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Within two weeks of Biden selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate on August 12, his Twitter following jumped by 738,595 new followers—a 9.1 percent leap. The number hit 11 million by the third week of October. A close examination has revealed unusual patterns. A large number of Twitter accounts that followed Biden’s appear to have been created exclusively for that purpose. And a large number of the users are located in small towns in rural India—in places where English-speakers are rare, and from handles run by people who don’t speak English as their first language, nor appear to be genuinely invested in American politics....

The leaders spoke at the UN General Assembly just hours apart on Tuesday and, at least on the surface, offered their own assurances that the intense U.S.-China rivalry would remain within the boundaries of responsible competition. Biden and Xi sought to outdo one another on global health and climate commitments, with the former highlighting the U.S.’s position as the world’s top COVID-19 vaccine donor—at over 160 million doses—and financial backer of climate action....

Biden’s initial and preferred plan has been to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. The increased taxes would help fund roads, bridges, electric vehicles and broadband, but Republicans have disagreed. An increase in corporate taxes would undo the tax cuts signed by former President Donald Trump in 2017. There is currently no minimum corporate tax on profits, so Biden proposed establishing a 15 percent minimum to give Republicans an alternative to his plan that would not require raising corporate taxes....

Even before Friday’s release of the meagre 266,000 job gain for last month, GOP governors of Montana and South Carolina had already announced plans to no longer participate in the federal program that gives a $300 weekly boost to jobless benefits. Economists had predicted more than one million job gains, and Friday’s figures cast minds back to one year ago, when in April 2020 the U.S. economy lost 20.5 million jobs, the largest decline since records began....

The president is currently in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, ahead of a visit to Bali in Indonesia for a G20 meeting next week. Speaking at a meeting in Phnom Penh, Biden said: “Now that we are back together in Cambodia I look forward to building even stronger progress than we’ve already made. And I want to thank the prime minister of Columbia’s leadership as ASEAN chair....

The Warriors have won four championships in the past eight years, but they did not meet Donald Trump while he was in office. The team was publicly disinvited after star point guard Stephen Curry said he was not interested in going, according to an ESPN report. During their meeting on Tuesday, Biden took a knee in front of the team for a photo with Vice President Kamala Harris and the team, prompting laughter from those in the room....

British lawmaker Chris Bryant, a Labour Party member of the U.K. Parliament, told the Evening Standard he put forward the Democrat on Monday. “When others have resorted to violent solutions, he has argued that the best force is the force of argument,” he told the newspaper. “Because guns can stop a heart but well-placed words can change many hearts, and many hearts can change a world.” Newsweek has contacted Bryant and the Biden campaign for comment....

The latest battleground state poll released by Pulse Opinion Research found that 55 percent of likely voters in Wisconsin favored Biden, while 43 percent said they were leaning toward Trump. A further 2 percent of Wisconsin voters said they were either unsure about who to vote for, or intended to back a third party candidate instead. Pressed on whether they certain of their vote, almost eight in ten respondents said their vote wouldn’t change, and 21 percent indicated that they could still be moved before polls open on November 3....

The former vice president was asked what he would do if he won the race to the White House, and a compromised version of a Medicare for All bill pushed forward by Sanders, managed to get through the Senate, and land on his desk in the Oval Office. “Do you veto it?” MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell asked Biden. Biden replied: “I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of healthcare being available now....

Biden repeatedly called for a bipartisan approach to governing during last year’s White House campaign. This harked back to his 36 years in the Senate, which had a less severe partisan divide when he was first elected in 1972 and for many years afterwards. “We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country,” Biden said before the election. “When I say that, and I said that from the time I announced, I was told that, ‘Maybe that’s the way things used to work, Joe, you got a lot done before, Joe, but you can’t do that anymore....

Instead of mining materials needed to build electric vehicles domestically, two unnamed administration officials told Reuters Biden will focus on purchasing the metals overseas and bring them into the U.S. Once the raw materials arrive, American workers will turn them into things like batteries, so electric vehicles can be built. The approach deviates from former President Donald Trump’s push to speed up domestic mining projects, which typically undergo a thorough environmental review to assess potential risks....

Alison Steinberg suggested that Biden’s diagnosis was “conveniently timed” and could be used as an excuse to remove him from office and replace him with Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden is reportedly experiencing “very mild symptoms” and is taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug designed to reduce the severity of the disease, as treatment for the virus. The 79-year-old is fully vaccinated, having received two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine before taking office, a booster shot in September 2021 and an additional dose on March 30....

Biden tested positive for COVID on Thursday and the White House said the president was experiencing what were described as “very mild symptoms.” The president will now isolate at the White House, where he will continue to carry out his duties and participate in planned meetings virtually, and will continue to do so until he tests negative. Shortly after the news broke, conservative commentators such as Charlie Kirk, Paul Joseph Watson, and tech entrepreneur Eli David took to Twitter to highlight the fact that Biden caught COVID despite having had four vaccines....

A record high of 70 percent of the general public said they disapprove of Biden’s response to inflation, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll. The figure, recorded after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has helped push up oil prices globally, is slightly higher than the 69 percent disapproval Biden received for his handling of inflation in previous ABC/Ipsos polls from the end of January and mid-December. The survey found the same percentage of respondents are also unhappy with how Biden is handling the surges in gas prices, with 70 percent saying they disapprove of how the president is coping, compared to 28 percent who approve....

When it comes to North Korea, Biden could simply decide to replicate the failed policies of the past—policies championed by Democrats and Republicans alike. That means more failed sanctions, more pressure coupled with the hope China can somehow bring Pyongyang to heel. And if that is the case, 2021 could be another year of missile and nuclear tests, threats of war followed by promises of talks that go nowhere....

A week ago Biden was staring into the abyss. His approval ratings were deep underwater and 70 percent of Americans thought the country was going in the wrong direction. Resurgent Republicans were poised to test the Democrats’ hold on states they had won easily for years, capitalizing on voters’ frustrations with a sputtering economy and an enduring pandemic that Biden had promised to end. And most embarrassingly, Biden’s signature legislative achievements had been thwarted repeatedly in Congress by factions within his own party, even after he announced what he called a framework agreement....

Unity has been a central element of Biden’s early rhetoric, inheriting as he did a fractured political landscape scarred by four years of Donald Trump and decades of worsening partisan divide in Washington, D.C. His unifying message may be welcomed by Americans exhausted by vicious politicking, the pandemic and systemic economic problems—but many Republican lawmakers are giving the president short shrift, particularly after his $1.9 trillion stimulus package was passed with no GOP support....

“Right now, we just aren’t getting all of the information we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, following a brief from members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams. He went on to call for “full visibility” from agencies to “avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit....

The letter states that the Republicans members of the House of Representatives have “serious concerns” about Harris’ appointment to resolve the situation, branded a border crisis by her political foes, amid record breaking numbers of encounters there. Harris was personally tasked by Biden to try and control the surge of migrants crossing the border. She has since been criticized by high profile GOP and right-leaning figures for not visiting the border since her appointment....

Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday that action would be taken when the House of Representatives and the Senate get back to work but didn’t offer details on what form that might take. On Wednesday, October 4, the OPEC+ group of oil producing nations said that they had agreed to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day to raise prices, despite objections and lobbying from the White House....