Elections

WASHINGTON — Personal lawyers for President Trump, seeking to appeal their case to the Supreme Court for the second time in less than a year, asked the justices on Tuesday to delay a ruling that would allow the Manhattan district attorney to obtain Mr. Trump’s financial records.In a 38-page “emergency” application, Mr. Trump’s legal team told the court that a Federal District Court judge was wrong to rule that the prosecutor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had a legal right to subpoena the materials — and that an appeals court panel in New York was wrong to uphold that ruling this month.“Allowing this deeply flawed ruling to stand, especially given the prominence of this case, will needlessly sow confusion where none presently exists,” wrote Mr. Trump’s legal team, including William S. Consovoy and Jay Sekulow. “The decision is indisputably wrong.”The request for Supreme Court intervention had been expected since a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled on Oct. 7 that Mr. Vance could use a grand jury to obtain Mr. Trump’s financial records, rejecting the president’s arguments that the request was overly broad and amounted to politically motivated harassment. Mr. Vance is a Democrat.“Grand juries must necessarily paint with a broad brush,” the judges wrote, adding: “None of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.”The request for intervention marks a return for the case. In July, the Supreme Court ruled, 7 to 2, that the fact that Mr. Trump was the sitting president did not make him absolutely immune from criminal investigation, as his legal team had argued.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that decision.However, the Supreme Court left Mr. Trump with other arguments to make before lower courts, including that the subpoena was too broad or issued in bad faith. Mr. Trump’s legal team has been trying out those arguments without success before lower courts — although the litigation has consumed months, continuing to run out the clock before the election.Breaking with precedent and norms, Mr. Trump refused to release his tax returns when he sought the presidency in 2016. In 2019, House Democrats and Mr. Vance separately subpoenaed the documents from the president’s accountants, and he has been fighting them ever since.Separately, however, The New York Times obtained access to more than two decades of tax return data of Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization and late last month began publishing a series of investigative articles about what they showed.The Times found, among other things, that despite Mr. Trump’s boasting about a huge income, his business empire has actually suffered huge losses, which he has leveraged to avoid paying income taxes in 11 of the 18 years The Times scrutinized; he paid just $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017. It also showed that the I.R.S. was investigating the legitimacy of a $72.9 million refund he claimed in 2010, which he may be forced to pay back with interest, and that in the next four years, more than $300 million in loans for which he is personally responsible will come due.The records also revealed numerous other issues with potential tax law implications, like a highly unusual $21 million payment from a Las Vegas hotel that Mr. Trump co-owns that was routed through other Trump companies at a time he was raising cash for his 2016 campaign, and the income his properties have received from people seeking favorable action from the government and access to him when he visits those properties.While it is clear that Mr. Vance is overseeing an investigation about Mr. Trump and his business practices, he has not publicly detailed the precise focus on the inquiry. Still, court filings by prosecutors suggest they are looking at potential crimes that include tax and insurance fraud and falsification of business records. Their subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, also seeks records and communications with the president.The filing to the Supreme Court by Mr. Trump’s legal team on Tuesday does not mention The Times’s recent reporting, and treats the tax returns as if their contents are still entirely confidential.Among the arguments that his lawyers made was that the president would be harmed not only by the records falling into the hands of prosecutors — who are generally required to keep subpoenaed material secret under grand jury rules — but also by the risk that they would become public, like if Mr. Vance were to put data from them in an indictment.“If the president’s records are disclosed publicly (as thus could happen even without a grand-jury breach), then the harm will not only be irreparable. It will be case-mooting,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote, calling that a particularly compelling justification to stay the order for Mazars to turn over the materials while they continue to fight the case. More

Democratic challenger Joe Biden indicated that his Barack Obama would soon be hitting the campaign trail in person to stump for his former running mate, with three weeks to go until the presidential election.“He’s doing enough for our campaign. He’ll be out on the trail,” Biden said on Tuesday before leaving for a campaign stop in Florida.Obama has participated in virtual fundraisers for Biden, his former vice-president, and the two filmed a “socially distanced conversation” in July, which focused on criticizing Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.Obama is seen by many as a brilliant campaigner, able to stir Democratic enthusiasm and get voters to the polls. He’s also appeared in online fundraising with vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.Reports appeared to confirm the move that Obama would soon be stepping out. “President Obama plans to hit the trail soon, in addition to all the other activities he’s undertaken all year in support of electing VP Biden – as he’s said, we all have to do everything we can to win on November 3,” an aide to the former president told ABC News.Any appearance by Obama on the stump in the final sprint of the election would also be in marked contrast to the attitude of the most recent former Republican president – George W Bush – who has not even expressed support for Trump, let alone joined him on his re-election bid.Meanwhile, Biden kept up his withering assault on Trump’s record in office by hitting yet another key swing state. In Pembroke Pines, Florida, Biden focused a speech on criticizing the president’s response to Covid-19, which is still out of control in the US, with cases rising in many states.The Democratic nominee told senior voters that Trump had treated America’s older citizens like they were expendable, for his own ends. To Trump, “you’re expendable, you’re forgettable, you’re virtually nobody,” Biden said at a senior center in Pembroke Pines, about 20 miles from Fort Lauderdale.The “only senior Donald Trump seems to care about” is himself, Biden added.“I prayed for his recovery when he got Covid. And I hoped he’d at least come out of it somewhat chastened,” Biden said of the president. “But what has he done? He’s just doubled down on the misinformation he did before and [is] making it worse.”Biden’s courting of seniors was a sign of his bet that a voting bloc that buoyed Trump four years ago has become disenchanted with the White House’s handling of the pandemic, in particular. It was Biden’s third visit to the state in a month, after making targeted appeals to other voting communities, including military veterans and Latinos.Florida is an essential state for both candidates to win, but especially Trump, whose narrow triumph there in 2016 fueled his shock victory over Hillary Clinton.Later, Biden was speaking at a voter mobilization rally in the heavily African American Florida community of Miramar. His swing through the state coincided with a $500,000 donation from billionaire former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg to increase Democratic turnout in Miami-Dade county.It also corresponded with more encouraging polling for the Democrat who seems to have surged in recent weeks. In most national polls he has a double digit lead over Trump and is also comfortably ahead in most swing state polls. But a new poll on Tuesday evening showed Biden’s lead surging to 17 points, according to an Opinium Research and Guardian opinion poll.About 57% of likely voters surveyed said they intended to vote for Biden, while just 40% said they favor Trump. More

Almost 4,000 tech and corporate workers at Amazon have signed an internal proposal asking the company to give all its workers, including those in its warehouses, a paid day off to vote, according to organizers and screenshots of the effort viewed by The New York Times.“Voting during the pandemic means hourslong lines and confusion over where and how to vote,” the internal proposal said. “Amazon has an opportunity to raise the bar and help ensure that every Amazon worker’s vote will be counted.”Amazon has more than 600,000 workers in the United States. A company spokeswoman, Jaci Anderson, said that in states with in-person voting, workers can request time off at the start or end of their shifts to vote, but how many hours, and whether it is paid, varies based on what state law.Many states require employees to be excused and paid for a few hours if voting conflicts with work schedules, but several battleground states, including Florida and Pennsylvania, do not require employers to provide paid time off for elections.A growing number of retailers, including Walmart, offer paid time off nationwide, and some, like Best Buy and Patagonia, are closing for a few hours on Election Day, Nov. 3, so employees have time to vote.On its internal website, Amazon recently encouraged warehouse workers to register and make a plan to vote. More

At home, he is the unassuming former mayor of a small town in Indiana, where he lives happily with his husband, a junior high school teacher, and their two lazy dogs.But on cable TV, where he has emerged in the homestretch of the presidential campaign as a likable and lethal surrogate for Democrat Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg is something else: “Slayer Pete”.Conferred on Buttigieg by the Los Angeles Times columnist Mary McNamara, the nickname captures the efficacy with which Buttigieg has turned his rhetorical chops to the task of obliterating apologists for Donald Trump.Buttigieg’s biggest scores have come on Fox News, an arena not many Democrats deign to enter, unwilling or unable to argue against an alternative reality where Covid-19 is a hoax, Hillary Clinton is public enemy No 1 and Trump is infallible.But if the echo-chamber quality of most Fox broadcasts has led the hosts into a sense of complacency when challenging their guests, they have recently been fed rude surprises – in the nicest possible way – by the rapier-tongued “mayor Pete” (his other nickname).Before the vice-presidential debate, Buttigieg, whose own presidential bid came to an end in March, was asked on Fox News why Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, had modified her stance on healthcare reform after joining the presidential ticket.“Well, there’s a classic parlor game of trying to find a little bit of daylight between running mates,” Buttigieg said. “And if people want to play that game, we could look into why an evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with the president caught with a porn star, or how he feels about the immigration policy that he called ‘unconstitutional’ before he decided to team up with Donald Trump.”Buttigieg is not universally loved. His record on policing and racial justice as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has been heavily criticized, and during the Democratic primary he had a long-running feud with Senator Amy Klobuchar, who in one debate quipped: “I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete.”But with the Democrats having mended their differences and the battle lines now clearly drawn in an election with epic stakes, Biden supporters of every persuasion might feel free to sit back and enjoy one thing Buttigieg does seem practically perfect at: dissecting Trump sycophants with a smile.When Fox host Steve Doocy tried to hit Biden for declining to debate Trump in person in the aftermath of Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, Buttigieg deftly turned the tables.“It’s too bad,” he said. “I don’t know why the president’s afraid to debate. All of us have had to get used to a virtual format. Parents are having to deal with e-learning, which is not what we’re used to. We’re having to take meetings over Zoom. It’s not something I think most of us enjoy, but it’s a safety measure.“I think part of why the US is badly behind the rest of the developed world on dealing with the pandemic is because every time there’s been a choice between doing something in a way that’s more safe or less safe, this president seems to push for less safe.”The range of Buttigieg’s analytical intelligence was on display in an interview in a friendlier forum, on MSNBC, when he was asked about a call by supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett for rulings to be “fairly reasoned and grounded in the law”.“This is what nominees do,” Buttigieg said. “They write the most seemingly unobjectionable, dry stuff. But really what I see in there is a pathway to judicial activism cloaked in judicial humility.”“At the end of the day, rights in this country have been expanded because courts have understood what the true meaning of the letter of the law and the spirit of the constitution is.“And that is not about time-traveling yourself back to the 18th century and subjecting yourself to the same prejudices and limitations as the people who write these words.“The constitution is a living document because the English language is a living language. And you need to have some readiness to understand that in order to serve on the court in a way that will actually make life better.”Buttigieg then quoted Thomas Jefferson, smiled, and finished with a dagger: “Even the founders that these kind of dead-hand originalists claim fidelity to understood better than their ideological descendants, today’s judicial so-called conservatives, the importance of keeping with the times.” More

US elections 2020

Amy McGrath says Senate majority leader focused on supreme court nominee rather than ‘helping America through crisis’ More

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Donald Trump has returned to the campaign trial after being hospitalized with Covid-19. He arrived on Air Force One to a packed outdoor rally in Florida without a protective mask but tossed out masks to the crowd. Trump boasted about his recovery, claiming he was now ‘immune’ to the virus. ‘I feel powerful,’ he said. ‘I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women and everybody.’ Trump’s return to his signature campaign rallies kicked off a three-week sprint to election day, as polls showed him losing more ground to Democratic rival Joe Biden
Trump holds first rally since Covid diagnosis, as Senate opens bitter hearings on court pick – as it happened
Trump holds packed rally after Covid diagnosis as he struggles in polls

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Millions of American voters will be unable to cast their ballot in this year’s presidential election and those affected will be disproportionately first-time voters and from minority groups, reports Sam Levine

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As the November election approaches, Donald Trump is continuing to make stark claims about voter fraud, particularly focused on postal voting. Despite a lack of evidence, many are interpreting the president’s claims as a prelude to his challenging the result should he be defeated. Fears of fraud are also being used by many states to place more hurdles in the way of voters trying to cast their ballots. The Guardian’s Sam Levine tells Anushka Asthana about the bureaucratic steps required to cast a legal vote in some states and how research shows that they mean the discounting of votes from disproportionately younger and minority voters. He also describes how millions of former prisoners are being denied votes decades after release due to bureaucratic errors or minuscule unpaid fines. He met Alfonso Tucker, a resident in Alabama, who was struck from the register over a $4 fine and whose son of the same name was also prevented from voting. Meanwhile, there are growing fears of intimidation at the polls, not least following Trump’s performance at the presidential debate in which he failed to denounce white supremacists, telling the rightwing Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by”. More

US elections 2020

President addresses mostly maskless crowd in key swing state of Florida: ‘I feel so powerful’

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‘I’ll kiss everyone’: Trump claims he has immunity at first rally since Covid diagnosis – video

Keen to appear lively and well after his recent hospitalization for Covid-19, Donald Trump held his first rally since being diagnosed, addressing a packed, largely maskless crowd in Florida – a state he desperately needs to win.
“I feel so powerful,” he boasted to his cheering supporters, 11 days after announcing his infection. “I’ll walk into that audience. I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women – everybody,” he added, his voice still a bit hoarse.
With just weeks to go before election day, and early voting under way, Trump has been eager to return to a full schedule of in-person rallies as he scrambles to hold on to supporters. Polls have his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, ahead by an average of 10.4 points as of Friday. Trump is also losing support from seniors, who are the most vulnerable in a pandemic that has already killed more than 214,000 Americans.
In a frenetic push to solidify support, Trump and his campaign have sought to downplay the threat of coronavirus. The president’s own demonstrations of reckless, maskless bravado appear to be key to that strategy, as Trump characterizes his opponent as frail and confined to his basement. More