Eliana Willis

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    Sexism casts shadow over Biden's search for a female running mate

    The final weeks of Joe Biden’s search for a running mate have had all the usual trimmings: leaks from unnamed Democratic party officials, last-minute suggestions of outsider names and a trail of vague hints from the candidate himself.But this year is different. Biden promised to select a female running mate, setting up a historic nomination process that many prominent Democratic women say is being overshadowed by the increasingly nasty – and unmistakably sexist – debate over who he should choose.“Even in this moment of women ascending to heights that we never have in our country’s history, it’s still really being talked about and debated through the lens of a man,” said Jess Morales Rocketto, the executive director at Care in Action, a nonprofit group that advocates for domestic workers.In the last week, prominent Democratic men, campaign advisors and anonymous donors have suggested that senator Kamala Harris, a top candidate for vice president, was too ambitious and questioned her likability.The former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, a member of Biden’s vice-presidential vetting team, was also reportedly bothered by the lack of contrition Harris expressed over a blistering attack on Biden during an early Democratic debate – an odd point of caution for a candidate who has been in politics for decades and seen his share of heated fights. Dodd’s younger days as a partier and his history with women have also come into question during the process.Overall, this year’s vetting period has been cast with a sense of Democratic elders critiquing potential running mates for Biden with the same stereotypical criticisms men too often lob at women.Biden is reportedly now moving toward the final phase of his selection process. Jill Biden told Fox News on Tuesday that her husband was “close” to making a decision. An announcement is expected in the coming days. More

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    'It’s a massive joy': the programme-makers bringing back quality British kids' TV

    While the BBC’s dollops of Bitesize Daily has reminded the country of the value of children’s television, there is another public-service initiative quietly climbing the charts. It is the awkwardly named Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), which was launched in 2019 to reverse a collapse in the number of original British children’s programmes, where funding has fallen by 40% in 10 years.No one knew if devoting £60m to a three-year-long experiment to subsidise programmes for four- to 18-year-olds could revive a creative sector that was dying on its feet or reintroduce variety beyond bought-in cartoons. But as the YACF enters year two, it is judged to have had a good start despite the pause in most TV production. Floella Benjamin, who championed it, says: “It is a success – it has opened the door to people whose voices have not been heard. The BBC can only do so much.”It is also delivering a lockdown dividend, after it improvised by inviting children and teenagers to become involved in short, quality programmes for broadcast, after only a quarter of children polled said television reflected their lives.If you want to see the output for yourself, try sampling the six-part Letters in Lockdown, available on All 4. One that touched me was made in three weeks, with Soham, a 16-year-old boy from Coventry, who writes to his absentee father in the Middle East: “I never felt I had a father figure; you drifted away,” he says, remarking he would have liked tips on shaving. As they share the letter, his father has teary moments and they reconcile.An experiment in May called See Yourself on Screen challenged children to compete to make a short TV show (with mentors) resulting in 15 that made it to broadcast. I loved one from a young girl, Betsy – called Squeaks and Wheeks – about her guinea pigs. “My best friends in lockdown … they can sometimes get a bit smelly,” she says. So she gussies them up with a shampoo and groom in preparation for a guinea-pig tea party. This was all mentored by Jessica Hynes. More

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    Biden tells Trump to 'do your job' as coronavirus fails to 'just disappear'

    The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, told Donald Trump “to step up and do your job” on Tuesday, highlighting that it had been a month since Trump most recently predicted the coronavirus would “just disappear”.“He was wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month,” Biden tweeted on Tuesday morning. “Mr President, step up and do your job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”More than 4.7 million people in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and at least 155,471 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. While the US is home to 4% of the world’s population, the country accounts for more than a quarter of global confirmed infections.More than 30 million Americans are unemployed because of the business closures to stop the spread of coronavirus. The White House and Congress are negotiating a new economic relief package, but two key relief measures ended last week, leaving millions of families with a sudden drop in income and fewer protections from evictions.Amid these colliding crises, Trump on Monday floundered in an interview with the Axios news site, where he repeatedly insisted the US was doing better than other countries, brandishing several pieces of paper with charts to make his point.Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, then realized Trump was talking about how many deaths the US has had in relation to identified cases. Swan then explained the deaths as a proportion of the population was where the US was doing badly in comparison with the rest of the world. Trump responded: “You can’t do that.”Covid-19 deaths rose for a fourth week in a row to more than 8,500 people in the seven-day period that ended Sunday, according to a Reuters analysis.A surge in cases has been identified in midwestern states for the first time while fewer cases and hospitalizations were recorded in some of the country’s most populated states: Arizona, Florida, Texas and California.California has had more cases identified than anywhere in the country, but Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday the weekly average of cases was down 21% from the previous week. He also cautioned it was too early to celebrate.“This virus is not going away,” Newsom said. “It’s not going to take Labor Day weekend off or Halloween off or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine, we are going to be living with this virus.”The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, on Monday praised the state of Connecticut, which has one of the lowest infection rates in the country, because of its slow, staggered reopening process. “You are in a situation that you now, in many respects, have the upper hand, because you have such a low rate that when you do get new cases, you have the capability of containment as opposed to mitigation,” Fauci said.New York, which has also been slow to reopen compared with much of the rest of the country, also had a case positivity rate lower than 1% this past weekend. But the densely populated state and its neighbor New Jersey have seen an increase in cases in recent days.The disparate situations across the country prompted teachers from dozens of school districts, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, to lead protests from their cars on Monday asking for instruction to be online in the fall. More