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      Here’s how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic stronghold

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      Here’s how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic strongholdScroll through our visual guide to see why proposed Tennessee maps amount to a masterclass in gerrymanderingRepublican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it. Nashville currently sits in the state’s fifth congressional district, represented by Jim Cooper, a Democrat who has held the seat for nearly 20 years. It’s a solid Democratic district – Joe Biden carried it by nearly 24 points in 2020 – but on Tuesday, Cooper announced he was retiring from Congress.“Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the general assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole,” he said in a statement. “I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.”The new districts crack the concentration of Democratic voters in Nashville and cram them into three districts that stretch across the state and are filled with reliable Republican voters. Donald Trump would have easily carried all three of the proposed districts in 2020. The plan is one of the clearest, and most brazen, efforts to dismantle a Democratic district to benefit Republicans. @font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline 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      in US Politics

      Abolish Trump-era ‘China Initiative’, academics urge, amid racial profiling criticism

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      US universities Abolish Trump-era ‘China Initiative’, academics urge, amid racial profiling criticism Stanford University professors say the programme is fuelling racism and harming US competitiveness, rather than uncovering spies in universities Vincent Ni China affairs correspondentTue 14 Sep 2021 22.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 22.02 EDTCalls are growing to abolish a controversial Trump-era initiative that looks for Chinese spies at US universities, which critics say has resulted in racial profiling and harmed technological competitiveness.In a letter sent to the Department of Justice, 177 faculty members across 40 departments at Stanford University asked the US government to cease operating the “China Initiative”. They argue the programme harms academic freedom by racially profiling and unfairly targeting Chinese academics.The letter follows the acquittal last week by a US federal judge of a researcher accused of concealing ties with China while receiving American taxpayer-funded grants. “We understand that concerns about Chinese government-sanctioned activities including intellectual property theft and economic espionage are important to address,” the Stanford academics wrote. “We believe, however, that the China Initiative has deviated significantly from its claimed mission: it is harming the United States’ research and technology competitiveness and it is fuelling biases that, in turn, raise concerns about racial profiling.”The Guardian view on anti-Chinese suspicion: target espionage, not ethnicities | EditorialRead moreOn Thursday, a federal judge in Tennessee acquitted Anming Hu, an ethnic Chinese nanotechnology expert at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, who had been accused of concealing his ties to Beijing while applying for research funding to work on a Nasa project. The judge said the US government hadn’t proven its case.“Given the lack of evidence that defendant was aware of such an expansive interpretation of Nasa’s China funding restriction, the court concludes that, even viewing all the evidence in the light most favourable to the government, no rational jury could conclude that defendant acted with a scheme to defraud Nasa,” US district judge Thomas Varlan wrote in a 52-page ruling.Responding to the decision, the Department of Justice said “we respect the court’s decision, although we are disappointed with the result”, according to US media. Hu’s attorney, Phil Lomonaco, said the academic was focused now on recovering his tenured position at the University of Tennessee.“Many universities should have learned from the experience that professor was forced to endure,” Lomonaco said. “The Department of Justice needs to take a step back and reassess their approach on investigating Chinese professors in the United States universities. They are not all spies.”‘There’s a better way’The high-profile trial came after a series of arrests of US-based researchers who had been accused of not properly disclosing their work in China in recent years. After a jury deadlock, Hu’s case ended in mistrial in June. An FBI agent admitted that he had “used false information to justify putting a team of agents to spy on Hu and his son for two years”, according to local news reports.Confronting hate against east Asians – a photo essayRead moreThe Trump-era China Initiative began in 2018. In justifying such an operation, Department of Justice said on its website: “The Department of Justice’s China Initiative reflects the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the president’s overall national security strategy.” It also publishes a list of successful prosecutions – with the latest one on 14 May.But critics say while it is necessary for the US to protect its national security, such a programme that targets an entire ethnic group would end up in discrimination against Asian Americans – in particular those who are of Chinese origin.On 30 July, 90 members of the US congress urged the Department of Justice to investigate what they called “the repeated, wrongful targeting of individuals of Asian descent for alleged espionage”, in a letter to attorney general Merrick Garland.Last week, Democratic congressman Ted Lieu demanded the Justice Department apologise to Hu. “You should stop discriminating against Asians. You should investigate your prosecutors for engaging in what looks like racial profiling. If Hu’s last name was Smith, you would not have brought this case,” he wrote.Hate crimes in US rise to highest level in 12 years, says FBI reportRead moreThe recent round of calls came in the wake of growing violence against Asians in the US. According to an FBI annual report last month, the number of reported crimes against people of Asian decent grew by 70% last year, totalling 274 cases.Margaret Lewis of Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, who has been calling on the US government to rethink its approach to research security, said: “I understand the need to be concerned about the Chinese government’s behaviour that incentivises violations of US law, but the US should first not engage in rhetoric that fuels xenophobia and racism.“It worries me that people with certain characteristics might fall under suspicion,” she said. “Let us not pretend there’s no concern about Beijing, but there’s a better way to do it. Getting rid of the name is the first step.”TopicsUS universitiesChinaDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS foreign policyAsia PacificnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      'Hateful' Tweet About Stacey Abrams Costs UT-Chattanooga Football Coach His Job

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      Georgia Runoff Updates

      Warnock and Ossoff Win

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      Live Forecast

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      Kanye West announces 'Kanye 2024' as he fails to make election impact

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      Kanye West has suggested he will run for president in 2024, following his failed bid this year.
      Alongside a photo of him next to an electoral map filled with Republican and Democrat wins, he tweeted “welp”, an expression of disappointment. He added: “Kanye 2024”.

      ye
      (@kanyewest)
      WELP KANYE 2024 🕊 pic.twitter.com/tJOZcxdArb

      November 4, 2020

      West was a latecomer to the 2020 race, announcing his candidacy in July. Initially focusing on abortion and faith, he later drew up a 10-point platform, calling for support for the environment and arts, an anti-interventionist foreign policy, and reforms to the legal system and policing.
      He struggled to make it to the ballots of many states, including some that legally barred him from appearing, and encouraged supporters to write him on to their ballot papers. Across the 12 states whose ballots he appeared on, he won fewer than 60,000 votes. He found most success in Tennessee, winning more than 10,000 votes, 0.3% of the state’s total.
      As he cast his own vote, West said he had never previously voted in a presidential election. He tweeted: “God is so good. Today I am voting for the first time in my life for the President of the United States, and it’s for someone I truly trust … me.” More

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      Biden and Trump diverge sharply on major issues in final presidential debate

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      The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during Thursday night’s final presidential debate, as the president attempted to reset a race that shows him trailing his opponent in opinion polls less than two weeks before election day.
      The evening in Nashville began relatively calmly, with the rivals making their closing arguments to the nation amid a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president. In part due to the pandemic, more than 40 million Americans have already cast their ballot, shattering records and leaving Trump an increasingly narrow window to reset the debate around his handling of the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.
      But Trump continued to downplay the severity of the public health crisis, defending his response and predicting that a vaccine was imminent, even though his own public health experts have said one would likely not be widely available to the American public until next summer.
      “It will go away,” Trump said, offering a rosy assessment of the pandemic’s trajectory even as cases have started rising again across the US and public health experts warn that the US is on the precipice of a dangerous new wave.
      “We’re rounding the corner,” he added.
      “We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy,” Trump said. “There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody’s ever seen before. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”
      In contrast, Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging the grim toll of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that the nation must prepare for “a dark winter”.
      Biden said: “220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States.”

      The 90-minute debate was a far more coherent and civil affair than the first presidential debate last month, which devolved into a chaotic brawl with Trump incessantly hectoring his opponent and sparring with the moderator. The shift in tone was probably due to a rule change that required a candidate’s microphone to be muted while his rival delivered a two-minute response to the opening question on each of the six debate topics.
      On Thursday, Trump largely abided by the rules, allowing Biden to speak uninterrupted, and even complimenting the moderator, the NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker, who he spent the last week criticizing.
      Biden, too, was more restrained. When Trump made a false claim about his opponent, Biden looked skyward, as if calling on a higher power to keep him from reacting. But it didn’t always stop him.
      When Trump said Biden called his decision to impose Covid-19 related travel restrictions on China “xenophobic”, the Democrat shot back: “He is xenophobic, but not because he cut off access from China.”
      The stakes were high for both candidates, even if the debate was unlikely to dramatically redefine the contours of the presidential race. Despite the cascading public health and economic crises, Biden has maintained a steady lead over the incumbent, according to public opinion polls, while Trump has struggled to outline his vision for a second term and grapple with voters’ disapproval of his response to the pandemic.
      Despite the increasingly ugly and personal nature of the campaign, the evening featured a substantive policy debate as the candidates diverged sharply on the issues of race, immigration and climate.

      They were asked to speak directly to the black and brown Americans about racism in America. Biden said plainly that institutional racism exists and that combatting racial inequality would be a priority of his administration. Trump, ignoring the prompt, assailed his opponent for playing a central role writing the 1994 crime bill that many experts and critics say laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities. Shielding his eyes to peer into the audience and concluding it was too dark to see properly, Trump was nonetheless confident that he was the “least racist person in this room”.
      Biden was incredulous. “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn,” he said, accusing Trump of being “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history” and a leader who intentionally “pours fuel on every single racist fire”.
      In an exchange on immigration, Trump attempted to defend his administration’s decision to separate thousands of immigrant families at the southern border, even after revelations that 545 children have still not been reunited with their parents after two years apart. The president said the White House was working on a plan to reunite the children and their parents but insisted the blame lay with the Obama administration, which enforced a record number of deportations.
      Biden forcefully denied that the previous administration was responsible for Trump’s family separation policy, decrying the situation as “criminal”.
      But pressed on why voters should trust him to deliver immigration reform when the Obama administration failed to deliver on this promise, he conceded: “we made a mistake. It took too long to get it right.”

      The final moments of the debate were devoted to a discussion on climate change. Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy – while again disputing Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not.
      “I know more about wind than you do,” Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. “It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds.”
      But at one point Biden said he would “transition from the oil industry” and replace it with renewable energy over the next several years. “That’s a big statement,” Trump said.
      Departing Nashville after the debate, Biden sought to clarify the remark: “We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels.”

      The candidates also clashed sharply on their finances and family business entanglements.
      Citing revelations in the New York Times that Trump only paid $750 a year in federal income taxes while maintaining an undisclosed bank account in China, Biden implored Trump to “release your tax returns or stop talking about corruption”. Trump, who has not yet released his tax returns, claimed his accountants told him that he had “prepaid tens of millions of dollars” in taxes.
      In turn, Trump repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated claims about the former vice-president’s son Hunter Biden. The Democratic nominee defended his son and categorically denied the accusations as he sought to turn the conversation back to policy.
      “There’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey,” Biden said, speaking directly to the camera. “He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.” More

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      in US Politics

      States use coronavirus to ban abortions, leaving women desperate: ‘You can’t pause a pregnancy’

      by

      Eight US states have worked to try and halt abortions entirely during the pandemic as clinics report a rise in demand Pro-choice activists supporting legal access to abortion protest outside the supreme court in Washington DC on 4 March. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images A woman in Texas was isolating with her family. She […] More