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      Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to supreme court in major victory for US conservatives

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      The US Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, delivering Donald Trump a huge but partisan victory just eight days before the election and locking in rightwing domination of the nation’s highest court for years to come.

      The vote was a formality, with senators divided almost entirely along party lines, voting 52 to 48 with just one Republican breaking ranks. But it still marked a seismic moment for Trump, for the supreme court and for American democracy.
      For the president, it meant his legacy on judicial appointees is secure whatever the outcome of next week’s election. Trump will have placed three conservative justices on the court, albeit in highly contentious circumstances.
      For the supreme court, it sealed an unassailable six to three balance between conservatives and liberal justices. The oldest of those conservatives, Clarence Thomas, is 72 and still has potentially many years to serve within his lifetime appointment.
      Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, underlined the political importance of the moment when he said on Sunday: “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
      For US democracy, the confirmation gives the conservative justices the upper hand on such hot-button issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and the climate crisis – areas where public opinion is firmly in favor of progressive change.

      Following the vote, a swearing-in ceremony was held at the White House. Trump introduced Barrett saying that her addition to the court carried forward “the cause of freedom”. In her speech, Barrett said she would conduct her new job “independently of both branches [of government] and of my own preferences”.
      She thanked the senate for “the confidence you have placed in me”, ignoring the inconvenient truth that half the political composition of the chamber had turned its back on her.
      The sole rebel from party ranks was the Republican senator Susan Collins who voted against Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in the day Collins said she had based her decision not on the judge’s qualifications but on a sense of fairness, though Collins’s tough re-election fight in Maine no doubt focused her attention.
      The confirmation will leave a residue of bitter partisan rancor given the Republican rush to push Barrett through days before the election – the closest confirmation to a presidential election in US history – having refused four years ago to countenance Barack Obama’s pick for the supreme court on grounds that the people should decide.
      Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate cast Barrett’s confirmation as one of the “darkest days in the 231-year history” of the Senate in his party’s closing arguments. Addressing his Republican peers, he said: “You may get Amy Coney Barrett on to the supreme court but you will never, never get your credibility back.”
      Joe Biden also protested the confirmation. During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, he tweeted: “More than 60 million Americans have already voted. They deserve to have their voices heard on who replaced justice Ginsburg.”
      McConnell was dismissive of Democratic laments, deriding them as a 50-year-old tactic. “What they want is activist judges, a small panel of lawyers with elite education to reason backwards from outcomes and enlighten all the rest of us,” he said shortly before the Senate vote was called.
      Barrett, 48, becomes only the fifth woman to sit on the supreme court. Trump moved quickly to nominate her to succeed the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on 18 September at age 87. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump plans new White House event for Amy Coney Barrett swearing-in

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      Senate expected to confirm supreme court nominee on MondayPrevious Barrett reception was branded a ‘superspreader event’US politics – live coverageDonald Trump was planning on Monday to dismiss public health concerns and hold a swearing-in ceremony within hours of Amy Coney Barrett’s expected Senate confirmation to the supreme court. Related: Amy Coney Barrett’s past calls into question her pledges of impartiality Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      Democrats hold Senate floor overnight to protest Amy Coney Barrett confirmation – live

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      Key events

      Show

      5.52am EDT05:52
      Kremlin criticises Joe Biden over his Russia comments, saying they ‘encourage hatred of Russia’

      3.27am EDT03:27
      McConnell: ‘they won’t be able to do much about this for a long time’

      1.46am EDT01:46
      Democrats hold senate floor overnight in protest of Barrett

      Live feed

      Show

      5.52am EDT05:52

      Kremlin criticises Joe Biden over his Russia comments, saying they ‘encourage hatred of Russia’

      A quick bit of foreign policy news from Reuters here, firstly over nuclear weapons. The New Start treaty between Russia and the US expires shortly, it’s the last remaining nuclear agreement between the two nations, and there’s as yet no concrete signs of it being extended.
      Russia has today suggested that it would refrain from deploying thousands of missiles if Nato would agree to similar measures, and is proposing “mutual verification measures”.
      The Kremlin has also commented again on the US election, saying that a statement from Joe Biden that Russia is the main threat to the US is “not true”. A Kremlin spokesperson said such statements encourage hatred of Russia.

      5.47am EDT05:47

      We’ve got a live feed of Senate proceedings up above in the blog – you may need to refresh the page to get the play button to appear. Here’s a clip of Sen. Chris Murphy from earlier.

      Senate Democrats
      (@SenateDems)
      Senate Republicans are rushing through Judge Barrett’s nomination so they can finally do what they’ve been trying to do for years: repeal the ACA, end insurance for millions, and strip protections for pre-existing conditions.Sen. Murphy explains. pic.twitter.com/HBiWQUn70d

      October 26, 2020

      Sen. Tim Kaine followed him, and he finished his speech by saying that Republican leaders would not wear masks to cover their noses and mouths and protect themselves and others from the coronavirus, but that the “soulless process” of confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court showed they were willing to “cover their eyes and their ears”.

      5.43am EDT05:43

      Oliver Milman writes for us that the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is pretty stark in terms of consequences for the global environment.

      The international effort to constrain dangerous global heating will hinge, in large part, on which of the dichotomous approaches of Donald Trump or Joe Biden prevails.
      On 4 November, the day after the election, the US will exit the Paris climate agreement, a global pact that has wobbled but not collapsed from nearly four years of disparagement and disengagement under Trump.
      Biden has vowed to immediately rejoin the Paris deal. The potential of a second Trump term, however, is foreboding for those whose anxiety has only escalated during the hottest summer ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, with huge wildfires scorching California and swaths of central South America, and extraordinary temperatures baking the Arctic.
      “It’s a decision of great consequence, to both the US and the world,” said Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat and key architect of the Paris accords. “The rest of the world is moving to a low-carbon future, but we need to collectively start moving even faster, and the US still has a significant global role to play in marshaling this effort.”
      Few countries are on track to fulfill commitments made in Paris five years ago to slash their planet-heating emissions and keep the global temperature rise to “well below” 2C of warming beyond the pre-industrial era. The world has already warmed by about 1C since this time, helping set in motion a cascade of heatwaves, fierce storms and flooding around the planet.

      Read more here: Climate at a crossroads as Trump and Biden point in different directions

      5.31am EDT05:31

      The summer has been characterised by a series of extreme weather events on both coasts of the US, and that looks set to continue.
      Hundreds of thousands of Californians lost power as utilities sought to prevent the chance of their equipment sparking wildfires and the fire-weary state braced for a new bout of dry, windy weather.
      More than 1 million people were expected be in the dark Monday during what officials have said could be the strongest wind event in California this year, reports the Associate Press. More

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      Revealed: the full extent of Trump’s ‘meat cleaver’ assault on US wilderness

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      For thousands of years, Native nations of the US south-west lived in the majestic canyons of Bears Ears.

      But it was land that conservative politicians and corporate interests also sought to control.

      So in late 2016, the Hopi celebrated when the Obama administration protected Bears Ears by declaring it a national monument, sheltering it from development and extraction.

      Just one year later, after Donald Trump took office, he drastically reduced the size of the monument by 85%.

      The administration justified the rollback by pointing to some local residents who opposed the monument. In truth it was also responding to a push by groups with deep ties to major GOP donors and the extractive industries.

      As the industry grew, the breaking point for Rogers was when a drilling pad was installed across the street from the home of a church family. Noxious fumes, nonstop industrial noise and dead birds followed, as Rogers tells it.

      The family reported headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory problems. Earlier this year, a pipe broke in the middle of the night and spewed a fluid drilling byproduct over the family’s home and livestock.

      The town is located in the middle of vast oil and gas fields, much of which are public lands.

      The Trump administration has opened up significant swaths of land around Carlsbad for oil and gas drilling.

      Scientists at the University of Wyoming discovered the Red Desert was the starting point of a wondrous large-mammal migration.

      Each year, hundreds of mule deer – a struggling species unique to the west – travel a 300-mile round trip from the Red Desert to forests south of Jackson Hole and back to feast on fresh greenery and bulk up in anticipation of winter.

      “It is the longest migration so far recorded for the species,” says Dr Matt Kauffman, a scientist with the US Geological Survey and the leader of the Wyoming Migration Initiative that maps migration corridors across Wyoming and the west. Each animal learns the route from its herd and follows the path “for the rest of its life”, he said.

      But around and within the corridor, land being leased for oil and gas drilling is on the rise. This magnificent migration depends on the region’s relatively undisturbed landscape, which includes private land as well as vast tracts of public land. More

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      in US Politics

      White House chief of staff says 'we're not going to control pandemic', after Pence staffers test positive – as it happened

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.32pm EDT17:32
      Summary

      1.35pm EDT13:35
      Senate to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court tomorrow

      9.50am EDT09:50
      Meadows: ‘We’re not going to control the pandemic’

      9.06am EDT09:06
      Lincoln Project lawyer to Kushner and Ivanka: ‘Sue if you must’

      8.21am EDT08:21
      US just misses new Covid case record – a day after setting it

      8.02am EDT08:02
      Good morning…

      Live feed

      Show

      5.32pm EDT17:32

      Summary

      Here’s a quick overview of what happened today:
      The Senate, which is in the middle of a special weekend session, made its final step toward confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court. Senate Republicans overrode a Democratic filibuster and are set to confirm Barrett tomorrow night.
      White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in an interview with CNN that the president is “not going to control the pandemic”. The unusually candid statement gave insight into the mindset of a White House that has, from the beginning, played down the effect of the coronavirus.
      Meanwhile, the US merely set a new Covid case record on Saturday, coming close to the 83,757 cases that were reported on Friday – the highest number in a single day – at 83,718 new cases. US health officials have for weeks voiced concerns of a new surge as the weather gets colder, and people stay indoors where the virus is more likely to spread.
      We’ll be back tomorrow with more live updates. Thanks for reading.

      5.24pm EDT17:24

      A ballot drop box that held more than 120 ballots was set on fire in Boston earlier Sunday. The box was outside the Boston Public Library in downtown Boston. Police say that the fire appears to have been a “deliberate attack”.
      Officials said that of the 122 ballots that were inside the box when it was emptied, and 87 of the ballots were still legible and able to process. The Massachusetts secretary of state said that voters whose ballots were affected by the fire will be sent a new ballot and will also have the option of voting early in person, if they choose.
      Security cameras around the box showed footage of a person setting fire to the box. The Boston Police Department is asking the public to help identify the person who started the fire.

      Boston Police Dept.
      (@bostonpolice)
      BPD Investigating Ballot Box Fire in the area of 700 Boylston Street in Boston. https://t.co/8FYA34H815 pic.twitter.com/FNrO1PpEUg

      October 25, 2020

      In a joint statement, William Galvin, Massachusetts’ secretary of state, and Boston mayor Marty Walsh said: “We ask voters not to be intimidated by this bad act, and remain committed to making their voices heard in this and every election.”

      5.08pm EDT17:08

      Donald Trump Jr. posed in front of a “Don Jr. 2024” sign for a picture he posted on Instagram yesterday.
      “Hahahahaha. Oh boy. This was a sign up at the Fallon Nevada Livestock Auction,” he wrote on Instagram. “This will make the lib heads explode. To whomever made that thanks for the compliment… but let’s get through 2020 with a big win first!!!!!”

      Ben Riley-Smith
      (@benrileysmith)
      Hmm. Don Jr not going out of his way to play down the 2024 speculation. pic.twitter.com/G99NigQSpA

      October 24, 2020

      Though Nevada went blue for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the state is technically a swing state that leans slightly left. Joe Biden holds a lead over Trump in the state, where Democratic voters are concentrated in Las Vegas and its surrounding suburbs while Republicans can be found in more rural areas of the state.
      Donald Trump Jr, 42, is best known for being an internet provocateur, complementing his father’s brashness and inclination for sharing disinformation on Twitter. Trump hasn’t been as involved in White House policy as his sister, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, nor has he been as active in running the Trump Organization as his brother, Eric, but Don Jr. has seemed to be the Trump offspring most inclined to politics and has turned into a valuable asset for his father’s campaign.
      “Don Jr. represents the emotional center of the MAGA universe,” Jason MIller, a senior advisor on Trump’s campaign, told the New York Times.
      While Trump has only joked about running for office, a Vice reporter suggested that Pennsylvania Republicans were floating the idea of Trump replacing a Republican Senator from the state who will be retiring. Trump himself has not spoken about the Pennsylvania Senate seat.

      4.34pm EDT16:34

      At least 58 million Americans have voted in the 2020 general election through early voting, according to Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who is running the US Election Project that’s keeping tabs on early voting count.
      Using individual state reports with ballot counts, the project estimates that 39.7 million Americans have voted by mail while 19 million have voted early in-person. Over 19 million of the total early votes come from California, Texas and Florida – the states with the highest population. Across 19 states that provide party registration with their reports, 13 million have been Democrat while 7 million are Republican. Another 6 million are registered independents.
      On Twitter, McDonald pointed out that Texas has hit nearly 80% of the total turnout in the state in 2016. McDonald has suggested that this election could have the highest voter turnout since 1908, with an estimated 65% of eligible voters participating in the election.

      Michael McDonald
      (@ElectProject)
      #earlyvote morning update 10/25At least 58 million people have voted in the 2020 general election 🥳https://t.co/s8K2xFDeSA pic.twitter.com/8NI64sWGRq

      October 25, 2020

      Joining the group of early voters is this interesting group of Joe Biden supporters in Nevada.

      Rex Chapman🏇🏼
      (@RexChapman)
      Nevada: Biden voters. Latinos. On horseback. In style.This is my America… pic.twitter.com/8ri9Ur7SyH

      October 25, 2020

      4.13pm EDT16:13

      From the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe in Miami:
      Born in Hawaii with deep roots in Chicago, Barack Obama is far removed from the traditional image of Florida Man. But with two appearances here in four days stumping for Joe Biden, the former president is relishing the atmosphere of the Sunshine State in the final days of the 2020 campaign.
      On Tuesday, Obama will follow up Saturday’s skewering of Donald Trump at a drive-in rally in North Miami with a similar gathering in Orlando, the exact details yet to be released by the Biden campaign.
      But the event means that, inside 96 hours, Obama will have made the same number of Florida appearances campaigning for his former vice-president that he did for Hillary Clinton in the last weeks of her run for the White House four years ago,
      “Oh, it’s good to be back in Florida,” Obama told the crowd in North Miami, shortly after paying a surprise visit to thank campaign workers in the nearby city of Miami Springs who helped him carry the state in 2008 and 2012.
      “You delivered twice for me, Florida. And now I’m asking you to deliver for Joe and deliver for Kamala.”
      Obama’s role in flipping Florida back blue after Trump seized the state by barely 1.2 percent in 2016 is more than just symbolic. Popular with Hispanic voters to a level that Biden has not been able to achieve, his messaging in a state where 2.5 million Latinos make up 17 percent of the electorate is crucial.
      On Saturday, he attacked Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and noted it had “hit African Americans and Latinos harder than anybody in Florida.”
      It is a point he is certain to press again on Tuesday in Orlando, the heart of the I-4 corridor with a significant Hispanic population, including about 300,000 Puerto Ricans.
      The demographic also offers Obama another opportunity to slam Trump. Criticism of the president’s handling of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island, was loud among Central Florida’s Puerto Rican community, with images of Trump casually tossing rolls of paper towels to suffering residents still fresh.
      “When a hurricane devastates Puerto Rico, a president’s supposed to help it rebuild, not toss paper towels [or] withhold billions of dollars in aid until just before an election,” Obama told the crowd in Miami.
      Expect more of the same in Orlando on Tuesday as Trump, the ultimate Florida Man, gets roasted by his nemesis once again.

      3.53pm EDT15:53

      Joe Biden released a statement in response to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ interview with CNN today where he said that the White House is not going to control the pandemic.
      “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We’re going to control the fact that we get a vaccine, therapeutics and other mitigation,” Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
      Biden said that the interview wasn’t a slip-up, but “a candid acknowledgement of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

      Scott Wong
      (@scottwongDC)
      BIDEN: “This wasn’t a slip by Meadows, it was a candid acknowledgement of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.” pic.twitter.com/BTizJZMQdf

      October 25, 2020

      3.30pm EDT15:30

      Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he’s happy with Donald Trump’s coziness with Russia, but the Kremlin today contradicted Trump and said that he doesn’t believe Joe Biden’s ties with Ukraine are criminal.
      Trump used Thursday’s debate with Biden as an opportunity to accuse Biden’s son of having unethical ties to Ukraine, accusations that have not been verified and that Biden has denied.
      According to Reuters, Putin said today that he is willing to work with any US leader, but noted that Biden has “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric”. Here’s more from the Reuters report:

      Putin appeared less friendly towards Trump in remarks broadcast by Russian state TV on Sunday. In what may be seen by some analysts as an attempt to try to curry favour with the Biden camp, the Russian presdient took the time to knock down what he made clear he regarded as false allegations from Trump about the Bidens.
      “Yes, in Ukraine he [Hunter Biden] had or maybe still has a business, I don’t know. It doesn’t concern us. It concerns the Americans and the Ukrainians,” said Putin.
      “But well yes he had at least one company, which he practically headed up, and judging from everything he made good money. I don’t see anything criminal about this, at least we don’t know anything about this [being criminal]”.

      3.00pm EDT15:00

      Mike Pence, who as vice president is technically the president of the Senate, is coming under criticism from Democrats for planning to come into the chamber to preside over the vote for Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
      At a rally in Florida yesterday, Pence said “I wouldn’t miss that vote for the world”. Pence’s appearance would be symbolic as he does not need to be physically present in the Senate for the confirmation to go through.
      Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer denounced Pence’s plan to attend the vote tomorrow, saying it sets “a terrible, terrible example for the American public”.
      “It is clear to me that their closing message is that they’re going to personally deliver Covid to as many people as possible,” Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator for Hawaii, told a reporter.

      Igor Bobic
      (@igorbobic)
      “It is clear to me that their closing message is that they’re going to personally deliver COVID to as many people as possible,” Schatz adds

      October 25, 2020

      At least five people close to Pence, including his chief of staff, have tested positive for Covid-19. A White House official said Sunday that Pence and his wife have tested negative for the virus. His office said that the vice president does not plan to quarantine. Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say a person should quarantine for 14 days if they were in close contact with a person who tested positive, even if they themselves do not have symptoms or tested negative.
      Pence, who is head of the White House’s coronavirus task force, has said that he can bypass CDC guidelines because he is an essential worker – a claim that has been questioned by health experts.

      2.27pm EDT14:27

      Ed Pilkington

      Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, is having a field day over the comments of the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows this morning. In a rare moment of transparency, Meadows admitted to a Sunday political talk show that the Trump administration had no intention of containing coronavirus, saying: “We’re not going to control the pandemic”.
      Cuomo said that thinking was tantamount to giving in to the virus. “They surrendered without firing a shot. It was the great American surrender,” he said on Sunday, as reported by the Daily News.
      The New York governor said that the Trump administration’s approach to Covid was summed up from the start by such capitulation. “They have believed from the beginning that they can’t control the virus,” he said.
      By contrast, Cuomo prides himself on having wrestled coronavirus to the ground. After a bad start to the pandemic, which saw New York City become the world’s top hotspot, the rate of infection has been reduced to one of the lowest in the country through an aggressive program of testing and contact tracing.
      There have been a total of almost 500,000 confirmed cases in the state, and 25,730 deaths. About 120,000 New Yorkers are being tested every day.
      “What we learned in New York was, if you put up a fight you will have won. Because New York won,” Cuomo said.

      2.10pm EDT14:10

      After the Senate voted to move forward with the final vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor, celebrating the lasting influence of the vote for posterity.
      “By tomorrow night, we’ll have a new member of the United States Supreme Court,” he told the chamber.
      McConnell acknowledged that this election could change the tide in Washington but said that not much could be done to change the nature of the court “for a long time to come”.

      Nicholas Fandos
      (@npfandos)
      McConnell, just after the Senate votes to limit debate on Amy Coney Barrett: “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

      October 25, 2020

      One Capitol Hill reporter noted that it appears the bruising on McConnell’s face and hands that were seen on Friday appeared to have gotten better. Apparently, getting three judges onto the Supreme Court in four years can do wonders to one’s health.

      Seung Min Kim
      (@seungminkim)
      Also, McConnell’s right hand, which was deeply bruised earlier this week and prompted several Qs about his health, appears much better. Most of the bruising is gone https://t.co/WPFJcqsog2

      October 25, 2020

      Updated
      at 2.19pm EDT

      1.35pm EDT13:35

      Senate to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court tomorrow

      The Senate just made a 51-48 vote to move forward with the final vote for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Republicans overrode a Democratic filibuster with today’s vote, and the final vote for her confirmation will take place tomorrow night.
      With the Republican majority in the Senate, Barrett’s nomination is pretty much a guarantee, despite weeks of criticism from Democrats about a Supreme Court nomination weeks before the presidential election.

      Manu Raju
      (@mkraju)
      #Breaking: Amy Coney Barrett on track for confirmation tomorrow evening after Senate Republicans defeat a Democratic filibuster, 51-48, during a rare Sunday session just nine days before the election

      October 25, 2020

      Updated
      at 4.31pm EDT

      1.10pm EDT13:10

      The NFL has fined the Tennessee Titans $350,000 for violating protocols leading to the league’s first Covid-19 outbreak during the season, multiple outlets are reporting.
      The Titans had 24 people, including 13 players, test positive for the coronavirus between 24 September and 11 October. The outbreak led the NFL to postpone two Tennessee games and the rescheduling of a game against Pittsburgh from 4 October to today and the second against Buffalo from 11 October to 13 October.
      The league and its players association sent officials, including infectious disease experts, to Nashville where they reviewed video and interviewed players, coaches and other personnel.
      ESPN reports the NFL informed the Titans last week that their review had concluded and the organization would face a potential fine. Individuals would not be disciplined and there was no discussion of forfeiture of draft picks.

      12.35pm EDT12:35

      Archie Bland

      One of the more surprising headlines of the day comes from the Wall Street Journal in: Health Agency Halts Coronavirus Ad Campaign, Leaving Santa Claus in the Cold.
      The WSJ reports that the Trump administration offered Santa Claus performers a deal: if they agreed to promote a Covid-19 vaccine, they would get early access to it. The story says that performers playing Mrs Claus or elves would also have been included. But the plan has now been called off.
      The article continues:

      Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, called the news “extremely disappointing”, adding: “this was our greatest hope for Christmas 2020, and now it looks like it won’t happen.”

      You can read more of this belter at the Wall Street Journal (although it’s behind a paywall).

      12.08pm EDT12:08

      The US Senate has started day two of a rare weekend session to continue debate over the confirmation of federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.
      Democrats have expressed outrage at the vacancy being filled so close to the election – in fact boycotting Thursday’s vote to advance her nomination to the full Senate – but the Republicans’ 53-37 majority in the upper chamber ensures they have the votes they need to approve her nomination and cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court for years to come.
      No supreme court nominee has ever been installed so close to a presidential election and, just four years ago, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and senator Lindsey Graham, who now chairs the judiciary committee, said that installing a nominee in an election year would be a shameful defiance of the will of voters.
      Barrett, 48, is expected to be confirmed Monday and quickly join the court.

      12.04pm EDT12:04

      More from Richard Luscombe…
      Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, was grilled on NBC’s Meet the Press about the Democrat nominee’s “light physical footprint”.
      To the backdrop of a graphic comparing Biden’s appearances since September in four key battleground states – North Carolina, Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania – to Trump’s (the president leads 19-14), host Chuck Todd wanted to know why Biden was concentrating heavily on Georgia instead of more northerly swing states.
      The answer: Biden is “focused on maintaining as many paths to 270 electoral votes as we possibly can.” Bedingfield also pointed out that at a scheduled appearance in Warm Springs, Georgia, on Tuesday, Biden would deliver his closing arguments at a place “which obviously has historical significance in this country”.
      Warm Springs is the resort town where the 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, built his Little White House, a cottage he used while suffering from polio in the 1930s.
      “Vice-President Biden has visited all of these battleground states multiple times,” Bedingfield said. “He was in Pennsylvania yesterday, doing two events, along with Dr [Jill] Biden. So no, we have been very aggressively campaigning.
      “Here’s the difference between what we’re doing and what Donald Trump is doing, we’re doing it safely.”
      Bedingfield noted that the president’s rallies feature large, mostly maskless crowds with no social distancing.
      A new CBS poll, meanwhile, showed Biden tied with Trump in Georgia and holding narrow leads in other southern battlegrounds, including Florida and North Carolina.
      Todd also pressed Bedingfield on Biden’s comments at last week’s final debate about the oil industry. Why, he wondered, would oil workers in Texas or elsewhere support a candidate who supports a transition away from the industry at a risk to their jobs?
      “There is only one person in this country who Joe Biden thinks should lose his job and it’s Donald Trump,” she said.
      “Joe Biden … is not going to end the fossil fuel industry, he’s going to end subsidies for the oil industry. He believes your taxpayer dollars should go to education. Donald Trump believes they should go to Exxon. That’s a conversation we’re willing to have any day.”

      11.26am EDT11:26

      A CBS News/YouGov poll of three southern battleground states finds Joe Biden in a dead heat with Donald Trump in Georgia with slight edges in Florida (by two points) and North Carolina (by four).
      Some other key findings from CBS News:

      • Early voters in each told us they favored Joe Biden, but those who have not yet voted favor Donald Trump, setting up a key turnout test running now through Election Day for both parties.
      • Very different views on the coronavirus outbreak still shape the race in all these states. In all, most Biden voters are very concerned about getting it, and Trump’s voters, by comparison, are far less concerned. Biden also gets better marks overall on how he would handle the outbreak.
      • Biden voters are more likely to say the outbreak and a candidate’s personal character are major factors in their vote. For Trump voters, the economy and immigration are the biggest factors.
      • In splits among key demographic groups, Biden currently leads among White women with college degrees in Florida and North Carolina; and across all three states it’s shifts from 2016 that are helping Biden. In Georgia, White voters without college degrees – both men and women – tend to like how Trump handles himself personally and dislike Biden’s approach. Biden is cutting into Trump’s 2016 margins with seniors in Florida and Georgia, cutting Trump’s 2016 advantage in half. In North Carolina Biden has a two-point edge with seniors.

      Last week Trump was forced to play defense when he staged a prime-time rally in Georgia, which no Republican presidential candidate has lost since George HW Bush in 1992 – a far cry from his original designs on expanding the map into Democratic-leaning states. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      'Sue if you must': Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards

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      The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.“Sue if you must,” Matthew Sanderson said.The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband, both senior White House advisers, displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Trump is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who have made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden.On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.In a legal response on Saturday night, attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz: “Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”Due to a “gross act of nepotism”, Sanderson wrote, citing supreme court precedent and “substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out”, Trump and Kushner have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely”.Kasowitz claimed Kushner “never said” the words attributed to him on the billboards, and Trump “never made the gesture” she is shown to make.Vanity Fair reported the Kushner quote, from a meeting in March, in which Kushner criticised New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Trump tweeted the pose used by the Lincoln Project in July, controversially promoting Goya foods.The “bruised self-image” of the president’s daughter, Sanderson wrote, “does not change the fact that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States”.“May I suggest,” he added, “that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the Covid-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch.“These billboards are not causing [their] standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.”A footnote to Sanderson’s letter cited “one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases”, that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation”.“Mr Kushner and Ms Trump’s claims will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini’s given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19,” it said.Sanderson also said “this isn’t over” and added: “Sue if you must.”As University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the Guardian on Saturday, that seems unlikely.Donald Trump “has honed litigation abuse, as a business person and president, to an art form,” Tobias said. But “if they did sue, the litigation might take years to resolve, be expensive and lead to embarrassing revelations … suits like this by people who have thrust themselves into the public eye are notoriously difficult to win.“In short, this appears to be the usual Trump family bluster.” More

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      'Power grab': how Republican hardball gave us Amy Coney Barrett

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      The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
      Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee shrugged off a Democratic boycott on Thursday to advance Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate, which will vote little more than a week before the presidential election. If confirmed, Barrett could be sworn in as a justice almost immediately.
      To critics, the rushed process represents one of the most naked power plays yet by a party which, confronting dismal opinion polls, is weaponizing unelected judges to compensate for setbacks in elections. Even as they contemplate the loss of political power, Republicans are poised to cement judicial power for generations.
      “This is like the last gasp by the Republican party to try to lock in their minority rule,” said Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice. “They’re potentially just days away from not only losing the White House but also the Senate, maybe even resoundingly, and so they’re trying to do everything they can to consolidate on the supreme court a Trump supermajority for decades to come.”
      Under Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republicans have built a reputation for ruthless bare knuckle tactics Democrats struggle to combat. They blocked swaths of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda and in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to his supreme court nominee Merrick Garland, arguing that it was an election year so the voters should decide.
      In 2018, when the conservative nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault, Republicans ignored fierce protests and rammed his appointment through. And when liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month, Donald Trump moved like lightning to replace her with Barrett, 48, a lifetime appointment who would tilt America’s highest court to a 6-3 conservative majority.
      It was another example of Republican hardball – audacious, shameless and devastatingly effective.
      Comedian Bill Maher told viewers of his HBO show: “If you haven’t gotten it yet, this kind of completely bald-faced premeditated hypocrisy should make it clear. There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care because it’s all and only about power. The only rule Republicans play by is: the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk.”
      Democrats cried foul, pointing out that the Senate has never confirmed a supreme court nominee so close to a presidential election. They were whistling in the wind. During committee hearings Barrett swerved most of their questions, refusing to commit herself on abortion, the transfer or power or the climate crisis.
      Kang said: “The process was so rushed and she was far more evasive and refused to answer more questions than any other nominee. That was a little bit jarring, if not surprising, but it shows how little respect Republicans have not only for the Senate but the supreme court itself. The Republican party is very blatantly just treating the supreme court as another political branch of government.”
      Demand Justice has called for Democrats to fight back by expanding the court, noting that its size has been changed seven times before. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he will appoint a bipartisan commission to examine such proposals.
      Kang predicted: “Republicans’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power grab to get a sixth seat on the court, when they already have five, could end up backfiring spectacularly on them and they could be on the losing side of a 7-6 supreme court before they know it.”
      All 12 Republicans on the judiciary committee voted in favour of Barrett. Ted Cruz of Texas hailed perhaps the “single most important accomplishment” of Trump’s presidency. Democrats displayed posters at their desks, of Americans who benefited from Obama’s Affordable Care Act which they warn Barrett could help strike down.
      Democrats have also warned that if Trump follows through on his threat to dispute the outcome of the 3 November election, it might go before Barrett and other members of the supreme court for a final ruling, just like the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.

      Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, described Barrett’s probable confirmation as a “‘power grab’ in every relevant sense of the term, especially in light of President Trump’s open concession that he appointed judge Coney Barrett in part to ensure her ability to vote in his favour should his re-election as president end up turning on a case the supreme court would need to resolve in order to give him an electoral college victory in the face of a national popular defeat.”
      Trump has appointed more than 200 federal judges, likely to be his most lasting legacy whether he serves one term or two. Critics suggest the courts represent the last bulwark of Republican minority rule and the Barrett episode is starkly indicative of a party that has lost its ideological and ethical moorings and now treats power as an end in itself.
      Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said Republicans have betrayed their claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, pro-life principles, small government and congressional oversight.
      “When a party diverges from itself on so many issues so many times,” he said, “it tells you they don’t actually have any moral convictions or principles that guide them. Only the pursuit of power.” More

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      Kleptopia review: power, theft and Trump as leader in Putin’s own image

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      In a year dominated by a US presidential election between a kleptocrat and a democrat, a book about world-class thieves laundering trillions ought be the perfect bedtime reading for anyone curious about the unprecedented amounts of money that have been looted and hidden over the last 20 years.Tom Burgis, a reporter for the Financial Times, is certainly an impressive investigator. He works hard to explain how myriad financial institutions, from the Bank of New York to Merrill Lynch and HSBC, have tried to deceive regulators and wash the ill-gotten gains of countless dictators.The oligarchs of Putin’s Russia are big players in these pages. So are Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, British bankers turned regulators, a trio of Central Asian billionaires, and no fewer than 30 other major characters, all listed at the beginning.This results in so many competing storylines that it becomes almost impossible to keep track. We bounce back and forth, from the Russian and Italian gangsters of Brooklyn to the oil fields of the former Soviet Union, from the platinum mines of Zimbabwe to the copper and cobalt of the Congo.Burgis draws useful parallels between Putin’s kleptocracy and Hitler’s GermanyThere are long sections about the wholesale theft of natural resources in post-Soviet Russia and the birth of the oligarchs, all of whom were forced to become Putin’s partners – or face imprisonment or death. For example, the purchase of a three-quarter stake in Yukos, for $350m, made Mikhail Khodorkovsky the richest man in Russia. Five years later, the vast oil company with 100,000 employees was worth $12bn. Khodorkovsky was arrested, jailed and eventually sent into exile.Burgis draws useful parallels between Putin’s kleptocracy and Hitler’s Germany, each home to both a “normative state” that generally respects its own laws and a “prerogative state” that violates most of them.According to the German-Jewish lawyer who was the author of the theory in the 1930s, “Nazi Germany was not a straightforward totalitarian system. It retained some vestiges of the rule of law, chiefly in matters of business, so that the capitalist economy had the basic rules it needed to keep going. But the prerogative state – Hitler’s political machinery – enjoyed … ‘jurisdiction over jurisdiction.”Trump helped to construct a new ‘global alliance of kleptocrats’. Their whole goal is the privatization of powerPutin has used his jurisdiction over everything to vanquish almost all of his enemies. And since Donald Trump has been collaborating with Russians in one way or another for almost 40 years, our kleptocrat-in-chief does finally make an appearance in Kleptopia, on page 250. After we’ve read a lot about Felix Sater, a second-generation Russian mobster connected to several schemes including the Trump Soho in lower Manhattan, Trump is identified as the “crucial ingredient” in Sater’s “magic potion for transforming dirty money”.Once the ratings of The Apprentice had washed away the public memory of multiple bankruptcies and “reinvented” his name as “a success”, Trump’s role in real estate deals became simply to “rent out his name”.“The projects could go bust,” Burgis writes, and “they usually did – but that wasn’t a problem.” The money had completed “its metamorphoses from plunder to clean capital”.Then there was the notorious sale of Trump’s Palm Beach mansion, to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95m, more than twice what Trump paid a few years before. According to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, Trump thought the real buyer was Putin – a story which hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it should.With his election as president, as Burgis puts it, Trump helped to construct a new “global alliance of kleptocrats”. Their whole goal is the privatization of power, and they control “the three great poles” – the US, China and Russia.In our new world of alternate facts, corruption is “no longer a sign of a failing state, but of a state succeeding in its new purpose”. The new kleptocrats have subverted their nations’ institutions, “to seize for themselves that which rightfully belonged to the commonwealth”.This is a ghastly and very important story. But the secret to great storytelling is knowing what to leave out. If Burgis had found a more focused way to tell this one, he would have written a much more powerful book. More