United States President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have ramped up their campaigns this week, with the former vice president heading to the campaign trail and both candidates hosting their first duelling events since their party's conventions wrapped up.
The campaign sprint reflects the pace of the race for both parties and comes before the Labor Day holiday on September 7, which traditionally marks the beginning of the most vigorous general election campaigning.
In the midst of a coronavirus pandemic that has struck the US harder than any country in the world in terms of reported cases and deaths, and ongoing civil unrest in cities around the US that has turned violent and deadly at times, both campaigns were jockeying to dominate the narrative.
That started on Monday when Biden, returning to the trail for the first time after taking a remote approach to campaigning in the midst of the pandemic, tried to rebut Trump's claims that "far left" democrats allowed "agitators" and "riot" to invade cities and suburbs.
Instead he presented Trump as a leader whose ineptitude in handling the health crisis has posed a far more pressing security concern to Americans.
During an event in Wilmington, Delaware on Wednesday, in which Biden took questions from reporters for the first time since the Democratic Convention, the nominee safely called re-opening schools a "national emergency" during the pandemic while telling Trump he "there has no clear strategy" for the crisis.
He also told police officers involved in Breonna Taylor's shootings in Louisville Kentucky and Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin should be charged.
Biden is set to visit Kenosha, which is in the key battleground state of Wisconsin, on Thursday, just two days after Trump made a controversial trip to the city, despite pleas from local and state officials that he stay away for fear that his visit would agitate unrest.
Trump used the trip to highlight his "law and order" message that has become increasingly central to the campaign, decrying property damage and attacks on police during protests as "domestic terror".
"American warriors did not defeat fascism and oppression overseas only to watch our freedoms be trampled by violent mobs here at home," Trump said on Wednesday during a World War II memorial event in Wilmington, North Carolina in an address that appeared was rushed due to lightning.
With 61 days to go until the November 3 runoff, both candidates also announced plans on Wednesday to mark the 19th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a hijacked plane crashed into a field, apparently as it was being diverted to Washington , DC.
Whether their visits to the Shanksville Memorial would coincide was not immediately clear, but the visits would likely be the nearest the candidates have been to each other in months.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
