Downing Street 'writing off president's chances of being re-elected in November and turning attention to wooing rival Joe Biden' amid fears for a US trade deal under Democrat.

Boris Johnson's team have started wooing Democrat US presidential challenger Joe Biden after reportedly giving up on Donald Trump's chances of being re-elected.

Downing Street are said to have turned their sights to the 77-year-old amid signs that he is developing a commanding lead over Mr Trump in the polls.

With just 22 days to go there are fears for the future progress of talks over a US-UK trade deal that have been carried out by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss.

Mr Biden has previously warned that Mr Johnson's attempts to undo part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement relating to Northern Ireland could see the UK shelve the talks if he is in charge.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said on Friday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, news that came as the nation was reeling from President Trump's own coronavirus diagnosis.

Lee, the third senator known to have tested positive for COVID-19, said in a statement he took a coronavirus test on Thursday after experiencing symptoms similar to those he has had for longtime allergies.

"Unlike the test I took just a few days ago while visiting the White House, yesterday's test came back positive. On advice of the Senate attending physician, I will remain isolated for the next 10 days," Lee said in a statement.

A former teacher in San Antonio says she was fired after she declined to stop wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask at the school.

Lillian White was a teacher at Great Hearts Western Hills, a charter school on the city's north side.

KENS reports that White began attending weekly in-person training sessions at Great Hearts Western Hills in July, wearing homemade masks printed with the phrases, "Black Lives Matter" and "Silence is Violence."

"For about a week and a half I was wearing these masks and no one said anything. A couple of the other teachers came up and asked for some if I had any extras and I made them some," White told KENS.

She says one Friday, she received a text message from the assistant principal, saying "we’d like you to stop wearing these masks anymore, parents will be coming around more and we don’t discuss the current political climate."

Even then, White says she continued to wear the mask, citing her commitment to what Black Lives Matter stands for.

"This is human rights and it should be something that is promoted at our school. It’s an excuse to not talk about it by saying this is politics, talk about it on your own time. It’s just an excuse because they’re uncomfortable with the conversation," White told KENS.

Republicans and independents may be less likely than Democrats to state their true preference for president, research finds.

A new online study finds that Republicans and independents are twice as likely as Democrats to say they would not give their true opinion in a telephone poll question about their preference for president in the 2020 election. That raises the possibility that polls understate support for President Donald Trump.

Some 11.7% of Republicans and 10.5% independents said they would not give their true opinion, vs. 5.4% of Democrats, according to the study by CloudResearch LLC, a Queens, N.Y.-based company that conducts online market research and data collection for clients. Among the reasons they gave was that "it's dangerous to express an opinion outside of the current liberal viewpoint," according to Leib Litman, the co-chief executive officer and chief research officer.

The question of whether "shy Trump" voters were undercounted in polls before the 2016 election was part of an exhaustive post-mortem published by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. "Some Trump voters who participated in pre-election polls did not reveal themselves as Trump voters until after the election, and they outnumbered late-revealing Clinton voters," the AAPOR study said, adding, "This finding could be attributable to either late deciding or misreporting (the so-called Shy Trump effect) in the pre-election polls."

I watch Russian news everyday, in Russian. My family is Russian. Most of my friends are Russians. I am an American but live in Latvia and Italy.

Have you noticed all the chaos in the world? Have you noticed that this chaos has increased tremendously in the past few years? Especially in the Middle East, Europe and the USA? Do you ever wonder why?

I will tell you.

There is a genius living in Moscow who is a former KGB colonel. He decided that he could make his country a world power again, increase its influence and respect and make himself one of the richest men in the world at the same time. His methods are brilliant and extremely well executed. Create chaos everywhere possible and then present himself as the sane and stable world leader who can lead in the absence of other great leaders.

He made sure that Donald Trump was elected president of the USA. He sent out his trolls to create chaos in America, UK, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries. He supported dictators in the Middle East and helped create millions of refugees knowing that they would head for Europe. He did not take any into his country for obvious reasons. Chaos has ensued.

He controls every media outlet in the Russian speaking world. Anyone who runs against him or becomes too powerful in opposition to him ends up dead or in prison. His propaganda machine is rivaled only by the propaganda machine of the American right wing. His is probably better but its reach is not as great since there are fewer Russian speakers than English speakers.

I am watching, the last few evenings, an amazing propaganda campaign on Russian stations against George Soros. Soros hates fascists as much as he hated the USSR. This evil genius has had his trolls spreading propaganda and lies about Soros in America for a couple of years blaming Soros for every anti-fascist, anti Trump protest in America and now his machine has gone full bore on Soros in Russia. He even uses right wing crazies in America to reinforce his propaganda campaign on Russian TV. Soros is now the evil genius behind all the chaos in the world. See how that works?

I could go on and on and on and I would still only be scratching the surface. I am not privy to all the evil and machinations of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. But I can assure you. Everything I have written here is true and is the reason he is despised in so many places in the world and by so many.

I am sure that if the truth ever comes out about this evil puppet master and all the chaos and evil he perpetuates around the world, even the Russian people will hate him.

I have stood face to face with this guy and he is as evil and dangerous as he is purported to be.