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31-10-2020
MILWAUKEE/ ROCHESTER/ WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden on Friday rushed to the Midwestern states where the coronavirus has roared back, with the republican leader falsely accusing 
doctors of profiting from COVID-19 deaths while Biden claiming that the US leader had surrendered to the pandemic.
Trump criticized Democratic governors who have imposed restrictions that aim to slow the virus’s spread, and said Biden would prohibit Americans from gathering for holidays or other special occasions if elected. Many of those who came to see him did not wear masks.
“You’ve got to open up your state and you’ve got to do it fast!” Trump said at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with just four days to go before the election.
At a later event in Rochester, Minnesota, he greeted hundreds of supporters who were locked out of a rally that was limited to 250 participants by state authorities.
Trump also trained his ire on the US medical system, falsely saying that doctors are somehow incentivized to drive up the death count.
“Our doctors get more money if someone dies from COVID,” he said in Waterford Township, Michigan.
Biden accused Trump of “giving up” in the fight against the virus and said he should not attack medical personnel who are treating its victims.
“Unlike Donald Trump, we will not surrender to this virus,” he said at a rally in St Paul, Minnesota. Supporters, socially distanced in their cars at the state fairground, and honked their horns in agreement.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 230,000 people in the United States and cost millions more their jobs, has dominated the final days of the campaign.
A record surge of cases is pushing hospitals to the brink of capacity. The news pushed Wall Street to its worst week since March, undercutting one of Trump’s main arguments for re-election.
Trump, who recovered from COVID-19 weeks ago, has played down the health crisis for months, telling supporters in recent weeks that the country is “turning the corner” even as cases surge. Biden has warned of a “dark winter” ahead and promised a renewed effort to contain the virus.
Biden leads Trump 52% to 42% in Reuters/IPSOS national opinion polling, partly because of widespread disapproval of his handling of the pandemic. Opinion polls show a closer contest in the most competitive states that will decide the election.
The focus on the upper Midwest underlined the region’s importance in the race. Michigan and Wisconsin were two of the three historically Democratic industrial states, along with Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for the Republican Trump in 2016, delivering him an upset victory.
Biden leads Trump by 9 percentage points in Michigan and Wisconsin and 5 points in Pennsylvania, according to Reuters/IPSOS polling.
Earlier, every candidate in the heat of a US presidential campaign talks up their goals for the first 100 days in office and Joe Biden, the Democrat challenging President Donald Trump, has done so for months.
From battling the coronavirus to rejoining the Paris climate agreement and immigration reform, a Biden presidency, he says, would change course on multiple fronts.
“We’re going to have an enormous task in repairing the damage he’s done,” Biden said recently of his rival.
Here is a look at a possible first 100 days of a Biden presidency.
Anti-pandemic strategy
Biden says he would immediately put a national strategy in place to “get ahead” of the virus and end the pandemic crisis.
That means a nationwide mask mandate and a plan that allows for free and widespread COVID-19 testing, boosting of US medical equipment manufacturing and making any future vaccine “free to everyone, whether or not you’re insured.”
Having accused Trump of undermining his own health experts, Biden has pledged to keep respected White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci on board.
He also said he wants to “take the muzzle off our experts” and cancel the process to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, which Trump initiated in July.
Economic revitalization
Effectively reopening the economy is another immediate priority, says Biden.
The Democrat, relying on his experience wooing lawmakers from both political parties, will demand Congress agree on a huge coronavirus relief package to assist struggling families and ravaged small businesses.
In July Biden unveiled his “Build Back Better” strategy, a $700 billion blueprint to create millions of jobs. Financing would come through tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and on major corporations.
Biden has also pledged to invest heavily in renewable energies.
Rejoining climate accord
Biden has long called for comprehensive action to combat climate change in the United States, battered by growing numbers of hurricanes and wildfires in recent years.
“The first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris accord,” Biden promised during his debut debate against Trump, who exited the landmark global agreement in 2017. “Because with us out, look what’s happening. It’s all falling apart.”
Biden says he would also convene a climate summit of the world’s leading polluters to “persuade” them to make more ambitious pledges to reduce carbon emissions.
Biden has adopted an ambitious $2 trillion climate change plan including a “clean energy revolution” that aims to achieve net zero emissions economy-wide no later than 2050.
He also promised to quickly reverse several of Trump’s rollbacks of regulations on environmental standards.
Judicial reform
Biden has promised to quickly appoint a bipartisan national commission that would have 180 days to study the judicial system — which the Democrat said is “getting out of whack” — and propose reforms.
He has said he is “not a fan” of expanding the US Supreme Court beyond its current nine members but other Democrats have expressed a clear preference for the move now that Trump’s third nominee to the bench, Amy Coney Barrett, has been confirmed, cementing its six-three conservative majority.
Biden, who authored numerous tough-on-crime bills when he was a senator, is also calling for sweeping criminal justice reform.
His plans include creating a grant program that encourages states to reduce incarceration and crime, ensuring 
housing for formerly incarcerated individuals and strategies to reduce repeat offending.
‘Pathway to citizenship’
Biden has promised a substantial set of immigration reforms should he win the White House.
He has announced he would immediately create a federal task force to reunite more than 500 children who were taken from their parents by the Trump administration at the US-Mexico border.
Biden has described the separations as a “criminal” result of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy aimed at deterring migrants from crossing into the US.
He would also rescind the travel bans that prohibit foreign nationals from several majority Muslim countries from entering the United States.
One of his more controversial steps could be action on the millions of undocumented people living in the United States.
“Within 100 days, I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people,” Biden said in his final debate with Trump, on October 22.
He also pledged to let minor children who entered the country with their parents illegally — a group of about 700,000 young people known as Dreamers — to legally stay and take steps toward US citizenship.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is on the verge of what would be a double-dream for US Democrats: becoming the nation´s first woman vice president and ending Donald Trump´s turbulent rule.
Harris comes into the November 3 election already a repeat trailblazer as California’s first Black attorney general and the first woman of South Asian heritage elected to the US Senate.
But winning the vice presidency, a heartbeat away from leading the United States, would be the most significant barrier she has broken yet and a stepping stone to the ultimate prize.
With the 77-year-Biden expected to serve only a single term if elected, Harris would be favored to win the 
Democratic presidential nomination four years from now.
That could give her a shot at more history-making — as the first female president of the United States.
“My mother raised me to see what could be, unburdened by what has been,” Harris, 56, wrote on Twitter.
Since being tapped as Biden´s running mate in August, she has slammed President Donald Trump on his chaotic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also racism, the economy and the president´s crackdown on immigration.
Harris was born to immigrants to the United States — her father from Jamaica, her mother from India — and their lives and her own have in some ways embodied the American dream.
She was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, then a hub for civil rights and anti-war activism.
Her diploma from historically Black Howard University in Washington was the start of a steady rise that took her from prosecutor, to two elected terms as San Francisco´s district attorney and then California´s attorney general in 2010.
However, Harris´s self-description as a “progressive prosecutor” has been seized upon by critics who say she fought to uphold wrongful convictions and opposed certain reforms in California, like a bill requiring that the attorney general probe shootings involving police. (Int’l News Desk)
