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Pennsylvania is expected to be the most crucial swing state. Both the Democratic and Republican parties view the state, which has 20 electoral college votes, as a key component of the 270 votes needed to win the election, according to strategists from both parties. “It’s pretty clear 25 days out that Pennsylvania will be the tipping point state,” said Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, a pro-Democratic group that reportedly spent millions to support the former vice president, told The Washington Post....

Biden lost his majority approval rating in mid-August 2021 as the American withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan gave way to the Taliban’s takeover. He’s continued to see a decline over the last year and the president is struggling significantly to win Americans over as the U.S. faces a 40-year high in inflation, people struggle to buy homes and threats of a recession loom. After seeing a declining approval rating, Biden’s popularity sank to its lowest point of his presidency, reaching an average of 37....

In a statement, Biden’s campaign chief Jen O’Malley Dillon said the president trying to “shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect.” She said it is an effort to remove the democratic rights of American citizens. “Never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election,” Dillon said. “The counting will not stop....

Notably absent is the most important agenda item: confronting the emir about the Qatar regime’s appalling human rights record. This is utterly unacceptable. Human rights organizations have extensively documented Qatar’s long record of glaring human rights abuses, and an American president cannot simply ignore them in order to service his own foreign policy agenda (whatever that agenda may be). Despite pledging a series of reforms to their migrant worker labor system in 2017 (which were only made under pressure from international labor organizations), Qatar has not followed through on any of these commitments....

The woman, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died after being arrested in Tehran, Iran, by morality police, who accused her of breaking the country’s strict law requiring women to fully cover their hair with a headscarf. Amini, who was reportedly beaten after her arrest, died in hospital after spending three days in a coma. Iranian authorities claim she suffered “sudden heart failure,” which has been rejected by her family. Videos on social media in recent days have shown protests throughout the country, including images of women burning headscarves and clashes between demonstrators and police....

The president said $5.5 billion would go toward a program that will make these bridges “safer and more useful.” Making the bridges more functional, Biden added, would provide communities with greater economic opportunities. “These are the bridges that are often overlooked when decisions are being made, but they are essential for small towns, rural towns, farmers to get their products to market, [to] small businesses to be able to serve customers,” he said....

The scenario came as Biden discussed and tried to invoke the impact that the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had on his own life, and how that had prompted him to run for office. The question was intended to start a conversation by comparing today’s political climate to that of the social unrest in the late 1960s. “My two political heroes were MLK and Bobby Kennedy....

This plan will expand on the American Rescue Plan, which provided economic support and relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to make it easier for American families to break into and stay in the middle class and enable people to re-enter and remain in the workforce. “It is not enough to restore where we were prior to the pandemic,” the White House said in the plan’s fact sheet. “We need to build a stronger economy that does not leave anyone behind – we need to build back better....

President Biden is proposing a tax on wealth appreciation for people above a certain level of wealth. In that group, if you have a house and the value goes up, you would pay a tax on the appreciation. If you had stock, you would pay tax on the increase. If you owned a privately held company that had a good year, you would pay a tax on the increase. If you had a farm, and the value of the land and equipment and buildings appreciated, you would pay a tax....

President Biden’s precedent-setting commitment to care work is a testament to decades of organizing by the women of color who perform the bulk of this country’s care work. His jobs and infrastructure plan will create over 1 million care jobs that pay a living wage, provide basic benefits and include the right to join a union. After decades of fighting for respect, protections and fair pay, this workforce—86 percent women and primarily Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous women and immigrants—is finally being seen....

On Tuesday, the White House announced the Bidens had departed Washington D.C. en route to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the president and First Lady Jill Biden would begin a several-day vacation with family through Jan. 2. The virtue of a presidential vacation is not a foreign one, even as presidents like the Bushes and former President Bill Clinton set a longstanding precedent of remaining in D....

Communism has long left the Kremlin, but the ideology remains vibrant in the Latin American island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Washington and Havana managed to overcome their differences to pursue a rapprochement under former President Barack Obama, but Donald Trump, his successor, decided to double down on the 60-year embargo against Cuba. Since coming to office early last year, Biden, who once backed the U.S.-Cuba thaw years ago as Obama’s vice president, has not only in effect maintained the “maximum pressure” approach pursued by his rival, but expanded upon it with new sanctions targeting Cuban officials and institutions accused of human rights abuses....

“It’s not that we have a gasoline shortage,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “We have this supply crunch, and things will be back to normal soon.” Across the Southeast, long lines have formed at gas stations, and fuel pumps have run dry as people have scurried to fill their tanks in case of disruptions. Granholm compared the run on gasoline to the frenzied purchasing at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, which cleaned out stores’ supplies of several common household items....

“Stacey Abrams helped Biden steal the 2020 Election in Georgia but now she won’t even share a stage with Joe,” Trump said in a statement. “Stacey knows that Biden actually lost BIG in Georgia, and in the 2020 Presidential Election as a whole, and he’s been so terrible she now wants nothing to do with him.” “Even the woke, radical left realizes that Joe Biden’s Administration is an embarrassment!”...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Friday that Biden has determined executive privilege is not warranted for the first tranche of records provided by the National Archives. “The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations, including the January 6 select committee, to bring to light what happened,” Psaki told reporters. The White House emphasized that this is an “ongoing process” and that the issue of executive privilege will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as requests come in from the select committee....

The midterm elections are still four months away, and the next Congress won’t be sworn in until January. But Republicans have already started laying the groundwork for aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, in anticipation of their expected return to power in the House. The president’s legislative agenda would face stiff resistance in a divided Congress. And it would be all but dead on arrival if Republicans also manage to capture the Senate in November....

Biffle, who has struggled this season, doesn’t have a sponsor signed for next year, so just how long this contract runs is still to be determined. But he’ll be there at least through 2016, and give the organization a veteran 44-year-old driver to go along with 26-year-old Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and 23-year-old Trevor Bayne. With the departure of Carl Edwards, Biffle’s contract extension should help stabilize an organization in a bit of flux....

You’d have to be really desperate to want to join this comedy show. BENDER: Who was affected most by Big 12 decision? The teams that had hoped to become Big 12 members are disappointed because there are tens of millions of dollars of difference between membership in the American Athletic Conference and the Big 12. But the people at Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston and Memphis at least can console themselves that they’re only spectators to this trainwreck....

In July, the average price for everyday items like gas, groceries, and housing was eight and a half percent higher than the previous year. Those numbers feel even more stark when combined with the National Retail Federation’s prediction that retailers should see six to eight percent growth in 2022. But that might just scratch the surface. A recent study by Accountable.US found that big box stores like Kroger, CVS, and T....