in US Politics
Joe Biden meets privately with Jacob Blake's family amid protests over shooting
Jacob Blake
Democratic presidential nominee met with Blake’s father, mother and siblings in Milwaukee, on the way to visit Kenosha, Wisconsin More
Joe Biden
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
'A political awakening': how south Asians could tilt key US elections
This article was published in collaboration with the JuggernautAround 2016, Aamina Ahmed found herself wondering why, for all the talk about getting out to vote, no one had been canvassing in her neighborhood in Canton, Michigan.Canton is a township between Detroit and Ann Arbor with a growing south Asian population. Ahmed, who is Pakistani American and works and volunteers for several civic engagement organizations, started to speak up about the absence of activity at local candidate forums. Intrigued, a worker at a voter outreach organization went back to their colleagues to inquire if they had visited these neighborhoods. It turned out that the field workers had skipped visiting voters with names they felt they couldn’t pronounce.“They were viewing it as, ‘Well, we don’t want to offend the person by mispronouncing their name versus you are actually excluding them from the opportunity to participate in democracy,” Ahmed said.Such is the kind of story that turns up when probing why south Asian Americans, who historically have high voter turnout rates and lean toward the Democratic party, might not cast their vote. Coupled with voter suppression tactics and difficulty understanding the complex US political process, targeted outreach has lagged, and some south Asians face issues related to language access and gender inclusion. These factors are hindering a burgeoning American political awakening, according to more than a dozen community organizers, researchers and political campaigners.But it would be a mistake to overlook the south Asian community’s political significance. Growing numbers among multiple south Asian communities underscore their strength within the Asian American demographic, the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the US electorate.The south Asian American population – those who trace their ancestry to the southern region of Asia – grew by 43% from 2011 to 5.7 million people in 2018, according to the American Community Survey, while the total US population grew by only 4.7% during that same time period. And about 2 million Indian Americans, the second largest immigrant group in the country, are eligible to vote in the US, according to Devesh Kapur, professor of south Asian studies at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of The Other One Percent: Indians in America. More
- in US Politics
What has four years of Donald Trump meant for the climate crisis?
Guardian US reporter Emily Holden looks at the Trump administration’s impact on the environment, and the consequences if he wins another term
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
The United States is one of the most polluting nations in the world – its factories, power plants, homes, cars and farms pump billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. By the end of this century, the earth’s temperature will rise by several degrees, many scientists say, if highly polluting countries such as the US don’t control their output now. The Guardian’s US environment reporter, Emily Holden, tells Anushka Asthana about Donald Trump’s environmental policies over the past four years, which have included reversing many of the pledges made by Barack Obama – most notably dropping out of the Paris climate agreement. She also looks at the proposals from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which include putting Americans back to work installing millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines, making the steel for those projects, manufacturing electric vehicles for the world and shipping them from US ports. What the American people decide in November, Emily believes, is critical for the future of the planet. More
- in US Politics
'Get off Twitter': Joe Biden urges Trump to focus on safely reopening schools
Joe Biden
Democratic candidate sought to put virus at heart of the campaign as rivals gave duelling speeches on Wednesday
Play Video
2:34
Joe Biden tells Trump to ‘get off Twitter’ and focus on reopening schools – video
Joe Biden attempted to regain the narrative in the US presidential election on Wednesday, telling Donald Trump to “get off Twitter” and focus on safely reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democratic nominee sought to put the virus back at the heart of the campaign after two weeks that saw the president capitalise on sporadic violence in American cities, which has blighted largely peaceful protests over police brutality and systemic racism, to push a “law and order” theme and force Biden on to the back foot.
With opinion polls narrowing two months before election day, Trump and Biden gave duelling speeches, both in cities called Wilmington but in different states, as they entered the final sprint to 3 November.
Declaring reopening schools “a national emergency” as he spoke in his home town, Wilmington, Delaware, Biden demanded: “Mr President, where are you? Where are you? Why aren’t you working on this? We need emergency support funding for our schools and we need it now. Mr President, that’s your job, that’s your job.”
He added: “That’s what you should be focused on now, getting our kids back to school safely, keeping schools safely able to remain open once they open. Not whipping up fear and division, not inciting violence in our streets.
“Get off Twitter and start talking to the congressional leaders in both parties. Invite them to the Oval Office. You always talk about your ability to negotiate. Negotiate a deal. A deal for somebody other than yourself.”
Trump was in Wilmington, North Carolina, for ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the second world war.
Showcasing the symbolic power on an incumbent president, Trump marked his visit to a battleground state with a speech in front of battleship. His remarks mostly concerned the creation of the first “American World War II Heritage City”, but he included a reference to his key campaign theme.
“American warriors did not defeat fascism and oppression overseas only to watch our freedoms be trampled by violent mobs here at home,” Trump said.
The vast majority of protests have been peaceful. Those that have turned violent have involved factions from either side of the political divide.
“These people only know one thing,” Trump said, “and that’s strength. That’s all they know, strength.” More - in US Politics
Joe Biden tells Trump to 'get off Twitter' and focus on reopening schools – video
Play Video
2:34
Joe Biden has described school closures as a ‘national emergency’ as he sought to put the coronavirus pandemic back at the heart of the US election campaign, after two weeks of Trump seeking to capitalise on sporadic scenes of violence in cities to push a ‘law and order’ theme
Topics
Joe Biden
Donald Trump
US elections 2020
Trump administration
US politics
US education More
- in US Politics
Trump is trying to pin Kenosha on Biden – but he created the chaos and violence | Richard Wolffe
Donald Trump took a trip to a place called Biden’s America on Tuesday. It is a strange land where the president of the United States is a helpless guest, a doomed corner of his own country that is somehow ruled by a former vice president.It is a topsy-turvy place, this Biden’s America. Occasionally, the president can regain his magical ruling powers by summoning assorted minions in uniforms and incanting a spell with his thumbs to tweet the words LAW AND ORDER.But mostly our president is lawless and disorderly, wandering through a country that has been laid low by a virus from China, a candidate from Delaware, and a bunch of friendly questions from Fox News.It’s weird that the Republican party finds it so hard to see homegrown terrorists in places like KenoshaHe is as befuddled as anyone on Facebook about what the hell is going on around him. But rather than trying to fix this dysfunctional version of the land of the free, he prefers to scare the bejesus out of white voters so they might forget this historic pandemic and recession.To steady his wobbly step, Trump leaned on two men who best represent what he understands by “law and order”. Sitting on one side of our impotent leader was Chad Wolf, the illegally appointed acting secretary of homeland security, who likes to send unidentified paramilitaries to assault American citizens but insists that they are not “the Gestapo, storm troopers or thugs”.Sitting on the other side was Bill Barr, the totally impartial attorney general – who called Black Lives Matter protesters “essentially Bolsheviks” – driven by some kind of religious lust for power. Heaven knows that politics and religion are the kind of bedfellows this president would never lust for.Together, these three outlaws descended on a small outer suburb of Milwaukee and Chicago home to fewer than 100,000 souls, where the Bolsheviks have decided to stage a pivotal uprising against everything good.The facts can be tricky here on the mostly white shores of Lake Michigan, but one thing is clear: Trump cannot feel your pain in Biden’s America.His audience at what this White House called “a community safety roundtable” included a pointless smattering of local suffering – mere pimples on the face of a horrified nation.There were the owners of an office furniture store. “You got hit pretty hard. That’s all right,” said our discomforter-in-chief. “It’s going to get rebuilt.”There was the owner of a candle store. “That’s a very fancy name you have there,” said the man trying to scare white America to its core. “But I’ll bet it was beautiful. Is it – are you going to rebuild? Will you be rebuilding?”“We were not destroyed, very fortunately,” said the candle lady.“Well, we’ll be giving you some help,” Trump said anyway.You never know, the Bolsheviks might come tomorrow.Then there was the camera store guy, who has been in business for 109 years, according to Trump.“You’re insured, right,” he asked. Yes, said the camera guy. “And so they’re helping, and they’re being responsible?” Why yes, said the store owner.So much suffering caused by the strange revolutionary forces of Biden’s America, gathering on the shores of a great lake for no great reason.“To stop the political violence, we must also confront the radical ideology that includes this violence,” said our explainer-in-chief. “Reckless, far-left politicians continue to push the destructive message that our nation and our law enforcement are oppressive or racist. They’ll throw out any word that comes to them.”It’s almost as if these politicians throw out words like bullets fired into the back of a father climbing into his car where his three children were waiting for him.You see, in Trump’s version of Biden’s America, violence springs like Athena from the head of Joe Biden, or AOC, or Lenin. It has no relationship to Jacob Blake, who was not named by Trump or his sidekicks at their community safety roundtable. It has nothing to do George Floyd, or Breonna Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery.It doesn’t even have anything to do with Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two protesters and injuring another in Kenosha, as part of a self-styled white militia that arrived from out of state. Somehow the town’s non-racist law enforcement turned a blind eye to Rittenhouse, walking the streets with his AR-15-style assault rifle, and his friends even after the shootings.Some types of radical ideology are good, and some are bad. The original Bolsheviks understood that distinction pretty well.There are many strange things that happen in Biden’s America. As Trump told Laura Ingraham of Fox News on Monday, there were people wearing black clothes on “a plane from a certain city this weekend” who were headed to the Republican convention that just ended. “A lot of people were on the plane to do big damage,” said the man tasked with protecting the constitution, as well as a nation of confused citizens.As if that isn’t bad enough, there are police who shoot unarmed civilians because they can’t take the pressure. It’s a bit like playing golf, Trump told the audibly horrified – but otherwise entirely supportive – Fox News interviewer.“You know, a choker, they choke,” Trump explained, somehow managing to dehumanize both the shooting victim and the police officer who pulled the trigger. “Shooting the guy in the back many times. Couldn’t you have done something different? … But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot.”It’s weird enough that a Republican party that campaigned for so long on the war on terrorism finds it so hard to see homegrown terrorists in places like Kenosha. It’s weirder still that the party now blindly follows a man who likens shooting someone in the back to missing a putt.But the weirdest thing in Biden’s America is that Donald Trump can only echo Joe Biden. One of them said this week, “I know most cops are good and decent people. I know the risk they take every day with their lives.” The other said: “The vast and overwhelming majority of police officers are honorable, courageous, and devoted public servants.” Which candidate hates law enforcement again?The last Republican president to promise to keep us safe was George W Bush, running for re-election after 9/11. But every few days in Trump’s America, we lose more Americans to the rampant pandemic than to the terrorist attacks that traumatized this nation 19 years ago.That’s not just weird. It’s the symptom of a political sickness inflicted by three and a half years of a lawless and lying president. This is Trump’s America, and we just vote in it.• Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist More
- in US Politics
Covid cases could surge in battleground midwest during Labor Day holiday
As health officials warned that gatherings on the upcoming Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States could fuel the spread of coronavirus, political observers are closely watching attitudes about the virus in the midwest, where Donald Trump and Joe Biden are locked in a struggle that could decide the presidential election.Two new national polls published on Wednesday found that Trump retained the support of 40%-41% of voters – within the narrow band of support he has held since he took office, even as the confirmed death toll from Covid-19 in the United States approaches 200,000.One of the polls, for Grinnell College by the highly reputed Selzer & Company, found that Trump enjoys a 49-45 lead over Biden among voters ages 55 and older – precisely the group most vulnerable to serious complications or death from coronavirus.But in midwestern states such as Iowa and Minnesota, in particular, new warnings about coronavirus are being sounded just as the presidential election enters its final weeks and absentee voting begins.“We cannot afford to have this Labor Day weekend further accelerate the community spread, because if that happens, what comes next is going to be worse,” Jan Malcolm, the Minnesota health commissioner, told local MPR News on Monday. “For a while now, we feel we’ve been kind of walking on the edge of a cliff.”A White House coronavirus taskforce sent Iowa health officials a report this week warning that the state has the highest rate of cases in the United States, according to the Des Moines Register.The state has recorded just over 1,000 deaths from Covid-19, and the more than 65,000 confirmed cases have disproportionately affected communities tied to regional packing plants.Biden was scheduled to speak on Wednesday about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and on Thursday the former vice-president planned to hold a community meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of protests after the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer last month. More
- in US Politics
Eighty-one Nobel winners back 'pro-science' Biden for president
Eighty-one American winners of Nobel prizes in the fields of chemistry, medicine and physics have endorsed Joe Biden for president, based on the candidate’s support for science.An open letter signed by the laureates asserts that the United States is at a unique historical crossroads demanding that leaders “appreciate the value of science”. The Biden campaign released the letter on Wednesday.The letter from the Nobel laureates endorses Biden with three sentences:
At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy. During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research, and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country. As American citizens and as scientists, we wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President.
The letter does not make explicit reference to the coronavirus pandemic or to the climate emergency, but it does single out an issue outside the expertise of the signatories: immigration.Biden respects “the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country”, the letter says.In July, the Donald Trump administration advanced a plan to deport foreign students in the United States whose classes had moved online owing to the pandemic, but the plan was soon shelved.Trump has described climate change as a conspiracy advanced by China and he regularly undermines efforts by public health officials to communicate the most basic details about coronavirus transmission and safety measures.He has failed to get the pandemic under control, while claiming the virus will simply go away, and has put the US on the path to leaving the landmark international Paris climate accord the day after the presidential election, 4 November.The group endorsement was organized by Representative Bill Foster of Illinois, CNN reported. Before joining Congress, Foster worked as a high-energy physicist and particle accelerator designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was a member of the team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter, according to his official biography.The Nobel prizes were endowed in 1895 by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist whose pioneering work in explosives led to an industrial career and fortune. Laureates outside the sciences include Biden’s former running mate, Barack Obama, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel peace prize. More
