Joe Biden in Kenosha after talking to Jacob Blake and meeting his family – live | US news

A new series of battleground state polls shows Joe Biden is pulling ahead in Pennsylvania, while he and Trump remain virtually tied in Florida and North Carolina.

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, Biden is 8 points ahead of the president among Pennsylvania’s likely voters, 52%-44%.

That number should help to calm some Democrats after a separate Monmouth University poll of Pennsylvania released yesterday showed Biden with a 1-3 point among the swing state’s likely voters, depending on the level of turnout.

But the Quinnipiac University poll also found a very tight race in Florida, with Biden leading by 3 points among likely voters in a survey with a 2.8-point margin of error.

A separate Monmouth University poll showed a similarly close race in North Carolina. Biden leads Trump there by 2 points, which is well within the poll’s margin of error.

The polls add to the overall evidence that last month’s party conventions don’t seem to have moved the needle all that much, and Biden has maintained his national advantage in the race.

However, Biden and Trump are still running neck and neck in several swing states, which will ultimately tip the balance of the Electoral College and determine the winner of the presidential race.

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor said he urged Joe Biden not to visit Kenosha today, as protests continue over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Tony Evers told reporters in a press call that he “made his position clear” to Biden, but the Democratic nominee chose to come to Kenosha anyway.

“Candidates can make their own decisions,” Evers said. “I would prefer that no one be here.”

Biden said yesterday that he had received “overwhelming requests” from Democratic leaders to go to Kenosha, but some local officials publicly said they would prefer neither presidential nominee visit at this time.

Evers previously sent a letter to Trump, who visited the city on Tuesday, similarly discouraging him from coming.

“I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing,” Evers said in the letter. “I am concerned your presence will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together.”

During his community meeting in Kenosha, Joe Biden pledged to “go down fighting for racial equality,” saying he is “optimistic” about the opportunity for change.

“I really am optimistic,” Biden said. “I promise you, win or lose, I’m going to go down fighting. I’m going to go down fighting for racial equality, equity across the board.”

The Democratic presidential nominee, who is leading national polls by about 7 points right now, added, “This is something worth losing over, but we’re not going to lose.”

Joe Biden said he spoke to Jacob Blake for about 15 minutes, and he noted Blake is now out of the intensive care unit.

Asked about what Blake said, the Democratic nominee said Blake emphasized that “nothing was going to defeat him.”

Blake is currently paralyzed from the waist down after being repeatedly shot in the back by Kenosha police, but Biden said the 29-year-old was determined to keep fighting, even if he never walked again.

The presidential candidate said he was also struck by the resilience and optimism of Blake’s family members, who expressed gratitude for the support they have received since the shooting.

Jacob Blake himself joined his family’s meeting with Democratic nominee Joe Biden by phone earlier today, according to the family’s lawyer.

Benjamin Crump, the civil rights attorney representing the Blake family, said in a new statement that the Bidens and the Blakes had a “very engaging 90-minute in-person meeting.”

Jacob Blake called into the meeting from his hospital bed, as the 29-year-old African American continues to recover after being repeatedly shot in the back by Kenosha police.

“Jacob Jr. shared about the pain he is enduring, and the vice president commiserated,” Crump said.

“The vice president told the family that he believes the best of America is in all of us and that we need to value all our differences as we come together in America’s great melting pot.

“It was very obvious that Vice President Biden cared, as he extended to Jacob Jr. a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer.”

Trump also visited Kenosha earlier this week, but the president did not meet with the Blake family during the trip.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden is speaking at a community meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, amid ongoing protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American.

Biden recalled how his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, was devastated by unrest in the 1960’s, after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.

The former vice president then flashed forward 40 years, to waiting at a Wilmington train station to go to Barack Obama’s inauguration.

“Don’t tell me things can’t change,” Biden said. But the presidential nominee conceded he had been too optimistic about the nation’s trajectory, saying, “I made a mistake: I thought you could defeat hate. It only hides.”

Biden condemned Trump’s leadership amid the national reckoning over racism, saying the president “legitimizes the dark side of human nature.”

“This is not who we are,” Biden said.

Joe Biden has arrived at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for a community meeting “to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face”, as the Democrat’s campaign has said.

According to a pool report, the meeting includes only a couple of dozen attendees due to coronavirus guidelines. The meeting is expected to last about an hour, and Biden will be the last person to speak.

A Washington Post reporter noted that Biden had to reject a handshake from one of the meeting attendees because of coronavirus concerns. Instead, the presidential nominee grabbed the man’s arm and complimented his biceps.

Dr Anthony Fauci said it is not likely that a coronavirus vaccine will be approved and ready for distribution by the end of October.

Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, has previously said a vaccine could be approved by November or December, but the CEO of Pfizer recently said he should have enough data by the end of October.

Fauci acknowledged that all of the timelines mentioned are “guesstimates,” but he considers it unlikely a vaccine will be ready by October.

“If someone comes out and says I’m going to shoot for the possibility that I’ll get it by October, you can’t argue strongly against that,” Fauci said. “That’s unlikely, not impossible. I think most of the people feel it’s going to be November, December.”

Fauci added, “It is conceivable that you could have it by October, though I don’t think that that’s likely.”

The exact vaccine timeline could have serious consequences on the presidential election, which will be held on November 3.

Trump has previously said a vaccine may be ready by the end of the year or “much sooner,” but that appears to be wishful thinking.

Twitter has placed a public interest notice on two of Trump’s tweets about encouraging voters to cast two ballots in November.

“We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter said.

“Per our policies, this Tweet will remain on the service given its relevance to ongoing public conversation. Engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Quote Tweet, but not Like, Reply, or Retweet it.”

The president’s tweets were an apparent attempt to clean up his comments yesterday on voting twice. During his trip to North Carolina, Trump said of voting by mail, “Let them send it in and let them go vote. And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.

The president later claimed he was simply encouraging people to ensure their votes are tabulated if they mail in their ballots.

But the North Carolina board of elections specifically discouraged people from going to polling places on Election Day to verify their ballots were counted.

“The State Board office strongly discourages people from showing up at the polls on Election Day to check whether their absentee ballot was counted,” Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the board, said in a statement. “That is not necessary, and it would lead to longer lines and the possibility of spreading COVID-19.”

Joe and Jill Biden are now heading towards Kenosha and will arrive in about 30 minutes.

Their meeting with members of the family of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Kenosha man, who is African American and was shot in the back by a white police officer on August 23 and is hospitalized with grave wounds, was kept private and details are not expected to be released by Biden’s campaign.

The Democratic presidential candidate is due to attend a community meeting in the small city and apparently has another stop in Kenosha, of which details have not yet been disclosed.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Joe Biden met with the family of Jacob Blake in Milwaukee. The Democratic nominee is holding a community meeting in Kenosha today as protests continue over the police shooting of Blake, an African American father of six.
• Trump and his advisers tried to walk back his comments encouraging North Carolinians to vote twice in November. The White House claimed the president was only encouraging voters to ensure their mailed-in ballots are counted. But Trump said of voting by mail yesterday, “Let them send it in and let them go vote. And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.
• US jobless claims fell to 881,000 last week, as concerns about unemployment linger. The figure represented a decrease from a week earlier, but 29 million Americans are still receiving unemployment benefits of some kind.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany concluded her briefing after about 25 minutes.

Before stepping away from the podium, McEnany addressed reports that one of Trump’s top medical advisers was encouraging the administration to embrace herd immunity as a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“That was never something that was ever considered here at the White House,” McEnany said, claiming the idea of endorsing herd immunity was “made up in the fanciful minds of the media.”

But the president himself appeared to raise the idea during his interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this week.

“Once you get to a certain number, we use the word herd, once you get to a certain number, it’s going to go away,” Trump said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the administration was “deeply troubled” by the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

McEnany called the attack “reprehensible,” and she read yesterday’s statement from the National Security Council condemning the poisoning.

It’s worth noting that Trump himself has not yet addressed the attack on Navalny. The German government announced yesterday that it appeared the opposition leader was poisoned with a nerve agent previously used by Russian agents.