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      in Elections

      Trump ally running for Congress believes in baseless QAnon sex-trafficking conspiracy

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      Anywhere but Washington

      Republicans

      Angela Stanton King, who is working to help the president win Black voters, confirmed her views to the Guardian

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      2:47

      Trump ally running for Congress says she believes baseless QAnon-linked conspiracy theory – video

      A Republican congressional candidate and high-profile ally in Donald Trump’s fight to win over Black voters has admitted to believing a baseless QAnon-related conspiracy theory that the online furniture retailer Wayfair is secretly selling trafficked children over the internet as part of a deep-state plot.
      Angela Stanton King, who is running in Atlanta, Georgia, for the congressional seat once held by the late civil rights icon John Lewis, told the Guardian in an on-camera interview she believed the debunked conspiracy theory while continuing to deny she was a follower of QAnon.
      When asked if she believed the retailer was involved in a global pedophilia conspiracy, she replied: “You know they are. You saw it. You watch the news just like I did.” The candidate then ended the interview, being taped as part of the Guardian’s Anywhere But Washington series.
      “I don’t know anything about QAnon. You know more than I know,” King said as she walked away.
      Stanton King is one of a number of Republican congressional candidates with ties to the far right, antisemitic conspiracy theory. She has almost no chance of winning her race in Georgia’s fifth congressional district, which has been held by Democrats with overwhelming margins for decades. But elsewhere in the state, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate for the 14th congressional district and an outspoken promoter of QAnon, looks set to win a seat in Congress.
      Donald Trump has himself praised QAnon followers as patriots who “love America” and declined opportunities to debunk the false theories.

      Play Video

      11:08

      Civil rights and QAnon candidates: the fight for facts in Georgia – video
      Stanton King has used her social media presence to push false theories linked to Qanon, including suggesting that the Black Lives Matter movement is “a major cover up for PEDOPHILIA and HUMAN TRAFFICKING”. She also reiterated a QAnon rallying cry related to the so-called “Storm”, a day of reckoning when, followers believe, Donald Trump will reveal the malefactors in the deep state. “THE STORM IS HERE,” she tweeted on 6 August this year.
      When asked to explain this post, Stanton King once again denied being a follower of the movement and stated: “It was raining that day.”
      Weather reports on 6 August in Atlanta indicate it was hot with no precipitation.
      Advocates on the ground in Georgia and elsewhere have reported an uptick in disinformation associated with the conspiracy theory movement during this election cycle. More

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      in Elections

      Millions of Americans voting early in what could be record election turnout

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      Millions of Americans have already cast their vote in America’s presidential election, underscoring unprecedented enthusiasm in the 2020 race that could lead to record-shattering turnout.Election day is still weeks away, but a staggering 17.1 million voters have already cast their ballots either by mail or in person, according to data collected by Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who closely tracks voter turnout. Overall, the US has already surpassed 12% of its total vote from the 2016 presidential election. Democrats appear to be disproportionately responsible for driving the early vote turnout and observers say this could be the first election in US history where a majority of voters cast their ballots before election day.Several states, including battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida have already surpassed 20% of their total 2016 vote, a sign of strong enthusiasm. (The Guardian and ProPublica are tracking these vote-by-mail ballots here.)“That’s nuts,” McDonald said in an interview. “This is orders of magnitude larger number[s] of people voting.”The United States may be heading for record turnout in a presidential election, experts say. McDonald estimates that about 150 million people will vote this year of the approximately 239.2 million eligible voters, the highest turnout in a presidential election since 1908. And Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm that closely tracks voter data, said he thought as many as 160 million voters could cast a ballot. 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 general election.The early enthusiasm comes as voters in Virginia, Ohio, Georgia and Texas have all seen huge lines on the first day of in-person early voting – some counties in those states said they saw record turnout on the first day. For months, election administrators have been trying to figure out how to predict and accommodate an influx of in-person voters as they face a shortage of personnel and locations.Democrats have encouraged their supporters to cast their votes as early as possible either in person or by mail. The push to vote early, both by mail and in person, has also come amid fears about the capacity of the United States Postal Service (USPS) to deliver mail-in ballots on time.“We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow up to make sure they’re received,” Michelle Obama said at the Democratic national convention in August.So far, Democrats are heeding that advice and crushing Republicans when it comes to both requesting and returning mail-in ballots. In North Carolina, a key battleground state, Democratic voters have returned 269,844 ballots, 42.9% of the more than 628,000 they requested. Republicans have returned just 96,051 out of a little over 258,413 requests (roughly 37%).In Pennsylvania, another key state, Democrats have returned more than 22% of the 1.7m ballots they requested, a significant advantage over Republicans, who have returned just over 12% of their 652,516 requested ballots. In Dane county, a liberal stronghold in Wisconsin, more than 62% of the more than 200,000 voters who requested ballots have already returned them, the highest return rate in the state.“It’s like a double advantage for Democrats – not only are there advantages for Democrats for the number of ballot requests, but they’re also adding on to that advantage by having their voters return their ballots at a higher rate than Republicans,” McDonald said.The surge has been enough to cause Republicans to concede privately at the very least that the advantage right now is with Democrats, both in terms of the presidential race and winning a majority of seats in the Senate.“If I’m in Vegas I’d bet on Biden,” said one Republican strategist who specializes in data analytics and asked to remain anonymous. That sentiment is increasingly shared by Republican operatives and top staffers in the Senate who are beginning to plot out life in the minority.But the enthusiasm spans both Democratic and Republican voters. “Look, I’d rather be down 710,000 [registered voters] than 1.4 million. But I don’t want to oversell it. We still have a lot of work to do,” said Republican strategist Mark Harris.The data is so drastically different from previous years that McDonald said it was difficult to predict what it portends for the eventual election outcome. In a typical election, there is usually a spike in voting around the start of early voting, which then falls off until near election day, when it climbs again.“There could be two plausible explanations. One is that Democrats are more enthused and want to vote as soon as they can. The other is that Republicans, even those who have requested mail ballots, are deciding that they want to vote in person and they may wait and then when in-person early voting or election day comes around, go vote then,” he said. 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

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      in US Politics

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

      by

      The World’s Election

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons
      by Julian Borger in Washington

      Main image:
      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.
      All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.
      Also at stake is the idea of “the west” as a like-minded grouping of democracies who thought they had won the cold war three decades ago.
      “The Biden versus Trump showdown in November is probably the starkest choice between two different foreign policy visions that we’ve seen in any election in recent memory,” said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of An Open World, a new book on the contest for 21st-century global order.
      In an election which will determine so much about the future of America and the world, the Trump campaign has said very little about its intentions, producing what must be the shortest manifesto in the annals of US politics.
      It appeared late in the campaign and has 54 bullet points, of which five are about foreign policy – 41 words broken into a handful of slogans such as: “Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans”.
      The word “climate” does not appear, but there are two bullet points on partnering with other countries to “clean up” the oceans, and a pledge to “Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air”. (The phrase ignores a series of US scandals about poor water quality – and the fact that millions of Americans can no longer afford their water bills.)
      The US remains the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the average American’s carbon footprint is twice that of a European or Chinese citizen. More

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      in US Politics

      It's not easy being the first but for Kamala Harris it has become a habit

      by

      It took less than one day after Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee for a racist and baseless “birther” conspiracy theory to start circulating among her critics.The morning after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, making her the first black woman and the first Asian American to join a major party’s presidential ticket, Newsweek published an op-ed casting doubt upon the California senator’s US citizenship because she was born to immigrant parents.The argument was immediately discredited by legal experts, who noted Harris was born in a hospital in Oakland, California, and was thus undeniably a US citizen.But that irrefutable evidence did not stop Donald Trump, one of the champions of the similarly baseless birther claims against Barack Obama, from stoking the conspiracy theory.“I just heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said at an August press conference. “But that’s a very serious, you’re saying that, they’re saying that she doesn’t qualify because she wasn’t born in this country.”The president has continued his attacks against Harris in the two months since, most recently calling her a “monster” after last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate.Trump’s efforts to demonize Harris have taken on an added element of desperation heading into the final weeks of the presidential election, as polls show Biden leading nationally and in major battleground states.The Democratic ticket’s significant polling advantage increases the likelihood that Harris will indeed become the country’s first female vice-president, potentially setting her up for a successful White House bid after Biden leaves office.But Trump’s comments have underscored a consistent theme of Harris’s entire political career, one that will probably only be amplified if she becomes vice-president: it’s not easy being the first.…Harris’s involvement with political activism started when she was a child, a fact that she has frequently touted on the campaign trail. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and became involved with the civil rights movement. More

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      in Elections

      Kamala Harris grilling prompts doubtful claim from Amy Coney Barrett

      by

      Amy Coney Barrett

      Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee condemns Republican push to overturn healthcare law and abortion rights

      Play Video

      2:57

      Kamala Harris questions Amy Coney Barrett over the Affordable Care Act – video

      Kamala Harris delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican efforts to tear down healthcare and abortion access as she grilled Amy Coney Barrett, prompting the supreme court nominee to make the unbelievable claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare.
      Speaking via teleconference during Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee began with a campaign speech about the importance of accessible healthcare amid the coronavirus – highlighting the number of Americans who would lose insurance if the 2010 Affordable Care Act were repealed in five states where Republican senators are struggling to win re-election.
      She then addressed Barrett: “Prior to your nomination, were you aware of President Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who will strike down the Affordable Care Act? And I’d appreciate a yes or no answer.”
      Barrett maintained that before she was nominated to the supreme court, she was unaware of his public statements. “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements,” Barrett said.
      Harris asked how many months after Barrett wrote an article criticizing John Roberts’ decision upholding the Affordable Care Act she received her nomination for her appeals court position.
      “The Affordable Care Act and all of its protections hinge on this seat,” Harris said.
      “I would hope the committee would trust my integrity,” Barrett said, noting, as she has done throughout the hearings, that she has not made any commitments to rule a certain way on the healthcare law.
      The assertion, and Barrett’s implication that she had somehow tuned out the president’s loud, public criterion for judges he’d appoint, is difficult to believe.
      Harris, the former attorney general of California, is famous for her prosecutorial style of questioning. Her sharp interrogation of Donald Trump’s last Supreme Court nominee – now Justice Brett Kavanaugh – helped elevate her political profile.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      Complete exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris and Judge Kavanaugh on Mueller Investigation.Kavanaugh: “I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”Sen. Harris: “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” pic.twitter.com/3bP7rJ6u0L

      August 11, 2020

      Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it.
      Barrett was a member of a “right to life” organization that in 2016 promoted a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized for misleading and misdirecting vulnerable women seeking abortions. She has signed off on a newspaper ad calling Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 ruling protecting the right to choose – “barbaric”. A Notre Dame Magazine article from 2013 describes a lecture series during which Barrett “spoke … to her own conviction that life begins at conception”.
      As a federal judge, she has considered three laws restricting abortion and expressed misgivings about rulings that had struck down the laws. She joined the dissent against a decision to strike down an Indiana abortion rule – signed into law by Mike Pence when the vice-president was Indiana’s governor – that mandated the fetal remains be buried or cremated.
      “I would suggest that we not pretend that we don’t know how this nominee views a women’s right to choose or make her own decisions,” Harris said. The senator noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Barrett has cited as her model in declining to give any hints on how she would vote on future cases, was, unlike Barrett, much more forthcoming with her own personal views on abortion.
      Harris did not ask Barrett a direct question about Roe v Wade, driving home the point that her views have already been made plain.
      Harris ended by asking to enter into the record letters opposing Barrett’s nomination from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood.

      Topics

      Amy Coney Barrett

      Kamala Harris

      Republicans

      US elections 2020

      US supreme court

      US politics

      US Senate

      news

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    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      US election 2020: what if Trump refuses to concede? – podcast

      by

      Trump has repeatedly stated that he may refuse to accept defeat in the coming election. As Lawrence Douglas explains, things could get very messy if the result is close

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump famously declared that he would accept the result of the contest with Hillary Clinton, before pausing for dramatic effect and adding: “If I win.” Even after being sworn in as president he cast doubt over the legitimacy of millions of votes that had seen him lose the popular vote while winning in the electoral college. This time around, with millions more than usual expected to vote by mail and with him trailing badly in the polls, Trump is once again questioning the legitimacy of the voting system. Prof Lawrence Douglas, the author of the recently published Will He Go?, tells Anushka Asthana that the stage is being set for a disputed election if the result hinges on small margins and mail-in ballots, which take longer to count. In this scenario, he believes Trump is likely to refuse to concede if the vote goes against him. It could open up a legal and political minefield that the US constitution and the separated powers of the US government is ill-equipped to deal with. One thing is clear: a new president must be sworn in at noon on 21 January 2020. But who turns up to that ceremony could be the result of a bitter and protracted battle. More