5:45
Increasing heat and droughts are \"supercharging\" wildfires by creating drier conditions for trees and brush. Warmer temperatures have also decreased moisture from melting snow and allowed bark beetles to travel further north, killing millions of trees, according to the National Climate Assessment published in 2018.
These factors allow fires to spread more quickly.
As the planet continues to warm, those conditions will only get worse, making wildfires more dangerous, climate scientists say.
The majority of land impacted by wildfires in states like California, Washington and Oregon is also managed by the federal government, which proactively removes dead trees and brush and conducts controlled burns to keep forests healthy.
--Stephanie Ebbs
TRUMP'S CLAIM: \"It's China's fault, it should have never happened. They stopped it from going in. But it was China's fault. By my doing it early -- in fact, Dr. Fauci said, 'President Trump saved thousands of lives.' Many of your Democrat governors said, 'President Trump did a phenomenal job.'\"
FACT CHECK: Trump is overstating his early actions in containing the virus by suggesting his travel restrictions from China were critical.
While Dr. Anthony Fauci has confirmed that those restrictions were important, Trump is omitting a major miscalculation he made early on in the pandemic -- not restricting travel from Europe.
Up to 75% of the coronavirus specimens circulating in the New York City area in early March were genetically similar to strains seen in Europe and other areas of North America, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Preventionstudy published in July.
Although Fauci has said that the president's travel restrictions did save lives, he has also stated on numerous occasions that if mitigation efforts such as social distancing and mask wearing were implemented earlier, then many lives could have been saved. \"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. ... If we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different,\" Fauci said during an interview on CNN in April.
--Arielle Mitropoulos
TRUMP'S CLAIM: Can you imagine where they say you have to have your ballot in by Nov. 10? Nov. 10. That means that's seven days after the election, in theory, should have been announced. We have major states with that -- all run by Democrats, all run by Democrats. It's a fraud. It's a rigged election.
FACT CHECK: It is true that mail ballots arriving after Nov. 3 will be counted in several states, but these ballots are not fraudulent.
For these mail ballots to be counted, they must be postmarked on or before Election Day, and in some states, they must be postmarked by the day before the election.
\"He has no idea what he's talking about,\" Biden says after Trump makes false claims about mail in voting.
— ABC News (@ABC) September 30, 2020
\"Once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted … that will be the end of it ... and if it's not me, I'll support the outcome.\" https://t.co/1FSfyX9lEP pic.twitter.com/sAX0siBSDj
In a normal election year, 19 states accept ballots that arrive after the election, as long as they are properly postmarked and arrive within a state-specific timeline, between three and 14 days post-election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. These states are not \"all run by Democrats\" either. Alaska, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi and Ohio -- all states with Republican governors currently -- have postmark-by deadlines on the books, even when there isn't a pandemic causing widespread changes to voting.
More states will have postmark-by deadlines for the November election, due to both court rulings and changes implemented by state officials.
In Wisconsin on Tuesday, for example, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling, which ordered county election officials to accept ballots received up to six days post-election as long as those ballots were postmarked on or before Nov. 3. Other battleground states where court rulings have extended the deadline for mail ballots to arrive include Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, but the extension is being challenged in all three states.
In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams reached a bipartisan agreement in mid-August to accept ballots returned by mail through Nov. 6, as long as those ballots are postmarked on or before Nov. 3.
--Quinn Scanlan
TRUMP'S CLAIM: \"As far as the ballots are concerned, it's a disaster. A solicited ballot, OK? Solicited is OK. You're soliciting. You're asking, they send it back, you send it back. I did that. If you have an unsolicited -- they are sending millions of ballots all over the country. There is fraud.\"
FACT CHECK: Despite Trump claiming that states across the country are mailing out \"unsolicited ballots,\" that is only true in nine states plus Washington, D.C.
In two states, Montana and Nebraska, most or some counties are mailing ballots to voters.
In fact, 41 of 50 states, voters are required to request an absentee ballot before being mailed one by election officials. Of those 41, only nine are proactively mailing registered voters applications to request an absentee ballot.
Of those states mailing ballots to voters, five -- Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Hawaii and Washington -- were already holding all-mail elections before the coronavirus pandemic. Officials in those states have seen no evidence of widespread fraud, and those voters are likely used to receiving ballots without requesting one.
Also, in four of the nine states mailing ballots -- Oregon, Washington, Utah and Nevada -- Republicans currently run elections. Only Nevada is considered a battleground in the presidential race among the states mailing ballots.
--Kendall Karson
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/biden-debate-pause-gty-ps-200929_1601436995563_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
TRUMP'S CLAIM: \"As you know, today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia they went in to watch, they were -- they are called poll watchers. A very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things.\"
FACT CHECK: The supporters, who sought to observe the polls, were blocked from entering the early voting sites because poll watchers' certifications for early voting have not been issued for anyone, including the Trump campaign. Also, early in-person voting is only at satellite election offices, not polling places, and poll watchers are only certified at polling places on Election Day, an elections official confirmed.
\"Satellite Offices are not Polling Places (and) poll watcher certificates have not been issued for any individuals for anything other than poll watching activities on Election Day at Polling Places,\" Nick Custodio, deputy to Lisa Deely, chairwoman of the Philadelphia City Commissioners, said in a statement to ABC News earlier on Tuesday.
Unless voters are there to utilize register to vote, request mail ballots, fill them out in-person, and submit them to clerks, they are not allowed in. Officials are also limiting the number of people in the election offices due to the pandemic. \"This is particularly important in the current environment as City buildings and offices remain closed to the public due to COVID-19,\" Custodio said in the statement.
Candidates are allowed to appoint two poll watchers, and political parties are allowed to appoint three, per precinct, who are permitted inside polling places to observe, challenge the qualification of voters, and potentially raise legal challenges, according to state law. Poll watchers must be registered to vote in the county the precinct they are observing is located.
Republicans are pushing for to allow partisan poll watchers to be stationed in counties outside of their residence in an ongoing legal fight in Pennsylvania. The state Supreme Court ruled against the GOP, limiting poll watchers to only counties where they live, but state Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.
--Quinn Scanlan and Kendall Karson
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/viewers-1-gty-er-200929_1601431017832_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
TRUMP'S CLAIM: When asked about the wearing of masks, Trump said that medical experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci said that \"masks are not good. Then he changed his mind.\"
When Biden asserted that if all Americans wore masks, and social-distanced between now and January, 100,000 lives could be saved, Trump asserted that experts have said the opposite.
\"Dr. Fauci said the opposite,\" Trump said. \"He said very strongly.\"
FACT CHECK: Although at the beginning of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, as well as Fauci and other top experts, initially discouraged wearing masks, the recommendationto wear a mask is now almost unanimous among health experts. Many of the president's own appointees have been very vocal in encouraging the American people to wear masks to curtail the spread of the disease.
Early on in the pandemic, there were concerns that masks and other personal protective equipment were in short supply for health care workers who needed them.
While Fauci mainly cited the need to conserve masks, he did say early in the pandemic during an interview with \"60 Minutes\" that wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences, such as leading people to touch their faces more often to adjust them, spreading germs from their hands.
The CDC changed its recommendation in early April and recommended the general public wear face coverings, based on evidence that a significant number of people who were asymptomatic or not yet feeling sick were transmitting the virus.
--Arielle Mitropoulos
BIDEN'S CLAIM: \"The Green New Deal is not my plan.\" \"No, I don't support the Green New Deal.\" \"I support the Biden plan that I put forward, which is different than what he calls the radical Green New deal.\"
FACT CHECK: While Biden has not fully supported the Green New Deal, he has embraced and adopted several key rhetoric and elements of the progressive agenda.
In its extensive clean energy plan released earlier this year, the Biden campaign described the Green New Deal as \"a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.\"
The $2 trillion plan, which was put forth after Biden tapped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., along with former Secretary of State John Kerry, to lead his climate task force, includes some core concepts of the Green New Deal, including the need to \"embrace greater ambition on an epic scale to meet the scope of this challenge,\" and that \"our environment and our economy are completely and totally connected.\" The plan also puts forward a goal to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and to reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
Biden's climate plan however, leaves out some of the more debated features of the Green New Deal, such as Medicare for All and a jobs guarantee.
ABC News' Meredith Deliso, Justin Fishel, Soorin Kim and Mark Osborne contributed to this report.
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