US election live updates: Trump launches intense campaign push, Biden hammers him on Covid

President Donald Trump is defending his administration's separation of immigrant children who remain away from their families following detentions along the US-Mexico border. Trump said during Thursday's debate that children are often brought across the border not by families but ``by coyotes and lots of bad people." The American Civil Liberties Union told a judge this week that there were still 545 children separated from their parents from 2018.

Former Vice President Joe Biden says he would push for a $15-per-hour minimum wage and rejects the idea that it would hurt small businesses. Biden said at Thursday's debate: "There is no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage, businesses go out of business". President Donald Trump argued that the minimum wage should be left as an issue for the states to determine. He says, ``How are you helping your small businesses when you're forcing wages? What's going to happen, and what's been proven to happen, is when you do that, these small businesses fire many of their employees."

Trump blamed Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even as Pelosi continues to negotiate a deal with Trump's emissary, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The Republican president suggested Pelosi doesn't want to do anything that would help him. Biden asked Trump why he isn't talking to his "Republican friends'' about a deal.