Eliana Willis

Donald Trump escalated his efforts to undermine the 2020 election this week.Republicans are reportedly considering the possibility of asking state legislatures to ignore the will of the popular vote and appoint electors favorable to the president. Trump also declined to say whether he would accept a peaceful transfer of power this week, comments that many Republicans distanced themselves from. Trump said he needs to place a new supreme court justice in place to resolve election disputes.The US constitution gives state legislatures the authority to appoint the 538 electors to the electoral college who ultimately elect the president. States have long used the winner of the popular vote to determine who gets the electoral votes in their states, but Republicans anonymously told the Atlantic the campaign has discussed the possibility of using delays in the vote count as a basis to ask Republican-controlled legislatures to appoint their own electors, regardless of the final vote tally.“The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” a Trump campaign legal adviser told the Atlantic.A Trump campaign spokesperson said the report in the Atlantic was not true.“The Atlantic story is false and ridiculous. The types of contingency plans included in the story are impossible,” the spokesperson said. “States have laws that determine how electors are selected. Especially if we’re looking at states that could have mail ballot problems (eg Pennsylvania, Michigan), no Democrat governor is going to sign a bill repealing those laws.”Experts cast doubt on the feasibility of such an effort.“It’s the ultimate nightmare scenario for the country. There’s no reason to think there would be any appropriate basis for doing this. It’s not at all clear that the legal power to do it even exists,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University. “There’s a delicate line in talking about and educating people about all sorts of potential scenarios that could emerge and creating unwarranted anxiety about what is likely to be a relatively well-functioning election process.”Such a scenario is unlikely, Richard Hasen, a law professor and election expert at the University of California, Irvine tweeted Thursday. He noted he did not see a way in which lawmakers could legally change the manner in which they chose electors after people started voting. Several battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, also have Democratic governors who could serve as a check on the legislature.It’s also not clear how widespread or serious the Republican effort is. Joseph Kyzer, a spokesman for North Carolina speaker Tim Moore, said it wasn’t something being discussed among lawmakers. Andrew Hitt, the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican party, also told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Wednesday it wasn’t something that was being discussed.Because of a surge in mail-in balloting, election officials are likely to continue counting votes after the polls close on 3 November. There’s nothing unusual about that kind of delay, but experts are increasingly worried Trump could use it to claim victory if vote tallies show him ahead on election night. There is a push to prepare the public to understand such a wait is normal to gird against claims of fraud.“Unnecessarily sowing doubt and confusion in voters mind can alienate some voters from even participating at all and can fuel anxieties that put people on a razor’s edge,” Pildes said. More

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President Donald Trump says he will reveal his nominee to fill the vacant US supreme court seat this Saturday and promises it will be a woman, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Speaking at an election rally in Jacksonville, Florida, Trump told the crowd he aimed to fill the seat before the November election. Despite promising his nominee would be female, the president played to the crowd, asking the assembled audience: ‘Who would rather see a man?’
Fight to Vote: will Trump concede if he loses and can Democrats fight back?

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Donald Trump was loudly booed by crowds as he visited the supreme court to pay his respects to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late justice and liberal icon who died last week aged 87.
As the president and the first lady paused at Ginsburg’s casket, the crowd yelled: ‘Vote him out!’  Ginsburg is the first woman in history to lie in state in the US Capitol 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her own words – video obituary
‘She was what America should be’: mourners bid farewell to Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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The long-awaited Facebook Oversight Board, empowered to overrule some of the platform’s content moderation decisions, plans to launch in October, just in time for the US election.The board will be ready to hear appeals from Facebook users as well as cases referred by the company itself “as soon as mid- or late-October at the very latest, unless there are some major technical issues that come up”, said Julie Owono, one of the 20 initial members of the committee who were named in May, in an interview on Wednesday.“The board is paying attention, and is, of course, aware of the worries around this election and the role that social media will play,” said Owono, who is also the executive director of the digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières. “When we launch, we will be ready to take requests, wherever they come from, and from whoever they come from, as long as it’s within our mandate.”The launch will come at a time of intense scrutiny and pressure for the company that has lurched from controversy to controversy since it was used by Russia to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election. The consequences of Facebook’s failures in addressing hate speech and incitement, which have for years been linked to violence in several countries and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, have become increasingly apparent in its home country in recent months. During a summer of civil unrest in the US, Facebook was linked to the growth of the violent Boogaloo movement and a militia’s “call to arms” on the night two Black Lives Matter protesters were shot and killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.The limits of the oversight board’s mandate have been a key point of controversy since the independent institution was proposed by Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2018. The board’s initial bylaws only allowed it to consider appeals from users who believe that individual pieces of content were unfairly removed, prompting criticism from experts, including Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who studies online speech regulation.“We were told this was going to be the supreme court of Facebook, but then it came out more like a local district court, and now it’s more of a traffic court,” Douek told the Guardian. “It’s just been steadily narrowed over time.”Crucial areas where Facebook exercises editorial control include the algorithms that shape what content receives the most distribution; decisions to take down or leave up Facebook groups, pages and events; and decisions to leave certain pieces of content up.The board would be considering “leave up” decisions as soon as it launched, Owono said, but only if Facebook referred a case to it. She said technical and privacy challenges had delayed the launch of a system for Facebook users to appeal “leave up” decisions, but that one would be available “as soon as possible”.Facebook’s decisions to leave certain content up, such as its decision not to remove a post by Donald Trump threatening Black Lives Matter protesters that “when the looting starts the shooting starts”, have become as controversial, if not more so, than its decisions to take certain content down.Owono said “checks and balances are needed everywhere”, including across the aspects of Facebook not included in the oversight board’s mandate, and she expressed some optimism that the institution was “agile” enough to change and adapt. Her own concern over Facebook’s “inaction” on hate speech and incitement was a major factor in her decision to join the board, she said.“The unwillingness to deal with these problems is leading increasingly to governments around the world, particularly in Africa, saying that to curb incitement to violence, they need to cut off the internet entirely,” she said. “For me it was important to be part of an institution that would be able not only to say whether or not Facebook’s decisions are in line with their community standards and international law, but also whether Facebook’s inaction is, because we will be able to look at content takedown but also content left up.”Asked whether she agreed with Facebook’s decision to leave the Trump “looting-shooting” post up, Owono demurred, noting that the board at the time had been in its earliest stages. When Owono was asked for her personal opinion, a PR representative interjected to refer to a statement the board issued at the time, which noted that the board had significant work to do before it could begin considering cases.That work has included making sure all board members are fully versed in Facebook’s community standards and international human rights law and getting technical training on the case management tool that will allow board members to receive and consider the appeals, Owono said.The tool was built by Facebook engineers with considerable input from oversight board members, according to a person familiar with the matter. One detail requested by the board members was to format user-submitted appeal statements with line numbers, so they will look similar to legal filings. At launch, it will be available in 18 languages, though that number includes both US and UK English and two types of Spanish.Owono said she wanted to ensure that the board’s work and decisions reflected both the diversity of Facebook’s users and the “diversity of the impact and where those impacts are occurring”, noting that a large majority of Facebook’s users are outside of the US.“There will be many other elections at the end of 2020 in which the role of platforms will also be scrutinized and should be scrutinized as well,” Owono said, including a general election in Myanmar on 8 November. “If we receive requests related to these elections, we’ll also pay the same attention and make the decisions that are being asked from us thoroughly and in accordance with international law principles.” More

Prince Harry

Remark follows duke and duchess’s video urging US voters to reject hate speech More

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Donald Trump said he wants to confirm a ninth justice to the supreme court because he believes the court will determine the outcome of the presidential election.
‘I think this will end up in the supreme court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,’ Trump told reporters at a White House event.
The president has previously indicated the federal courts will need to become involved in the election because it will be tainted by fraud. Trump has provided no evidence for that extraordinary claim, and voter fraud is rare.
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‘She was what America should be’: mourners bid farewell to Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Justice’s casket sits on supreme court steps in Washington as mourners pay respects – and raise fears for future More

Ginsburg will lie in repose for two days at the court
Cindy McCain endorsing Biden because ‘he’s the better man’
Biden team prepared for all possibilities
US essential workers burned out amid pandemic
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg lies in repose at US Supreme Court – watch live

Key events

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10.35am EDT10:35
Fauci and Redfield testify before Senate committee

9.57am EDT09:57
John Roberts speaks about Ginsburg’s legacy

9.45am EDT09:45
Ginsburg’s casket arrives at supreme court

9.27am EDT09:27
Trump to visit Ginsburg’s casket at supreme court tomorrow

8.44am EDT08:44
Police in Iowa charge four people over death of man whose body was found burning in ditch – conclude it was not racially motivated

8.20am EDT08:20
Trump urges FDA to move quickly on Covid vaccines while praising new Johnson & Johnson clinical trials

7.20am EDT07:20
Statistical model at the Economist gives Democrats a 67% chance of flipping the Senate in November

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11.14am EDT11:14

In case you missed it: Trump will hold a press conference at 6 pm ET today, on the “economy, job gains and vaccine development,” the president announced in a tweet this morning.

Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump)
White House News Conference today at 6:00 P.M. Economy, Job gains and Vaccine development are all doing GREAT!

September 23, 2020

The presser comes one day after reports emerged that the Food and Drug Administration is planning to release strict guidelines on an emergency use authorization of a coronavirus vaccine, which would make it very unlikely a vaccine would be approved before election day.
Trump has previously said a vaccine will be available in “weeks,” but the CDC director, Robert Redfield, told the Senate last week that a vaccine would not be widely available to the American public until mid to late 2021.

10.59am EDT10:59

Lauren Aratani

Four top health officials are testifying in front of a Senate committee on the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are among the experts that are testifying today.
Perhaps alluding to comments Redfield made last week where he said a mask may be more effective than a vaccine, Fauci said: “We feel strongly that if we have a combination of adherence to public health measures, together with the vaccine that will be distributed, we may be able to turn the pandemic around.” He said that a prediction of a vaccine is “of course no guarantee”.
In his opening statement, Redfield highlighted the shifting nature of infection in the country, saying that 26% of infections are in young adults ages 18 to 25. “It’s important that these young adults understand they are major contributors to the spread of covid-19 in our country at this time,” he said, emphasizing the importance of following public health guidelines.
Director of the Food and Drug Administration Stephen Hahn and assistant health secretary Brett Giroir are also testifying today.

10.48am EDT10:48

Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, reiterated that he is “cautiously optimistic” that the country will be able to get a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine.

ABC News
(@ABC)
Dr. Anthony Fauci “cautiously optimistic” about vaccine progress.”As these trials go on, we predict that sometime by the end of this year—let’s say November or December—we will know whether or not these are safe and effective.” https://t.co/CgurRa0bnn pic.twitter.com/0SlaaJfZsn

September 23, 2020

“As these trials go on, we predict that sometime by the end of this year—let’s say November or December—we will know whether or not these are safe and effective,” Fauci said of the current vaccine candidates.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to soon release strict guidelines on the emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine that would make it very unlikely for a vaccine to be approved before election day, on November 3.

10.35am EDT10:35

Fauci and Redfield testify before Senate committee

Members of the White House coronavirus task force are now testifying before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee.
Among those testifying are Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield testify to Senate on coronavirus response – watch live
Fauci opened his remarks by noting his concerns about so-called “long haulers,” those who have experienced long-term effects after contracting coronavirus, such as fatigue and muscle aches.

Updated
at 10.39am EDT

10.28am EDT10:28

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s casket is now in place at the top of the supreme court steps, where it will be on public viewing for the next two days.

Mitchell Miller
(@mmillerwtop)
Justice Ginsburg’s flag-draped casket is now in place under the Supreme Court portico. pic.twitter.com/JoO70ScOwA

September 23, 2020

Hundreds of people came out to greet Ginsburg’s casket as it arrived at the supreme court this morning, and thousands will likely visit today and tomorrow to pay their respects to the late justice.
Trump will be among the mourners. According to a White House statement released this morning, the president plans to pay his respects tomorrow.

10.09am EDT10:09

One longtime supreme court reporter, Pete Williams of NBC News, became choked up on air as he watched Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s coffin arrive at the supreme court this morning.

TODAY
(@TODAYshow)
Longtime Supreme Court correspondent @PeteWilliamsNBC gets choked up as the casket of Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives. pic.twitter.com/zodG6znHjX

September 23, 2020

Williams noted Ginsburg sat on the bench for 27 years, but her career with the supreme court truly started 49 years ago, when she argued her first case before the court. In the case, Ginsburg argued gender discrimination was unconstitutional.

9.57am EDT09:57

John Roberts speaks about Ginsburg’s legacy

Supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts is now speaking at the memorial service for his late colleague, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Roberts expressed his condolences to Ginsburg’s family and said the late justice’s life represented “one of the many versions of the American dream.”

ABC News
(@ABC)
Chief Justice John Roberts: “I offer our heartfelt condolences on the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That loss is widely shared but we know that it falls most heavily on the family. Justice Ginsburg’s life was one of the many versions of the American dream.” https://t.co/NnighCEWGt pic.twitter.com/icSF2zJ7wh

September 23, 2020

Roberts noted that Ginsburg grew up in Brooklyn with her mother, who was a bookkeeper. Roberts said Ginsburg often told this joke: “What’s the difference between a bookkeeper in Brooklyn and a supreme court justice? One generation.”
Roberts added, “It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso, but became a rock star instead.”
Roberts said Ginsburg brought the country “closer to equal justice under law” and became “a star on the bench.”

Updated
at 10.02am EDT

9.45am EDT09:45

Ginsburg’s casket arrives at supreme court

The casket of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has arrived at the supreme court, where she will lie in repose today and tomorrow. More