Biden is on the cusp of winning the presidency on Friday as he opened or extended leads over Trump in critical battlegrounds of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona…reports Asian Lite News
Kamala Harris, the first Indian and Black American candidate on a US presidential ticket, is pencilled in to speak ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at a location that’s increasingly taking on the look of a victory podium set up at the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden is on the cusp of winning the presidency on Friday as he opened or extended leads over Trump in critical battlegrounds of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona. A Pennsylvania win alone will push him over the top of the 270-electoral vote target.
Voters check in to receive their ballots during the in-person early voting at a polling station in Madison Square Garden in New York, the United States, Oct. 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
As per campaign chatter, Harris speaking first is the Biden camp’s nod to the vice presidential candidate’s historic run. At this time, it is not clear if Harris and Biden will take the stage even if Pennsylvania results are not yet declared by that time.
At this time, the mood in the campaign is said to be one of “joy” and “relief” after an “emotional roller coaster” of a long and bruising election campaign season amid an ongoing pandemic.
Champagne bottles are being popped but the public posture remains muted yet confident.
A campaign staffer told NBC that the final call on the election result (in Biden’s favour) is “only an eventuality” and “imminent”.
The statement accuses Democrats of resisting the “basic principle” that “all legal ballots must be counted and all illegal ballots should not be counted”…reports Asian Lite News
President Donald Trump’s team has put out a statement, saying that “the American people deserve to have full transparency into all vote counting and election certification”.BBC reports
“This is no longer about any single election. This is about the integrity of our entire election process,” the statement said.
The statement accuses Democrats of resisting the “basic principle” that “all legal ballots must be counted and all illegal ballots should not be counted”, and says Trump will “pursue this process through every aspect of the law”.
“I will never give up fighting for you and our nation,” the statement concluded.
Trump has repeatedly suggesting counting postal votes that arrive after election day is “illegal”.
New York, Nov. 05 (Xinhua) — People watch live broadcast of the ballot counting during the 2020 U.S. presidential election on Times Square in New York, the United States, Nov. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
Meantime, Biden leads Trump by nearly 6,000 votes in Pennsylvania and over 1,000 in deep red Georgia.
Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history.About 130,000 votes remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.
Biden leads Trump 253 to 214 in the electoral vote tally. A victory in Pennsylvania means it is game over for Trump, who ran a wild campaign in 2016 and has transformed the White House in the strangest of ways in the last four years
Biden is leading Trump 253-214 in the electoral vote count. He is on the cusp of victory if he carries Pennsylvania. Biden is now ahead by more than 9,000 votes there…reports Nikhila Natarajan
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
An increasingly confident Joe Biden campaign sent out a stern message on Friday, without naming US President Donald Trump, saying the “United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”
Biden is leading Trump 253-214 in the electoral vote count. He is on the cusp of victory if he carries Pennsylvania. Biden is now ahead by more than 9,000 votes there.
“As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.
The Biden campaign’s remarks came on a day when Donald Trump has rage tweeted since 2 am, claiming (wrongly) that he has won the election based on “legal” votes, and that “these late ballots past Election Day are illegal”.
Trump is fuming and showing it on Twitter and elsewhere. His public posture remains combative although White House insiders have been saying, in conversations with reporters, that they feel deflated, especially now that Pennsylvania is slipping away to Biden.
The President’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC that Trump seems ready to fight, a remark he repeated later in the day to White House pool reporters.
The President does not technically have to concede if he loses an election, it is more of a tradition. At this time though, Trump’s mood is to contest the election results in key battlegrounds by flinging lawsuits and seeing what sticks.
Meanwhile, key Republicans have begun breaking away from Trump’s stand, saying they see no evidence to support Trump’s baseless claim that Democrats are trying to “steal” the elections.
New York, Nov. 05 (Xinhua) -- People watch live broadcast of the ballot counting during the 2020 U.S. presidential election on Times Square in New York, the United States, Nov. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history. About 130,000 votes remain to be counted in Pennsylvania…reports Nikhila Natarajan
After three full days of waiting patiently for the slow march of vote counting to work itself out, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden finally stormed into the lead in battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday morning, closing in on the White House which continues to turn on a handful of incredibly tight contests.
The Biden campaign believes that it has crossed the Pennsylvania challenge and is “joyous”, according to reporters on the ground in Delaware, the Biden headquarters.
Biden leads Trump by nearly 6,000 votes in Pennsylvania and over 1,000 in deep red Georgia.
Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history. About 130,000 votes remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.
New York, Nov. 05 (Xinhua) — People watch live broadcast of the ballot counting during the 2020 U.S. presidential election on Times Square in New York, the United States, Nov. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
Trump is fuming, he remains defiant and continues to allege “fraud” in Pennsylvania and other battlegrounds. His children have chimed into the overall White House meltdown, in terms that generally occupy the wide arc between what’s “legal” and “illegal”.
Biden leads Trump 253 to 214 in the electoral vote tally. A victory in Pennsylvania means it is game over for Trump, who ran a wild campaign in 2016 and has transformed the White House in the strangest of ways in the last four years.
Biden is a sharp contrast to Trump, both in the personal and political realm. The last three days have shown Americans glimpses of that very difference.
Biden spent every day since November 3 trying to ease tensions and delivering his messages with little outward show of anxiety.
“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” Biden has said repeatedly. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the President of the United States of America.”
In the podcast on Thursday, Bannon first called Fauci’s firing, as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray…reports Asian Lite News
The podcast Twittter account of Steve Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser, has been suspended after he allegedly called for America’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci’s head to be put on “pikes”.
The suspension of the account @WarRoomPandemic came after Bannon’s statement went live on the micro-blogging platform on Thursday, The Hill News website reported.
In a statement to The Hill, Twitter said the account was suspended for violating “our policy on the glorification of violence”, adding that it had policies in place to address “explicit threats of violence and other forms of online abuse or harassment and hateful conduct”.
In the podcast on Thursday, Bannon first called Fauci’s firing, as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci, no, I actually want to go a step farther, but the President is a kind-hearted man and a good man.
Washington, Sept. 23, 2020 (Xinhua) — Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, testifies during a hearing of U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Sept. 23, 2020. Anthony Fauci attended the hearing on Wednesday and warned of the long-term effects that disease might have on those infected. (Graeme Jennings/Pool via Xinhua/IANS)
“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone,” Bannon further said in the podcast.
Meanwhile, YouTube also removed Bannon’s video and has given it one strike.
YouTube has a three-strike policy before it terminates an account.
“We’ve removed this video for violating our policy against inciting violence. We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period,” Alex Joseph, a YouTube spokesperson, told The Hill news website in a statement on Thursday.
The development came as counting of the votes cast in Tuesday’s US presidential election was still underway in few states, leading to tensions over the outcome.
Esper is helping lawmakers draft legislation to remove Confederate names from military bases, which could lead to a further rift between him and President Donald Trump…reports Asian Lite News
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman has denied a media report that claimed US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper was planning to resign.
“The NBC story is inaccurate and misleading in many ways. To be clear, Secretary of Defence Esper has no plans to resign, nor has he been asked to submit a letter of resignation,” Xinhua news agency quoted Hoffman as saying in a tweet late Thursday.
Citing three defence officials, NBC News had reported earlier in the day that Esper had “prepared his letter because he is one of the Cabinet officials long expected to be pushed out after the election”.
Esper is helping lawmakers draft legislation to remove Confederate names from military bases, which could lead to a further rift between him and President Donald Trump, the report said.
United States President Donald Trump participated in a phone call with Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Sunday, October 4, 2020 from a conference room at the Walter Reed military hosptial where he is being treated for COVID-19. (Photo: White House/IANS)
For months, US media has been reporting about the President’s frustration with Esper, who opposed using active-duty troops against civil unrest in June when Trump threatened to send military forces to crack down on nationwide demonstrations against racial injustice.
At a press briefing in August, when asked if he would fire Esper, Trump said that he “considers firing everybody”.
Esper took office as the 27th US Defence Secretary in July 2019.
His predecessor Jim Mattis left office in December 2018 after clashing with Trump over the withdrawal of US troops from Syria.
It marks the third time the number has dipped below 800,000 in the past 33 weeks, and the 11th time it has come in below 1 million…reports Asian Lite News
The number of initial jobless claims in the US totalled 751,000 last week, as the labour market continues to recover at a slowing pace due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic, the Labour Department reported.
In the week ending October 31, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits slightly decreased by 7,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised level of 758,000, Xinhua news agency quoted a report released by the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Thursday as saying.
It marks the third time the number has dipped below 800,000 in the past 33 weeks, and the 11th time it has come in below 1 million.
The claims report also showed that the number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits in the week ending October 24 decreased by 538,000 to 7.29 million.
Meanwhile, the recipients of Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a federal program that provides an additional 13 weeks of benefits for those who exhaust regular state benefits, rose by 277,564 to reach 3.96 million in the week ending October 17.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs — state and federal combined — for the week ending October 17 declined by 1.15 million yet remained elevated at 21.5 million, indicating the pandemic’s severe disruption to the labour market.
The social network also will label presidential candidates’ posts with a link to its voting information centre…reports Asian Lite News
Facebook. (File Photo: IANS)
Facebook on Friday said it will update the notifications running across the top of its main app and Instagram with the projected winner of the election once it has been projected by a majority of media outlets,
The social network also will label presidential candidates’ posts with a link to its voting information centre.
“While several states continue to count votes, we wanted to share a reminder of the steps we’ll take to provide reliable information across our products once there is a projected presidential winner,” Facebook said in a tweet.
Once a majority of independent decision desks at major media outlets project a winner, “we’ll update the notifications running across the top of Facebook and Instagram with the projected winner of the election”.
Facebook announced several measures to reduce the spread of misinformation on its platforms before the November 3 election.
It also labeled a couple of tweets on “election theft” and mail-in ballots as misleading by US President Donald Trump.
“We will also start applying labels with the projected winner on all presidential candidates’ posts with a link to our Voting Information Center to see more about the election results,” the company said.
All 27 domains were being used in violation of US sanctions targeting both the government of Iran and the IRGC, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday…reports Asian Lite News
The US has seized 27 additional domain names that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “unlawfully” used to spread “disinformation”.
All 27 domains were being used in violation of US sanctions targeting both the government of Iran and the IRGC, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
Four of the domains purported to be genuine news outlets but were actually controlled by the IRGC and targeted audiences in the US, to covertly influence US policy and public opinion, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to descriptions in the seizure documents.
The remainder targeted audiences in other parts of the world, it added.
“Within the last month we have announced seizures of Iran’s weapons, fuel, and covert influence infrastructure,” John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department, said in a statement.
“As long as Iran’s leaders are trying to destabilise the world through the state-sponsorship of terrorism and the taking of hostages, we will continue to enforce US sanctions and take other legal steps to counter them.”
This seizure warrant follows an earlier seizure of 92 domains used by the IRGC for similar purposes.
“The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is aggressively investigating any evidence of foreign influence and the unlawful spread of disinformation by hostile nations. Today, we seized 27 additional domains that Iran’s IRGC was illegally using in attempt to manipulate public opinion in other countries, including the US,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair.
“Thanks to our ongoing collaboration with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the FBI was able to disrupt this Iranian propaganda campaign and we will continue to pursue any attempts by foreign actors to spread disinformation in our country.”
New York, Nov. 04 (Xinhua) -- A staff member works at a polling station in New York, the United States, Nov. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
The Federal Election Commission concentrates on the election financing, strictly enforcing the laws on political contributions in cash and in kind, rather than dealing with the nitty-gritty of conducting elections….reports Arul Louis
New York, Nov. 04 (Xinhua) — A staff member works at a polling station in New York, the United States, Nov. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
An official overseeing elections in the US state of Georgia has pointed out shocking inefficiencies in the presidential election like a memory card on an election machine failing, ballots that didn’t get uploaded to the system and the postal ballots printed on papers that could not be scanned for counting.
One of the polling place scanners in Taylor County had “a corrupt memory card”, Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia state voting system manager, said on Thursday.
He said they rescanned the paper versions of the ballots that were kept as backups.
In another county, Laurens, “they are trying to figure out exactly where the batches” are for 797 ballots, he said.
“They thought they had uploaded them and they looked and realised they had not,” Sterling said.
Taylor County had printed the postal ballots on a different size of paper from the one used to scan them for counting, he said.
“They’re going through the process of duplicating each of those ballots on the ballot marking devices,” which will have to be verified against the original to get the count done, he said.
Voters check in to receive their ballots during the in-person early voting at a polling station in Madison Square Garden in New York, the United States, Oct. 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying/IANS)
Sterling pointed out that under Georgia law, “it’s counties who run elections and there are 159 counties in the state”,
They are of different sizes and have different levels of staffing, he said.
Election laws and process in the US differ by states.
Sterling said that in Georgia, “the law calls for all absentee (postal) ballots to be accepted by 7 p.m. on election day” and when they have problems the voters have to be notified that they have three days to “cure” or fix them.
Trump’s campaign is fighting the counting of postal ballots that come in after the close of voting on election day in some states.
Combo photo shows U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump attend their respective events on different occasions. (Xinhua/IANS)
Unlike countries like India, the US does not have a national body to run the elections, which are conducted by the states and there is a further level of complexity when the states devolve the responsibility to local government entities.
The Federal Election Commission concentrates on the election financing, strictly enforcing the laws on political contributions in cash and in kind, rather than dealing with the nitty-gritty of conducting elections.
The problems in the holding of US elections have come to the fore this time with President Donald pointing some of the flaws.
However, the Democrats have defended the system and the media, which complains about elections in other countries play down the faults of the US system to the point of almost denying their prevalence.
