Elections

South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison has shattered congressional fundraising records, bringing in $57m in the final quarter for his US Senate campaign against Republican incumbent and Trump ally Lindsey Graham as the Republican party tries to retain control of the chamber in November’s election.Harrison’s campaign said Sunday that the total was the largest-ever during a single three-month period by any Senate candidate. That tops the $38m raised by Democrat Beto O’Rourke in 2018 in the final fundraising period of his challenge to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who won the race.Graham, a longtime senator, is tied with Harrison in a highly competitive race.Graham hasn’t released fundraising totals for the previous quarter, although it’s likely he’s been eclipsed by Harrison. Last month, Graham made a public plea for fundraising to help him keep up with Harrison, saying on Fox News that he was “getting killed financially” by Harrison, who he predicted would “raise $100m in the state of South Carolina.”“The money is because they hate my guts,” Graham added.At the end of June, both candidates were roughly matched at about $30m apiece, money that has come largely from out of-state donors. For the race overall, not including the most recent quarter, Harrison’s in-state contribution amount is 10%. Graham’s is 14%.“This campaign is making history, because we’re focused on restoring hope back to South Carolina,” said Guy King, Harrison’s campaign spokesman. “While Lindsey Graham continues playing political games in Washington, Jaime Harrison is remaining laser-focused on the real issues impacting people here – like health care, broadband access, and Covid relief for businesses and families.”The latest fundraising report comes one day before the start of what is predicted to be a contentious hearing in the Senate judiciary committee on Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court. Graham is the committee chairman.His commitment to confirming Trump’s third nominee to the court has become a focal point in the Senate campaign, with Harrison frequently chiding Graham for reversing on previous promises not to consider election-year nominations. Graham has responded by saying he feels Democrats would do the same if given the choice.Attributing the fundraising success to grassroots support, Harrison’s campaign said the $57m came in the form of 1.5m donations from 994,000 donors. The average contribution was $37.During Harrison’s debate with Graham on 3 October, social media users across the country chimed into tweet threads with pledges to donate as often as they could. In the two days following that matchup, Harrison’s campaign said they brought in $1.5m – as much as the effort had raised in some previous entire fundraising quarters.At the beginning of the campaign, Harrison, an associate Democratic National Committee chairman, told The Associated Press he felt it could take $10m to win the race, an amount he felt he could raise given his national-level connections. To date, he has brought in nearly $86m. More

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It was a kind gesture to some 6,000 Filipinos who, in their youth, had fought with American armed forces in World War II and had been granted U.S. citizenship decades later. In 2016, when the veterans were in their 80s and 90s, the Obama administration agreed to allow some of their relatives in the Philippines to come to the United States before they completed the long wait for formal admission.Last August, the Trump administration announced it was ending the program.This gratuitous swipe at a group of old veterans is a measure of how meticulously the Trump administration has pursued the destruction of immigration in America. Through administrative orders, strict enforcement and mere threat, the White House has attacked virtually every aspect of immigration, legal and illegal.This transformation of the American immigration system has been perhaps the administration’s boldest accomplishment, overseen with single-minded focus by Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump with an affinity for white nationalism.A report this summer from the Migration Policy Institute outlined over 400 actions on immigration that had been enacted by a sprawling array of federal departments in the Trump era.The effects are clear. Between 2016 and 2019, annual net immigration into the United States fell by almost half, to about 600,000 people per year — a level not seen since the 1980s — according to an analysis by William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution. (Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, that number has certainly decreased even more.)The 2016-19 drop “is clearly a result of Trump’s restrictive immigration measures,” Mr. Frey told the editorial board, “including immigrant bans from selected countries, greater limits on refugees, and generating fear among other potential immigrant groups over this administration’s unwelcoming policies.”Along with more obscure actions, like ending that Filipino veterans program, the administration has been methodical in ensuring that its most widely criticized efforts succeed.In the spring of 2018, as thousands of Central American families crossed the southern U.S. border to seek asylum, the Justice Department ordered the arrest of anyone entering the country without authorization. This forced the separation of hundreds of families, even the removal of infants from nursing mothers.To scare people from bringing their families over the border, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, said, “We need to take away children.” It made no difference how young they were.National and international outrage over this cruelty led the administration to rescind that family separation policy. So it changed tack, shutting out asylum seekers through minute attention to administrative detail, bare knuckle diplomacy and ignoring legality.Border control officials said they would accept asylum applications only from people who arrived at approved border crossings, even though the law says anyone can apply for asylum once in the United States. At those crossings, asylum seekers were forced to wait for days, even weeks, in long lines just for a chance to approach the border to ask for protection. The White House packed the immigration appeals board with Trump appointees, with predictable results: Rejections increased.Mr. Trump also used the threat of tariffs to get Mexico to crack down on undocumented Central American immigrants and to allow frustrated asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border while their cases meandered through U.S. immigration courts.After Mr. Trump suspended aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in March, Guatemala and Honduras agreed to accept asylum seekers who had passed through those countries on their way north, so they could either apply for asylum there or go home. (A federal appeals court blocked this arrangement, but that’s effectively moot during the pandemic, since the administration has all but shut down the border under a 1944 public health law.)The scope of the administration’s actions has been far broader than Mr. Trump implied it would be when he campaigned. He promised to bar “rapists” from Mexico, create “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and save America from homicidal undocumented immigrants.Once in office, it was not just criminals and terrorists who drew his attention. It was also people seeking protection from the horrors of their home countries, undocumented immigrants trying to support their families and foreigners striving for a better life in the United States.Mr. Trump eventually achieved a version of his Muslim ban when the Supreme Court approved of severe restrictions on entry for residents of 13 countries, the majority of them with mostly Muslim populations. While the White House said one reason the ban was needed was lax security in those countries, it also has drastically scaled back the refugee program, which involves stringent vetting by American and United Nations officials. In Barack Obama’s last year as president, the ceiling for refugee admissions was 110,000. For the current fiscal year, it’s 15,000. Mr. Trump has made these desperate people campaign punching bags. “Are you having a good time with your refugees?” he said with smirk to a roaring crowd in Minnesota recently. (In fact, when a poll asked Minnesotans whether they approved of having refugees resettled in their community, 59 percent said yes, and 29 percent said no.)Despite Mr. Trump’s promises to protect Americans from killer immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now more than twice as likely to pick up immigrants with no criminal record beyond immigration violations, compared with the number before he took office. After being labeled the “deporter in chief,” Mr. Obama ordered ICE to concentrate enforcement on unauthorized immigrants who had committed crimes. Within weeks of his own inauguration, Mr. Trump eliminated any deportation priorities and made all undocumented immigrants fair game for ICE. With many cities resisting ICE’s more stringent demands for cooperation, the agency has also found it easier to just pick up anyone with an existing deportation warrant.“I understand when you’re a criminal and you do bad things, you shouldn’t be in the country,” Helen Beristain, who voted for Mr. Trump, said when her husband, Roberto, owner of a restaurant in Granger, Ind., was ordered to be deported to Mexico in March 2017 after 20 years in the United States. But, she said, when “you support and you help and you pay taxes and you give jobs to people, you should be able to stay.”Not anymore.While Mr. Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during his presidency, he has also eagerly pursued reductions in authorized immigration.The administration had threatened to furlough 70 percent of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees, blaming the pandemic, but some of those employees said the real problem was restrictive policies and delays in visa applications that have sharply reduced revenue from the processing fees that fund the agency. At the same time, applications for permanent residency have declined since the administration announced it would adopt a rule that would prevent those considered likely to receive public benefits from becoming permanent residents. Among recent green-card recipients, 69 percent had at least one of the characteristics that would be weighed, according to the Migration Policy Institute.Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of homeland security, recently announced that the number of H-1B visas for skilled workers would be cut by one-third because of tighter criteria for who can get them. Critics said this would make American companies shift more work abroad.Mr. Trump also has ended “temporary protected status” for 400,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan and elsewhere who have legally lived and worked in the United States for decades after being provided a haven from war or natural disaster.If Democrats were to take control of Congress and the White House next year, it would be fairly simple to undo some of the damage Mr. Trump has done to the nation’s immigration system. The protections that Mr. Trump overturned for the Dreamers — the thousands of people who were brought to the United States without authorization when they were young — could be written into law, with public support. The travel ban could be overturned, and more refugees could be admitted. ICE could be directed to once again concentrate on deporting criminals. Resources could be shifted to smarter border security measures that don’t rely on a physical wall.But rolling back other measures will be difficult.“There’s so much change that has happened in the last four years, there’s no way a new administration could reverse things in four or even eight years,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute who was a co-author of the group’s July report.Beyond that, there could be political challenges to undoing President Trump’s clamps on the border if that would invite new caravans of asylum seekers. Would Democrats reverse the public charge rule and leave themselves open to accusations of coddling newcomers?After undoing the cruelest and most pointless of the president’s changes to the immigration system, a new administration would need to make difficult decisions about controlling the border, assessing the role that skills and family ties should play in admitting immigrants, enforcing employment laws for unauthorized immigrants and creating a pathway to citizenship for millions of those workers and their families.But rejecting, by law and action, the Trump administration’s racism, cruelty and xenophobia would reaffirm that America is a nation of immigrants who help revitalize the country — an ideal that most Americans support.With a pandemic and an economic crisis to address, immigration may not seem like a priority. Yet if it is not addressed, the immigration system Mr. Trump has erected may be in operation for years to come.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Three weeks from now, we will reach an end to speculation about what Donald Trump will do if he faces political defeat, whether he will leave power like a normal president or attempt some wild resistance. Reality will intrude, substantially if not definitively, into the argument over whether the president is a corrupt incompetent who postures as a strongman on Twitter or a threat to the Republic to whom words like “authoritarian” and even “autocrat” can be reasonably applied.I’ve been on the first side of that argument since early in his presidency, and since we’re nearing either an ending or some poll-defying reset, let me make the case just one more time.Across the last four years, the Trump administration has indeed displayed hallmarks of authoritarianism. It features egregious internal sycophancy and hacks in high positions, abusive presidential rhetoric and mendacity on an unusual scale. The president’s attempts to delegitimize the 2020 vote aren’t novel; they’re an extension of the way he’s talked since his birther days, paranoid and demagogic.These are all very bad things, and good reasons to favor his defeat. But it’s also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianism he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. He lacks power over the media: Outside of Fox’s prime time, he faces an unremittingly hostile press whose major outlets have thrived throughout his presidency. He is plainly despised by his own military leadership, and notwithstanding his courtship of Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley is more likely to censor him than to support him in a constitutional crisis.His own Supreme Court appointees have already ruled against him; his attempts to turn his voter-fraud hype into litigation have been repeatedly defeated in the courts; he has been constantly at war with his own C.I.A. and F.B.I. And there is no mass movement behind him: The threat of far-right violence is certainly real, but America’s streets belong to the anti-Trump left.So if you judge an authoritarian by institutional influence, Trump falls absurdly short. And the same goes for judging his power grabs. Yes, he has successfully violated post-Watergate norms in the service of self-protection and his pocketbook. But pre-Watergate presidents were not autocrats, and in terms of seizing power over policy he has been less imperial than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama.There is still no Trumpian equivalent of Bush’s antiterror and enhanced-interrogation innovations or Obama’s immigration gambit and unconstitutional Libyan war. Trump’s worst human-rights violation, the separation of migrants from their children, was withdrawn under public outcry. His biggest defiance of Congress involved some money for a still-unfinished border wall. And when the coronavirus handed him a once-in-a-century excuse to seize new powers, he retreated to a cranky libertarianism instead.All this context means that one can oppose Trump, even hate him, and still feel very confident that he will leave office if he is defeated, and that any attempt to cling to power illegitimately will be a theater of the absurd.Yes, Trump could theoretically retain power if the final outcome is genuinely too close to call.But the same would be true of any president if their re-election came down to a few hundred votes, and Trump is less equipped than a normal Republican to steer through a Florida-in-2000 controversy — and less likely, given his excesses, to have jurists like John Roberts on his side at the end.Meanwhile, the scenarios that have been spun out in reputable publications — where Trump induces Republican state legislatures to overrule the clear outcome in their states or militia violence intimidates the Supreme Court into vacating a Biden victory — bear no relationship to the Trump presidency we’ve actually experienced. Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like “plotting” implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks.OK, the reader might say, but since you concede that the Orange Man is, in fact, bad, what’s the harm of a little paranoia, a little extra vigilance?There are many answers, but I’ll just offer one: With American liberalism poised to retake presidential power, it needs clarity about its own position. Liberalism lost in 2016 out of a mix of accident and hubris, and many liberals have spent the last four years persuading themselves that their position might soon be as beleaguered as the opposition under Putin, or German liberals late in Weimar.But in reality liberalism under Trump has become a more dominant force in our society, with a zealous progressive vanguard and a monopoly in the commanding heights of culture. Its return to power in Washington won’t be the salvation of American pluralism; it will be the unification of cultural and political power under a single banner.Wielding that power in a way that doesn’t just seed another backlash requires both vision and restraint. And seeing its current enemy clearly, as a feckless tribune for the discontented rather than an autocratic menace, is essential to the wisdom that a Biden presidency needs.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

Back in March, as the coronavirus first gripped the country, Pearl Jam made the difficult decision to postpone all its concert dates for the foreseeable future. In doing so, the band was canceling not just a fall tour, but also a trip through presidential battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that would have doubled as a get-out-the-vote campaign.While the tour may be canceled, the band’s political arm remains cranked on full blast.“If we’re a band who does well in the swing states, then that also means that we’re not just playing to an audience of progressives — if they’re swinging, we’ve got a broad audience there,” said Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s lead singer, describing the band’s ability to reach the kinds of voters who could decide the election.The group is hoping to engage that fan base with its new political operation, PJ Votes. Having gotten to know its audiences over 30 years, the band knows that its fans are mostly in their 40s and that many are already likely to vote. So it is challenging each fan to reach out to three friends, not only getting them to register but also ensuring that they vote.“What we’ve attempted to do is really just bring it back down to basics and encourage people to, again, think about what’s important to them,” Mr. Vedder said. “And be active and be patient and realize that this election is going to be different than any other.”What sets Pearl Jam’s effort apart from many celebrity-driven initiatives is that it follows many of the best practices of modern political campaigns. People can sign up by texting a five-digit number, the same way they can for Joseph R. Biden Jr. or President Trump. The group is harnessing data gleaned from its social media following and rabid fan base, and has partnered with seasoned Democratic operatives like Whitney Williams, a former candidate for governor in Montana, and local civic groups such as Make the Road Pennsylvania.Pearl Jam has even registered as a political advertiser on Facebook, spending more than $17,000 in the past week alone.The band began its digital efforts at a 2018 concert in Missoula, Mont., supporting the re-election campaign of Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, with a similar texting operation to register 4,000 new voters at the show. Ninety percent of them voted in the election, according to the band.“That prepared us for a lot of what we’re doing right now,” said Jeff Ament, the bassist. “We sort of took that model and just blew it up a little bit.”In every election cycle, artists and athletes use their platform to encourage fans to vote. But 2020 has seen celebrities embrace more sophisticated, holistic approaches. LeBron James, for example, launched More Than a Vote, a group focused on protecting African-Americans’ voting rights. PJ Votes is also trying to go beyond the basics.“It’s a sophisticated operation, it’s informed by the best techniques in our business,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist. “If you’re an artist with millions of followers on Instagram and you say I should vote for Joe Biden, that will have an impact, and that’s great. But that’s not a campaign. That’s a moment. And I think what they have done is really put together a campaign that is potentially very powerful, given the depth and breadth of their audience.”Like many bands with its longevity, Pearl Jam has a fan base that is both wide and loyal. And it counts some unexpected supporters, which was attractive to Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that partnered with PJ Votes.Election 2020 More

Like many things this year, the presidential and vice-presidential debates have looked a little different. And thanks to the coronavirus and a host of political developments, the remaining debates on the schedule are now in flux.So far, the two debates that have taken place have featured only one moderator per debate, and the number of people allowed to watch in person has been much more limited than usual. Both debates have started at 9 p.m. Eastern time and have run uninterrupted for an hour and a half.But with two debates still remaining on the calendar, the Commission on Presidential Debates now faces a dilemma. Mr. Trump announced shortly before 1 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 2, that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for the virus. And now it is no longer clear whether the final two presidential debates will take place or in what form.Here’s a rundown of what we know for each debate so far:Sept. 29First Presidential DebateLocation: President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, met at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The University of Notre Dame withdrew as host because of the coronavirus pandemic.The moderator: Chris Wallace, the anchor of “Fox News Sunday,” moderated the debate. It was the second time he had moderated a presidential debate; the first was between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.Topics announced: The moderator has full discretion in picking the debate topics. For the first round, Mr. Wallace chose Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s records, the Supreme Court, the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, race and violence in cities, and the integrity of the election. There were 15 minutes to discuss each topic.Oct. 7Vice-Presidential DebateLocation: Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.The moderator: The vice-presidential debate was moderated by Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief.Second Presidential DebateOn Oct. 9, the second presidential debate was canceled. It had been scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami.The Commission on Presidential Debates had previously said it would be held virtually — with the candidates in separate locations — or not at all, citing safety concerns about the coronavirus.But Mr. Trump demanded that the debate be restored to its original, in-person format. And then because Mr. Trump had declined to take part in a virtual debate, Mr. Biden developed his own plan to participate in an ABC News town hall that evening in Philadelphia.No law requires presidential candidates to take part in debates. So, eventually, the debate was simply called off.Oct. 22Third Presidential DebateAs of Oct. 9, the Trump campaign said it was onboard, and Mr. Biden’s campaign also agreed to participate in the debate as long as it was either a one-on-one matchup with Mr. Trump or a town-hall-style event in which both candidates took questions from voters.The original plan for the third presidential debate is as follows:Location: Belmont University in Nashville.How to watch: The Times will have an uninterrupted stream along with a live chat and a live briefing with analysis from our reporters. The debate will also be carried on the news networks.The moderator: Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent and co-anchor of “Weekend Today.” She is only the second Black woman to serve as the sole moderator of a presidential debate. The first was Carole Simpson.Topics announced: The moderator and the Commission on Presidential Debates will announce topics a week before the debate, but as in the first debate, there will be six topics. Each will get 15 minutes.Matt Stevens and Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting. More