,” said Sloan, the veteran activist. “He was going to work within the system, which he did.”

When a seat on the New Castle County Council was coming open in 1970, local Democrats assumed that Biden would be eager to claim it.

John Daniello, a party official who would become the Democratic state chairman, approached Biden to feel him out.

“He just had no interest in local government, so county office didn’t turn him on even a little bit,” Daniello said. “I made the pitch that, you know, all politics is local and that you’ve got to start someplace to get name recognition.”

Biden was persuaded in time. He ran and won.

Soon after, he asked Daniello to lunch.

“I thought he wanted to talk about pending issues,” Daniello said.

But Biden had another gambit in mind: What about the U.S. Senate?

Joe Biden marched into adulthood in Bass Weejuns penny loafers. He was known around the University of Delaware campus as the teetotaling semi-jock with a sweater around his neck — the type who seemed more consumed with date nights than civil rights and expected a certain standard of decorum from his companions, once threatening to break off an evening with a woman who lit a cigarette in his borrowed convertible.

Joe Biden marched into adulthood in Bass Weejuns penny loafers. He was known around the University of Delaware campus as the teetotaling semi-jock with a sweater around his neck — the type who seemed more consumed with date nights than civil rights and expected a certain standard of decorum from his companions, once threatening to break off an evening with a woman who lit a cigarette in his borrowed convertible. And when Biden and his friends from Syracuse University law school happened upon anti-war protesters at the chancellor’s office — the kind of Vietnam-era demonstration that galvanized so much of their generation — his group stepped past with disdain. They were going for pizza. More than a half-century later, as Biden seeks the White House with a pledge to soothe the nation’s wounds and lower its collective temperature, he has been left to deflect a curious charge at the center of President Donald Trump’s reelection effort: Biden, the president insists, is eager to do the far-left bidding of violent agitators and other assorted radicals. Also read| Biden, Harris wish Hindu-Americans on the occasion of Navratri “They’ve got you wrapped around their finger, Joe,” Trump taunted at their first debate. Biden, a 77-year-old moderate who cites John Wayne movies and long-dead Senate peers, has generally defaulted to a visceral defense: Look at me. “Ask yourself,” he implored voters in a recent address. “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” He does not now, friends from his youth say, and he did not then — in spite of, and perhaps partly because of, the decade in which he came of age. Amid simmering protests, generational division and defining disputes about the course of American life, Biden was a young man keen on bringing a bit of a 1950s sensibility into the 1960s — a nice-house-on-a-cul-de-sac kind of guy who spent his weekends as a 20-something husband scouting available real estate from his Corvette. Also read| Biden sets fundraising record with $383 mn in September There is a version of these years that Biden prefers to share publicly: how he was captivated by the civil rights movement, coming to understand the racial divide as a teenage lifeguard in a Black neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware; how he was brokenhearted by the murder of his heroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers; how he was motivated chiefly by an altruistic call to service. If much of this accounting is plainly true in the abstract, those who knew him say, it also elides some finer points of Biden’s arc: his boundless personal ambition, his canny relationship-building as a political novice and, quite often, his conspicuous psychic distance from the activist fervor of the times as he plotted a path to office. “He had other priorities,” Gilbert J. Sloan, a longtime supporter who was active in Delaware’s 1960s protest movements, said of Biden’s outlook then. “He was very young and ambitious.” A review of how Biden navigated this period of national upheaval — drawn from interviews with more than a dozen friends, classmates and others who have known the Democratic nominee across the decades — at once lays bare the implausibility of Trump’s attack and supplies an enduring window into Biden’s own theories of social movements. Incremental progress is still progress, he has long believed, and within-the-system change is still change. Also read| US election 2020: How the States vote for the Presidential elections If today’s activists have at times viewed Biden skeptically through this season of unrest, questioning whether he can connect with the passion in the streets when he has rarely shown passion in the streets himself, his early history would appear to reinforce their doubts. This is a man whose institutionalist instincts seemed to harden even before he belonged to any political institutions — and who has never shown much patience for protests that turn destructive or unruly. “That’s the way he views activism,” said Bob Markel, a friend since the 1950s. “Occupying an office of a dean or something like that is not his style.” It never has been. As the Vietnam War reshaped lives across many less-than-affluent families like his own, with casualties and moral outrage mounting especially among young adults a few years behind him, Biden eluded both the conflict and the attendant anger. He received five student draft deferments during the war and was kept from service after a physical exam in 1968 because he had asthma as a teenager, according to his campaign. (Trump, now 74, received five deferments in all, including a medical deferment for bone spurs.) Also read| Jim Carrey plays Joe Biden in the most anticipated season premiere of 'SNL' Biden has said he viewed the Vietnam War “in terms of stupidity, not morality,” doubting its wisdom but never feverishly enough to chant about it. “I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dye shirts,” he told reporters in 1987, distinguishing himself from some politically minded contemporaries. “Other people marched. I ran for office.” ‘Average Irish Guy’ It can be almost impossible now to imagine Biden as a young man — or, at least, a younger man than he was when he first reached Washington, as a 30-year-old senator shattered by the car crash that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter. But to those who met him before his best-known trials and triumphs, the Joe Biden who wandered campus in a tasteful button-down and chinos remains an indelible character, settling into the identity that would become his self-styled political brand: polished but unpretentious, a natural leader with few obvious preternatural gifts. “He was an average Irish guy. His father was a car salesman, for God’s sake,” said Fred Sears, a friend from the University of Delaware. “A good-looking guy with a gift of gab.” Have a look| US election 2020: Last few Presidents of the United States of America The glad-handing started early. An aspiring football running back and amiable freshman in 1961, Biden was elected president of his class, moving quickly to flatter his constituents. “He came up to me, shook my hand,” recalled Brian Barrabee, a football player who lived in the same dorm, “and he said, ‘Brian, I’d like to thank you for not running for class president because if you had, you would have beaten me.’ It was his way of getting people to feel good.” By his own account, Biden’s most resonant exposure to the dominant political issues of the day came well off campus. He has said he once walked out of a Wilmington restaurant that refused to serve a Black student from his high school, a recollection that Markel corroborated. And at 19, Biden worked as a lifeguard in a largely Black section of Wilmington in 1962. Also read| Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump in Florida rally as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens' He has said he took the job after absorbing images of the civil rights fight on television and realizing he had few relationships with Black people, suggesting he came to understand injustice most acutely by speaking to swimmers about the prejudices they faced. “What he learned from us is that we didn’t have what everybody else had,” said Richard Smith, a longtime civil rights activist who met Biden that summer as an adolescent. “He got his schooling at the swimming pool.” Biden’s formal schooling, friends say, could feel less connected to the wider national tumult. Barrabee said the campus was not a “hotbed of political activity,” describing much of the student body as “suburban kids from Wilmington, Delaware, southern Delaware area, who just wanted to go to college.” Biden did not drink — “there are enough alcoholics in my family,” he has said — and he did not smoke. But he had a way of finding trouble. He has said he was placed on probation for hosing down a resident adviser with a fire extinguisher. He once paid a covert visit to a romantic interest and left a friend, his lookout, to take the fall with the campus police, according to a transcript of Biden’s eulogy for the man in 2004. Also read| US election 2020: How are votes counted in the presidential election? Biden has said his worrisome grades sidelined his football career. Academic struggles kept him from sticking with student government as well, Sears said. But Biden’s father perhaps inadvertently assisted in his distracting social agenda: Cars were not permitted on campus, Sears said, but the elder Biden’s job allowed his son easy access to loaner vehicles for weekend excursions. “Every weekend, somehow, Joe ended up with a car,” Sears said of his friend’s advantages in courtship. “It was always a convertible. Besides being very cool and dressing right, showing up in a convertible he had us all beat eight ways from Sunday.” ‘I Wore Sport Coats’ The tilt of Biden’s life changed for good with a last-minute flight to the Bahamas. Also read| In record turnout, over 16 million Americans vote ahead of election day on November 3 He had driven down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the spring of 1964 for a couple of days with friends when boredom compelled them to consider a more daring beach destination. They booked a round trip to Nassau for about $25. While there, Biden met Neilia Hunter poolside at an exclusive hotel he had sneaked into by wrapping a guest towel around his waist and walking past the guards with confidence. “I’ve got the blonde,” he told his friends, beelining to Hunter, an attractive sunbather from a well-to-do family near Syracuse. She liked him back. And when they returned stateside, the fresh clarity in Biden’s personal life seemed to sharpen his focus on other endeavors, coaxing him to fits of big-picture dreaming. Also read| US election 2020: Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Joe Biden, new poll shows He would apply to law school at Syracuse to be near Hunter. He would make sure he was studying enough to get in. They would get married, have kids (“she wanted five”), buy a house (“a big Tudor-style house with real trees, what the real estate professionals call ‘mature plantings’”). He would work as a trial lawyer, start his own practice, run for office. “Once I had Neilia with me, it became more of a plan than a daydream,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir. “Now I could see the picture whole.” The early goals in this timeline were accomplished apace: He got into Syracuse. He and Hunter were married in 1966. Markel, one of Biden’s groomsmen, said Biden’s seriousness extended even to his own bachelor party. The group had rented a motel room around New Castle, Delaware, he recalled, growing rowdier by the hour, with the exception of the non-drinking groom. “We got kind of sloppy drunk,” Markel said. “Toward the end of the evening, I remember him giving us a lecture: ‘You guys are a disgrace.’” But Biden was still liable to lose interest in academics quickly, prizing football tailgates or social engagements with Hunter and often copying class notes from a friend. Sometimes, Hunter prepared Biden’s study sheets, inventing mnemonic devices for him to memorize. In his most damaging bit of carelessness, Biden lifted chunks of a law review article without proper citation — a blemish that damaged his 1988 presidential campaign amid other accusations of plagiarism at the time. Biden has said he did nothing “malevolent” at Syracuse but simply did not understand citation standards because he had not been to class often enough. “He found out it wasn’t that easy,” said Mike Gelacak, a friend who later worked as a Senate aide to Biden. “His wife explained to him that he had to knuckle down.” And if the country’s volatility in those years seeped into campus life, classmates say that Biden never much grappled with it in their company. “I was married,” Biden told reporters during the 1988 campaign, declaring himself “out of sync” with anti-war zeal. “I was in law school. I wore sport coats.” 'The World Had Changed' His wardrobe remained conservative upon graduation, befitting his new employer: a Wilmington law firm representing insurance companies, railroads and other well-resourced clients. It was prestigious work, Biden told friends. He was making it. He was on schedule. In public remarks through the years, Biden has tended to dwell more often on the broader historical record of this period than his own. During a 2009 speech, he said the violence in Vietnam “pierced America’s consciousness,” recounting a student occupation of the Syracuse chancellor’s office. He did not tell his audience what he thought of those doing the occupying at the time. In a 2016 address, Biden explained that once he graduated, “the world had changed.” “Dr. King had been assassinated,” he said. “There were riots throughout America. A significant part of my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, was burned to the ground.” This localized distress had perhaps the most lasting effect on Biden. Wilmington was home to a notoriously lengthy National Guard occupation: Troops continued patrolling predominantly Black neighborhoods well after initial unrest following King’s death. Biden has described the episode, combined with his lifeguard experience, as central to his early understanding of race relations. He began working as a public defender part time and signed on with another practice that often represented the less prosperous. “If you’re interested in a political career, you do what he did rather than take a job at a white-shoe law firm,” Markel said. The less subtle giveaway came during a visit to the Biden residence around this time. “We sat down in his living room, and two dogs pop out,” Markel remembered. “I said, ‘What are their names?’ He said, ‘Senator and Governor.’” Steeped in the “Truman Democrat” leanings of his relatives from an early age and repulsed, he has said, by the politics of Richard Nixon, Biden joined a local Democratic group, implicitly (and, often enough, explicitly) announcing himself as a prospective force in the party. Even then, “he was an institutionalist,” said Sloan, the veteran activist. “He was going to work within the system, which he did.” When a seat on the New Castle County Council was coming open in 1970, local Democrats assumed that Biden would be eager to claim it. John Daniello, a party official who would become the Democratic state chairman, approached Biden to feel him out. “He just had no interest in local government, so county office didn’t turn him on even a little bit,” Daniello said. “I made the pitch that, you know, all politics is local and that you’ve got to start someplace to get name recognition.” Biden was persuaded in time. He ran and won. Soon after, he asked Daniello to lunch. “I thought he wanted to talk about pending issues,” Daniello said. But Biden had another gambit in mind: What about the U.S. Senate?

Joe Biden's non-radical 1960s

Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday (local time) weighed emphatically in favour of Affordable Care Act, informally known as 'Obamacare' at an event in Michigan.

Michigan is a swing state, that is, one of the states that are not seen to strongly support either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Victory in swing states may prove to be instrumental for both candidates after they win their respective traditional strongholds.

“If I have the honor of becoming your president, we'll build on the Affordable Care Act, no matter what they do," Biden said at an event in Michigan.

Affordable Care Act was passed by Barack Obama administration. The act paved way for millions of Americans to afford healthcare. Republican Party has been against the law from the moment it was passed. Democrats allege that striking down the law is high on the priority list of Republicans. Democratic Party has upped the ante to support the Act especially after Judge Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court.

In Michigan, Biden lashed out at Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

"He’ll do anything to distract us from focusing on his failures to deal with this virus to protect the nation," Biden said. "It's not disappearing, in fact it's on the rise again. It's getting worse, as predicted."

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/democrats-have-nothing-but-disdain-for-your-values-says-trump-in-florida-rally-as-crowd-chants-lock-up-bidens-335925">Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump in Florida rally as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens'</a>

Biden has shown strength with senior voters, many of whom have faulted Trump for his response to the health crisis.

Biden also homed in on another area where Trump has run into regular controversy -- his often lackluster responses when asked to condemn extreme right-wing groups and white supremacists.

He said Trump's comments were a "dog whistle" to such groups.

"Look. Everybody knows who Donald Trump is, let's show them who we are," Biden said at a car rally in Detroit. 
"We choose hope over fear, unity over division, science over fiction and yes, truth over lies."

(With agency inputs)

Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday (local time) weighed emphatically in favour of Affordable Care Act, informally known as 'Obamacare' at an event in Michigan.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday (local time) weighed emphatically in favour of Affordable Care Act, informally known as 'Obamacare' at an event in Michigan. Michigan is a swing state, that is, one of the states that are not seen to strongly support either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Victory in swing states may prove to be instrumental for both candidates after they win their respective traditional strongholds. “If I have the honor of becoming your president, we'll build on the Affordable Care Act, no matter what they do," Biden said at an event in Michigan. Affordable Care Act was passed by Barack Obama administration. The act paved way for millions of Americans to afford healthcare. Republican Party has been against the law from the moment it was passed. Democrats allege that striking down the law is high on the priority list of Republicans. Democratic Party has upped the ante to support the Act especially after Judge Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court. In Michigan, Biden lashed out at Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. "He’ll do anything to distract us from focusing on his failures to deal with this virus to protect the nation," Biden said. "It's not disappearing, in fact it's on the rise again. It's getting worse, as predicted." Also Read | Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump in Florida rally as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens' Biden has shown strength with senior voters, many of whom have faulted Trump for his response to the health crisis. Biden also homed in on another area where Trump has run into regular controversy -- his often lackluster responses when asked to condemn extreme right-wing groups and white supremacists. He said Trump's comments were a "dog whistle" to such groups. "Look. Everybody knows who Donald Trump is, let's show them who we are," Biden said at a car rally in Detroit. "We choose hope over fear, unity over division, science over fiction and yes, truth over lies." (With agency inputs)

We will build on Obamacare, no matter what they do: Joe Biden in Michigan

According to US Elections Project, over 23 million people have already voted in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/us-election"> US elections</a> ahead of election day on November 3.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-election-2020-unprecedented-surge-in-mail-in-votes-wion-voa-co-production-335918/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The surge in voting has surprised experts as only 6 million had voted at this time during the 2016 elections which was won by <a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/us-election-2020-last-five-presidents-of-the-united-states-of-america-335804">Trump</a>. California, Texas and Florida have witnessed a huge voter turnout with over 2 million votes cast already, according to United States Elections Project, run by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/democrats-have-nothing-but-disdain-for-your-values-says-trump-in-florida-rally-as-crowd-chants-lock-up-bidens-335925">Also Read: Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens'</a>

The voters have turned up in huge numbers despite the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/coronavirus-cases-cross-8-million-in-united-states-daily-infections-on-the-rise-since-september-335923">coronavirus</a> pandemic sweeping the country even as US President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/we-will-build-on-obamacare-no-matter-what-they-do-joe-biden-in-michigan-335944">Joe Biden</a> continue to take on each other in various Townhall duels across the country.

Most of the voting so far has taken place through in-person or by mail-in voting. According to Ohio Secretary of State, over 2.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested which is double the number requested in the same period in 2016.

Over a million people have also voted in Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia.

Voters have also chosen their next US president in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Aziona and Okhalama with a sizeable number of votes cast. &nbsp;

According to reports, the youth in America have turned up in huge numbers so far to vote.&nbsp;

According to US Elections Project, over 23 million people have already voted in the US elections ahead of election day on November 3. Watch: The surge in voting has surprised experts as only 6 million had voted at this time during the 2016 elections which was won by Trump.

According to US Elections Project, over 23 million people have already voted in the US elections ahead of election day on November 3. Watch: The surge in voting has surprised experts as only 6 million had voted at this time during the 2016 elections which was won by Trump. California, Texas and Florida have witnessed a huge voter turnout with over 2 million votes cast already, according to United States Elections Project, run by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald. Also Read: Democrats have nothing but disdain for your values, says Trump as crowd chants 'Lock up Bidens' The voters have turned up in huge numbers despite the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the country even as US President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden continue to take on each other in various Townhall duels across the country. Most of the voting so far has taken place through in-person or by mail-in voting. According to Ohio Secretary of State, over 2.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested which is double the number requested in the same period in 2016. Over a million people have also voted in Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia. Voters have also chosen their next US president in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Aziona and Okhalama with a sizeable number of votes cast. According to reports, the youth in America have turned up in huge numbers so far to vote.

US Elections: Over 23 million Americans vote ahead of polling day

President Donald Trump painted a rosy picture of his financial condition during a televised town hall Thursday night, calling his hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due “a peanut” and saying he had borrowed it as a favor to lenders eager to take advantage of his financial strength.

In fact, the loans, and the unusual requirement he had to accept to receive them, illustrate the financial challenges he faces and the long-standing reluctance of banks to deal with him.

Trump had to personally guarantee $421 million in debt, a rare step that lenders only require of businesses that may not be able to repay. The commitment puts his assets on the line and could place his lenders, should he be reelected, in the position of deciding whether to foreclose on a sitting president.

The personal guarantee also speaks to why, despite Trump’s assertion that banks are eager to lend him money, nearly all the money he borrowed in the last decade came from only two institutions.

“When a bank asks for a personal guarantee, it is because the bank isn’t satisfied with the creditworthiness of the borrower,” said Richard Scott Carnell, who served as assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton and now teaches law at Fordham University. “If the captain gives a personal guarantee for the ship, he will be less likely to sink it.”

Trump was asked about the debt in response to an investigation by The New York Times published last month based on a review of more than two decades of his tax-return data. The investigation found that Trump had personally guaranteed $421 million of his companies’ debts, with more than $300 million coming due within four years.

The Times also found evidence that Trump might have difficulty repaying or refinancing the loans without liquidating assets. His main source of income in recent decades — a total of more than $427 million from entertainment and licensing deals that were fueled by his fame — has all but dried up. That cash enabled a buying spree of failing golf courses, and propped up those businesses as their losses mounted. In recent years, Trump has burned through most of the cash, stocks and bonds at his disposal and has recently explored the sale of some of his holdings, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

The investigation revealed that Trump’s finances were under stress, with losses that allowed him to pay just $750 in federal income taxes for 2016 and 2017, and nothing at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. Also hanging over him is a decadelong audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax-return data obtained by The Times does not by its nature identify the lender for most of Trump’s debts. But the borrowing businesses and largest amounts track with the personal financial disclosures he has been required to file with the federal government as a candidate and president.

The bulk of the debt appears to be owed to Deutsche Bank, one of the few lenders that would do business with Trump in the last decade, even after he defaulted on past loans.

The tax records, for example, show that the largest loan balances at the end of 2018 that Trump had personally guaranteed were $160 million on his Washington hotel and more than $125 million on his Doral golf resort. His disclosure forms indicate that Deutsche Bank was the lender on both loans. Trump had also personally guaranteed $60.3 million of debt owed by one of his entities, DJT Holdings. His Chicago tower, another Deutsche Bank borrower, is among the many businesses he controls through that holding company.

Deutsche Bank is the only mainstream financial institution that has been consistently willing to do business with Trump. And even that lender has required him to personally guarantee what he has borrowed.

As The Times has reported, Deutsche Bank and Trump have had a long and fraught relationship, with the bank at times being hesitant to lend to Trump, including refusing to advance him money during his 2016 campaign.

Deutsche Bank has spent billions of dollars trying to transform itself into a global player, a strategy that has pushed it to take outsize risks that have repeatedly landed it in trouble with U.S. regulators. In recent years, the Justice Department has investigated whether the bank has complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes. And in 2017, the Justice Department completed a deal with the bank that required it to pay $7.2 billion for its sale of toxic mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

According to Trump’s disclosure forms and property records, the only other significant lender to his businesses since 2012 has been Ladder Capital.

Trump’s reputation among lenders was sealed over the decades that his Atlantic City casinos repeatedly filed for bankruptcy. Ben Berzin, a retired executive vice president and senior credit officer at PNC Bank who dealt with Trump over the casino loans, said banks got “an expensive education,” and the ones that did not demand a personal guarantee got burned.

“They lent on the aura of success,” he said. “And things went really wrong.”

Trump’s most lucrative investment is one run by another company: a 30% share with Vornado Realty Trust in two office buildings, one in Manhattan and the other in San Francisco. Trump withdrew $125.5 million from his share of the partnership’s profits from 2010 through 2018, the records show.

The Times’ totals for Trump’s debts do not include $950 million that the Vornado partnership borrowed on the two buildings in 2012 from four lenders, including Deutsche Bank. Tax records issued to Trump show he is not responsible for any of that debt.

The debt that Trump has personally guaranteed was only part of the total debt and other liabilities shown in his tax records for the end of 2018. Additionally, Trump’s businesses owe more than $200 million for which Trump is not personally responsible.

During the town hall, Trump said that the $421 million in debt was not a concern, apparently clinging to his long-held assertion that his net worth is more than $10 billion.

“What I’m saying is that it’s a tiny percentage of my net worth,” Trump said

“When you look at vast properties like I have, and they’re big and they’re beautiful and they’re well located, when you look at that, the amount of money, $400 million, is a peanut, it’s extremely underlevered,” he added, seemingly using his own version of the financial term “underleveraged.”

In a dire situation, Trump could try to sell some assets or properties to cover a loan coming due. But loans are usually based on the profitability of the business borrowing the money.

Tax records for the businesses on which he borrowed the bulk of the money suggest that refinancing may present a challenge. Doral and his Washington hotel, with more than $300 million in debts coming due, have posted regular losses. And in addition to the debt he owes, Trump has pumped a net of $261.8 million cash into the businesses to help keep them afloat.

And he appears to have spent much of the cash and investments he had on hand just a few years ago, as his income from entertainment and endorsements began a steep decline.

In January 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds, his biggest single month of sales in at least the last two decades. He sold $54 million more in stocks and bonds in 2015, and $68.2 million in 2016. A financial disclosure released in July shows that he had as little as $873,000 in securities left to sell.

Trump’s businesses reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40% from five years earlier.

Carnell, the former Treasury official, said Trump’s personal guarantee on the debts put his lenders, primarily Deutsche Bank, in an “awkward” spot, in no small part because banks are subject to federal regulation and Trump has displayed a willingness to push the Justice Department to investigate perceived foes.

“The Donald Trump approach to law is all legal levers would be fair game in pressuring or punishing a bank,” he said.

President Donald Trump painted a rosy picture of his financial condition during a televised town hall Thursday night, calling his hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due “a peanut” and saying he had borrowed it as a favor to lenders eager to take advantage of his financial strength.

President Donald Trump painted a rosy picture of his financial condition during a televised town hall Thursday night, calling his hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due “a peanut” and saying he had borrowed it as a favor to lenders eager to take advantage of his financial strength. In fact, the loans, and the unusual requirement he had to accept to receive them, illustrate the financial challenges he faces and the long-standing reluctance of banks to deal with him. Trump had to personally guarantee $421 million in debt, a rare step that lenders only require of businesses that may not be able to repay. The commitment puts his assets on the line and could place his lenders, should he be reelected, in the position of deciding whether to foreclose on a sitting president. The personal guarantee also speaks to why, despite Trump’s assertion that banks are eager to lend him money, nearly all the money he borrowed in the last decade came from only two institutions. “When a bank asks for a personal guarantee, it is because the bank isn’t satisfied with the creditworthiness of the borrower,” said Richard Scott Carnell, who served as assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton and now teaches law at Fordham University. “If the captain gives a personal guarantee for the ship, he will be less likely to sink it.” Trump was asked about the debt in response to an investigation by The New York Times published last month based on a review of more than two decades of his tax-return data. The investigation found that Trump had personally guaranteed $421 million of his companies’ debts, with more than $300 million coming due within four years. The Times also found evidence that Trump might have difficulty repaying or refinancing the loans without liquidating assets. His main source of income in recent decades — a total of more than $427 million from entertainment and licensing deals that were fueled by his fame — has all but dried up. That cash enabled a buying spree of failing golf courses, and propped up those businesses as their losses mounted. In recent years, Trump has burned through most of the cash, stocks and bonds at his disposal and has recently explored the sale of some of his holdings, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The investigation revealed that Trump’s finances were under stress, with losses that allowed him to pay just $750 in federal income taxes for 2016 and 2017, and nothing at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. Also hanging over him is a decadelong audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. The tax-return data obtained by The Times does not by its nature identify the lender for most of Trump’s debts. But the borrowing businesses and largest amounts track with the personal financial disclosures he has been required to file with the federal government as a candidate and president. The bulk of the debt appears to be owed to Deutsche Bank, one of the few lenders that would do business with Trump in the last decade, even after he defaulted on past loans. The tax records, for example, show that the largest loan balances at the end of 2018 that Trump had personally guaranteed were $160 million on his Washington hotel and more than $125 million on his Doral golf resort. His disclosure forms indicate that Deutsche Bank was the lender on both loans. Trump had also personally guaranteed $60.3 million of debt owed by one of his entities, DJT Holdings. His Chicago tower, another Deutsche Bank borrower, is among the many businesses he controls through that holding company. Deutsche Bank is the only mainstream financial institution that has been consistently willing to do business with Trump. And even that lender has required him to personally guarantee what he has borrowed. As The Times has reported, Deutsche Bank and Trump have had a long and fraught relationship, with the bank at times being hesitant to lend to Trump, including refusing to advance him money during his 2016 campaign. Deutsche Bank has spent billions of dollars trying to transform itself into a global player, a strategy that has pushed it to take outsize risks that have repeatedly landed it in trouble with U.S. regulators. In recent years, the Justice Department has investigated whether the bank has complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes. And in 2017, the Justice Department completed a deal with the bank that required it to pay $7.2 billion for its sale of toxic mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. According to Trump’s disclosure forms and property records, the only other significant lender to his businesses since 2012 has been Ladder Capital. Trump’s reputation among lenders was sealed over the decades that his Atlantic City casinos repeatedly filed for bankruptcy. Ben Berzin, a retired executive vice president and senior credit officer at PNC Bank who dealt with Trump over the casino loans, said banks got “an expensive education,” and the ones that did not demand a personal guarantee got burned. “They lent on the aura of success,” he said. “And things went really wrong.” Trump’s most lucrative investment is one run by another company: a 30% share with Vornado Realty Trust in two office buildings, one in Manhattan and the other in San Francisco. Trump withdrew $125.5 million from his share of the partnership’s profits from 2010 through 2018, the records show. The Times’ totals for Trump’s debts do not include $950 million that the Vornado partnership borrowed on the two buildings in 2012 from four lenders, including Deutsche Bank. Tax records issued to Trump show he is not responsible for any of that debt. The debt that Trump has personally guaranteed was only part of the total debt and other liabilities shown in his tax records for the end of 2018. Additionally, Trump’s businesses owe more than $200 million for which Trump is not personally responsible. During the town hall, Trump said that the $421 million in debt was not a concern, apparently clinging to his long-held assertion that his net worth is more than $10 billion. “What I’m saying is that it’s a tiny percentage of my net worth,” Trump said “When you look at vast properties like I have, and they’re big and they’re beautiful and they’re well located, when you look at that, the amount of money, $400 million, is a peanut, it’s extremely underlevered,” he added, seemingly using his own version of the financial term “underleveraged.” In a dire situation, Trump could try to sell some assets or properties to cover a loan coming due. But loans are usually based on the profitability of the business borrowing the money. Tax records for the businesses on which he borrowed the bulk of the money suggest that refinancing may present a challenge. Doral and his Washington hotel, with more than $300 million in debts coming due, have posted regular losses. And in addition to the debt he owes, Trump has pumped a net of $261.8 million cash into the businesses to help keep them afloat. And he appears to have spent much of the cash and investments he had on hand just a few years ago, as his income from entertainment and endorsements began a steep decline. In January 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds, his biggest single month of sales in at least the last two decades. He sold $54 million more in stocks and bonds in 2015, and $68.2 million in 2016. A financial disclosure released in July shows that he had as little as $873,000 in securities left to sell. Trump’s businesses reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40% from five years earlier. Carnell, the former Treasury official, said Trump’s personal guarantee on the debts put his lenders, primarily Deutsche Bank, in an “awkward” spot, in no small part because banks are subject to federal regulation and Trump has displayed a willingness to push the Justice Department to investigate perceived foes. “The Donald Trump approach to law is all legal levers would be fair game in pressuring or punishing a bank,” he said.

$421 million in debt: Trump calls it ‘a peanut,’ but challenges lie ahead

Are social media giants trying to manipulate the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections? If not, why then have Facebook and Twitter restricted the reach of an article on Hunter Biden? Palki Sharma Upadhyay has the details.

Gravitas: Is social media manipulating U.S. polls?

At least three people connected to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign have tested positive for the coronavirus. Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has suspended her travel plans, leading the campaign to suspend in-person events.

Kamala Harris suspends travel plans: Harris shared flight with 2 people who later tested positive

US President Donald <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-thought-he-had-a-nuclear-deal-with-putin-not-so-fast-russia-said-335455">Trump</a> speaking at a Town hall meeting in Miami today ahead of the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/us-election?page=1">US elections</a> said he stood for "peaceful transfer" of power while adding that "don't expect that to be needed because I will win".

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/can-trump-close-the-gap-with-biden-us-election-2020-new-york-direct-335571/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The US president downplayed the importance of masks with the US reeling under coronavirus pandemic, saying that there are two opinions on it.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-elections-2020-key-issues-and-donald-trump-joe-bidens-stand-on-them-335441">Also Read:&nbsp;2020 US election's key issues and Donald Trump, Joe Biden's stand&nbsp;</a>

Trump said he decided not to eat White House meal brought to him by a valet who "was playing with his mask."

On the question of herd immunity as a strategy, Trump said: "The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. We did the right thing," adding, "You cannot continue to let this go on with the lockdowns."

When asked about QAnon, Trump said: "I just don't know about QAnon. You tell me all about it. Let's waste a whole show."

"I denounce white supremacy," Trump said.

On his much-touted 'fraud" in &nbsp;mail-in ballots, Trump said: If the FBI director doesn't think there's a tremendous problem with mail-in ballots, then he's not doing his job."

On charges of evading taxes, Trump dismissed the allegation, saying: "What they did is illegal. The numbers are all wrong I'm very under-levered. ... It's a tiny percentage of my net worth."

The US president reiterated that he does not "owe Russia money".

"Nobody in their right mind would release their taxes prior to working out a deal with the IRS," the US president said, while asserting that "it's common sense and intelligence...I would love to release them."

US President Donald Trump speaking at a Town hall meeting in Miami today ahead of the US elections said he stood for "peaceful transfer" of power while adding that "don't expect that to be needed because I will win".

US President Donald Trump speaking at a Town hall meeting in Miami today ahead of the US elections said he stood for "peaceful transfer" of power while adding that "don't expect that to be needed because I will win". Watch: The US president downplayed the importance of masks with the US reeling under coronavirus pandemic, saying that there are two opinions on it. Also Read: 2020 US election's key issues and Donald Trump, Joe Biden's stand Trump said he decided not to eat White House meal brought to him by a valet who "was playing with his mask." On the question of herd immunity as a strategy, Trump said: "The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. We did the right thing," adding, "You cannot continue to let this go on with the lockdowns." When asked about QAnon, Trump said: "I just don't know about QAnon. You tell me all about it. Let's waste a whole show." "I denounce white supremacy," Trump said. On his much-touted 'fraud" in mail-in ballots, Trump said: If the FBI director doesn't think there's a tremendous problem with mail-in ballots, then he's not doing his job." On charges of evading taxes, Trump dismissed the allegation, saying: "What they did is illegal. The numbers are all wrong I'm very under-levered. ... It's a tiny percentage of my net worth." The US president reiterated that he does not "owe Russia money". "Nobody in their right mind would release their taxes prior to working out a deal with the IRS," the US president said, while asserting that "it's common sense and intelligence...I would love to release them."

Peaceful transfer, I absolutely want it, says Trump at town hall meeting

The race for the White House has reached Israel. Both, Democratic Party and Republican Party are trying hard to attract dual-nationality American-Israelis, many of whom are registered in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. As a result, posters in Hebrew have suddenly started appearing in Tel Aviv.

This week, posters saying 'You have to thank Trump' in Hebrew were seen on minibuses in Tel Aviv.

Like Republicans, Democrats are trying to woo voters in Israel as well. Democrats have &nbsp;arranged a 40% discount with the courier service DHL for voters whose home states require overseas ballots to be sent by mail.&nbsp;

There are no reliable statistics on American-Israelis` political leanings, but Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, estimated there were 25,000-30,000 eligible Florida voters in the country.

"That could be the deciding factor in that state`s contest," he said, pointing to George W. Bush`s narrow Florida victory in 2000, which handed him the election. He was quoted by Reuters.

US President Donald Trump has had a big influence in Israel as he delighted many by his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israeli capital and moving US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Joe Biden`s supporters have sent election postcards to Israeli Democrats and independents from swing states, where, they say, around half of American-Israeli Democrats are registered.

"Trump has used Israel as a partisan football to serve his own constituencies, like Christian Evangelicals," Democrats Abroad Israel chair Heather Stone told Reuters.

Biden, she said, was "a long-time friend of Israel who will help keep alive" the vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Biden or Trump?

The parties` estimates of the number of eligible dual citizens resident in Israel range from 100,000 to 300,000. Some experts who track the information said it was likely to be more than 250,000.

Half a dozen American-Israeli voters interviewed by Reuters identified the coronavirus crisis, economic policy and candidates` stands on Israel as guiding their decisions.

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-trumps-coronavirus-optimism-continues-as-joe-biden-says-prez-did-nothing-335685">US election 2020: Trump's coronavirus optimism continues as Joe Biden says Prez did 'nothing'</a>

One New York voter, Hezi Kugler, said he was voting for Biden to bring "a return to decency and a restoration of integrity" at the highest level of government.

"Trump has done some things that are good for Israeli interests, but his lack of global leadership has created an enormous vacuum in the region that is generally bad for Israel," said Kugler, 62, an energy industry professional in Tel Aviv.

In the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, Republican David Wiener said Trump was the right choice because he approached thorny Middle East conflicts "from a business perspective".

Last month, Trump hosted a White House ceremony in which Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed deals to establish formal relations.

"Gulf countries see Israel as an opportunity to expand their industries ... Trump took advantage of that with the UAE," said Wiener, 39, an aerospace engineer registered in Pennsylvania.

Palestinian outreach

Although the election is most visible in Israel, there are also many Palestinians eligible to vote.

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has encouraged voting by both sides, hosting Facebook live events with Arabic subtitles geared towards residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

For Democrats Abroad, Stone said she was working with Palestinian activists in East Jerusalem and in the Palestinian diaspora to get out the vote.

One East Jerusalem activist, Kefah Abukhdeir, said Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza face multiple barriers to sending votes abroad, including unreliable postal services that she called "practically non-existent".

"We haven`t had much luck turning out voters here," she said.

In Gaza, where an estimated 300 American-Palestinians live, Kamal Abusharia said he hoped to vote for the first time since the early 1990s in part due to anger towards Trump.

But he held out little hope that Biden would reverse all of Trump`s pro-Israeli moves were he to win.

"I don`t think that Biden would work to (return) the embassy (to Tel Aviv) or put the issue of Palestinian refugees back on the table," he said.

The race for the White House has reached Israel. Both, Democratic Party and Republican Party are trying hard to attract dual-nationality American-Israelis, many of whom are registered in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

The race for the White House has reached Israel. Both, Democratic Party and Republican Party are trying hard to attract dual-nationality American-Israelis, many of whom are registered in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. As a result, posters in Hebrew have suddenly started appearing in Tel Aviv. This week, posters saying 'You have to thank Trump' in Hebrew were seen on minibuses in Tel Aviv. Like Republicans, Democrats are trying to woo voters in Israel as well. Democrats have arranged a 40% discount with the courier service DHL for voters whose home states require overseas ballots to be sent by mail. There are no reliable statistics on American-Israelis` political leanings, but Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, estimated there were 25,000-30,000 eligible Florida voters in the country. "That could be the deciding factor in that state`s contest," he said, pointing to George W. Bush`s narrow Florida victory in 2000, which handed him the election. He was quoted by Reuters. US President Donald Trump has had a big influence in Israel as he delighted many by his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israeli capital and moving US embassy there from Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Joe Biden`s supporters have sent election postcards to Israeli Democrats and independents from swing states, where, they say, around half of American-Israeli Democrats are registered. "Trump has used Israel as a partisan football to serve his own constituencies, like Christian Evangelicals," Democrats Abroad Israel chair Heather Stone told Reuters. Biden, she said, was "a long-time friend of Israel who will help keep alive" the vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Biden or Trump? The parties` estimates of the number of eligible dual citizens resident in Israel range from 100,000 to 300,000. Some experts who track the information said it was likely to be more than 250,000. Half a dozen American-Israeli voters interviewed by Reuters identified the coronavirus crisis, economic policy and candidates` stands on Israel as guiding their decisions. Also Read | US election 2020: Trump's coronavirus optimism continues as Joe Biden says Prez did 'nothing' One New York voter, Hezi Kugler, said he was voting for Biden to bring "a return to decency and a restoration of integrity" at the highest level of government. "Trump has done some things that are good for Israeli interests, but his lack of global leadership has created an enormous vacuum in the region that is generally bad for Israel," said Kugler, 62, an energy industry professional in Tel Aviv. In the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, Republican David Wiener said Trump was the right choice because he approached thorny Middle East conflicts "from a business perspective". Last month, Trump hosted a White House ceremony in which Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed deals to establish formal relations. "Gulf countries see Israel as an opportunity to expand their industries ... Trump took advantage of that with the UAE," said Wiener, 39, an aerospace engineer registered in Pennsylvania. Palestinian outreach Although the election is most visible in Israel, there are also many Palestinians eligible to vote. The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has encouraged voting by both sides, hosting Facebook live events with Arabic subtitles geared towards residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. For Democrats Abroad, Stone said she was working with Palestinian activists in East Jerusalem and in the Palestinian diaspora to get out the vote. One East Jerusalem activist, Kefah Abukhdeir, said Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza face multiple barriers to sending votes abroad, including unreliable postal services that she called "practically non-existent". "We haven`t had much luck turning out voters here," she said. In Gaza, where an estimated 300 American-Palestinians live, Kamal Abusharia said he hoped to vote for the first time since the early 1990s in part due to anger towards Trump. But he held out little hope that Biden would reverse all of Trump`s pro-Israeli moves were he to win. "I don`t think that Biden would work to (return) the embassy (to Tel Aviv) or put the issue of Palestinian refugees back on the table," he said.

US Elections 2020 fever reaches streets of Tel Aviv

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