Election live updates: Biden, Trump headed to Minnesota as early voting begins

The Biden campaign debuted a new television ad Friday in battleground states with large numbers of military veterans as it continued to seek advantage from a report in the Atlantic that Trump had referred to injured soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” The president has disputed the report.

The new spot features Brig. Gen. John Douglass, a former Air Force casualty notification officer, who talks about his experiences knocking on the doors of military families letting them know their loved ones had died.

“These military families suffer, and those spouses are not suckers,” he says. “And those children are not losers. It’s obvious that this president has no real empathy just shows he doesn’t get it.”

The Biden campaign said the ad is airing on television and digital platforms in Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Jill Biden, the wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, is maintaining an active campaign schedule Friday, with virtual events focused on the impact of the coronavirus in a pair of western states.

Biden is scheduled to hold a roundtable discussion with a group of mothers in Colorado about “the challenges presented by the pandemic for their children, their workplaces and businesses, and their communities,” according to the campaign.

Later, she’ll turn her focus to Nevada, with a virtual conversation with members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 about the impact of the coronavirus on the state’s tourism and hospitality industries.

Joe Biden has made Trump’s handling of the coronavirus central to argument that the Republican incumbent needs to be replaced.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton carried Colorado over Trump by nearly five percentage points. Clinton prevailed in Nevada by about two percentage points.

Want to make sure your ballot counts? Track it online like a UPS delivery.

That’s now possible across much of America, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic.

I don’t often get emails from my state government, so I was curious about one recently asking me to check out California’s new election website, Where’s My Ballot. There, I typed in my name, birthday and Zip code — and a minute later, I had signed up for personalized voting updates. Now I’ll get a text when my ballot is in the mail, as it’s on its way back to election officials and, eventually, counted.

In Arizona, Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, a gun safety advocate and a former astronaut, leads the Republican, Sen. Martha McSally, 50 percent to 42 percent among likely voters.

In Maine, Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, leads Sen. Susan Collins (R) among likely voters, 49 to 44 percent.

And in North Carolina, Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, a lawyer and former state senator, leads Sen. Thom Tillis (R), 42 percent to 37 percent.

Democrats are seeking to flip several seats and take control of the Senate.

The Times-Siena College polling also found Trump trailing Biden by significant margins in two of the three states.

In Arizona, Biden has a nine-percentage-point lead, while in Maine, he leads by 17 percentage points, according to the polling. In North Carolina, Biden leads Trump by one percentage point, effectively a dead heat.

On Friday, the road to the White House runs through Minnesota, with both Biden and Trump planning visits to the Midwestern battleground state.

Biden, according to his campaign, is visiting Duluth, Minn., where he plans to tour a union training center and deliver remarks.

Later Friday, Trump is scheduled to attend a “Great American Comeback Event” in Bemidji, Minn.

The two trips coincide with the start of in-person early voting in the state.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton narrowly carried Minnesota over Trump. This year, polls have shown Biden with a more comfortable lead. In a Washington Post average of recent surveys, the Democratic candidate is up by 11 percentage points.

Vice President Pence is heading to Arizona on Friday for a “Veterans for Trump” event, as the Republican campaign maintains a heavy focus on the Western battleground state.

Pence is scheduled to appear in Litchfield Park, Ariz., a community outside Phoenix.

In 2016, Trump carried Arizona by more than three percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But Biden maintains a six-percentage point lead this year, according to a Washington Post average of recent polls.

Trump held a “Latinos for Trump” event in Phoenix on Monday. Both Karen Pence, the vice president’s wife, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and White House adviser, have also made appearances in Arizona this week.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, will address the first stop Friday of a “virtual bus tour” designed to increase turnout among Black voters in battleground states.

Friday’s event, which is focused on North Carolina, is the first in a series organized by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee and the Biden campaign. The series is being billed as the “Turn Up and Turn out the Vote Virtual Bus Tour.”

A pattern of campaign contributions by employees and relatives of Louis DeJoy before he became postmaster general indicates a possible effort to reimburse his associates for donations as recently as 2018, according to a Federal Election Commission complaint filed Thursday by a government watchdog group.

The filing by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center is the third complaint seeking a state or federal investigation since The Washington Post this month reported allegations that DeJoy and his aides urged employees at New Breed Logistics, his former North Carolina-based company, to write checks and attend fundraisers on behalf of Republican candidates.

DeJoy then defrayed the cost of those political contributions from 2003 to 2014 by boosting employee bonuses, two employees told The Post.

A Biden town hall does not hit the Pinocchio meter as much as a Trump town hall. Biden tends to stick close to the facts but occasionally gets carried away with some over-exuberance.

Here are five claims that caught our attention during his CNN town hall in Moosic, Pa., moderated by Anderson Cooper.

CNN made television history on Thursday night with a voter forum that perfectly illustrated the logistical creativity that has been necessary when holding a presidential election during a global pandemic.

The network hosted the first drive-in town hall event, with registered Pennsylvania voters posing questions to Biden in a stadium parking lot, only a few feet away from parked vehicles.

“Have you ever been to an event like this?” moderator Anderson Cooper asked the former vice president at the beginning of the event, held at a minor league baseball field in Pennsylvania.

A former model on Thursday became the latest woman to accuse Trump of assault, telling the Guardian newspaper that Trump groped and kissed her against her will outside a bathroom at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997.

Amy Dorris, who was 24 at the time of the alleged incident, told the Guardian that her encounter with Trump left her feeling “sick” and “violated” and that she has struggled for years with whether she should speak publicly, including before the 2016 election.

Dorris did not return calls from The Washington Post, but her account was corroborated by her mother, Katherine Dorris, who said Dorris confided in her about the incident at the time it happened. Separately, a friend of Dorris’s, Caron Bernstein, told The Post that she was authorized by Dorris to speak on her behalf and to confirm that the details in the Guardian piece were accurate.