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'It's all fake': Trump's manufacturing jobs promises ring hollow in midwest
Manufacturing sector
Workers are feeling abandoned and betrayed after promises on the campaign trail to boost factory jobs fell woefully short More
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'We don't have any choice': the young activists naming and shaming US politicians
It was a Saturday night in September when 160 or so middle and high school students logged on to a Zoom call about how to confront American politicians using tactics inspired by young civil rights activists fighting for the abolition of slavery.The teenagers were online with the Sunrise Movement, a nationwide youth-led climate justice collective, to learn about organizing Wide Awake actions – noisy night-time protests – to force lawmakers accused of ignoring the climate emergency and racial injustice to listen to their demands.It’s a civil disobedience tactic devised by the Wide Awakes – a radical youth abolitionist organization who confronted anti-abolitionists at night by banging pots and pans outside their homes in the run-up to the civil war.Now, in the run-up to one of the most momentous elections in modern history, a new generation of young Americans who say they are tired of asking nicely and being ignored, are naming and shaming US politicians in an effort to get their concerns about the planet, police brutality, inequalities and immigration heard.The first one targeted the Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell after details emerged about the police killing of Breonna Taylor. In the days following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sunrise activists woke up key Republican senators including McConnell and Lindsey Graham, demanding that they delay the vote on Trump’s supreme court nominee until a new president is sworn in.“Even though we can’t vote, we can show up on the streets and wake up politicians. It’s our future on the line not theirs,” said 17-year-old Abby DiNardo, a senior from Delaware county. The high school senior recently coordinated a Wide Awake action outside the home of the Republican senator Pat Toomey, a former Wall Street banker who has repeatedly voted against climate action measures.The Sunrise Movement was founded by a small group of disparate young activists in 2017 and initially focussed on helping elect proponents of clean energy in the 2018 midterms. More
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Top Senate Republican says he has the votes to confirm Amy Coney Barrett
Amy Coney Barrett
Judiciary committee expected to confirm supreme court justice nomination on 22 October before advancing to full Senate ballot More
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Top Trump administration figures flout law banning partisan campaigning
Trump administration
The agriculture secretary is the latest of 14 political appointees to be cited by the government watchdog for violating the Hatch Act More
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Trump is ending the census count early. It's a feat of profound political cynicism | Andrew Gawthorpe
A Supreme Court ruling this week allowed the Trump administration to end the 2020 census two weeks early, risking an undercount of members of the population who are difficult to reach – particularly immigrants, transients, and the poor. From the beginning, the administration has attempted to meddle with what is usually a scrupulously non-partisan process in order to advance its goal of disenfranchising and immiserating parts of the country which do not vote Republican. And following this court ruling, it is on track to get away with it.Even by Trump’s own standards of naked partisanship and self-dealing, the weaponization of the census has been cynical and alarming. By deliberately attempting to produce an undercount in certain parts of the country, and by trying to seize control of the process whereby the census is used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives and Electoral College, the administration is leaving behind a tainted legacy.Why does the census even matter? As well as being the basis for distributing political power between and within the states, the data from the census guides the allocation of about $1.5t in federal funding each year. The constitution states that the census has to take place every ten years and be based on an “actual enumeration” of residents, meaning that the Census Bureau is not permitted to use statistical models to make up for an inaccurate count. If the census isn’t accurate, then the country has to live with the consequences until the next one takes place a decade later.The Trump administration’s interference began with its attempt to insert a citizenship question into the census, which was designed to suppress responses from immigrants. After the Supreme Court found that excuses for inserting the question were “contrived”, Trump claimed the right to unilaterally alter the Census Bureau’s count to exclude undocumented immigrants. The administration is now rushing to end the census early in order to ensure that Trump, and not a successor with more respect for the constitution, is still in the White House to transmit the altered figures.The immediate result of this move would be diminished political representation and federal resources for communities with large numbers of such immigrants. But the more long-term result would be the delegitimization of yet another vital institution. In recent years, Republicans have cynically stacked the Supreme Court and undermined confidence in the electoral process through baseless conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots. Now they refuse to carry out the simple act of counting how many people are resident in the country in order to fairly distribute power and resources. With every institution they bring low, they undermine the trust that makes governing a large and diverse democracy possible.The politicization of the census is just as disturbing as these other developments. It is a basic principle of democracy that power and resources be distributed based on population – one person, one vote, one equal share. As Republicans face the reality of a demographic shift away from their ageing white base, they would rather deny the very existence of groups to which they are unfavorable – particularly immigrants – than share power and resources. It wouldn’t be the first time the party has pulled this trick. After the 1920 census showed that city dwellers – many of whom were immigrants – outnumbered rural residents for the first time in American history, the Republican-led House of Representatives refused to reapportion Congressional seats accordingly. It took decades and the intervention of the Supreme Court to restore a semblance of fairness.As they attempt to cope with yet another Republican attack on democracy, Democrats have no clear guidelines on how to respond. This time it is they who control the House of Representatives, but it is unclear what will happen if Democrats simply refuse to accept the incorrect figures transmitted by the Trump White House. The most likely outcome is that no reapportionment will happen at all, freezing the country in an unfair and regressive status quo. And for so long as the filibuster stifles the Senate, legal changes which might ameliorate the negative impacts of a sabotaged count will be hard if not impossible to achieve.But the broader issue raised by the census is how Republican nativism and partisanship exert a death grip on American politics. When one of the two main parties no longer believes in democracy, it forces people to expend time and energy battling for the most basic of principles – even the right to have their existence acknowledged – rather than working to address the country’s very real problems. Removing Republicans from power in November won’t free the nation from this problem. The battle to rejuvenate American democracy will still be long and hard. But it will at least be a victory for the principle that every vote has a right to be counted and every voice has a right to be heard. And from there, a true reckoning with what ails the nation can begin. More
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Trump ally running for Congress believes in baseless QAnon sex-trafficking conspiracy
Anywhere but Washington
Republicans
Angela Stanton King, who is working to help the president win Black voters, confirmed her views to the Guardian
Play Video
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 - in Elections
Millions of Americans voting early in what could be record election turnout
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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Amy Coney Barrett hearing: top Republican praises judge for being 'unashamedly pro-life' – live
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
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UpdatedPlay Video
Amy Coney Barrett questioned on third day of supreme court hearing – watch live
Key events
Show
5.48pm EDT17:48
Public hearing poortion ends5.00pm EDT17:00
Today so far4.06pm EDT16:06
Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals1.15pm EDT13:15
Today so far12.33pm EDT12:33
Third day of Barrett’s nomination hearings resumes12.01pm EDT12:01
First break in today’s hearing10.27am EDT10:27
Virginia voter registration deadline extended after technical failureLive 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 EDT5.40pm 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/gv9KN904fuOctober 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/XHix45wzlwOctober 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/aiGXBSbHRZOctober 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/XUysq0KVaYOctober 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
