Joe Biden and wife Jill meet with Jacob Blake’s family on way to Kenosha – live

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.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed concerns that Trump is pressuring the FDA to approve a coronavirus vaccine before the presidential election.

“No one is pressuring the FDA to do anything,” McEnany said.

A number of health experts have warned that, if the FDA uses its emergency authority to approve a coronavirus vaccine, it could create safety issues.

A reporter asked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany about the president’s conflicting statements on his visit to Walter Reed Medical Center last year.

The White House initially said Trump made the unexpected visit to Walter Reed to start his physical, but the president now says he went to complete his physical.

“The president did his physical in two parts,” McEnany said. “The media is engaging in conspiracy theories about the president’s health.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is not a conspiracy theory to point out that the president’s own comments contradict each other.

No surprise here: the first question directed at White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had to do with the president’s advice to North Carolina voters to try to cast two ballots in November.

McEnany claimed the press was taking Trump’s comments out of context. “The president does not condone unlawful voting,” McEnany said.

Here’s exactly what the president said 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.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany began her briefing by playing a video on loop of House speaker Nancy Pelosi not wearing a mask in a San Francisco salon.

Pelosi briefly removed her mask during an indoor visit to a San Francisco salon, which was in violation of city guidelines aimed at limiting the spread of coronavirus.

But it’s worth noting that Trump has not worn a mask at all during recent events, including during his convention acceptance speech on the White House South Lawn last week, which was attended by 1,500 people.

Joe Biden is meeting with several members of Jacob Blake’s family at the Milwaukee airport, according to a pool report.

The Democratic nominee and former second lady Jill Biden met with Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, and three of his siblings.

Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, and the family’s attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, joined the meeting by phone.

The meeting comes less than two weeks after Blake was repeatedly shot in the back by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Trump visited Kenosha on Tuesday but did not meet with the Blake family. The president instead toured property that had been damaged amid recent protests and held a roundtable with local officials, during which he once again called for “law and order” in the city.

Wisconsin’s Republican senator encouraged Joe Biden to look at property that had been damaged amid recent protests when the Democratic nominee visits Kenosha today.

“I welcome @JoeBiden into our state today,” Senator Ron Johnson said in a tweet. “I hope he actually views the destruction and starts to understand how [devastating] it is. How continued protests create a siege and can shut down a city. I also hope he understands exactly what it took to stop the rioting in #Kenosha.”

The Kenosha mayor lifted the city’s curfew last night due to the past several “relatively peaceful” nights of protesting, so it’s unclear how the city is under “siege,” as Johnson claimed.

Trump toured damaged property when he visited Kenosha on Tuesday, but one owner of a business highlighted during the president’s Kenosha roundtable complained that Trump was exploiting his struggles for political gain.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden criticized Trump over the president’s scheduled trip to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, later today.

“When President Trump speaks in Westmoreland County today, you almost certainly won’t hear him take responsibility for the economic hardship his presidency has caused Pennsylvanians,” Biden said in a new statement.

“President Trump’s mishandling of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic has caused millions of people across the Commonwealth to file for unemployment since March.”

The president’s campaign appearance in Latrobe comes three days after Biden delivered a speech on racial injustice in Pittsburgh.

Trump carried Pennsylvania by less than 1 point in 2016, and Democrats hope to flip the state in November. A new Monmouth University poll shows the race in Pennsylvania tightening, with Biden leading Trump by just 4 points among the swing state’s registered voters.

The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:

Intense scrutiny of the United States Postal Service and its likely role in November’s election is calling new attention to the chairman of the organization’s board of governors, who has deep ties to influential Republicans including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

The postal service’s smooth running is seen as key to the success of mail-in voting in 2020, with tens of millions of voters expected to use postal votes instead of going to polling stations, out of health fears due to the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats have raised concerns that Republicans are seeking to disrupt the agency’s operations in ways that could hinder mail-in voting.

The USPS board of governors chairman, Robert M Duncan, is partially the target of a request by the House oversight committee. The committee, chaired by Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, is asking for documents related to how the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, was selected for his position.

Through a spokesman for the USPS board of governors, Duncan declined a request by the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to provide more information on the appointment of DeJoy, a major Republican donor. The 11-member USPS board of governors oversees the policies and expenditures of the postal service. The board can also fire the postmaster general.

To at least one former member of the board of governors, having a sitting member, much less a chair like Duncan, with such extensive political ties that could be a conflict of interest is unprecedented.

“We never had that type of situation come up,” said the former Nevada congressman James Bilbray, who served on the board in different capacities for a decade. “I don’t think we would have hired anybody or picked anybody that had a conflict. The reason is it just would not be the right thing to do, at least on my part.”

Another sign of how remarkable this election season is: the North Carolina board of elections just sent out a reminder that it is a felony to cast two ballots, after Trump encouraged his supporters to vote by mail and in person.

“It is illegal to vote twice in an election,” Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the board, said in a statement.

“Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law.”

Bell noted that there are a number of checks in place to ensure no voter is allowed to cast more than one ballot. She also outlined several ways for voters to ensure their absentee ballot was 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,” Bell said. “That is not necessary, and it would lead to longer lines and the possibility of spreading COVID-19.”

The statement comes one day after Trump said this in an interview when asked about 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 Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn reports:

Joe Biden will meet Jacob Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, later today as well as other members of the family of the 29-year-old who is gravely wounded and still fighting for his health in a local hospital in Kenosha after being shot in the back by a white police officer on August 23.

On his visit, in addition, the Democratic presidential nominee has vowed not to do “anything other than meet with community leaders” to “start to talk about what has to be done”.

“I’m not going to tell Kenosha what to do, but what we’ll do together,” Biden said following a campaign speech from his Wilmington, Delaware, home on Wednesday.

Biden took questions about the Blake shooting after the speech on Wednesday.

He said: “I think we should let the judicial system work its way. I do think at a minimum they need to be charged, the officers.”

Biden is due in the battleground state of Wisconsin as Kenosha, a small city located between Milwaukee and Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan, became a focus of nationwide protests against institutionalized racism and police brutality, ahead of the 2020 election.

The visit by Biden and his wife Jill follows a controversial stop by Donald Trump just two days prior. During his own trip, the president pinpointed cities such as Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland to promote a campaign message of “law-and-order.”

Trump also opted out of mentioning Jacob Blake’s name or meeting with any members of his family, leading members of which indicated they had no interest in meeting or talking with him. Instead Trump toured buildings damaged when initial protests after the police shooting splintered into violence on the fringes in the night. Trump also talked with officials and business owners.