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Democratic national convention 2020
Activist who lost his voice because of ALS urged Americans to vote for Joe Biden and called Trump an ‘existential threat’
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0:48
Activist Ady Barkan delivers powerful speech on protecting US healthcare – video
Progressive activist Ady Barkan, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), gave a powerful address at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday endorsing Joe Biden for president, calling Donald Trump an “existential threat” and demanding access to quality healthcare for all Americans.
Healthcare is expected to be at the top of voters’ minds ahead of the November election, which has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic that has left more than 170,000 people dead, infected more than 5.4 million people and left millions unemployed, leaving many without health insurance.
“We live in the richest country in history and yet we do not guarantee this most basic human right,” said Barkan. “Everyone living in America should get the healthcare they need regardless of their employment status or ability to pay.”
Barkan is a prominent advocate of Medicare forAll, a policy promoted by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s plan to establish a universal health insurance system in the US.
Biden, who was formally nominated as the Democrats’ choice for president during the second night of the convention on Tuesday, campaigned on improving and expanding the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, but does not support Medicare for All.
However, as the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout continues to devastate communities, Biden has inched left on healthcare.
Nonetheless, Barkan, who has lost his voice because of ALS and has previously testified before Congress using eye movements, urged Americans to vote for Biden in order to avoid the “existential threat of another four years of this president”.
“Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people’s health insurance,” Barkan said.
“We must elect Joe Biden. Each of us must be a hero for our communities, for our country, and then, with a compassionate and intelligent president, we must act together and put on his desk a bill that guarantees us all the health care we deserve.”
In an interview before his speech aired on Tuesday night, Barkan told the New York Times there was “work to do” to “convince Democratic leadership to shift perspective” on healthcare.
“I support Medicare for All and Joe Biden obviously doesn’t,” he said. “Many Democratic voters agree with me, as evidenced by the overwhelming support in the exit polls during the primaries. And the pandemic and depression have proven how dangerous it is to tie insurance to employment.”
The Democratic convention, which has been radically scaled back and moved almost entirely online, has repeatedly attempted to promote a message of unity between liberals, progressives, moderates and also Republicans.
Barkan was diagnosed with ALS in 2016, at 32 years old. He was little known outside of progressive circles until he cornered the former Arizona senator Jeff Flake on a flight from Phoenix to Washington and urged Flake not to vote for the Republicans’ tax plan. Barkan told Flake about his medical condition and said the tax bill threatened crippling cuts to the federal disability program he relied on for coverage.
Flake ultimately voted for the measure, but the exchange elevated Barkan’s profile. His group, the Center for Popular Democracy, set up the “Be a Hero” campaign to rally Democrats before the midterms. A profile in Politico called Barkan the “most powerful activist in America”.
“I am hopeful about this country’s future because right now, there is a mass movement of people from all over this country, rising up,” he told the Guardian in 2019.
“Nurses, doctors, patients, caregivers, family members – we are all insisting that there is a better way to structure our society, a better way to care for one another, a better way to use our precious time together. If we do the work, we will build the better world our families deserve.”
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0:48
Prominent activist Ady Barkan called on voters to act in the forthcoming presidential election to safeguard the future of the US healthcare system.
‘Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people’s health insurance,’ Barkan said on the second night of the Democratic national convention
Democrats formally nominate Joe Biden for president
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The New York congresswoman seconded the nomination of the Vermont senator and praised his ‘historic grassroots campaign to reclaim our democracy’ in convention address
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Speaker says pause does not ‘reverse damage already done’
Democrats show unity on first night of virtual convention
Michelle Obama picks Trump apart in DNC speech
Julián Castro warns Democrats of ‘potential slide of Latino support
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‘They’re afraid of the voter’: Pelosi says Democrats will fight for USPS – video
Key events
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8.36pm EDT20:36
Summary
7.54pm EDT19:54
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to deliver endorsement of Joe Biden tonight
5.04pm EDT17:04
Today so far
4.12pm EDT16:12
Pelosi dismisses delay to USPS changes as ‘insufficient’
1.45pm EDT13:45
Postmaster general suspends operational changes until after election
1.09pm EDT13:09
Afternoon summary
10.26am EDT10:26
Gun-toting St Louis couple to speak at Republican convention
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8.36pm EDT20:36
Summary
That’s it for the politics blog today. We’ll have live coverage of the Democratic convention coming up next on our new liveblog here.
From me and Joan E Greve:
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was suspending operational changes to the US Postal Service until after the presidential election. Amid accusations that the Trump administration was purposely seeking to slow mail services to help the president’s reelection effort, DeJoy said he was delaying cost-cutting measures to USPS until after November in order to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi said DeJoy’s decision was “insufficient” to address concerns about voter suppression. “This pause only halts a limited number of the Postmaster’s changes, does not reverse damage already done, and alone is not enough to ensure voters will not be disenfranchised by the President this fall,” Pelosi said.
DeJoy will testify before the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs on Friday. The postmaster general will also appear before the House oversight committee on Monday, and congressional Democrats say they intend to press DeJoy on whether he will reverse changes already made to USPS operations that have slowed mail delivery.
The Republican-led Senate intelligence committee released a bipartisan report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report describes an extensive web of contacts between high-ranking Trump campaign officials, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and people with ties to Russian intelligence.
Trump mocked Michelle Obama’s widely praised speech at the Democratic convention last night, in which the former first lady argued the president was the wrong man for the job during an unprecedented moment of crisis for the country. Trump told Obama to “sit back and watch” as he sailed to reelection, even though national polls show the president trailing Joe Biden by several points.
The president revived racist, xenophobic rhetoric during a campaign event in Yuma, Arizona. He touted his border wall, promoted his anti-immigrant policies, and baselessly cast migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as criminals – and stoked racist fears against immigrants to promote his campaign over Biden’s.
Cindy McCain and Colin Powell are the latest Republicans set to participate in the Democratic National Convention tonight. McCain will be featured in a video celebrating Biden’s friendship with her late husband, senator John McCain. Powell, who served as Secretary of State under George W Bush, has already indicated he’ll vote for Biden over Trump — who he publicly rejected in 2016.
Follow along with our DNC coverage:
7.54pm EDT19:54
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to deliver endorsement of Joe Biden tonight
Powell, the Republican secretary of state who served in the George W Bush administration, endorses Biden in a clip that the DNC has released ahead of tonight’s events.
One of several high-profile Republicans who have supported Biden over Trump, Powell indicated in June that he’d vote for Biden — choosing again, as he did in 2016, not to vote for Trump.
Here’s the clip:
[embedded content]
7.23pm EDT19:23
Here’s more analysis of the Senate report that lays bare the Trump campaign’s links to Russia, from the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Julian Borger:
The report by the Senate intelligence committee provides a treasure trove of new details about Donald Trump’s relationship with Moscow, and says that a Russian national who worked closely with Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 was a career intelligence officer.
The bipartisan report runs to nearly 1,000 pages and goes further than last year’s investigation into Russian election interference by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. It lays out a stunning web of contacts between Trump, his top election aides and Russian government officials, in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
The Senate panel identifies Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer employed by the GRU, the military intelligence agency behind the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. It cites evidence – some of it redacted – linking Kilimnik to the GRU’s hacking and dumping of Democratic party emails.
Kilimnik worked for over a decade in Ukraine with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager. In 2016 Manafort met with Kilimnik, discussed how Trump might beat Hillary Clinton, and gave the Russian spy internal polling data. The committee said it couldn’t “reliably determine” why Manafort handed over this information, or what exactly Kilimnik did with it.
It describes Manafort’s willingness to pass on confidential material to alleged Moscow agents as a “grave counterintelligence threat”. The report dubs Kilimnik part of “a cadre of individuals ostensibly operating outside of the Russian government but who nonetheless implement Kremlin-directed influence operations”. It adds that key oligarchs including Oleg Deripaska fund these operations, together with the Kremlin.
The investigation found that Kilimnik tweets under the pseudonym Petro Baranenko (@PBaranenko). The account regularly propagates Moscow’s line on international issues, such as the conflict in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The fact that a Republican-controlled Senate panel established a direct connection between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence makes it harder for Trump and his supporters to allege that the investigation into possible collusion was a “witch-hunt” or “hoax” as the president has repeatedly claimed, in the remaining three months before the election.
7.08pm EDT19:08
Cindy McCain has promoted a clip of a video — which is set to air at the Democratic National Convention tonight — in which she discusses her late husband John McCain’s friendship with Joe Biden.
John McCain ran against Barack Obama and Biden in the 2008 elections.
Cindy McCain
(@cindymccain)
My husband and Vice President Biden enjoyed a 30+ year friendship dating back to before their years serving together in the Senate, so I was honored to accept the invitation from the Biden campaign to participate in a video celebrating their relationship.https://t.co/Y6XOnBC1IW
August 18, 2020
6.35pm EDT18:35
The Democratic National Committee removed a portion of its official platform seeking to end subsidies for fossil fuel companies, even though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on the promise that they would stop such subsidies, HuffPost reports.
From HuffPost:
On July 27, officials added an amendment to the Manager’s Mark, a ledger of party demands voted on as one omnibus package, stating: “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.”
The amendment was approved. But the statement ― which reflects pledges presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, each made on the campaign trail ― disappeared from the final draft of the party platform circulated Monday.
In an emailed statement, a DNC spokesperson said the amendment was “incorrectly included in the Manager’s Mark” and taken out “after the error was discovered.”
Activists accused the DNC of retroactively removing the amendment from the final draft of the platform.
Earlier, my colleague Emily Holden reviewed the Biden climate plan. Read her assessment here:
6.16pm EDT18:16
Here’s a view from the Trump campaign event in Yuma, Arizona:
Jill Colvin
(@colvinj)
The crowd here in Yuma. Many in masks, but many not. Feels like pre-COVID times, minus the chairs pic.twitter.com/kSJQ91zo3q
August 18, 2020
6.15pm EDT18:15
Speaking in Arizona, Trump has revived his racist, xenophobic rhetoric that baselessly casts immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as criminals.
He also has falsely asserted that the media no longer discusses the border wall. Here is a selection of recent reporting on the border wall:
Voice of San Diego: “Kumeyaay Band Sues to Stop Border Wall Construction”
National Geographic: “Sacred Arizona spring drying up as border wall construction continues”
The Guardian: “Officials ignored warnings about Trump wall threat to endangered species”
Washington Post: “There’s new wall on 194 miles of the border. Sixteen miles didn’t have a barrier before”
6.04pm EDT18:04
Cindy McCain will be featured in a video that’s set to air during tonight’s Democratic National Convention, according to the AP. She is one oof several Republicans who are participating in the DNC.
From the AP:
Cindy McCain is not expected to offer an explicit endorsement, but her involvement in the video is her biggest public show of support yet for Biden’s candidacy. McCain was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee against Democrat Barack Obama, who won the election with Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
Both Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump, and the family is longtime friends with the Bidens. Trump targeted John McCain personally in 2015, saying the former prisoner of war wasn’t a hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain later angered Trump with his dramatic thumbs-down vote against repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law.
When McCain died on a Saturday in 2018, the Trump administration lowered the American flag over the White House to half-staff but then raised it by Monday. After public outcry, the White House flags were again lowered. Trump wasn’t invite to McCain’s funeral.
5.58pm EDT17:58
Donald Trump is speaking at a campaign event in Arizona. According to the press pool, about five hundred people are in attendance, with no social distancing. Many of the supporters are reportedly wearing MAGA face masks.
Arizona governor Doug Ducey is among those who have appeared alongside Trump. As part of yesterday’s Democratic National Convention programming, Kristin Urquiza — who was mourning her father who died of Covid-19, delivered a stinging rebuke of Ducey and Trump.
“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” Urquiza said. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”
Earlier this year, Urquiza also wrote an obituary for her father in which blamed his death on the “carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk”.
Updated
at 6.24pm EDT
5.36pm EDT17:36
Notre Dame University has canceled in-person classes for two weeks after starting the semester on 10 August. Students will be allowed to stay on campus, but activities will be limited and large gatherings barred.
Yesterday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also decided to switch to remote learning after at least 130 students tested positive for coronavirus.
Notre Dame
(@NotreDame)
University of Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins announced today that in-person classes are suspended, effective Wednesday, replaced by remote instruction only for the next two weeks because positive rates for the coronavirus continue to climb: https://t.co/gKsvmjCqD6
August 18, 2020
Updated
at 5.45pm EDT
5.22pm EDT17:22
Sam Levine reports:
In an unprecedented move, Louisiana’s top election official wants to require a positive Covid-19 test if a voter wants to vote absentee over concerns about the virus. This comes amid a lack of consistent access to testing in the state.
Louisiana is one of seven states that will still require an excuse to vote by mail this year, only allowing absentee voting if a voter is aged 65 or older or meets certain other conditions such as temporary absence from their county or hospitalization.
For its elections in July and August, Louisiana eased those restrictions for voters at risk of developing complications from Covid-19 or who had potential exposure to the virus. But under secretary of state Kyle Ardoin’s proposal for the state’s November and December elections released Monday, those accommodations won’t apply. Instead, a voter would need to test positive for Covid-19 between the end of early voting and election day, currently a week-long period to use the hospitalization excuse to request a mail-in ballot.
The proposal from Ardoin, a Republican, comes as Louisiana has seen lags in testing, meaning a voter could get tested and not have their results in time to be able to request a mail-in ballot. Louisiana has seen 138,485 cases of Covid-19 and 4,526 deaths so far. In April, African Americans accounted for 70% of Covid-19 deaths in the state.
5.04pm EDT17:04
Today so far
That’s it from me for now. I will be back tonight to cover the second night of the Democratic convention.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was suspending operational changes to the US Postal Service until after the presidential election. Amid accusations that the Trump administration was purposely seeking to slow mail services to help the president’s reelection effort, DeJoy said he was delaying cost-cutting measures to USPS until after November in order to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi said DeJoy’s decision was “insufficient” to address concerns about voter suppression. “This pause only halts a limited number of the Postmaster’s changes, does not reverse damage already done, and alone is not enough to ensure voters will not be disenfranchised by the President this fall,” Pelosi said.
DeJoy will testify before the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs on Friday. The postmaster general will also appear before the House oversight committee on Monday, and congressional Democrats say they intend to press DeJoy on whether he will reverse changes already made to USPS operations that have slowed mail delivery.
The Republican-led Senate intelligence committee released a bipartisan report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report describes an extensive web of contact between high-ranking Trump campaign officials, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and people with ties to Russian intelligence.
Trump mocked Michelle Obama’s widely praised speech at the Democratic convention last night, in which the former first lady argued the president was the wrong man for the job during an unprecedented moment of crisis for the country. Trump told Obama to “sit back and watch” as he sailed to reelection, even though national polls show the president trailing Joe Biden by several points.
My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
4.49pm EDT16:49
Trump has arrived in Yuma, Arizona, for his campaign event on immigration and border security. More
Democratic national convention 2020
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton offer their endorsements
Event mixes live-streamed speeches, montages and celebrities More
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Former first lady shows support for Democrats and little-known African American jeweller More
Michelle Obama
Obama delivered the climactic speech on the first night of the Democratic convention, and Trump responded with snark
Obama’s rebuke and anti-Trump Republicans: key takeaways
Play Video
18:00
Michelle Obama: the former first lady’s DNC speech in full – video
In her keynote speech to the Democratic national convention on Monday night, Michelle Obama reprised a message from the 2016 campaign in which she urged Democrats not to take Donald Trump up on his insults and mockery.
“When they go low,” she said, “we go high.”
On Tuesday morning, Trump duly went low, attacking Obama after she said he “is clearly in over his head” as president.
“Somebody please explain to Michelle Obama that Donald J Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama,” Trump tweeted. “Biden was merely an afterthought.”
Trump went on to accuse Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the former vice-president whom Democrats will officially nominate for president this week, of “treason”, then attacked Michelle again during a White House ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
“She was over her head,” the president said, “and frankly, she should’ve made the speech live, which she didn’t do, she taped it. And it was not only taped, it was taped a long time ago, because she had the wrong [coronavirus] deaths and she didn’t even mention the vice-presidential candidate” – Kamala Harris, named by Joe Biden last week.
Trump also complained about the former first lady receiving “fawning reviews” and said he thought her speech was “extremely divisive”.
Obama delivered the climactic address on the first night of a four-day convention produced in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but playing out almost exclusively online, with speakers and entertainers filling two hours of live-streamed content each night.
Trump was one of few Republicans to respond to the former first lady, whose reappearance on the national stage was greeted enthusiastically by Democrats. Obama’s husband is scheduled to address the convention on Wednesday.
“Michelle Obama as anchor can make any relay team a gold-medal winner, but the [Democratic National Committee] did a lot of work for Joe Biden tonight,” tweeted David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Barack Obama.
“Not everything worked, which figures, given the magnitude of the virtual format they’re trying. But much of it did. Solid first night.”
In an unprecedented election season mostly devoid of campaign rallies, handshakes and selfies with the candidate, the Democrats were preparing for a second night of what might be the biggest experiment of all: moving an event meant to display the density of the party’s enthusiasm into the diffuse online world.
Following Eva Longoria on Monday night, the actor Tracee Ellis Ross, star of Girlfriends and Black-ish, was slated to emcee proceedings on Tuesday. The official schedule included a unique “keynote address” by 16 rising stars of the party, including the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
The political star power was to grow through Tuesday evening, with speeches by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry to be followed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former president Bill Clinton and Dr Jill Biden, the nominee’s wife.
Biden planned to speak from a classroom at a high school in Delaware where she formerly taught English. Officials said she would highlight her husband’s commitment to education and community, as well as his decency.
Michelle Obama, wearing a necklace spelling out V-O-T-E, touched on those themes in her speech while making the case against Trump.
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
The last line was an echo of a recent Trump statement about the confirmed death toll in the US from coronavirus-related disease, which has surpassed 170,000.
“We’ve got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it,” Obama said.
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