PHILADELPHIA - Joe Biden railed against President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and framed the 2020 election as a choice between Main Street and Wall Street during an outdoor town hall meeting Thursday just outside his childhood hometown of Scranton.

The former vice president, taking questions from voters for a little more...Read more

President Donald Trump once again promised that a COVID-19 vaccine for Americans could be ready within weeks, a timeline faster than has been deemed possible or likely by the scientific agencies overseeing the effort and the companies developing the products.

Trump's optimistic promises have left him in a battle with the realities of time, the ...Read more

WASHINGTON - Michael Bloomberg is starting to put his money where his mouth is.

Aides to the Democratic billionaire said Thursday that Bloomberg will spend $5.4 million on a weeklong TV ad campaign in Florida, part of his pledge to help Joe Biden win the all-important presidential battleground state.

The ads will begin airing this weekend on ...Read more

WASHINGTON - House Democrats' plan to vote on legislation decriminalizing marijuana before the November election went up in smoke Thursday, as leadership decided to postpone consideration of the measure amid concerns about the political optics.

Some of the more moderate Democrats in the caucus, including ones considered vulnerable for ...Read more

WASHINGTON - Southern states have lagged behind the rest of the country in census counting amid the pandemic - and now a historic hurricane season may hamper last-ditch efforts to finish in a shortened timeline, census experts warned Thursday.

The Census Bureau has counted about 93% of households nationwide, but a handful of Southern states ...Read more

Trump hotels have reportedly billed $1.1 million to cover Secret Service stays during presidential visits - including a five-figure tab while the New Jersey golf resort was closed for the coronavirus shutdown.

The Washington Post on Thursday revealed an additional $188,000 in hotel bills picked up by the American taxpayers covering his ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA - Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris came to Philadelphia on Thursday with an itinerary and a message aimed at reaching the city's Black and Latino voters, saying the coronavirus pandemic has been "an accelerator" of inequities minority communities have long faced - and that President Donald Trump has worsened their ...Read more

President Donald Trump painted a grim and divisive portrait of the state of American education on Thursday, claiming that anything from elementary schools to colleges are being overrun by "radical" teachers bent on destroying "our children" with "Marxist doctrines."

The president was talking about an educational framework known as critical race...Read more

WASHINGTON - Just weeks after a Republican National Convention dominated by calls for "law and order," President Donald Trump's campaign has returned to an almost exclusively economic message in its advertising.

It's the latest strategic pivot by the Trump campaign, as polls continue to show Joe Biden holding a steady advantage in the ...Read more

Five years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on same-sex marriage, the Census Bureau has released the most detailed data ever on same-sex couples, married and unmarried, in a move welcomed by LGBTQ activists.

"Like with so many other marginalized communities, being able to have this data means so much," said Beatriz Valenzuela, ...Read more

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday dodged a question on whether he will bring a motion to vacate to remove Speaker Nancy Pelosi from her post, an effort the Freedom Caucus was urging him to pursue.

"I do not want Nancy Pelosi to be speaker, but I do not want Nadler to be chair. I do not want Schiff to be chair and I ...Read more

On the eve of the 2018 elections, President Donald Trump took the stage at a Pensacola rally and marveled at the damage wrought to Florida's Forgotten Coast only weeks earlier by Category 5 Hurricane Michael.

"That wasn't a hurricane. That was like a 50-mile wide tornado," Trump said, noting how the storm had wiped homes in coastal towns clean ...Read more

WASHINGTON - After battling months of withering criticism for his botched response to the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump is relying on a new defense - it was Joe Biden, not him, who failed during a pandemic.

His evidence: the so-called swine flu pandemic, which killed 12,469 Americans in 2009 and 2010, when Biden was vice president....Read more

In this election cycle, it's tempting to see every aspect of American life in partisan terms, including its economic divide. But there's an aspect to the economic picture that doesn't get enough attention despite the impulse to view everything through a red vs. blue prism.

It's not merely the split in manufacturing vs. service or information ...Read more

WASHINGTON - A Trump administration plan to use the census to exclude from congressional representation immigrants who are living here illegally might inadvertently exclude many U.S. citizens living under the radar in states such as Alaska, New Mexico and West Virginia.

Last week, a federal appeals court in New York blocked the administration's...Read more

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump contradicted one of his administration's top scientists and announced Wednesday that widespread distribution of a coronavirus vaccine would begin as early as next month, further rattling the scientific and public health communities and stoking rival Joe Biden's claim that Trump can't be trusted to oversee ...Read more