Election live updates: Biden says ‘hellish’ wildfires will become more frequent if Trump wins second term

In a speech outside the Delaware Museum of Natural History on Monday afternoon, Biden upbraided Trump for blaming the recent wildfires on residents of western states and warned that the country will face further environmental devastation if the president is reelected.

“The West is literally on fire, and he blames the people whose homes and communities are burning,” Biden said of Trump.

In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Democrats will “destroy” America’s suburbs. In his remarks Monday, Biden turned that message on his head, arguing that the suburbs are at greater risk from the environmental damage that would accompany a second Trump term.

“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?” Biden said. “How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms? If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?”

He noted that Trump’s “climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating and more deadly.”

While he harshly criticized Trump’s record on climate change, Biden also struck a tone of bipartisanship, calling for a response based on science rather than politics.

“Here’s the deal: Hurricanes don’t swerve to avoid red states or blue states,” he said. “Wildfires don’t skip towns that voted a certain way. The impacts of climate change don’t pick and choose. That’s because it’s not a partisan phenomenon. It’s science. And our response should be the same — grounded in science.”

The former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration told a House panel Monday that an investigation into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is warranted in the wake of accusations that he reimbursed employees for campaign contributions they made to his preferred GOP politicians, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

“This is a matter of grave concern,” Richard W. Painter told the House Oversight subcommittee on government operations.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement last week that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which she chairs, would begin an inquiry, saying that DeJoy may have lied to the panel under oath.

The Washington Post 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 by boosting employee bonuses, two employees told The Post.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for such contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws.

Painter said the allegations were a “legitimate area of inquiry for this committee,” and questioned whether the Postal Service Board of Governors properly vetted DeJoy.

“Directors have fiduciary obligations that includes investigating the background of people and screening for conflicts of interest,” Painter said.

Republicans on the committee challenged Painter’s testimony, including his suggestion that DeJoy could have violated the law. They highlighted that Painter switched parties from Republican to Democratic in 2018 to run for an open Senate seat in Minnesota, an unsuccessful bid. Painter said he ran as an independent.

Vice President Pence delivered a law-and-order message during a campaign rally in Janesville, Wis., on Monday as he returned to a state that experienced significant unrest after last month’s police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha.

“We are going to have law and order, in every city, in every state in this country, for every American, of every race and creed and color, so help us God,” Pence said in a speech during which he credited Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard with quelling the violence in Kenosha and stressed that “burning businesses is not free speech.”

“We are going to back the blue,” Pence added, referring to police officers.

The vice president chided Biden for having said the United States is systemically racist and that law enforcement has a systemic bias.

Pence said there is no need to choose between supporting law enforcement and standing with African American “neighbors.”

“We have done both for 3½ years,” Pence said. “We’re going to do both for four more years in the White House.”

Pence spoke in an indoor hotel ballroom before a crowd of a few hundred people in chairs spaced a few feet apart. The vast majority of attendees did not wear masks.

President Trump said in an interview published Monday that he did not think he was subject to an order by Nevada’s Democratic governor limiting gatherings to 50 people when he addressed a crowd of thousands an indoor rally in Henderson, Nev., on Sunday night.

“No,” Trump said when asked by a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter if he believed he was subject to the order of Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), whom he blamed for having to move his rally to an indoor warehouse, which Trump described as “a friend’s place.”

“They canceled six different sites because the governor wouldn’t let it happen, all external sites,” Trump claimed. His assertion could not be immediately confirmed.

Sisolak has castigated Trump for having “blatantly disregarded the emergency directives and tough choices made to fight this pandemic and begin reopening our economy by hosting an indoor gathering that’s categorized as ‘high risk,’ according to his own CDC.”

During Trump’s interview, he called Sisolak a “political hack” and took issue with Nevada’s plan to send mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Trump, meanwhile, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was “not at all concerned” about catching the coronavirus at a rally filled with many people not wearing masks.

“I’m on a stage, and it’s very far away,” Trump said. “And so I’m not at all concerned.”

“I’m more concerned about how close you are, to be honest,” Trump said to the reporter interviewing him, who was standing several feet away and wearing a mask.

Law-and-order has emerged as a salient issue in the presidential election, though neither candidate has a decisive advantage in public trust on it, according to a new Monmouth University poll.

While Trump has sought to cast himself as the law-and-order candidate, 52 percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat confident that Biden can maintain law and order, the poll finds. Meanwhile, 48 percent say the same thing about Trump if he is reelected.

According to the poll, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Americans say that maintaining law and order is a major problem in the country right now. Another 25 percent say it is a minor problem, and 8 percent say it is not a problem.

The Monmouth poll is also that latest to find that most Americans (61 percent in this survey) say that Trump’s handling of protests over racial injustice had made the situation worse. Only 24 percent say he has made it better.

Meanwhile, 45 percent think Biden would have handled this situation better if he was president. Another 28 percent say he would have done worse, and 23 percent say he would have handled it about the same as Trump.

Biden cast an early vote Monday in Delaware’s primary, touting his support for Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who is among those on the ballot, and voicing optimism that the American people will insist that all votes are counted in November even if Trump tries to suppress them.

Biden spoke briefly with reporters after emerging from the New Castle County Board of Elections in Wilmington with his wife, Jill Biden. The campaign said he had used a provision that allows voters to make appointments to cast their ballots early.

Jill Biden wore black boots with the word “VOTE” on the back in silver letters.

Biden said his message to Delaware voters is, “Vote, vote, vote.”

“I like Coons the best. He’s a great, great senator,” he added.

Asked if he has confidence that all votes will be counted in November, Biden replied, “I have confidence that Trump will try to not have that happen, but I’m confident the American public is going to insist on it.”

Asked why he had chosen to vote early, Biden said, “Because I’m going to be in — where am I tomorrow?”

Aides and his wife shouted, “Florida.”

“I’m traveling tomorrow,” the Democratic nominee added.

The NAACP and a leading public-sector labor union have partnered to mobilize Black voters in several battleground states with a pair of radio ads highlighting the impact of Trump’s stewardship of the pandemic and its impact on the African American community.

Representatives of the NAACP and the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees said spots from the seven-figure buy are airing in major markets in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina through Election Day.

“While Trump lied, Black people died,” says the NAACP ad, which urges voters to request a ballot and make a plan to vote.

The AFSCME ad knocks Trump for spending time on the golf course “while covid-19 hits the black community hard.”

The two organizations said the ads are part of a partnership that will focus on Black voter education and mobilization based on what is at stake for communities of color.

“I can’t recall an election where fundamental issues of racial justice have been more at stake,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement. “It’s going to take overwhelming turnout among African Americans and communities of color to prevail in November. That’s why AFSCME has entered into this unique partnership with the NAACP.”

Trump, who has repeatedly sought to alter the debate schedule with Biden, on Monday expressed interest in a format that almost certainly will never happen: a four-hour event hosted by Joe Rogan, a comedian and mixed martial arts color commentator.

Tim Kennedy, a retired mixed martial arts fighter, noted on Twitter that Rogan was interested in hosting such a debate between Trump and Biden without a live audience.

“It would be four hours with no live audience. Just the two candidates, cameras, and their vision of how to move this country forward,” he tweeted. “Who wants this?”

“I do!” Trump tweeted in response.

Democrats immediately dismissed his response as a stunt from a candidate whose interest in debating they have questioned.

Jill Biden, the wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, will continue to be an active presence on the campaign trail on Monday by participating in a virtual roundtable with nurses focused on the impact of the novel coronavirus on their working conditions and patient safety.

Biden is scheduled to join Deborah Burger, president of the National Nurses United, and some of its members, for the afternoon event. The union has endorsed Joe Biden for president.

In recent weeks, Jill Biden, a longtime educator, has been conducting a tour of schools in battleground states, some of them in person and some of them virtually.

The historically destructive wildfires on the West Coast are finally bursting into the race between President Trump and Joe Biden — presenting an urgent crisis that’s impossible to ignore even amid a once-in-a-generation pandemic and economic recession.

With more than two dozen major fires in California alone last week during an unprecedented wildfire season, they’re no longer an afterthought for campaigns that — seven weeks from Election Day — would typically be hyper-focused on engaging voters in swing states such as Florida, Michigan and Ohio rather than addressing disasters in California, Oregon and Washington, three states solidly in the Democratic column.

For Trump, the crisis is a chance to marshal federal powers to provide aid to people during a race in which his self-inflicted wounds have made it hard for him to leverage the advantages of incumbency.

For Biden, the fires are an opportunity to accuse his opponent of not doing enough to help battle the blazes — or to curb the rise in global temperature that climate scientists say is fueling the fires, an issue Biden has made central to his candidacy.

Audiotape aired Monday of Trump reflecting on how well he gets along with autocratic leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you’re not supposed to because everyone says, ‘What a horrible guy,” Trump told journalist Bob Woodward. “But you know, for me it works out good. It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and the meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You’ll explain that to me someday, okay? But maybe it’s not a bad thing. … The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with so much.”

The audio was aired for the first time on NBC’s “Today” show as part of an interview with Woodward, who is promoting his forthcoming book, “Rage.”

Some of Trump’s comments about autocrats had been previously reported by The Washington Post and others, but Woodward’s book has had added impact from the airing of portions of the 18 interviews he conducted with Trump.

Last week, that included audio of Trump acknowledging he had deliberately downplayed the threat of the coronavirus.

Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, plans to join Kamala D. Harris, the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee, for a virtual “grassroots” fundraiser Monday night.

The event signals that Clinton does not plan to sit on the sidelines in the closing weeks of this year’s race.

In an email solicitation last week, Clinton said she and Harris are “teaming up for this grassroots fundraiser to discuss exactly what’s at stake in this race and our party’s plan to fight and win over these next few weeks.”

Proceeds from the event, which costs $7, are to benefit the Biden Victory Fund, a joint venture of the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties.

The wildfires ravaging the West Coast will be a focal point of the presidential campaigns on Monday, with both Biden and Trump holding events that will draw attention to the more than two dozen lives lost and the destruction of millions of acres of land in California, Oregon and Washington.

Trump, who is wrapping up a West Coast swing, plans to meet privately with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and receive a briefing with state fire and emergency officials on Monday. Later, according to the White House, he will deliver remarks at McClellan Park, a former air base that serves as a home for state firefighting planes.

Meanwhile, Biden plans to deliver afternoon remarks from Wilmington, Del., “on the ongoing wildfires and urgent need to address the climate crisis,” according to his campaign. Trump has faced criticism for largely remaining silent about the crisis.

Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), is also preparing to focus on the wildfires. She is traveling to California on Monday with plans to meet with emergency personnel on Tuesday.

On Monday, Trump plans to stage a Latinos for Trump event in Phoenix before returning late in the day to the White House.

Biden’s agenda for Monday also includes voting in Delaware’s primary elections and remarks later in the day to a Poor People’s Campaign virtual event, “Voting Is Power Unleashed.”

Vice President Pence is heading to two key states Monday, seeking to shore up President Trump’s support in Wisconsin and rallying Republicans in Montana.

In Wisconsin, Pence will hold a Make America Great Again rally in Janesville, according to the White House. Trump narrowly beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin four years ago, and both he and Biden have been heavily targeting the state this year.

Later Monday, Pence will deliver remarks at a Montana Republican Party rally in Bozeman. Trump easily won Montana in 2016. The state has voted for a Republican for president since 1992, but this year Democrats are seeking to flip the seat of Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.). The Democratic nominee is the state’s popular governor, Steve Bullock, who polls show is locked in a tight race against Daines.