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    US economy bounces back but deeper trends hint at enduring woe

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    The US economy bounced sharply back from the record-setting slump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to government figures released on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a key talking point days before the election.
    According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September and was up 7.4% compared to the previous quarter. The previous record was a 3.9% quarterly increase in 1950.
    Trump was quick to claim credit, tweeting the figures were the “Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close.”

    Donald J. Trump
    (@realDonaldTrump)
    GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close. Next year will be FANTASTIC!!! However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all. So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.

    October 29, 2020

    But the numbers show the US still has a long way to go to escape the devastation wrought by Covid-19 and were boosted by extra unemployment payments, business loans and direct payments, none of which have been replenished for the fourth quarter.
    The news comes just five days before the US election and is the last major economic release before polls close. Even before the figures were released the Trump campaign released ads boasting: “FASTEST GDP GROWTH IN HISTORY.”
    Big issues remain for the economy, however. The growth rate announcement came on the same day that the labor department announced that another 751,000 people filed for unemployment claims last week and the unemployment rate, at 7.9%, is twice as high as it was in February before the pandemic struck the US.
    A closer look at the numbers shows that the US’s economic woes are far from over. Thursday’s figures follow an equally historic slump in the second quarter. The US economy shrank by a revised annual rate of 31.4% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, as much of the country went into lockdown to control the virus.
    The annual rate suggests the economy will continue on its current trend for the rest of the year. But such huge swings make the annualized figures misleading – no one expects such massive losses or gains to continue but most economists expect the US economy to be smaller at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.
    Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, said the figures represented “real growth” but added “there is still a long way to go before we get back to normal.”
    The decision to reopen much of the economy has provided a considerable boost, especially to consumer spending, which drove much of the recovery. But it comes as coronavirus infections are soaring in the US. Covid cases hit new highs over the weekend and the US now has the largest number of infections, more than 8.6m, and deaths, over 225,000, in the world.
    There are also signs that the recovery has slowed in recent months. Unemployment claims remain at historically high levels and the number of new jobs being created has dropped month on month. The economic situation for women, people of colour and teenagers remains difficult. The unemployment rate fell to 7.9% for the US population overall in September. For Black Americans it was 12.1% and for Black teens (16-19) it was over 20%.
    GDP is the broadest measure of the economy and includes personal consumption, business investment, government spending and net exports. The figure has often been criticized as a measure of economic health – GDP growth has, for example, done little to address growing income inequality.
    For some still feeling the impact of the pandemic and its attendant recession the latest GDP news was little comfort, especially as Congress remains deadlocked over further stimulus relief.
    Tim Swartz in Mesa, Arizona, stopped receiving unemployment benefits on 5 September after the unemployment office flagged an issue with his payments. When the pandemic hit he had to stop working as an Uber and delivery driver to care for his five children, including one with special needs. His wife works full-time as a medicine technician at a facility for Alzheimer’s patients.
    “I cannot get any answers from anyone on the phone or through emails. I’m behind on rent and utilities,” Swartz said. He has now received an eviction notice. “I’m not sure how we will pay the outstanding balances for rent and utilities,” he said.
    “Many of us are losing hope along with everything we have worked so hard for,” said Swartz. Three of his children had to recently return to online learning after exposure to classmates who tested positive for coronavirus, further delaying his return to work. “Without any relief package to help keep the economy going I don’t see much growth in the near future and unfortunately even darker times ahead for American families.” More

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    Fox News's Tucker Carlson mocked for 'lost in the mail' Biden documents claim

    The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been mocked for his attempt to explain why he could not produce some documents he had promised relating to Joe Biden.He said the only copy of the papers, which he claimed added to claims about Biden’s son Hunter, had been lost.In a segment delivered to camera, Carlson said:
    On Monday we received from a source a collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family. We believe those documents are authentic, they’re real, and they’re damning … We texted a producer in New York and we asked him to send those documents to us in LA … He shipped those documents overnight to California with a large national carrier brand … But the Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing. The documents had disappeared.
    He went on to say of the delivery company, which he did not name:
    They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it, they went through the office in New York where our producer dropped that package off, they combed their entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for. They went far and beyond. But they found nothing, those documents have vanished. As of tonight the company has no idea – and no working theory even – about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign.
    Carlson’s show has been one of the main conduits of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, attempting to expand the narrative about his dealings in Ukraine and China and castigating other media outlets for not paying enough attention to claims made recently in the New York Post.Carson’s story of the lost documents cut little ice on social media:BREAKING: Documents Tucker Carlson never actually had that would allegedly blow up the election were so important that they were sent via DHL, and now can’t be found despite copiers, iPhone cameras and security cameras. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/9yKkDAUh2v— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) October 29, 2020 More

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    God and the GOP: will conservative evangelicals stay loyal to Trump? – video

    In 2016, white evangelicals made up a quarter of all US voters. And 81% of them voted for Donald Trump. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to the pivotal battleground state of North Carolina to see if Trump’s religious base is showing signs of crumbling. They meet extreme evangelical pastors, travelling progressive preachers and the moral movement leader Rev William Barber
    Watch other episodes of the Anywhere but Washington video series  More

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    Your absentee ballot never showed up. Now what?

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    Voting during a contentious presidential election and a pandemic is more than a little overwhelming. Like many Americans, you may have designed a plan to vote by absentee ballot months ago, when 3 November felt a lifetime away, and no one knew how election day would look. Maybe you were unsure of where you would be, geographically speaking, and voting by mail felt like the safest option. If you’re like me, when the time came to request your absentee ballot, you submitted your information and waited for the ballot to arrive in the mail, but it never did.
    I requested my absentee ballot for New York on 14 September. Two weeks later, the status on my ballot tracker read “out for delivery” but no ballot ever arrived. One of my roommates requested her Pennsylvania absentee ballot on 5 October and it has reportedly been on the way since 19 October. Last week, the Queer Eye star and Texas resident Jonathan Van Ness shared on Instagram that his absentee ballot was marked out for delivery weeks before but never arrived, and the election board couldn’t locate it.
    Why hasn’t my absentee ballot arrived if I requested it before the deadline?
    As states grapple with the challenges of voting during a pandemic, people across the country may find themselves without an absentee ballot days before the election for a multitude of reasons. An absentee ballot request form “may be marked invalid if it’s not completed according to the specific instructions or if it was submitted by the postmarked date, but not received by the deadline”, says Carolyn DeWitt, president and executive director of Rock the Vote. To make matters worse, “if a voter submitted an absentee request that was deemed invalid, they may not receive notification, in which case a voter may be waiting for a ballot that will never arrive”.
    Another one of my roommates believed she had properly requested her California absentee ballot online, only to learn that she needed to physically submit an absentee ballot request to her local board of elections as well. Meanwhile, the US Postal Service has been struggling to meet the demands of increased absentee ballots amid delayed services this year.
    Did states have enough resources and time to set up voting by mail?
    In short, the answer is no. While five states have conducted elections by mail for years, including Oregon and Colorado, the rest were forced to adapt in a matter of months. “It takes most states several years to transition to a vote-by-mail state, but the pressures and restrictions of Covid-19 have put significant pressure on election officials while the federal government has failed to provide adequate resources,” says DeWitt. “There are logistical hurdles – from the purchasing, printing and mailing of millions of absentee request forms and absentee ballots to the processing and counting of absentee ballots.”
    Congress has granted $400m in election aid to states but the Brennan Center for Justice estimated $4bn would be needed to create “free, fair, safe, and secure” elections across the country. Donald Trump has also admitted to restricting funds for the USPS in hopes of curbing mail-in voting. With the entity responsible for delivering absentee ballots under-resourced, ballots may remain in processing or lost through election day.
    What is the best way to track my absentee ballot’s status?
    If you requested an absentee ballot but have yet to receive it, you can track it online or by calling and emailing your local election official, says Ben Hovland, chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission. It may be possible to visit your local election office and speak with a representative, depending on your jurisdiction.
    How do I vote if my absentee ballot is lost?
    In the case that your ballot isn’t located, you have a few options. First, check if an absentee ballot can be picked up from your local election office. If so, you or a trusted person may be able to grab and drop it off in a ballot dropbox or at your local election office quickly.
    The more obvious choice – voting in person – is also an option but comes with a few hoops to jump through. “Most states will require the voter to complete a standard affidavit or another form of documentation confirming that they never received the ballot. Then, the voter will be allowed to vote in-person,” says DeWitt. These affidavits are available at polling places and would be submitted with your in-person vote. “In some cases, voters may have to complete a provisional ballot that will be counted once it’s been verified that the voter did not already vote.” This is the case in states such as New Jersey, Alabama, Texas and California.
    Provisional ballots are a safeguard to ensure people only vote once, explains Hovland. They are theoretically counted as long as you don’t submit a completed absentee ballot, but there’s no guarantee. The 2018 Election Administration and Voting survey reported that about 38% of provisional ballots were rejected in the 2018 election. Reasons for this included a voter not being registered in that jurisdiction, having the wrong ID, and having already voted. Canceling your absentee ballot before voting, as Van Ness reported doing, may allow you to vote in person.
    If your only option is voting in person, but the idea of doing so during a pandemic is frightening, there are a few precautions you can take, says Hovland. If possible, avoid peak voting times before and after work, as well as lunchtime. Check to see if early voting is happening in your district, and keep in mind that the polling location may be different than your voting place on election day. Some jurisdictions also provide voters with the ability to check wait times in advance of leaving to vote.
    What if my absentee ballot comes at the last minute?
    While the USPS advises against mailing your ballot later than a week before the election, if your ballot shows up between now and election day, you can still use it. Some states, such as Michigan and New York, allow you to drop it off in person or invalidate it at the polling station and cast your vote there. In certain places, such as Florida, voters may be able to have their ballots delivered by someone else, says DeWitt. Some jurisdictions may provide ballot pick-up for disabled voters.
    To find out more about your state’s rules and practices for absentee ballots, visit the below resources:
    Vote.org breaks down absentee ballot rules by state
    The ACLU outlines voter deadlines and laws More

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    Could the 2020 US election really be decided by the supreme court?

    Like Babe Ruth pointing a bat over a fence, Donald Trump last month called his shot.
    “I think this will end up in the supreme court,” Trump told reporters, referring to the election. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices. I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.”
    Earlier this week, Trump got his ninth justice, with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the seat vacated by the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
    But is the 2020 presidential election really headed for the supreme court? Here’s a look at the situation:
    Can Barrett hand Trump the election?
    Probably not. The most likely scenario is that American voters alone will decide the election.
    For all its flaws and added complications this year from the coronavirus pandemic, the US elections system has basic features to ensure a high correlation between the vote that is cast and the result that is announced.
    It is highly decentralized, with thousands of jurisdictions staffed by members of each major party, all using different technologies and independently reporting results, which can be reviewed or recounted, with both sides and the media watching out for irregularities before, during and after election day. It might take awhile, and the tragic story of disenfranchisement in the United States continues, but elections officials have vowed to deliver an accurate count.
    Sometimes, however, US elections are very close, and in an era of nihilistic partisanship, court fights during elections are becoming increasingly common. Such disputes might land with increasing frequency before the supreme court.
    It is extremely rare for a presidential election to land before the supreme court. In 1876, five justices sat on a commission that decided the 1876 race for Rutherford B Hayes over Samuel Tilden.
    In the modern era, it has happened just once, in 2000, after the Florida state supreme court ordered a recount in a razor-thin race that the Republican secretary of state said George W Bush had won. Republicans challenged the recount order and the case went to the supreme court, which sustained the challenge and stopped the recount.
    How might a 2020 election-supreme court scenario unfold?
    The supreme court has already issued two significant rulings in the election, one that allowed ballots received in Pennsylvania up to three days after election day to be counted, and a second blocking ballots received in Wisconsin after election day from being counted. Lower courts have issued numerous decisions on issues around voting and counting.
    Republicans in Pennsylvania have vowed to renew their challenge to ballots received after election day, and if they can push the case back to the supreme court, they might find victory this time with Barrett making a majority.
    But if the supreme court ends up getting involved in a major way in the presidential election, it would likely be to weigh in on a question that is not yet clear because we don’t know what legal conflicts will play out in which states.
    In Bush v Gore (2000), lawyers on the Republican side argued that the state supreme court had usurped the legislature’s authority by ordering a recount. The supreme court stopped the recount, not by relying on the argument about the court bigfooting the legislature, but by finding that different standards for vote-counting in different counties violated the equal protection clause.
    Is there a chance Barrett would recuse herself from any case involving a president who appointed her so recently?
    At her confirmation hearing, Barrett dodged just this question. “I commit to you to fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal,” she said. “And part of the law is to consider any appearance questions. And I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether the circumstances require my recusal or not. But I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.” More

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    'Already broken': US election unlikely to change relations with Russia

    After four years in which the Kremlin loomed large over US politics, the topics of collusion, Russian meddling or Ukrainian scandals have been largely absent from the campaign agenda as election day draws close.
    It may be that Moscow still intends to interfere: the FBI director Christopher Wray said last month that the bureau has seen “very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020” – mainly involving misinformation with the primary goal of denigrating Joe Biden. And the US indictment of six Russian military intelligence hackers last week served as a reminder of the potential threat.
    However, as Biden enters the final days of the campaign with a significant lead, Putin appears to be hedging his bets. The Russian president pointedly declined to amplify Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations about Biden’s son, Hunter, and his past business dealings in Ukraine, noting he did not “see anything criminal” in them. Putin has also pointed to possible common ground with the Democrats on social democratic ideology and arms control.
    The Russian leader and the former vice-president certainly know each other well from past encounters, though the relationship lacks any of the warmth that Trump claims infuses his bond with the Russian leader.
    “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul,” Biden told Putin at a 2011 meeting, according to an account he gave the New Yorker. “He looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said: ‘We understand one another.’”
    Biden has not dwelled on the well-worn topics of Trump’s soft spot for Putin or Kremlin meddling – in part because coronavirus has cast such a long shadow over the election and the Biden team feel that voters are tired of hearing about Russia.
    “The most resonant issues for American voters right now are Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and the dangers of white nationalism; by contrast, Russian election interference in 2016 seems more distant for those just trying to make ends meet,” said Michael Carpenter, a foreign policy adviser during Biden’s time as vice-president who remains in touch with the campaign.
    It is possible, too, that “Russiagate” was never a major vote-winning issue: Trump’s supporters dismissed the charges as “fake news” and many of his opponents were more focused on other issues.
    “Russia is a media and a Washington conversation. My students don’t care about Russia; they care about Black Lives Matter and MeToo,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a Russian-American professor of international affairs at the New School in New York.
    Questions over the business dealings of Biden’s son in Ukraine have failed to resonate much beyond Trump’s core base, with a recent attempt to reopen allegations of Biden’s alleged wrongdoing in Ukraine largely falling flat.
    If Moscow did indeed help put Trump in the White House, their man has done little to improve the the bilateral relationship over the past four years, despite his personal praise for Putin. But his disdain for western alliances and naked America-first self-interest is something that the Kremlin appreciates – and may explain why officials in Moscow want to see Trump win a second term.
    “Putin and people around him might like Trump because he fits very nicely with their view of the world. He’s a graphic illustration of their logic that the world is moving away from liberal values and multilateralism and towards sovereignty and traditional values,” said Andrey Kortunov, of the Russian International Affairs Council.
    He said that while Putin genuinely does not understand politicians such as Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron – and believes their talk of values to be hollow and cynical – with Trump there is a recognition of a kindred spirit, even if there is little affection for him as a person. The two men share “scepticism of international bodies, emphasis on sovereignty, a transactionalist approach to foreign policy and a feeling that discussions about values are mere hypocrisy”, said Kortunov.
    Putin earlier this month noted Biden’s history of “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric” and contrasted it with Trump’s oft-stated desire for better ties with Moscow.
    “Biden’s approach to Russia would involve supporting a dialogue on arms control, strategic stability, crisis management and risk reduction from a position of strength,” said Carpenter, saying it was simplistic to see the question of Russia policy as a black-and-white hawk or dove calculation.
    Kortunov said that Russia, unlike Germany, Israel or China, is in the “privileged position” that the outcome of the election is likely to have little effect on bilateral relations. “But the bad news is that this is because it will be bad either way. Almost anything that could be broken is already broken,” he said. And there is little prospect of improvement.
    Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who was reportedly an intermediary for informal contacts with members of the Trump entourage after his 2016 victory, declined to say whether he favoured a Trump or Biden victory. But he said either way it was hard to imagine how things could get worse. “We are at the lowest point ever in the history of US-Russian relations so going even lower would be difficult,” he said.
    Russia still denies all accusations of meddling in the 2016 election, whether it be the hacking of Democratic party servers or armies of internet trolls stirring up trouble on Facebook and Twitter.
    But Fiona Hill, who was the national security council director for European and Russian affairs for three years of the Trump administration and testified at Trump’s impeachment hearing, said hawkish Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev and other top officials all but admitted Russia’s interference in the 2016 vote when she confronted them.
    “The Russians said to us: ‘You guys left yourselves open.’ They were admitting it essentially. They said it’s on you that this got so out of hand.”
    The officials suggested that the US had left Russia an open goal with its divisive politics – and she felt they had a point: “We were providing the raw materials, making our own mistakes,” she said. The Russian interference “wouldn’t have resonated without our deep polarisation and our structural issues”.
    This time round, there are new allegations of Russian attempts to influence the political landscape, such as a rightwing site apparently set up by Russians and meant to influence US voters. But there is less attention now, perhaps because with the amount of disinformation flowing from the White House, the Russian efforts appear to be a drop in the ocean.
    “The biggest risk to this election is not the Russians, it’s us,” said Hill. More

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    'Sue if you must': Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards

    The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.“Sue if you must,” Matthew Sanderson said.The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband, both senior White House advisers, displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Trump is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who have made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden.On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.In a legal response on Saturday night, attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz: “Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”Due to a “gross act of nepotism”, Sanderson wrote, citing supreme court precedent and “substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out”, Trump and Kushner have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely”.Kasowitz claimed Kushner “never said” the words attributed to him on the billboards, and Trump “never made the gesture” she is shown to make.Vanity Fair reported the Kushner quote, from a meeting in March, in which Kushner criticised New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Trump tweeted the pose used by the Lincoln Project in July, controversially promoting Goya foods.The “bruised self-image” of the president’s daughter, Sanderson wrote, “does not change the fact that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States”.“May I suggest,” he added, “that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the Covid-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch.“These billboards are not causing [their] standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.”A footnote to Sanderson’s letter cited “one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases”, that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation”.“Mr Kushner and Ms Trump’s claims will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini’s given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19,” it said.Sanderson also said “this isn’t over” and added: “Sue if you must.”As University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the Guardian on Saturday, that seems unlikely.Donald Trump “has honed litigation abuse, as a business person and president, to an art form,” Tobias said. But “if they did sue, the litigation might take years to resolve, be expensive and lead to embarrassing revelations … suits like this by people who have thrust themselves into the public eye are notoriously difficult to win.“In short, this appears to be the usual Trump family bluster.” More