Joe Biden now leads Donald Trump 253-214 in the Electoral College after winning Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, according to the AP.
What we're seeing in the U.S. election should come to no surprise: Trump is working overtime to use legal and technical maneuvers, make threats and push false rumors.
We always knew that if there wasn't a clear winner on election night and if states took more than 24 hours to count votes, Donald Trump would use that time to sow chaos and discord. That's exactly what he's doing.
More than a month ago, I explained this scenario to Christiane Amanpour on CNN where I described a national nightmare as Trump tries to rip apart the valid voting by millions of Americans who voted by mail.
The good news for Biden: Since election night, he's picked up Wisconsin and Michigan, and he's leading in Arizona and Nevada. We likely won't know Pennsylvania results until Friday, which could also move significantly toward Biden — blocking the president from re-election.
The behavior of the president's campaign isn't acceptable, and it shouldn't be tolerated by any American.
While we wait for all the votes to be counted in this U.S. election, here's what I'm reading today:
In remarks from Wilmington, Delaware yesterday, Biden said:
"We're winning enough states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Yesterday once again proved that democracy is the heartbeat of this nation, even in the face of a pandemic. More Americans voted than ever in American history — over 150 million. Senator Harris and I are on track to win more votes than any ticket in the history of this country. We are campaigning as Democrats, but I will govern as an American president."
Gun Sense Wins!
Gun safety champions were on the ballot, and won in Tuesday's election.
More than 20 Moms Demand Action volunteers have already won their races up and down the ballot, and results are still coming in across the country.
Two U.S. Senate seats flipped from red to blue with gun sense champions and Everytown-backed candidates John Hickenlooper in Colorado and Mark Kelly in Arizona.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, winningMoms Demand volunteers include Rep. Lucy McBath (Georgia - 06), who was re-elected after she flipped that district from red to blue in 2018. In Illinois, Moms Demand volunteer Marie Newman won in the state's 3rd Congressional District.
If Trump were to eke out a victory, the U.S. government would all but vanish from international efforts to slow the Earth's warming, in favor of promoting fossil fuels.
Joe Biden has called climate change "the existential threat to humanity" and vowed to immediately rejoin the Paris Accord if elected. But even if he wins the White House, his plan to invest trillions of dollars toward making the United States a greener nation will face a deeply divided Congress.
Either way, Tuesday's election could result in the one thing scientists say the nation and the planet can no longer afford: More years of U.S. stagnation on climate action.
“While the Trump Administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the American people never supported that decision,” Mike Bloomberg, who has funded the America's Pledge effort to keep the United States on track with its international pledges, said in a statement, “and cities and states and businesses across the country resolved to do their part to stay in.”
"It couldn’t be a more dangerous time to turn our backs on climate leadership," writes Antha Williams, Global Head of Climate & Environment Programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Read this report on extreme measures some places like Hong Kong are taking to stop the spread of Covid-19:
Hong Kong is closed to almost everyone except residents, and a highly organized series of stations awaits arrivals at the airport. At the first one, health workers make sure travelers have filled out a health declaration form and downloaded the government’s StayHomeSafe app.
Next, the tracking bracelet is secured to your wrist. Then someone calls your phone to make sure the number on file is correct.
At another station you receive the quarantine order, along with an at-home test to be taken on Day 10 and a form for recording your temperature twice a day. Don’t have a thermometer? Here’s one for free.
Arriving passengers are sent for testing, where they stand in private cubicles and spit into specimen bottles. (“Make a ‘kruuua’ noise,” the instructions suggest.) Anyone who tests positive is sent to a hospital; their close contacts are quarantined.
The Times also reports on the varying policies for arrivals in New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Doha and London.
“If 2020 was a week, this would be it.” -- Jimmy Fallon
"New York and its whopping 29 electoral votes went for Joe Biden. You know what they say, if you can make it here, you're not Donald Trump." -- Stephen Colbert
"Biden won over Bostonians by telling a guy from New York to shut the hell up." -- Stephen Colbert
On the Florida election outcome:
“Trump is the ultimate Florida mascot. He's got the tan, and all his friends are in jail." -- Trevor Noah
On Joe Biden winning the state of Connecticut:
"Turns out the Constitution state prefers someone who has read the Constitution." -- Stephen Colbert
On the day after the election:
“Seriously, today felt like waking up with a hangover and realizing you’re still at the bar.”
— Jimmy Fallon
“After all that good news for Biden, in a move that just reeks of desperation and cheap cologne, with eight million votes still uncounted, Trump’s campaign manager came out of the blue to announce, ‘We are declaring a victory in Pennsylvania.’ That’s bold! And I fully expect his “victory” in Pennsylvania to be just as successful as his victory over coronavirus.”
— Stephen Colbert
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