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Both announcements follow months of growing suspicion in the U.S. that an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) triggered the pandemic. As of May 26, the pandemic has killed more than 591,941 Americans. China has vehemently denounced the lab leak questions as Western propaganda. However, the country’s claim that the outbreak began in a Wuhan wet market has failed to satisfy U.N. investigators and Western scientists. Growing suspicion in the U....

In May, Brad Parscale tweeted a GIF of a Death Star, the space station featured in the Star Wars franchise, writing: “For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. “In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time.” Parscale’s comments were widely ridiculed at the time, prompting him to respond: “I didn’t give our campaign the name, Death Star, the media did....

Biden on Tuesday further outlined his economic agenda, which he vowed would look to address racial inequalities across the United States. A plan, released by Biden’s campaign team, vowed that the former vice president’s plan was “built on the proposition that we must build our economy back better than it was before the COVID-19 crisis.” Suggestions for this “stronger, resilient, and inclusive economy,” including plans to funnel federal money to small businesses, with development programs for those and to boost disadvantaged neighborhoods....

According to the poll, among all registered voters, Trump holds a one-point lead, as 48 percent said they’d vote for him, compared to 47 percent that sided with the former vice president. The poll, which was conducted by Marist College/NBC News, found both candidates receiving 48 percent of support from likely voters across Florida. The poll surveyed 766 likely voters from August 31 to September 6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4....

“When Joe Biden says we are in a battle for the soul of our nation against vile forces of hate who have come crawling out from under rocks, you are the epitome of what he means. What you stand for is absolutely repugnant. Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here,” Andrew Bates, the director of rapid response for Biden’s campaign, tweeted. Newsweek reached out to the Biden campaign for further comment, but it did not respond by the time of publication....

It is a theme that Biden has repeatedly raised. But it isn’t true. It is better than his typical approach of not accounting for the population’s size in the United States relative to other countries. But it ignores the unreliable COVID-19 data from other large countries, most notably China and Russia, which have underreported infections and deaths. More importantly, Biden’s claim doesn’t acknowledge that the U.S. counts coronavirus deaths differently from other countries....

Of the current election cycle’s designated battlegrounds, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin have become subject to elevated public scrutiny and campaign focus from both sides. A handful of additional states, like Texas, were surprising additions to the list of battlegrounds in 2020. Polls conducted among likely voters in the Lone Star State, which has historically voted for Republican presidential candidates, suggest the current race is closer than others that have taken place in past years....

The poll, which was conducted by YouGov/The Economist, found 53 percent of likely voters saying they will vote for Biden on Election Day, compared with 43 percent that said Trump. YouGov/The Economist surveyed 1,500 registered voters from October 31 to November 2 and reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. In comparison, the final poll conducted by YouGov/The Economist before the 2016 election found Clinton holding a four-point lead, as 45 percent said they’d vote for her compared with 41 percent that chose Trump....

The edited recordings appear to be of Biden and Poroshenko speaking to each other, and were leaked by Andrii Derkach—a Ukrainian associate of President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Last year, it was revealed that Giuliani was heading the president’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating Biden, ultimately leading to Trump’s impeachment. In the conversations, Biden reportedly demands that Poroshenko fire former general prosecutor Viktor Shokin or miss out on $1 billion in aid....

“Today’s billion-dollar investment to further expand testing production puts us on track to quadruple the amount of at-home rapid tests available for Americans by December,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients announced on Wednesday. “That means we’ll have available supply of 200 million rapid at-home tests per month starting in December, with supply of tens of millions of additional tests coming on the market across the next few weeks,” Zients said....

In fact, Trump has accused the Biden team of plagiarism this month because of the focus on domestic production and revitalizing American manufacturing. If Biden wins, he’ll likely pick up where Trump left off. But the similarities stop there. “The difference you are going to see is in the manner in which Biden goes about confronting and trying to contain China, not the degree to which they are pursuing this ongoing decoupling from the Chinese economy,” said Jon Lieber, the managing director for the U....

Appearing before a Senate panel for his confirmation hearing, Chipman faced criticism from Republican senators about his previous remarks advocating for gun control. “The AR-15 is one of, if not the most popular rifle in America. It’s not a machine gun, it’s a rifle,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said. “Your public position is that you want to ban AR-15s, is that correct?” Chipman first responded by thanking Cruz for “offering me a Dr....

On July 8, Biden said “The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army…. There’s going to be no circumstance in which you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.” With pictures of Chinook helicopters ferrying personnel from the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul to Hamid Karzai airport on Sunday, the president must now regret uttering those words....

And yet there are still other relationships that desperately require a total revaluation or recalibration. U.S.-Saudi relations is the poster child of this group—even more so given the incompetence, petulance, and misjudgment Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has shown ever since he captivated Western commentators with his wide smile and youthful, “can-do” attitude. The hypothesis that U.S.-Saudi relations can’t go on the way they have over the previous eight decades is not new....

The bipartisan Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC), a group of House and Senate leaders that oversees the formal swearing in, normally distributes 200,000 tickets across U.S. House and Senate offices to distribute to constituents, who fill the National Mall during the ceremony. The new cap puts attendance closer to 1,200—about the size of a State of the Union address, though the event is held outside on the Capitol steps instead of in the cramped House chamber....

Biden made the remarks during an interview Tuesday evening with CNN’s Jake Tapper that focused on the president’s assessment of his Russian counterpart’s intentions. The interview reinforced the frosty relations between Moscow and Washington as Biden scolded Putin for threatening to use nuclear weapons to further his invasion of Ukraine. Biden signaled he was open to talking about the release of Griner, who has been imprisoned in Russia since February....

“Just over a week ago, many of the pundits declared this candidacy was dead,” Biden said. “Now we’re very much alive. And although there’s a way to go, it looks like we’re going to have another good night.” “As I said from the beginning, this election is one that has character on the ballot,” Biden continued. “The character of the candidates, the character of the nation is on the ballot....

Asked about whether he mishandled the Obama-era documents found in his former office in Washington, D.C., and at his home in Delaware, Biden responded with the phrase that is used to convey that there’s little importance about a specific issue or that it lacks significance. The “there’s no there there” expression was used by former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin when he represented Trump in the former president’s first impeachment case....

The White House formally granted Biden access to the classified documents, known as the President’s Daily Brief, on Tuesday. Its authorization followed weeks of stalled transition efforts, including reluctance, on the part of President Donald Trump’s administration, to share intelligence information with his expected successor. The President’s Daily Brief is a per diem synopsis and analysis of national security issues distributed to only a handful of federal officials and advisers, in addition to the president and vice president....

Kansas has won nearly half of the Big 12 Tournaments contested to date. The Jayhawks have claimed the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament in 11 of the past 23 seasons, and they have more than twice as many tournament banners as any other program in the Big 12. They have only lost once in conference play this season, and Kansas will have an extra advantage with this tournament taking place in Kansas City....