- Former President Barack Obama, campaigning for Joe Biden in Florida on Tuesday, slammed White House coronavirus outbreaks as indicative of Donald Trump’s botched response to the pandemic.
- Trump campaigns in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska as Biden heads to one-time Republican bastion Georgia.
- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will administer judicial oath to newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
- Melania Trump holds first solo event of the campaign in Pennsylvania.
- More than 64.7 million US citizens have already cast ballots in early voting with just seven days until the election, smashing the 2016 total of about 57.2 million who voted early.
Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the United States elections. This is Joseph Stepansky
Poll roundup: Nevada is looking less like a battleground
Two new polls released today show Biden with a lead in Nevada, a state Trump hopes to flip this year.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released today has Biden up 49-43 percent over Trump among likely voters (margin of error +/-3.8 percent) while a new University of Nevada, Las Vegas poll has Biden leading among likely voters, 50-41 percent (margin of error +/-4 percent).
Trump, who lost Nevada to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a slim 2.4 percentage points, will campaign along the Nevada-Arizona border tomorrow. Vice President Mike Pence will visit the state on Thursday. For their part, the Biden campaign is sending Kamala Harris to the state today for two stops.
Meanwhile, yet another Florida poll shows a statistically tied race there. Fifty percent of likely Florida voters back Biden while 48 percent support Trump, according to a new Florida Atlantic University poll. The margin of error is +/-3.1 percent.
After Supreme Court ruling on Wisconsin mail-ballot extension, spotlight on North Carolina, Pennsylvania
The Supreme Court on Monday struck down an attempted deadline extension for ballots to be received.
Based on the ruling, ballots must be received by election officials by the close of polls on election day. Democrats in the state had sought to allow ballots post-marked by election day to be counted if they arrived up to six days later, amid concerns over US Postal Service slowdowns.
The decision turns attention to two key states that have pending litigation that will possibly be heard by the Supreme Court.
Republicans are attempting to undo a policy in North Carolina that allows ballots post marked by election day to be counted if they arrive by November 12.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Republicans have sought to fast track a case to the high court that would overturn a policy that allows ballots post-marked by election day to be counted if they arrive up to three days later. The Supreme Court had already deadlocked 4-4 on the matter, upholding a lower courts deadline extension. However, with the ascension of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, creating a 6-3 conservative majority on the bench, Republicans hope a new ruling on the matter would be in their favor.
Obama slams Trump for allowing outbreak in the White House
Obama, campaigning for Biden in the key battleground of Florida, urged residents to vote as soon as possible, while slamming Trump for allowing a coronavirus outbreak in the White House.
“Let me say this, I lived in the White House for a while. It’s a controlled environment,” Obama said in Orlando Florida. “You can take some preventive measures in the White House to avoid getting sick. Except this guy can’t seem to do it. He’s turned the White House into a hot zone. Some of the places he holds rallies have seen new spikes right after he leaves town.”
Obama also slammed comments by Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, who on Sunday said in an interview “we’re not going to control the pandemic”, while adding “we are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas”.
Barrett sworn in to Supreme Court
Amy Coney Barrett was formally sworn in Tuesday as the Supreme Court’s ninth justice, her oath administered in private by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Barrett was confirmed Monday by the Senate in a 52-48 virtual party line vote. She is expected to begin work as a justice on Tuesday after taking the second of two oaths required of judges by federal law.
No justice has assumed office so close to a presidential election or immediately confronted issues so directly tied to the incumbent president’s political and personal fortunes. At 48, she’s the youngest justice since Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991 at age 43.
Washington Times, Boston Herald endorse Trump
The conversvative Washington Times and the Boston Herald tabloid have endorsed Trump for president.
Both papers made the announcement in editorials on Tuesday, with the Herald writing that Trump is “what America needs right now, decisive action to get us back to pre-pandemic strength – not an unfeasible spending spree in the name of a progressive utopia.”
Beyond the two endorsements on Tuesday, only five major papers have endorsed Trump, according to the University of California’s American Presidency Project. That’s compared to 44 who have endorsed Biden.
The Trump-endorsing newspapers include the New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and the Las Vegas Review Journal, which is owned by Trump mega-donor businessman Sheldon Adelson.
Senator Cruz does not think Hunter Biden attacks working
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, has said in an interview that he does not think the Trump campaign’s focus on the dealing’s of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has been effective with voters.
“I don’t think it moves a single voter,” Cruz said, when asked about a dubious report on Hunter Biden’s emails that suggested Biden used his influence as vice president to help his son’s business dealings.
Cruz also added: “One of Biden’s best points was when he said, ‘All of these attacks back and forth about my family and his family, they don’t matter. What matters is your family.'”
Trump, while on the campaign trail, has repeatedly seized on the report on Hunter Biden. The younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine were the centre of House impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Biden campaigns in Georgia, in show of optimism
Leading his Republican rival in national opinion polls, Biden journeys to Georgia on Monday, which has not supported a Democrat in a presidential election since 1992.
Meanwhile, Trump will hold rallies in three states key to his re-election hopes: Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska.
In Georgia, opinion polls show the race to be tight, and a win by Biden there would likely be a severe blow to Trump’s chances. Biden told reporters on Monday he believes he has a “fighting chance” to take Georgia.
He will hold an afternoon event in Warm Springs, Georgia, before capping the day with an evening rally in Atlanta. The aggressive move also carries risks for Biden, whose trip to Georgia precludes visits to more traditional battleground states that can swing toward either party’s candidate.
Judge rejects DOJ request to shield Trump from rape accuser’s defamation lawsuit
A federal judge has rejected a US government request to drop Donald Trump as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit by a writer who said the president falsely denied raping her in a Manhattan department store a quarter century ago.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan refused to let the government substitute itself for Trump as a defendant in former Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit.
Kaplan’s decision is a defeat for Trump, because dropping him as a defendant would have shielded him from liability and likely doomed Carroll’s defamation claim. Acting at the behest of Attorney General William Barr, the Department of Justice has argued that Trump acted in his official capacity when denying Carroll’s accusations, and therefore could not be sued personally for defamation.
But the judge said Trump was not an “employee of the government” entitled to be shielded from Carroll’s claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Kaplan also said Trump did not make his statements within the scope of his “employment” as president.
Barrett to be given judicial oath by Chief Justice Roberts
Amy Coney Barrett is set to be given the judicial oath by Chief Justice John Roberts in a private ceremony on Tuesday, cementing her place on the court.
Barrett’s first votes on the Supreme Court could include two big topics affecting the man who nominated her. The court is weighing a plea from Trump to prevent the Manhattan district attorney from acquiring his tax returns as well as appeals from the Trump campaign and Republicans to shorten the deadline for receiving and counting absentee ballots in the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Barrett will also rule on any challenges related to the election, as the Supreme Court did in the 2000 election between former President George Bush and former Vice President Al Gore.
Bloomberg funding late Biden push in Texas, Ohio: Report
Billionaire former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg is planning to spend about $15 million to help Biden defeat Trump in Texas and Ohio during the final week of the campaign, the New York Times has reported, citing a senior Bloomberg aide.
Bloomberg, who lost to Biden in a crowded field for the Democratic nomination, has promised to spend up to $100 million of his personal fortune to support Biden’s campaign for the November 3 election. He has been targeting Florida as a state he could push into the Biden column and on Monday he agreed to add Texas and Ohio for a late television advertising blitz, after his team presented polling data showing them as competitive, the report said.
He will also increase pro-Biden advertising in Florida, the report said.
Read all of the election news from October 26 here.
