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      in US Politics

      Women march against Trump and Republicans in major US cities

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      Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied on Saturday in Washington DC and other US cities, exhorting voters to oppose Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in the 3 November elections. The latest in a series of rallies that began with a massive women’s march the day after Trump’s January 2017 inauguration was playing out during the coronavirus pandemic. Demonstrators were asked to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, opened the Washington event by asking people to keep their distance from one another, saying the only superspreader event would be the recent one at the White House. She talked about the power of women to end Trump’s presidency. “His presidency began with women marching and now it’s going to end with woman voting. Period,” she said. More

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      in Elections

      Biden says he'll lay out stance on expanding supreme court before election

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      Joe Biden said at a town hall event on Thursday night that he would announce before election day whether he favors expanding the supreme court.Biden has repeatedly declined to lay out a stance on the issue amid an ongoing Republican sprint to install a third justice nominated by Donald Trump before the election, in what critics have called a naked power grab.The Senate judiciary committee appeared poised to approve and hand off the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the full Senate next week.Barrett’s installation on the court would make for the most dramatic ideological realignment on the court in decades. In part that’s because she would replace a liberal justice, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.But the conservative court coup would also be the result of a successful plot by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to hold open a supreme court seat for almost a year in 2016 so that Trump could fill it instead of Barack Obama.That fact, combined with similar maneuvering by McConnell at the district and appeals court levels, have led Biden backers to express outrage that the candidate’s unwillingness to stake out a position on so-called “court-packing” would create controversy.The court has already been packed, Biden supporters say, by Trump, McConnell and their Republican surrogates and outside accomplices.In a town hall in Philadelphia on Thursday night, Biden sought to hold the focus on the Republicans’ conduct, telling host George Stephanopoulos that “no matter what answer I gave you” on court packing, “if I say it that’s going to be the headline tomorrow.’”As Stephanopoulos insisted on knowing whether Biden would encourage Congress to pass legislation to expand the court – all of this in the hypothetical instance in which Democrats win the White House in November, hold the House of Representatives, flip the Senate and then make court-packing a legislative priority – Biden said people would know how he felt “before they vote”.Barrett’s likely confirmation would establish a solid 6-3 conservative majority on the court that could last decades. Some progressives have called on the next Democratic president and Congress to add seats to the court, which would change the norm of nine seats that has been in place since 1869. Other activists have called for term limits for judges to increase court turnover.But none of those measures would be effective in the long term so long as Republicans in the Senate, whenever in the majority, refuse to fill court vacancies with judges appointed by a Democratic president and then pump those vacancies full when a Republican president takes over. More

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      in US Politics

      Amy Coney Barrett hearing: top Republican praises judge for being 'unashamedly pro-life' – live

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      Lindsey Graham lavishes praise on supreme court nominee
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals
      Barrett dodges abortion and healthcare questions
      Trump and Biden offer different visions of US role in world
      Trump in trouble as Florida’s seniors shift towards Biden
      Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter

      LIVE
      Updated

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      Amy Coney Barrett questioned on third day of supreme court hearing – watch live

      Key events

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48
      Public hearing poortion ends

      5.00pm EDT17:00
      Today so far

      4.06pm EDT16:06
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      1.15pm EDT13:15
      Today so far

      12.33pm EDT12:33
      Third day of Barrett’s nomination hearings resumes

      12.01pm EDT12:01
      First break in today’s hearing

      10.27am EDT10:27
      Virginia voter registration deadline extended after technical failure

      Live feed

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48

      Public hearing poortion ends

      Next is a closed hearing on FBI background checks. Tomorrow the judiciary committee will set up a vote and hear outside witnesses.
      “You will be confirmed, God willing,” Graham said.

      Updated
      at 5.49pm EDT

      5.40pm EDT17:40

      Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Republican, used a Trump campaign talking point that Harris’ past career as a prosecutor deepened racial inequities to rebut her claim that systematic racism exists.
      You can read more about Harris past as a prosecutor here. The Trump campaign – while itself promoting a “tough on crime” attitude and railing against Black Lives Matter protestors – has nonetheless adopted progressive critiques of Harris’ record as “top cop”.
      Harris “thinks America is systemically racist – I think our history is the best evidence of that it is not,” said the senator from Louisiana, citing the Barack Obama presidency as proof. “With the blink of an eye, we went from institutionalized slavery to an African American president,” he said.
      After lobbing several softball questions at Barrett including (“Do you hate little warm puppies?”) Kennedy ended by asking: “Who does the laundry in your house?” (which I’m sure he also meant to ask Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch).
      It is worth noting that Barrett didn’t clearly answer this one either: “We run a lot of loads of laundry.”

      5.19pm EDT17:19

      Barrett also would not comment on whether she believes voting discrimination exists.
      Harris: Do you agree with Justice Roberts when he said voting discrimination still exists?
      Barrett: “I will not comment on what any justice said in an opinion, whether an opinion is right or wrong, or endorse that proposition.”

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Under questioning from Kamala Harris, Amy Coney Barrett refuses to say if she thinks voting discrimination still exists pic.twitter.com/gv9KN904fu

      October 14, 2020

      5.14pm EDT17:14

      Harris took up questioning Barrett on climate change.
      Harris: Do you think COVID-19 is infectious?
      Barrett: Yes.
      Harris: Do you think smoking causes cancer?
      Barrett: I’m not sure exactly where you’re going with this… Yes, every package of cigarettes warns that smoking causes cancer.
      Harris: Do you think climate change is happening?
      Barrett: “Senator, again… You have asked me a series of questions that are completely uncontroversial, and then trying to elicit an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate.”
      Climate change is not a contentious matter of public debate – about 8 in 10 Americans say that human activity is fueling climate change, per a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. But most importantly, climate change is not a contentious matter of scientific debate.

      5.00pm EDT17:00

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The third day of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearings is still unfolding. Barrett has been answering questions from the Senate judiciary committee for eight hours, and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is currently questioning the nominee.
      Lindsey Graham praised Barrett as “unashamedly pro-life,” describing her nomination as historic. “I have never been more proud of a nominee,” the Republican committee chairman said. “This is history being made, folks. This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology. And she’s going to the court.”
      The first lady revealed Barron Trump had coronavirus. Melania Trump said Barron, her and the president’s 14-year-old son, tested positive for coronavirus but showed no symptoms. Barron and the first lady have both since tested negative, she said.
      Trump is en route to Des Moines, Iowa, where he will hold a campaign rally tonight. The president won Iowa by 9 points in 2016, but recent polls show Trump and Biden running neck and neck in the state.
      Virginia extended its voter registration deadline, after an accidentally cut cable caused the state’s online registration system to shut down yesterday. Virginia voters now have an additional two days to register.
      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.54pm EDT16:54

      Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is now questioning Amy Coney Barrett. She is the last Democrat who will speak in this round of questioning.

      4.49pm EDT16:49

      Trump is en route to Iowa, a state that he won by 9 points in 2016. Polls currently show the president and Joe Biden running neck and neck in Iowa.
      The president will hold a rally in Des Moines tonight, and attendees will be greeted by this billboard when they arrive at the event site.

      Jim Acosta
      (@Acosta)
      Billboard outside Des Moines airport where Trump holds Iowa rally tonight. pic.twitter.com/XHix45wzlw

      October 14, 2020

      4.41pm EDT16:41

      Speaking to reporters before leaving for his Iowa rally, Trump very briefly addressed his son’s health before pivoting to praising Amy Coney Barrett.

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Trump spent exactly one second answering a question about how his son Barron is doing after he tested positive for coronavirus pic.twitter.com/aiGXBSbHRZ

      October 14, 2020

      “Barron’s fine, and Amy is doing a fantastic job. We’re heading out to Iowa, and we have a big rally,” Trump said.
      The first lady said in a statement that Barron tested positive but experienced no coronavirus symptoms. He has since tested negative, as has the first lady.

      4.31pm EDT16:31

      Like other Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, Cory Booker pressed Amy Coney Barrett on voting rights.
      As part of his questioning, Booker asked Barrett if she had ever waited in line for five hours to vote. She said no. Booker asked if she had ever waited an hour to vote. She said no.
      Booker compared those answers to the experience of many black voters in America, who often face long lines at their polling stations.

      4.22pm EDT16:22

      Trump said his son, Barron, is doing “fine” after testing positive for coronavirus.
      The president responded to a reporter’s question about Barron as he left for Des Moines, Iowa, where he is holding a campaign rally later tonight.
      Shortly before Trump’s departure, the first lady revealed Barron had tested positive but shown no coronavirus symptoms in a statement about her own experience with the virus.
      Melania and Barron Trump have both since tested negative, the first lady said.

      4.16pm EDT16:16

      Amy Coney Barrett told Democrat Cory Booker that she could not offer her opinion on whether it was wrong to separate immigrant children from their parents.
      “That’s a matter of hot political debate in which I can’t express a view or be drawn into as a judge,” Barrett said. “I can’t express a view on that.”
      The Democratic senator responded that he considered such matters to be “basic questions of human rights”.
      The Trump administration attracted severe criticism in 2018 after its “zero tolerance” immigration policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents.

      4.06pm EDT16:06

      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      Melania Trump released a statement about her experience with coronavirus, and the first lady revealed her son with the president, Barron Trump, tested positive for coronavirus.
      The first lady said 14-year-old Barron initially tested negative after the president was diagnosed, as the White House announced. But the White House did not reveal Barron’s later test came up positive.

      Melania Trump
      (@FLOTUS)
      To all who have reached out – thank you. Here is my personal experience with COVID-19 :https://t.co/XUysq0KVaY

      October 14, 2020

      “To our great relief he tested negative, but again, as so many parents have thought over the past several months, I couldn’t help but think ‘what about tomorrow or the next day?’,” the first lady said in the statement.
      “My fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive. Luckily he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms.”
      The first lady noted Barron has since tested negative again, as has she. Trump said her own experience with coronavirus was like “a roller coaster of symptoms in the days after” she was diagnosed.
      “I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time,” Trump said. “I am happy to report that I have tested negative and hope to resume my duties as soon as I can.”
      The first lady added, “Along with this good news, I want people to know that I understand just how fortunate my family is to have received the kind of care that we did.”
      Trump said she continues to pray for the Americans who are currently struggling with coronavirus and their families.

      Updated
      at 4.09pm EDT More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Amy Coney Barrett pledges 'open mind' and plays down conservative record

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      Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s nominee to the US supreme court, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a final round of questioning about her judicial record and personal views, with her confirmation all but assured despite Democrats’ forceful opposition.Members of the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday attempted to dig deeper into the conservative judge’s views on the Affordable Care Act, which expanded healthcare cover to millions more Americans under Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, and abortion rights.Also on the agenda in this week’s hearings are same-sex marriage, gun control and any potential cases related to the result of the looming 2020 election.But Barrett, in the tradition of recent supreme court nominees, avoided answering directly about how she would rule on some of the most important issues that the court may be asked to address.Playing down the conservative positions she expressed in legal writings as an academic and in personal commitments she made as a private citizen, the 48-year-old appellate court judge she had no political agenda and would approach every case with “an open mind”.Barrett has been nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month. The confirmation hearings have halted all other business on Capitol Hill as Republicans, eager to cement a conservative majority on the court for at least a generation, rush to confirm Barrett before the November election.Opening the session on Wednesday, after nearly 12 hours of questioning the day before, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the committee, celebrated Barrett’s almost inevitable confirmation as a momentous victory for conservatives, and particularly for conservative women, who he said have faced “concrete” social and cultural barriers in public life that do not exist for liberal women.“This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology,” Graham said. “She is going to the court.”In moments of personal reflection during the hearings, Barrett suggested that mockery of her association with People of Praise, the insular Catholic community inspired by charismatic Christianity, as well as commentary about her large family, which includes two adopted children from Haiti, has been painful. But she said while faith was important to her personally, it would not influence her decisions on the supreme court bench.But she repeatedly declined to say how she would rule on a challenge to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 supreme court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. But she declined again on Wednesday to characterize the decision as a “super-precedent” that must not be overturned.Democrats continued to press their case that her confirmation would imperil the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, arguing that Donald Trump and Republicans were rushing to confirm her before the court hears arguments that could decide the fate of the healthcare law next month. Again, Barrett insisted that she was not “hostile” to the ACA and would decided cases “as they come”.Republican state officials and the Trump administration are effectively seeking to invalidate the entire healthcare law based on a single part of it.Though she did not say how she would rule, Barrett expressed skepticism of this view in an extended exchange with Graham. In such cases, the judge said “the presumption is always in favor of severability” – a legal doctrine applied to congressional litigation that she said requires a court to strike down one element while preserving the rest of the law.Democrats have urged Barrett to recuse herself in the forthcoming case involving the ACA – as well as potential challenges to the result of the election – because Trump has repeatedly said that his judicial nominees will dutifully advance his agenda. In a vague reference to the president’s tan, Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, suggested that Trump’s words cast an “orange cloud” over Barrett’s nomination.Barrett declined to say whether she would recuse herself in either instance, only that she would consider the matter. Again, she maintained her independence from the executive branch and the president who nominated her, first to a seat on the US court of appeals for the seventh circuit, and then to the supreme court.Pressed by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, Barrett would not say whether the president was allowed to pardon himself. She stated unequivocally that that “no one is above the law”, though cautioned that the supreme court has no real recourse to ensure that Americans, including the president, followed its orders.Republicans rushed to the judge’s defense, accusing Democrats of impugning her integrity as a judge.Recalling the 1987 nomination ofRobert Bork, which was derailed amid deep opposition from liberal groups and Democrats who warned that his confirmation would tilt the court to the right on key issues such as religion and abortion, senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, decried the “attempted Borking of Amy Barrett”.Republicans touted her adherence to “originalism”, an approach championed by Barrett’s mentor, the late justice Antonin Scalia, that aims to interpret the constitution as it was written centuries ago. Confronted by Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, with several of Scalia’s more controversial opinions, including a scathing dissent in a landmark case establishing the right for same-sex couples to marry, Barrett said that they shared a philosophy but would not always reach the same conclusions.“I hope you’re not suggesting I don’t have my own mind,” she said.But Coons was not persuaded, and announced that he would not vote to confirm her.“Nothing has alleviated my grave concerns that rather than building on Justice Ginsburg’s legacy of advancing privacy and equality and justice, … in fact, you will take the court in a very different direction,” he said.Owing to the proximity of the election, and the near-certainty of the outcome, many senators have used the nationally televised hearings as an opportunity to amplify their campaign messages. Graham, locked in a tight race for re-election in South Carolina, was effusive in his praise of the conservative judge, who Republicans hope will energize their base while appealing to suburban women leaving the party over Trump.“I have never been more proud of the nominee than I am of you,” Graham said to Barrett. “This is history being made, folks.”Away from the hearing room, the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told donors that Barrett “seems like a decent person” but said it was “an abuse of power” to confirm her to the supreme court before the November election.The committee is expected to vote on 22 October, as Trump pressures the Senate to confirm Barrett before the November election. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The problem with Amy Coney Barrett's nomination isn't timing. It's her views | Nathan Robinson

      by

      The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court has been controversial in large part because Republicans are so obviously violating the standard they used to justify keeping Merrick Garland off the supreme court during Obama’s second term. But that hypocrisy has overshadowed the much more important matter: the substance of Barrett’s record, and her likely actions as a supreme court justice.Barrett’s rulings on the seventh circuit court of appeals show her to be someone who cares little about justice, and who doesn’t particularly value the interests of workers, immigrants and the poor. In case after case, she has found procedural technicalities to justify depriving people of their basic rights, and it’s clear that on some of the most important issues of our time, she would swing the supreme court in a direction nobody should want to see it go.Take policing. This year saw the eruption of massive Black Lives Matter protests all over the country as a reaction to police violence, with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor outraging millions of people. But as a judge, Barrett has shown little interest in rectifying racial injustice. In the case of Torry, et al v City of Chicago, et al, she concluded that officers were reasonable in stopping and harassing a group of Black men even though there was absolutely no evidence that they had committed a crime. In Biegert v Molitor, et al, Barrett sided with police who shot a mentally ill man to death after his mother had called 911. In United States v Wilson, Barrett concurred with a decision that officers had reasonable suspicion to use force to detain a Black man when he ran away from them, because he had a “bulge in his pocket” and was in a “high-crime area”, in part because a “reasonable officer could infer from Wilson’s flight that Wilson knew he was in violation of the law”. And in Sims v Hyatte, Barrett indicated that she would have kept a Black man in prison who had been convicted on the basis of incredibly dubious eyewitness testimony.Barrett’s attitude has been the same on other issues. On immigration, she has indicated that she would defer to the executive branch’s absurd reasons for denying visas to lawful immigrants, without requiring the Trump administration to justify its decisions. She has ruled against prisoners, workers, debtors, and consumers, and there is reason to believe she would rule against the Affordable Care Act if the issue came before her.Barrett’s body of rulings is not that large, making it difficult to extrapolate how she would rule on important issues if elevated to the supreme court. But we have ample reason to believe that Barrett, a conservative Catholic, is hostile to abortion rights and might overturn Roe v Wade when she had a chance. In addition to being a conservative Catholic, Barrett is a self-described legal “originalist” who almost certainly believes Roe was a legally shoddy opinion. (Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not that confident in the legal grounds for the ruling.)There is one perspective on law that suggests judges should be evaluated on the basis of their “qualifications” rather than their “politics”. This point of view has led the liberal Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman to endorse Barrett, on the grounds that she is intelligent and experienced. Some of the same arguments were made about Brett Kavanaugh. If you think in terms of qualifications, it’s difficult to come up with good reasons to oppose conservative judges. After all, many conservatives went to top-ranked law schools and published journal articles. I suspect that this is part of why Democratic opposition to Barrett has not been as strong as it should be, and the focus has been on Republican hypocrisy rather than Barrett’s record. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern even argues that Democrats have “privately given up” on opposing Barrett.But they shouldn’t. The fact that Barrett is “qualified” does not automatically entitle her to a supreme court seat – and her politics are enough to justify trying to keep her off it. Barrett’s views are almost certainly far to the right of the average American, and her elevation to the court will make that body even less representative of a complex and rapidly changing society. Judging is a political act; supreme court justices do not, as John Roberts famously insisted, merely “call balls and strikes” like neutral umpires. Instead, they impose their personal convictions on the country through rulings on questions that affect us all. Conservative judges tend to be less sympathetic to the relatively powerless, and this comes out in their rulings. If you care about protecting the legal rights of the powerless, you have good reason to oppose the confirmation of hardline conservatives onto the court no matter which law school they went to or how many years they have previously served on the bench.The primary reason Barrett needs to be opposed is not that she has been nominated during an election year, but that she has been nominated at all. Her record as a federal appeals court judge indicates that she will issue politically conservative rulings with harmful social consequences. Democrats need to unanimously oppose her and use all of the procedural weapons at their disposal to reduce the chances of her successful confirmation. More