Author: PolitCens

The use of the White House by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for events related to this week’s Republican National Convention are legal, according to administration officials.  For others working in the White House and the administration, however, there are lines not to be crossed, according to the Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law that prohibits most government officials from engaging in political activities while on the job.  Trump administration officials have been cited for breaking the Hatch Act 13 times by federal investigators at the Office of Special Counsel. At least a dozen more investigations are apparently under way, according to executive branch sources and legal watchdog groups. “White House counsel has been very, very strict with us. They’ve sent out many, many one-pagers and emails explaining what can and can’t be done,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, replied to a question Tuesday from VOA. “Everybody needs to do things on their own time. You cannot use government equipment — all of those things. So, it’s being very, very strictly adhered to.” First Lady Melania Trump visits an exhibit of artwork by young Americans in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which afforded the vote to women, at the White House in Washington, August 24, 2020.The first lady is using the newly renovated Rose Garden as the site for her live address Tuesday night to the Republican Party’s convention, which formally renominated her husband Monday.  A few meters away, lights, speakers and a stage, with ample space for an invited audience, have been erected on the White House South Lawn for Thursday night’s nomination acceptance speech by the president. Trump’s address is to be followed by fireworks launched from the National Mall. “The president and vice president are not covered by any of the provisions of the Hatch Act. Accordingly, the Hatch Act does not prohibit President Trump from delivering his RNC acceptance speech on White House grounds,” Erica Hamrick, deputy chief of the Hatch Act Unit at the Office of Special Counsel, wrote this month in a written response to the House Oversight Committee.  That has not quelled criticism about the unprecedented use of the White House for an explicitly political event.  For much of his presidency, Trump has used official events, including news conferences and speeches inside and out of the White House, to repeatedly attack his political foes.  Conventions during the pandemicFILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, August 20, 2020, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware.Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans and Democrats significantly scaled back their political conventions. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, made their acceptance speeches in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, with only a few dozen journalists and campaign staff in the room.  Trump traveled Monday to Charlotte, North Carolina, the first day of his party’s event, to speak to several hundred delegates. In the evening, the convention’s program contained two events with the president and guests in the White House specifically taped for the telecast.  Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to deliver his nomination acceptance speech Wednesday evening at Fort McHenry in Maryland, the site of a battle in the War of 1812 that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner, the U.S. national anthem. Expenses, including travel, that are deemed political are supposed to be paid by the president’s reelection campaign, not the U.S. government.  If Trump delivers his acceptance speech on White House grounds, this decision will violate ethics norms established by former presidents, said Georgia Lyon, a communications fellow at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.  “There have been a variety of ways the White House has been used in the past for influencing elections that may have run afoul of the law,” Scott Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel from 2003 to 2008, told the Government Executive newsletter. He cited the Bill Clinton administration renting out areas of the White House for fundraisers and the administration of George H.W. Bush using federal funds and resources to help Republican candidates.  However, former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to ensure the line was not crossed between their duties as public servants and political candidates. They were observed keeping political activities at the White House limited to the residence area or those that are not regularly used solely in the discharge of official duties, in accordance with the Hatch Act. Pompeo speechThere is one other current significant departure from precedent – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address to the Republican convention Tuesday night will be from Israel during a diplomatic trip. FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo meets with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem.“It’s a break in tradition – one of many breaks in tradition that we can associate with the Trump presidency,” Matthew Continetti, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA. Pompeo, a former congressman, is doing it, not only to maintain his presence in Republican politics – looking beyond the Trump administration – but “also to remind the viewers that the Trump administration is not without accomplishments in the foreign policy arena,” Continetti said. It is rare for the nation’s top diplomat to engage is such an explicitly political act.  The speech by Pompeo during an overseas mission is a “blatant use of office for overtly political purposes” that undermines the critical work being done by the State Department, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said.  A State Department official said Pompeo’s address was being done in his personal capacity.  Even if any activities by Trump administration officials result in findings that they violated the Hatch Act, punishment is left to their bosses. Trump has not acted against those working for him already deemed violators.  Some of his aides privately scoff at the Hatch Act and say they take pride in violating its regulations, according to The New York Times.  Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. 
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The president of the U.N. Security Council said Tuesday there is no consensus for restoring international sanctions on Iran in the 15-member council and that he would take no further action on a U.S. demand to re-impose them.  “It is clear for me that there is one member, which has a particular position on the issue, while there are significant numbers of members who have contrasting views,” said Council President Indonesian Ambassador Dian Triansyah Djani. “In my view, there is no consensus in the council. Thus, the president is not in the position to take further action.”  Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to New York and personally notified the United Nations that the United States was triggering a mechanism under the U.N. Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal into international law and would “snapback” sanctions on Iran dating back to 2006.   But other deal participants immediately cried foul, saying the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, and therefore gave up its right to initiate the process. Washington rejected their interpretation and said the U.S. can trigger snapback as a named participant in the council resolution.   Resolution failedOn August 14, the U.S. sought to have the council adopt a resolution to renew an arms embargo on Iran that, under the terms of the JCPOA, will expire on October 18. The move failed, with only one other council member (the Dominican Republic) voting with Washington. The Trump administration then triggered snapback in order to re-impose the embargo, as well a series of other sanctions.   “The Trump Administration has no fear in standing in limited company on this matter, in light of the unmistakable truth guiding our actions,” said U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft on Tuesday. “I only regret that other members of this council have lost their way and now find themselves standing in the company of terrorists.”  In the nuclear deal, the original participants – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany – agreed with Iran to gradually lift the sanctions in return for limits on Tehran’s nuclear activities that would prevent it making a nuclear bomb.   If snapback is imposed, diplomats say it would almost certainly collapse the deal, which has been struggling since the U.S. left and Iran responded by resuming some of its prohibited nuclear activities.   “We are firmly convinced that protecting the JCPOA is of crucial importance,” said Germany’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Günter Sautter. “The nuclear deal with Iran is not perfect, but it continues to be the international community’s best tool to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”  Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said he hoped the council president’s decision would be the end of the matter and that the U.S. would “refrain from further steps to pursue this path.”  The remaining JCPOA participants have urged Iran to quickly return to compliance with the deal. 
 
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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, will be tested regularly for COVID-19, an aide said on Monday, as the campaign prepares for the possibility of more public events in the run-up to November’s election.
 
Since the coronavirus began spreading widely in the United States in March, Biden has done few public events, most of them close to his Delaware home.
 
But following his formal nomination at last week’s Democratic National Convention, the campaign is expanding its health protocols in a new phase of the race that could see the former vice president in closer proximity to the public.
 
“Consistent with the transparency Vice President Biden has demonstrated, we will make public if either the Vice President or Senator Harris ever has a confirmed, positive case of COVID-19,” a campaign aide told Reuters.
 
The aide said Biden, 77, Harris, 55, and key staff who interact with them would be tested “on a regular basis,” in line with the advice of medical advisers.
 
“This is what responsible leadership looks like,” the person said.
 
Reporters have frequently asked Biden whether he has been tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and he has always answered no.
 
He has criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the virus, which has killed more than 176,000 Americans, as disastrous.
 
During campaign appearances, many broadcast online, Biden consistently wears masks and maintains distance to show his adherence to public health guidelines.
 
By contrast, Trump, 74, who will face Biden in the Nov. 3 election, downplayed the virus in its early stages, once referred to mask-wearing as politically correct and has been reluctant to wear a face covering himself.
 
Trump in July wore a mask in public for the first time during the pandemic, a shift in his tone to encourage Americans to wear them as the country began to see a resurgence of cases.
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The Republican Party’s foreign policy agenda has been almost entirely shaped in the past four years by President Donald Trump’s approach to international relations, including new trade deals, skepticism of international organizations, and calls to reduce U.S. troop deployments overseas.   Because of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing protocols, the Republican Party this year did not write a new party platform, which traditionally gives an official outline of the party’s vision and policy priorities. However, the party said in a resolution released at this week’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, that if it had been able to convene in 2020 to write a new platform, it would have “undoubtedly unanimously” backed the Trump administration’s agenda.   The party has rallied around Trump’s foreign policy goals, largely encapsulated by his “America First” slogan, which he debuted during his 2016 campaign and repeated Monday in an outline of his second-term agenda released by his campaign. Other foreign policy goals were to “bring our troops home” and “end our reliance on China.”   China China has become one of the central foreign policy topics in the 2020 campaign, heightened by Trump’s trade war as well as questions of China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.   FILE – President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He have lunch after signing the ‘Phase 1’ U.S.-China trade agreement, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Jan. 15, 2020, in Washington.The United States and China signed the first phase of a trade deal in January following rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs totaling billions of dollars. The deal has been touted by the Republican Party as evidence that the president can deliver on his trade goals and followed another newly inked trade deal by the Trump administration for North America.    However, negotiations on a second phase of the China trade deal have stalled. Trump said in July the accord means “much less to me” because of what he called China’s role in the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and this month he called off a new round of trade talks with China, saying, “I don’t want to talk to China right now.”    Some members of the Republican Party have urged Trump to be even tougher on China.    Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said if Trump is reelected, he would expect the president to become more confrontational with China.   “Both parties, but particularly the Republican Party, have come to see China not just as an economic rival, but as a growing security threat,” Alden said.   FILE – A cargo truck drives amid stacked shipping containers at the Yangshan port in Shanghai, China, March 29, 2018.Trump’s second-term agenda goals include the pledge to “bring back 1 million manufacturing jobs from China,” as well as to prevent federal contracts to companies that outsource to China.    Afghanistan The president’s second-term agenda also pledges to “stop endless wars” and bring U.S. troops home, a sentiment echoing his 2016 campaign.    But while Trump has often repeated his desire to end wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, he has struggled to fulfill his goal of reducing overall U.S. troop numbers overseas.    FILE – U.S. troops patrol at an Afghan National Army (ANA) Base in Logar province, Afghanistan, Aug. 7, 2018.In Afghanistan, Trump agreed in 2017 to a troop increase at the request of then-top U.S. commander in Afghanistan General John Nicholson, raising U.S. troop levels in that country to around 14,000.    The number of U.S. troops there now is back to 8,500, around the same level as when Trump took office in 2017, and the president recently laid out plans for further withdrawals as part of still-unmet conditions outlined in a U.S.-Taliban deal signed earlier this year.   Trump has defended his efforts at diplomacy with the Taliban, saying in a 2019 address to the United Nations, “the United States has never believed in permanent enemies.”   Charles Stevenson, a professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said candidates of both parties often pledge to reduce troop levels but find it difficult to fulfill their promises once taking office.    “There are costs from totally pulling out” of a region, including diplomatic and political ones, he said.   International alliances Trump has approached foreign diplomacy much differently than most past presidents, publicly questioning the value of international alliances and organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).   FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participate in a round table meeting during a NATO leaders meeting, Dec. 4, 2019.On NATO, Trump has argued that many members do not spend enough on defense to fully meet their commitments under the agreement.   “NATO countries must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS. Very Unfair,” Trump tweeted before attending a NATO summit in 2018.   Economic cost is often a key factor in Trump’s foreign policy stances, and he has questioned the costs associated with large U.S. military bases around the world, including in Japan, South Korea and Germany.   The president has broken off a host of international agreements since taking office, including the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and the Iran nuclear deal.    Trump has not been afraid to criticize traditional allies, getting into public disputes with a number of world leaders, including those from Germany, France and Canada.   Alden said Trump’s “America First” agenda often veers into a policy that is better described as “America Alone.” He said under Trump, “the United States has completely abandoned the notion of allies being important and abandoned the notion of international cooperation as being important.”   Trump has defended his approach, telling the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, “Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.”   North Korea While Trump is not afraid to have public disagreements with world leaders, his relationships with them often play a key role in his foreign policies.   Nowhere has that been more apparent than with North Korea, where Trump early in his presidency called leader Kim Jong Un “little rocket man” and threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” but later said of Kim, “We’ve developed a very good relationship.”   Trump has met with Kim three times and the two have reportedly exchanged at least 25 personal letters.   FILE – In this June 30, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, right, meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea.At their first summit in Singapore in 2018, the two leaders signed an agreement to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” but never agreed on the details of what that meant.    Despite the lack of specifics, Trump has had some success with his meetings with Kim. Since the summits began, North Korea has refrained from any major missile or nuclear tests.    For months, however, negotiations have stalled and North Korea has refused to talk.  Kim said in January 2020 that he is prepared for a “long-term” standoff with the United States.     
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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, will be tested regularly for COVID-19, an aide said on Monday, as the campaign prepares for the possibility of more public events in the run-up to November’s election.
 
Since the coronavirus began spreading widely in the United States in March, Biden has done few public events, most of them close to his Delaware home.
 
But following his formal nomination at last week’s Democratic National Convention, the campaign is expanding its health protocols in a new phase of the race that could see the former vice president in closer proximity to the public.
 
“Consistent with the transparency Vice President Biden has demonstrated, we will make public if either the Vice President or Senator Harris ever has a confirmed, positive case of COVID-19,” a campaign aide told Reuters.
 
The aide said Biden, 77, Harris, 55, and key staff who interact with them would be tested “on a regular basis,” in line with the advice of medical advisers.
 
“This is what responsible leadership looks like,” the person said.
 
Reporters have frequently asked Biden whether he has been tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and he has always answered no.
 
He has criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the virus, which has killed more than 176,000 Americans, as disastrous.
 
During campaign appearances, many broadcast online, Biden consistently wears masks and maintains distance to show his adherence to public health guidelines.
 
By contrast, Trump, 74, who will face Biden in the Nov. 3 election, downplayed the virus in its early stages, once referred to mask-wearing as politically correct and has been reluctant to wear a face covering himself.
 
Trump in July wore a mask in public for the first time during the pandemic, a shift in his tone to encourage Americans to wear them as the country began to see a resurgence of cases.
…

The Republican Party’s foreign policy agenda has been almost entirely shaped in the past four years by President Donald Trump’s approach to international relations, including new trade deals, skepticism of international organizations, and calls to reduce U.S. troop deployments overseas.   Because of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing protocols, the Republican Party this year did not write a new party platform, which traditionally gives an official outline of the party’s vision and policy priorities. However, the party said in a resolution released at this week’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, that if it had been able to convene in 2020 to write a new platform, it would have “undoubtedly unanimously” backed the Trump administration’s agenda.   The party has rallied around Trump’s foreign policy goals, largely encapsulated by his “America First” slogan, which he debuted during his 2016 campaign and repeated Monday in an outline of his second-term agenda released by his campaign. Other foreign policy goals were to “bring our troops home” and “end our reliance on China.”   China China has become one of the central foreign policy topics in the 2020 campaign, heightened by Trump’s trade war as well as questions of China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.   FILE – President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He have lunch after signing the ‘Phase 1’ U.S.-China trade agreement, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Jan. 15, 2020, in Washington.The United States and China signed the first phase of a trade deal in January following rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs totaling billions of dollars. The deal has been touted by the Republican Party as evidence that the president can deliver on his trade goals and followed another newly inked trade deal by the Trump administration for North America.    However, negotiations on a second phase of the China trade deal have stalled. Trump said in July the accord means “much less to me” because of what he called China’s role in the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and this month he called off a new round of trade talks with China, saying, “I don’t want to talk to China right now.”    Some members of the Republican Party have urged Trump to be even tougher on China.    Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said if Trump is reelected, he would expect the president to become more confrontational with China.   “Both parties, but particularly the Republican Party, have come to see China not just as an economic rival, but as a growing security threat,” Alden said.   FILE – A cargo truck drives amid stacked shipping containers at the Yangshan port in Shanghai, China, March 29, 2018.Trump’s second-term agenda goals include the pledge to “bring back 1 million manufacturing jobs from China,” as well as to prevent federal contracts to companies that outsource to China.    Afghanistan The president’s second-term agenda also pledges to “stop endless wars” and bring U.S. troops home, a sentiment echoing his 2016 campaign.    But while Trump has often repeated his desire to end wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, he has struggled to fulfill his goal of reducing overall U.S. troop numbers overseas.    FILE – U.S. troops patrol at an Afghan National Army (ANA) Base in Logar province, Afghanistan, Aug. 7, 2018.In Afghanistan, Trump agreed in 2017 to a troop increase at the request of then-top U.S. commander in Afghanistan General John Nicholson, raising U.S. troop levels in that country to around 14,000.    The number of U.S. troops there now is back to 8,500, around the same level as when Trump took office in 2017, and the president recently laid out plans for further withdrawals as part of still-unmet conditions outlined in a U.S.-Taliban deal signed earlier this year.   Trump has defended his efforts at diplomacy with the Taliban, saying in a 2019 address to the United Nations, “the United States has never believed in permanent enemies.”   Charles Stevenson, a professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said candidates of both parties often pledge to reduce troop levels but find it difficult to fulfill their promises once taking office.    “There are costs from totally pulling out” of a region, including diplomatic and political ones, he said.   International alliances Trump has approached foreign diplomacy much differently than most past presidents, publicly questioning the value of international alliances and organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).   FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participate in a round table meeting during a NATO leaders meeting, Dec. 4, 2019.On NATO, Trump has argued that many members do not spend enough on defense to fully meet their commitments under the agreement.   “NATO countries must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS. Very Unfair,” Trump tweeted before attending a NATO summit in 2018.   Economic cost is often a key factor in Trump’s foreign policy stances, and he has questioned the costs associated with large U.S. military bases around the world, including in Japan, South Korea and Germany.   The president has broken off a host of international agreements since taking office, including the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and the Iran nuclear deal.    Trump has not been afraid to criticize traditional allies, getting into public disputes with a number of world leaders, including those from Germany, France and Canada.   Alden said Trump’s “America First” agenda often veers into a policy that is better described as “America Alone.” He said under Trump, “the United States has completely abandoned the notion of allies being important and abandoned the notion of international cooperation as being important.”   Trump has defended his approach, telling the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, “Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.”   North Korea While Trump is not afraid to have public disagreements with world leaders, his relationships with them often play a key role in his foreign policies.   Nowhere has that been more apparent than with North Korea, where Trump early in his presidency called leader Kim Jong Un “little rocket man” and threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” but later said of Kim, “We’ve developed a very good relationship.”   Trump has met with Kim three times and the two have reportedly exchanged at least 25 personal letters.   FILE – In this June 30, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, right, meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea.At their first summit in Singapore in 2018, the two leaders signed an agreement to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” but never agreed on the details of what that meant.    Despite the lack of specifics, Trump has had some success with his meetings with Kim. Since the summits began, North Korea has refrained from any major missile or nuclear tests.    For months, however, negotiations have stalled and North Korea has refused to talk.  Kim said in January 2020 that he is prepared for a “long-term” standoff with the United States.     
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U.S. President Donald Trump took center stage at the Republican National Convention Monday night and immediately signaled that defending his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis is paramount in winning a second term. On the first night of the nationally televised Republican convention, Trump was shown greeting health care workers at the White House who – against the views of many Americans — praised his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. “You’re an incredible group,” Trump told several health care workers and two COVID-19 survivors who recovered from the infectious disease that has killed more than 177,000 people in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data, the most of any nation in the world. “We have to make this China virus go away,” Trump told the group in the East Room of the White House, an apparent acknowledgement that the unrelenting virus is also a threat to his reelection to a second term. None of the group was wearing a face mask or socially distancing from the others as health experts have advised.   Later, in the Diplomatic Room, Trump greeted a half-dozen people who had been held prisoner overseas, all of whom had been released after U.S. diplomatic efforts during Trump’s presidency. Michael White, held for two years in Iran, told Trump, “You were able to get me out of that prison. It was amazing.”White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, left, Vice President Mike Pence and chief of staff Mark Meadows stand off stage as they listen to President Donald Trump speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 24, 2020.Democrats released an ad mocking the Republican convention just as Republicans staged counter events last week while the Democrats met. “Welcome to the RNC, Republican National Chaos,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot, which opened with a scene of downtown Charlotte. “Because Trump is meeting the COVID moment with job-destroying incompetence and deadly mismanagement, students and teachers are left to themselves, the jobless left without a lifeline, grandparents left to die alone, an economy left to perish.” A parade of Republicans, most speaking from the empty Mellon Auditorium a short distance from the White House, praised Trump and called for his reelection. His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., described his father’s Democratic opponent in the November 3 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, as “the Loch Ness monster of the swamp,” a reference to the federal government, and a threat to U.S. democracy.  The younger Trump called Democrats the party of “rioting, looting and vandalism” during protests against racial injustice in the U.S. “Trump’s America is the land of opportunity,” he declared. For President Trump, the four days of the Republican convention are crucial, a chance through saturation television coverage for him to convince enough American voters that he deserves another four-year term when national polls often show voters disapprove of his performance as the country’s chief executive during the past 3½ years.Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., speaks during the Republican National Convention from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, Aug. 24, 2020.Many voters have voiced their discontent about the chaotic Trump presidency and his uneven response to the coronavirus pandemic. Others have grown weary of his thousands of tweets with barbed comments aimed at anyone he disagrees with or attacks him. He has 10 weeks to make his case before Election Day, but the polls show Biden leading by an average of 7.6 percentage points, according to an aggregation of polls by the Real Clear Politics website. However, Biden’s edge is a bit thinner in several key battleground states that could once again prove decisive in the election.  Only two U.S. presidents have lost reelection contests after a single term in office in the past four decades. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes but won the election by narrowly capturing three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — that Democrats had usually won. However, polls show Biden is leading in all three states. The U.S. president is chosen in the Electoral College, the country’s indirect form of democracy where the overall national outcome is determined by the winner in each of the 50 states, not the national popular vote. Earlier in the day, the more than 300 delegates who gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the business portion of the convention renominated Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for a second four-year term, with the U.S. leader appearing shortly after that to thank the party stalwarts. Trump called the November 3 vote “the most important election in the history of our country.” He contended that the only way Democrats could defeat him is through a rigged election using mail-in-ballots sent to voters.  “They’re trying to steal the election,” Trump declared without evidence. “Suppose they don’t mail them to Republican neighborhoods.”  Trump’s visits with the health workers and the freed prisoners marked the first of four straight evenings he plans to speak to the mostly virtual convention, with the focus shifting from Charlotte to Washington, and culminating Thursday with his renomination acceptance speech at the White House. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, and Nikki Haley, an Indian American and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also spoke on his behalf. Trump, as president, has been a vocal supporter of gun ownership rights as sanctioned by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But as many Democrats call for limitations on gun ownership, Republicans brought the issue to the fore with a pair of controversial speakers, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis, Missouri, couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters as they walked past their mansion in a June demonstration against racial injustice. The McCloskeys said they felt threatened by the protesters, but a St. Louis prosecutor charged both with a felony, unlawful use of a weapon.Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley leaves after speaking during the Republican National Convention from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, Aug. 24, 2020.Mark McCloskey said, “Donald Trump will protect your God-given right to protect your homes and family.” His wife said, “Your family will not be safe with the radical Democrats’ agenda.” Democrats last week conducted their convention entirely virtually, with a collection of taped and live presentations, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Republican delegates in Charlotte were subject to regular temperature checks and daily testing for COVID-19. All were required to be tested before they left their states, and throughout Monday’s events they were wearing devices to enable contact tracing. A total of 336 delegates gathered at the convention to renominate Trump. The size of the Republican gathering is downscaled from past conventions, just not as much as the Democrats’ conclave. Gone at both party conventions are the thousands of delegates who have crammed into arenas and stadiums at quadrennial gatherings in years past. Biden, as he accepted his party’s presidential nomination last week, contended that Trump had created a “season of darkness in America” in which he had failed to control the unrelenting pandemic while millions of workers have lost their jobs. “We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege,” Biden said. Trump claimed that “the Democrats held the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention in American history.” He accused them of “attacking America as racist and a horrible country that must be redeemed.” But he wasted no time in attacking Biden after the delegates cast their votes to renominate him. As he has often done in recent times, Trump attacked his Democratic opponent as a puppet of the radical left, warning that if the former vice president is elected in November, “Your American dream will be dead.” Republicans are billing their convention “Honoring the Great American Story.” The Trump campaign said that each night will include remarks from political leaders as well as “everyday Americans whose stories are filled with hope and patriotism.” All three living former Democratic presidents — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — along with 2004 nominee John Kerry and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, spoke on behalf of Biden at the Democratic convention. But neither former Republican President George W. Bush nor 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who now is a Utah senator and a Trump critic, is on the Republican convention schedule.  More than two dozen former Republican lawmakers announced their support for Biden as the Republican convention started. 
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