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      in Elections

      'Already broken': US election unlikely to change relations with Russia

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      After four years in which the Kremlin loomed large over US politics, the topics of collusion, Russian meddling or Ukrainian scandals have been largely absent from the campaign agenda as election day draws close.
      It may be that Moscow still intends to interfere: the FBI director Christopher Wray said last month that the bureau has seen “very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020” – mainly involving misinformation with the primary goal of denigrating Joe Biden. And the US indictment of six Russian military intelligence hackers last week served as a reminder of the potential threat.
      However, as Biden enters the final days of the campaign with a significant lead, Putin appears to be hedging his bets. The Russian president pointedly declined to amplify Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations about Biden’s son, Hunter, and his past business dealings in Ukraine, noting he did not “see anything criminal” in them. Putin has also pointed to possible common ground with the Democrats on social democratic ideology and arms control.
      The Russian leader and the former vice-president certainly know each other well from past encounters, though the relationship lacks any of the warmth that Trump claims infuses his bond with the Russian leader.
      “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul,” Biden told Putin at a 2011 meeting, according to an account he gave the New Yorker. “He looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said: ‘We understand one another.’”
      Biden has not dwelled on the well-worn topics of Trump’s soft spot for Putin or Kremlin meddling – in part because coronavirus has cast such a long shadow over the election and the Biden team feel that voters are tired of hearing about Russia.
      “The most resonant issues for American voters right now are Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and the dangers of white nationalism; by contrast, Russian election interference in 2016 seems more distant for those just trying to make ends meet,” said Michael Carpenter, a foreign policy adviser during Biden’s time as vice-president who remains in touch with the campaign.
      It is possible, too, that “Russiagate” was never a major vote-winning issue: Trump’s supporters dismissed the charges as “fake news” and many of his opponents were more focused on other issues.
      “Russia is a media and a Washington conversation. My students don’t care about Russia; they care about Black Lives Matter and MeToo,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a Russian-American professor of international affairs at the New School in New York.
      Questions over the business dealings of Biden’s son in Ukraine have failed to resonate much beyond Trump’s core base, with a recent attempt to reopen allegations of Biden’s alleged wrongdoing in Ukraine largely falling flat.
      If Moscow did indeed help put Trump in the White House, their man has done little to improve the the bilateral relationship over the past four years, despite his personal praise for Putin. But his disdain for western alliances and naked America-first self-interest is something that the Kremlin appreciates – and may explain why officials in Moscow want to see Trump win a second term.
      “Putin and people around him might like Trump because he fits very nicely with their view of the world. He’s a graphic illustration of their logic that the world is moving away from liberal values and multilateralism and towards sovereignty and traditional values,” said Andrey Kortunov, of the Russian International Affairs Council.
      He said that while Putin genuinely does not understand politicians such as Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron – and believes their talk of values to be hollow and cynical – with Trump there is a recognition of a kindred spirit, even if there is little affection for him as a person. The two men share “scepticism of international bodies, emphasis on sovereignty, a transactionalist approach to foreign policy and a feeling that discussions about values are mere hypocrisy”, said Kortunov.
      Putin earlier this month noted Biden’s history of “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric” and contrasted it with Trump’s oft-stated desire for better ties with Moscow.
      “Biden’s approach to Russia would involve supporting a dialogue on arms control, strategic stability, crisis management and risk reduction from a position of strength,” said Carpenter, saying it was simplistic to see the question of Russia policy as a black-and-white hawk or dove calculation.
      Kortunov said that Russia, unlike Germany, Israel or China, is in the “privileged position” that the outcome of the election is likely to have little effect on bilateral relations. “But the bad news is that this is because it will be bad either way. Almost anything that could be broken is already broken,” he said. And there is little prospect of improvement.
      Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who was reportedly an intermediary for informal contacts with members of the Trump entourage after his 2016 victory, declined to say whether he favoured a Trump or Biden victory. But he said either way it was hard to imagine how things could get worse. “We are at the lowest point ever in the history of US-Russian relations so going even lower would be difficult,” he said.
      Russia still denies all accusations of meddling in the 2016 election, whether it be the hacking of Democratic party servers or armies of internet trolls stirring up trouble on Facebook and Twitter.
      But Fiona Hill, who was the national security council director for European and Russian affairs for three years of the Trump administration and testified at Trump’s impeachment hearing, said hawkish Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev and other top officials all but admitted Russia’s interference in the 2016 vote when she confronted them.
      “The Russians said to us: ‘You guys left yourselves open.’ They were admitting it essentially. They said it’s on you that this got so out of hand.”
      The officials suggested that the US had left Russia an open goal with its divisive politics – and she felt they had a point: “We were providing the raw materials, making our own mistakes,” she said. The Russian interference “wouldn’t have resonated without our deep polarisation and our structural issues”.
      This time round, there are new allegations of Russian attempts to influence the political landscape, such as a rightwing site apparently set up by Russians and meant to influence US voters. But there is less attention now, perhaps because with the amount of disinformation flowing from the White House, the Russian efforts appear to be a drop in the ocean.
      “The biggest risk to this election is not the Russians, it’s us,” said Hill. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He's jealous of Covid’s media coverage’: Obama ridicules Trump at Florida rally

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      Barack Obama ridiculed Donald Trump at a Florida rally on Tuesday for the president’s complaints about the media closely covering the national coronavirus crisis.
      The 44th president has recently abandoned traditional decorum where a former president refrains from publicly criticizing his successor, lambasting the 45th president in recent speeches for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, in particular.
      At a drive-in rally in Orlando to boost support for his former Vice President and now Democratic nominee for the White House, Joe Biden, Obama took a tone combining mockery of Trump with indignation.
      He spoke of record numbers dying of coronavirus in the US and asked rhetorically of the president: “What is his closing argument?” with the election just a week away.
      “That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies ‘Covid, Covid, Covid’, he is complaining. He is jealous of Covid’s media coverage,” Obama said with mock incredulity as the crowd laughed.

      At a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, Trump did say those words and complained that the media was paying too much attention to coronavirus, even as he claimed record case numbers are exaggerated and downplayed the death rates.
      Obama said: “If he had been focused on Covid from the beginning, cases would not be reaching record highs across the country this week, the White House would not be having its second outbreak in a month.
      Staff working for Mike Pence, the vice-president, have come down with Covid, it was revealed at the weekend, just a few weeks after Trump, his wife and youngest son all had coronavirus and multiple prominent people tested positive after the event at the White House to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.
      Obama also roasted the White House for chief of staff Mark Meadows’s remark on television at the weekend that the administration was not going to control the pandemic.
      Obama said: “Winter is coming. They are waving the white flag of surrender. Florida, we can’t afford four more years of this, that’s why we’ve got to send Joe Biden to the White House.”
      Trump tweeted that it was a “no crowd, fake speech” and slammed conservative Fox News for airing it.
      [embedded content] More

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      in US Politics

      US coronavirus cases surge in midwest as Trump heads there in campaign push

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      [embedded content]
      A surge in new cases of coronavirus in the midwest continues, as Donald Trump plans multiple rallies in the region and presidential rival Joe Biden heads out to campaign in Georgia.
      Researchers at Johns Hopkins University recorded 60,789 new cases in the US on Monday, not far off all-time highs reached at the weekend. Total cases have surpassed 8.6m, with more than 225,000 deaths.
      Trump continues to bleed political support from the perception that he does not take the virus seriously. Despite that, on Monday night he held a ceremony at the White House for supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was reminiscent of an earlier event linked to an outbreak of Covid-19 that infected the president himself.
      Trump, Barrett, her husband Jesse Barrett, and supreme court justice Clarence Thomas appeared outside the White House without masks for a ceremonial swearing-in.
      On Tuesday, Trump traveled to a rally in Michigan and planned to go on to events in Wisconsin and Nebraska the same day, on a pre-election blitz across three states where cases are rising most steeply. New daily cases in Michigan have more than doubled in the last week, while Nebraska has one of the highest rates of test positivity in the nation at 21.5% over the last week, according to Johns Hopkins.
      Wisconsin, one of the most important electoral prizes, where the Democratic governor has asked Trump previously not to hold rallies that could spread coronavirus, broke one-day state records on Tuesday in Covid-19 deaths and cases as state officials told residents to stay home, wear a mask, and implored them to cancel travel and social gatherings.
      The state had 64 deaths due to the virus and 5,262 new cases over the last 24 hours, state officials said during an afternoon news conference.
      Thousands of supporters attended a Trump rally last week in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for which a local rural activist group rented out a billboard reading “Trump Covid Superspreader Event”, with an arrow.
      Local doctors urged the president not to hold a rally on Tuesday evening in western Wisconsin.
      “Returning to Wisconsin, repeating a reckless, risky event like a packed campaign rally is just asking for trouble,” said Robert Freedland, an ophthalmologist in La Crosse and state representative for the Committee to Protect Medicare, according to a local media report.
      “In all likelihood, my colleagues in La Crosse will be putting on their N95 masks and dealing with the impacts of Trump’s super-spreader event long after he leaves. It is dangerous and it’s unacceptable,” Freedland said.
      But the plea was likely to fall on unsympathetic ears in the Trump campaign, just as similar pleas did when the president held a rally in Janesville in the state earlier this month.
      Meanwhile Joe Biden delivered speeches with social distancing measures in place in Georgia, which has recorded fewer than 1,000 cases a day over the last seven days and where test positivity is at 7.2%.
      While Covid-19 hotspots are proliferating across the US, the states undergoing the most serious increases are Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee and California, according to Johns Hopkins.
      Vice-President Mike Pence, who continues to campaign despite having been in close contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases including his chief of staff, planned to speak in North Carolina and South Carolina on Tuesday.
      Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, planned to speak in Nevada, where most voters vote early and Democrats are in a tough fight to keep the state blue.
      Elections officials across the country have issued health safety guidelines for voters planning to visit polling sites in person.
      The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, advised voters to wear a mask, wash hands and maintain 6ft distance. In Michigan, the secretary of state issued personal protective equipment to all poll workers. More than half the teams in the National Basketball Association have taken steps to convert their facilities into safe polling places.
      In states such as Texas that do not have a mask mandate, officials advised voters to take extra precautions.
      “To prevent becoming infected from someone who has Covid and is not wearing a mask, be sure to wear a mask to the polling site that is of sufficient quality to protect not only others, but also yourself,” Erin Carlson, director of graduate public health programs at the University of Texas at Arlington, told Mirage News.
      “Also, remember to carry your own black pen, stylus and hand sanitizer. If you don’t have a stylus, bring a wipe to wipe down the polling booth touchscreen before you use it.”
      Residents in the border city of El Paso have been urged to stay home for two weeks as coronavirus cases threaten to overwhelm some hospitals, potentially keeping some voters away from polls.
      “We are in a crisis stage,” said El Paso county judge Ricardo Samaniego. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the 2020 US elections: It’s time to dump Trump. America’s only hope is Joe Biden

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      Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recession and deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
      If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
      The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interests appear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
      Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
      A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
      The people’s enemy
      Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
      Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
      It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
      Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
      Faustian pact
      Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
      The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
      We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
      In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      A Trump win or a disputed result are Canadians' worst fears

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      Before every US presidential election, a few disgruntled Americans can be relied on to promise that they’ll move to Canada if the results don’t go their way.
      Canadians watch US elections with close attention – and occasional horror – but they rarely expect many voters to make good on that vow. A few do make the move; most do not.
      However, in recent weeks the political temperature in the US has mounted: senior Republicans have called for supporters to“guard” polling stations, and right-wing militias have openly called for armed revolt in the event that Donald Trump loses.
      In Canada, fears are growing that the fallout from a contested vote could spill across the border.
      The spectre of unrest, trade disruption, and even violence is likely to have prompted frantic strategising among senior government officials, said Thomas Juneau, a professor of international relations and security studies at the University of Ottawa.
      “We are absolutely at the point where we have to think about scenarios that … start raising really difficult questions for Canada,” said Juneau.
      A contested election, or a second term of Trump where he begins making decisions that are bad for Canada, are both looking like plausible outcomes, he said.
      As one of the United States’ largest trading partners, Canada cannot afford to be caught off-guard. The two nations share the world’s longest undefended border and have highly integrated economies.
      “There are few things that Canada does better than understanding the United States,” he said. “There is not a single department in the Canadian government, that doesn’t devote a considerable proportion of its resources and time to managing relations with the US. Folks in the Canadian government think about the relationship every day.”
      The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has spent much of his tenure restraining any urge to overtly criticise Trump, has expressed cautious optimism about the upcoming election and downplayed fears of violence or disruption.
      “I think we’re certainly all hoping for a smooth transition or a clear result from the election, like many people are around the world,” he said earlier this month. “If it is less clear, there may be some disruptions and we need to be ready for any outcomes, and I think that’s what Canadians would expect of their government, and we’re certainly reflecting on that.”
      Hundreds of billions of dollars cross the border each year in trade networks that thrive not least because of mutual co-operation and the predictability of the bilateral relationship.
      Any disruption could prove catastrophic to Canada.
      “I’ve made no bones about saying that the greatest damage to the US-Canada relationship is Donald Trump,” said Bruce Heyman, former US ambassador to Canada. “[Trump] has never admitted failure. So when you get down to an election where you either win or lose, he has a hard time accepting the fact that he can lose. He has never used the words ‘defeat’ or ‘loss’ in terms of the election.”
      In office, Trump has frequently challenged the norms of the relationship with his country’s closest ally.
      He has feuded with Trudeau, calling the prime minister “two-faced”. He has slapped tariffs on aluminium and steel and forced a redrafting of the continent’s free trade agreement. He has called into question Canada’s critical alliances such as Nato, and the missile defence system Norad.
      Trump’s administration has also failed to stand up for Canada during diplomatic rows with China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, leaving the country to fend for itself.
      “And I think a second term of Donald Trump will be an extreme version of what we have seen in the first,” said Heyman.
      While the Trump era may mark a historic low in the relationship, he is not the first US president to oversee strained relations with Canada.
      Prime ministers and presidents have often sparred in past, most recently when Canada decided not to join the US in its invasion of Iraq.
      Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister for 15 years from the 1960s to the 1980s, likened the relationship to that of a mouse beside a snoring elephant. His clash with President Richard Nixon led to a period of chilled relations.
      “It is time for us to recognise … that we have very separate identities; that we have significant differences; and that nobody’s interests are furthered when these realities are obscured,” Nixon told the Canadian parliament in 1972.
      But the current damage is clear: a recent poll found that Canadian sentiment towards the US had reached its lowest point in 40 years. Only 29% of residents have a favourable view of their southern neighbour.
      And many blame Trump: nearly 66% want Joe Biden to win the election.
      But whatever happens on 3 November, tussles over trade and tariffs are likely to persist. A Biden administration would still face domestic pressure to bring manufacturing jobs home and to maintain hardline US positions on commodities such as softwood lumber.
      “Because Trump is so unpopular in Canada, people naturally tend to idealise what a Biden presidency would look like,” said Juneau. “But the idea Biden would just erase all of the bilateral trade irritants between the two countries is not true. And I think the Canadian government understands that very well.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden attacks Trump's 'rushed and unprecedented' confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett – US politics live

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      Key events

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      1.25am EDT01:25
      Barrett reaction: ‘They have lied, cheated, and compromised democracy’

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      5.42am EDT05:42

      Also on a foreign policy front, secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in India at the moment. He has paid respects at the National War Memorial, and then stated India and the United States are cooperating to take on all threats, including China.
      “Today is a new opportunity for two great democracies like ours to grow closer,” Pompeo said before the talks with Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh.
      “There is much more work to do for sure. We have a lot to discuss today: Our cooperation on the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, to confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s threats to security and freedom to promoting peace and stability throughout the region.*
      The two countries have signed an agreement on sharing geospatial data, which Singh has said is a “significant achievement”.

      Secretary Pompeo
      (@SecPompeo)
      A solemn moment laying a wreath at the National War Memorial in New Delhi with U.S. Secretary of Defense @EsperDoD. We will never forget the brave men and women who have given their lives in defense of the world’s largest democracy. pic.twitter.com/xvwUdgSvlF

      October 27, 2020

      On coronavirus, Pompeo said US companies are making efforts to sell Gilead’s Remdesivir drug to India. India is on course to shortly reach 8 million cases, and has the second highest case count in the world behind the US.
      China, perhaps unsurprisingly, has not taken too kindly to Pompeo’s words. Reuters report that Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing in Beijing. “We urge Pompeo to abandon his Cold War mentality, zero-sum mindset, and stop harping on the ‘China threat’”.

      5.33am EDT05:33

      A very quick snap here – an American citizen was kidnapped near the town of Birnin Konni in southern Niger in the early hours of Tuesday morning, three security sources and a local official told Reuters.
      The details of the kidnapping were not immediately clear, and no one had claimed responsibility.
      Niger is struggling with a security crisis as groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State carry out an increasing number of attacks on the army and civilians, particularly in the west region bordering Mali and Burkina Faso. Birnin Konni is a few hundred miles to the east of that region, near the border with Nigeria.

      Updated
      at 5.51am EDT

      5.28am EDT05:28

      CNN have a run-down on what Amy Coney Barrett can expect to find in her in-tray as she takes her place on the supreme court. They highlight:
      Trump taxes case – the justices are primed to decide soon whether a New York prosecutor will get access to Trump’s financial documents from January 2011 to August 2019, including his tax returns. Last July, the Supreme Court, voting 7-2, rejected the President’s broad claims of immunity.
      Pennsylvania ballot extensions – Republicans in Pennsylvania asked the Supreme Court on Friday to block a ballot receipt extension that would allow them to be counted if they are received within three days of Election Day – even if they do not have a legible postmark.
      North Carolina ballot counting extension – Republicans in North Carolina are asking the Supreme Court to block a nine-day extension of the counting of ballots if they are received by Election Day and reinstate a three-day extension established by the legislature last June.
      Minnesota congressional election date – a Republican candidate for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District is asking the justices to intervene in a case concerning whether his election takes place on November 3 or on February 9, 2021, after the recent death of Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks caused the contest to be moved to next year as required by state law.
      Mississippi abortion case – the case pertains to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law in 2018. The law made exceptions only for medical emergencies or cases in which there’s a “severe fetal abnormality,” but not for incidents of rape or incest.
      Read more here: CNN – Trump’s taxes, election and abortion cases await Amy Coney Barrett in her first week

      5.22am EDT05:22

      Even before Amy Cony Barrett takes her seat, there’s a sign of things to come with judgements over the election, as yesterday the supreme court sided with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting mail-in ballots that are received after election day. Maanvi Singh and Sam Levine report:

      In a 5-3 ruling, the justices refused to reinstate a lower court order that called for mailed ballots to be counted if they are received up to six days after the 3 November election. A federal appeals court had already put that order on hold.
      The ruling awards a victory for Republicans in their crusade against expanding voting rights and access. The three liberal justices dissented. John Roberts, the chief justice, last week joined the liberals to preserve a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline but voted the other way in the Wisconsin case, which has moved through federal courts.
      “Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote.
      “As the Covid pandemic rages, the court has failed to adequately protect the nation’s voters,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent that noted the state allowed the six-day extension for primary voting in April and that roughly 80,000 ballots were received after the day of the primary election.

      Read more here: Wisconsin can’t count mail-in ballots received after election day, supreme court rules

      5.12am EDT05:12

      There’s been an understandable focus on the possible impact of seating Amy Coney Barrett on healthcare during a pandemic. But the potential impacts of her ruling on the Affordable Care Act go much further than coronavirus, as Katelyn Burns writes for us today:

      Jack Jimenez tried to obtain private health insurance, only to be denied because of a pre-existing condition – his gender dysphoria diagnosis. Jimenez is trans and him living his true identity was reason enough to deny him coverage.
      It wasn’t until 2014 when the Affordable Care Act (also known as the comprehensive healthcare reform law and as Obamacare) was implemented, that Jimenez was able to get insurance, the specialist treatment he needed, and a diagnosis because the law eliminated exclusions for pre-existing conditions. It turned out he had pseudotumor cerebri, a condition in which spinal fluid leaks into the skull. The symptoms mimic those of a brain tumor, including vision issues, headaches and ringing in the ears.
      “It’s that very first doctor appointment. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “To have people look at you and go, ‘Oh, OK. Yes. I can see why that’s a big concern. Let me write down these three pages of weird symptoms that you’ve been having and let’s do some tests and figure out what the hell is wrong with you,’” he said. “Nobody, nobody had really done that at all.”

      Read more here: As the future of Obamacare heads to the supreme court, so does trans rights

      5.05am EDT05:05

      Here’s what the New York Times editorial board had to say about the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett:

      When she takes her seat on the bench at One First Street, it will represent the culmination of a four-decade crusade by conservatives to fill the federal courts with reliably Republican judges who will serve for decades as a barricade against an ever more progressive nation.
      This is not a wild conspiracy theory. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and one of the main architects of this crusade, gloated about it openly on Sunday, following a bare-majority vote to move Judge Barrett’s nomination to the Senate floor. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” Mr. McConnell said. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
      That’s the perfect distillation of what this has been all about. It also reveals what it was never about. It was never about letting the American people have a voice in the makeup of the Supreme Court.

      Read more here: New York Times – the Republican party’s supreme court

      4.58am EDT04:58

      Away from the election and the supreme court for a moment, California is bracing for another round of fire danger from gusts even as crews battle two southern blazes that have left more than 100,000 under evacuation orders.
      Associated Press report that some of the fiercest winds of the fire season drove fires up and down the state Sunday night and Monday before easing, but they were expected to resume overnight and continue into Tuesday morning. More

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      How Texas went from low voter turnout to nation's top early voting state

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      “Donald Trump needs to be goin’ bye-bye,” Ann Wolfe said as she approached one of Austin’s Holiday Inn hotels, now doubling as a polling place.
      Although the man in the White House claims he’s pro-life like her, she said, “under his watch, over 200,000 people are dead”. So while Wolfe was open to candidates from both parties down ballot, she planned to throw her support behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who she thought was at least “a normal human being”.
      “It seems like it’s the most important vote that we’ll ever have to have in this lifetime,” she said.
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      In a tidal wave of political engagement, more than 7 million Texans have already cast a ballot during the general election, the vast majority in-person. The numbers are propelling what is historically one of the lowest voter turnout states to the top of the nation’s leaderboard in terms of the sheer number of people who have voted thus far. That groundswell of participation is even more striking in context, as democratic hurdles remain ever-present at the polls while fears of Covid-19 also loom large.
      “What we’re seeing is that Texans will crawl through broken glass to be able to make sure their voices are heard this election,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic party.
      In the midst of the early voting period, extended by Governor Greg Abbott amid the coronavirus pandemic, approximately 43% of registered voters statewide had voted as of Sunday, logging more than 80% of the total turnout from four years ago with over a week left in the election.
      “It is really quite something that people are turning out in the numbers that they are. And that they’re standing in line for hours when this is early voting, this is not Election Day, and many Texans have never done that before because it is such a low voter turnout state,” said Brittany Perry, an instructional associate professor in political science at Texas A&M University.
      In Harris and El Paso counties, more than two-fifths and roughly a third of registered voters respectively had cast ballots by Sunday, despite sometimes encountering three-hour-long waits, according to Election Protection. Broken machines thwarted residents in Travis and Fort Bend counties on the first day of early voting, yet both have already experienced turnout around 50% of registered voters as of last weekend. And, while there have been curbside voting issues in Bexar and Hidalgo counties, that hasn’t stopped more than 600,000 people from participating in the electoral process, long before 3 November.
      Donald Trump and his broader agenda are likely at least part of what’s driving so many voters to the polls, said Emily M Farris, an associate professor of political science at Texas Christian University. “Trump’s path to the White House is basically impossible without winning Texas’ 38 electoral votes,” she said.
      And the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis is weighing on people’s minds in the state, where cases persist and 17,700 people have died. “Obviously, the way, you know, this whole pandemic has panned out, I think it’s important for us to have support from our government. I just don’t feel that,” said Ileanna Mercado, a school counselor on her way to vote for Biden in Austin. “I just would like for our country to go in a very different direction.” More