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      The Guardian view on the US elections: a nation dangerously divided | Editorial

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      Whoever wins this year’s election, America remains a country bitterly and evenly divided. It has been more than three decades since the last presidential landslide. Despite polls suggesting that Donald Trump was poised to suffer a sweeping rejection by the voters, there was no repudiation of the president. Rather, just a fraction of the popular vote separates Joe Biden and Mr Trump.
      Our view was that Mr Trump deserved to lose and in a big way. His mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis, which cost hundreds of thousands of American lives, was cause enough. But there were numerous reasons for Mr Trump’s ejection from the White House, given he ran the worst administration in modern US history.
      It is small comfort that Americans understood the threat that Mr Trump represented and turned out in record numbers to vote against him. Yet, as this election depressingly revealed, there was an almost equal and opposite reaction from Mr Trump’s base. The president’s appeal, it seems, has only widened and deepened since he took office. Mr Trump received so many more votes than he did in 2016 that his tally is only surpassed by Mr Biden this year, and Barack Obama in 2008.
      Should he depart, and there are few signs he will do so without a fight, Mr Trump’s legacy will be the politics of anger and hate. It is a tragedy for America that a poisonous division is becoming the norm rather than the exception. The concern in the US is that cultural divisions have gone past the point of no return. The priority for Americans must be to work out a way to stop the political rift from yawning so wide that the two hostile, sometimes armed, camps are incapable of talking to each other.
      The national conversation will not be easy to start, especially given the venomous way in which President Trump conducts politics. If there was any idea that the country could pick up after the election where it left off in 2016, it vanished the moment Mr Trump declared a victory he obviously had not yet won. His claim that his legal team would attempt to block states from counting all the votes that have already been cast, ballots which are widely viewed as certain to skew Democratic, was as outrageous as it was expected.
      Republicans have embraced their inner Trump, which is why democracy itself was on the ballot in 2020. Under Republican control, the US Congress, for the first two years of Trump’s presidency, did not check Mr Trump’s assault on the norms of democratic governance as much as enable it. The Grand Old Party has increasingly turned to policies designed to constrain the majority electorate. Faced with unfavourable demographic change, Republicans have cemented minority rule across American political institutions. The question that Mr Trump now poses is whether Republicans would go as far in their pursuit of power to undo a presidential election.
      The president may be counting on Republicans to subvert longstanding election norms or hope that the supreme court, to which he appointed three justices, will make the final call. If permitted, the ensuing constitutional crisis would dwarf Trumpism’s outrages. It would also play out against a background of heightened political mobilisation, which would bring with it the threat of civic strife.
      There is a real worry that the two main US parties appear locked in a dangerous and ferocious power struggle for control of the government. Mr Trump’s divisive politics have seen elections become a source of volatility in the world’s leading democracy. The margin of control of the Senate is so narrow that it would be foolish to predict who may end up in charge. Democrats retain their hold on the House of Representatives, but with a looser grip than before. This is a zero-sum game, where one party’s loss is another’s gain. Government in America, and its people, will be the losers. More

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      Record number of Native American women elected to Congress

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      The 117th Congress will have a record number of Native American women after voters elected three to the House of Representatives.Democrats Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member representing New Mexico, and Sharice Davids, a Ho-Chunk Nation member representing Kansas, both retained their seats after becoming the first Native American women elected to Congress, in 2018.They are joined by Yvette Herrell, who is Cherokee. Herrell, a Republican, beat the Democratic incumbent Xochitl Torres Small for her New Mexico congressional seat.The wins for Herrell and Haaland mean that New Mexico will be the first state to have two indigenous women as congressional delegates. The state also became the first to elect women of color as all three of its delegates in the US House of Representatives.According to a Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) report, 18 indigenous women were running for congressional seats this year – a record in a single year. Native American women made up 2.6% of all women running for Congress this year, the highest percentage since CAWP started collecting data in 2004.There have been four Native Americans in the US Senate and a handful of indigenous US representatives. All were men until Haaland and Davids were elected in 2018.In Kansas, Stephanie Byers, who is Chickasaw and a retired teacher, became the state’s first transgender lawmaker when she won her race for a seat in its house of representatives.“We’ve made history here,” Byers said on Tuesday. “We’ve done something in Kansas most people thought would never happen, and we did it with really no pushback, by just focusing on the issues.”Also in Kansas, Christina Haswood, a Navajo Nation member, became the youngest person in the state legislature at 26. A third member of the Kansas house , Ponka-We Victors, a Tohono O’odham and Ponca member, won her re-election campaign.The US House of Representatives will have its highest number of indigenous representatives after Tuesday’s election, according to the independent Native American newspaper Indian Country Today.Six candidates, including Haaland, Davids and Herrell, won their elections. Two Oklahoma representatives, Tom Cole, who is Chickasaw, and Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee, won their re-elections, and Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele, who is Native Hawaiian, won an open seat for Hawaii. There were previously four indigenous members of Congress, all in the House of Representatives. More

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      US election 2020 live: Trump and Biden pick up wins as votes counted in Florida

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      Key events

      Show

      10.23pm EST22:23
      Republicans pick up Senate seat in Alabama

      10.17pm EST22:17
      Biden underperforming in Florida and Georgia compared to polls

      10.09pm EST22:09
      Cornyn wins Senate race in Texas

      10.06pm EST22:06
      Trump wins Kansas

      10.02pm EST22:02
      Lindsey Graham wins re-election

      10.00pm EST22:00
      Polls close in four more states

      9.49pm EST21:49
      Democrats pick up first Senate seat with Hickenlooper win

      Live feed

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      10.23pm EST22:23

      Republicans pick up Senate seat in Alabama

      Republican Tommy Tuberville has been declared the winner of the Alabama Senate race, defeating Democratic incumbent Doug Jones.

      AP Politics
      (@AP_Politics)
      BREAKING: Republican Tommy Tuberville wins election to U.S. Senate from Alabama, beating incumbent Sen. Doug Jones. #APracecall at 9:10 p.m. CST. #Election2020 #ALelection https://t.co/lGfinjTqT4

      November 4, 2020

      Jones had been widely expected to lose his race, after narrowly winning the seat in a 2017 special election.
      Combined with Democrats flipping Cory Gardner’s seat in Colorado, the two parties have canceled out their Senate gains so far tonight.

      10.17pm EST22:17

      Biden underperforming in Florida and Georgia compared to polls

      We still have a long night ahead of us, but the results so far indicate Joe Biden has underperformed in Florida and Georgia in comparison to his polling there.
      With about 91% of the Florida vote in, Donald Trump leads Biden by about 3 points, 51%-48%.
      In Georgia, where 54% of the vote is in, Trump leads by 13 points, 56%-43%.
      Florida was seen as a toss-up, although a recent poll showed Biden ahead there by 5 points. The Democratic nominee was also seen as slightly favored to win Georgia. More

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      USA OK? My FAQs about Trump, Biden, the election and what happens next | Robert Reich

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      You’ve been in or around politics for more than 50 years. How are you feeling about Tuesday’s election?
      I’m more frightened for my country than I’ve ever been. Another four years of Donald Trump would be devastating. Still, I suspect Biden will win.
      But in 2016, the polls ….
      Polling is better now, and Biden’s lead is larger than Hillary Clinton’s was.
      What about the electoral college?
      He is also leading in the so-called “swing” states that gave Trump an electoral college victory in 2016.
      Will Trump contest the election?
      Undoubtedly. He’ll claim fraudulent mail-in ballots in any swing state Biden wins where the governor is a Republican – states such as Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona. He’ll ask those governors not to certify Biden electors until fraudulent ballots are weeded out.
      What’s his goal?
      To deny Biden a majority of electors and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where Republicans are likely to have a majority of state delegations.
      Will it work?
      No, because technically Biden only needs a majority of electors already appointed. Even if disputed ones are excluded, I expect he’ll still get a majority.
      What about late ballots?
      Trump has demanded all ballots be counted by midnight election day. It’s not up to him. It’s up to individual state legislatures and state courts. Most will count ballots as long as they’re postmarked no later than election day.
      Will these issues end up in the supreme court?
      Some may, but the justices know they have to appear impartial. Last week they turned down a request to extend the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in Wisconsin but allowed extensions to remain in place in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
      But the supreme court decided the 2000 election for George W Bush.
      The last thing John Roberts, the chief justice, wants is another Bush v Gore. With six Republican appointees now on the court, he knows its legitimacy hangs in the balance.
      Trump has called for 50,000 partisans to monitor polls while people vote, naming these recruits the “army for Trump”. Do you expect violence or intimidation?
      Not enough to affect the outcome.
      Assume you’re right and Biden wins. Will Trump concede?
      I doubt it. He can’t stand to lose. He’ll continue to claim the election was stolen from him.
      Will the Democrats retake the Senate?
      Too close to call.
      If not, can Biden get anything done?
      Biden was a senator for 36 years and has worked with many of the current Republicans. He believes he can coax them into working with him.
      Is he right?
      I fear he’s overly optimistic. The GOP isn’t what it used to be. It’s now answerable to a much more conservative, Trumpian base.
      If Republicans keep the Senate, what can we expect from a Biden administration?
      Reversals of Trump executive orders and regulations – which will restore environmental and labor protections and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Biden will also fill the executive branch with competent people, who will make a big difference. And he’ll end Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone foreign policy.
      And if Democrats retake the Senate?
      Helpful, but keep your expectations low. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had Democratic Congresses for their first two years yet spent all their political capital cleaning up economic messes their Republican predecessors left behind. Biden will inherit an even bigger economic mess plus a pandemic. With luck, he’ll enact a big stimulus package, reverse the Trump Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and distribute and administer a Covid vaccine. All important, but nothing earth-shattering.
      If Biden wins, he’ll be the oldest man to ever be president. Will this be a problem for him in governing?
      I don’t see why. He’s healthy. But I doubt he’ll seek a second term, which will affect how he governs.
      What do you mean?
      He’s going to be a transitional rather than a transformational president. He won’t change the underlying structure of power in society. He won’t lead a movement. He says he’ll be a “bridge” to the next generation of leaders, by which I think he means that he’ll try to stabilize the country, maybe heal some of the nation’s wounds, so that he can turn the keys over to the visionaries and movement builders of the future.
      Will Trump just fade into the sunset?
      Hardly. He and Fox News will continue to be the most powerful forces in the GOP, at least for the next four years.
      And what happens if your whole premise is wrong and Donald Trump wins a second term?
      America and the rest of the world are seriously imperiled. I prefer not to think about it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More

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      Republicans use congressional hearing to berate tech CEOs and claim Trump is 'censored'

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      Republican lawmakers berated the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google in a hearing that was ostensibly about a federal law protecting internet companies but mostly focused on how those companies deal with disinformation from Donald Trump and other conservatives.Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai testified before Congress on Wednesday about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law underpinning US internet regulation that exempts platforms from legal liability for content generated by its users.The hearing was meant to investigate “how best to preserve the internet as a forum for open discourse”, according to the Senate judiciary committee, but came largely in response to allegations from Republicans and the president of anti-conservative bias in the tech world. Those accusations are unsubstantiated. In fact, a recent report alleged that Facebook had suppressed progressive content to appease Republican lawmakers.Still, Republicans on the committee accused the CEOs of “censoring” the president, and questioned them about their decision-making around labeling some of the president’s social media posts as misinformation. The Republican chair of the committee, Roger Wicker, opened the hearing criticizing Twitter and Facebook’s decision to limit sharing of an unverified political story by the New York Post about the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and Twitter’s labeling of a Trump tweet casting doubt on mail-in ballots as potential misinformation.Republican after Republican accused Twitter of mishandling Trump’s tweets, with the Senator Marsha Blackburn claiming the company had “censored” Trump 65 times and Biden “zero” times.Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, responded Trump has not been “censored”.“To be clear, we have not censored the president,” he said. “We have not taken the tweets down that you are referencing, we added additional context as we do with any world leader.” More

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      Trump assaulted American democracy – here's how Democrats can save it | Robert Reich

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      Barring a miracle, Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed on Monday as the ninth justice on the US supreme court.
      This is a travesty of democracy.
      The vote on Barrett’s confirmation will occur just eight days before election day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Merrick Garland, who Barack Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president”.
      Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. When Barrett joins the court, five of the nine justices will have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.
      The Republican senators who will vote for her represent 15 million fewer Americans than their Democratic colleagues.
      Once on the high court, Barrett will join five other reactionaries who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation.
      Barrett’s confirmation is the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural and white segment of the US population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations.
      In the event Joe Biden becomes president on 20 January and both houses of Congress come under control of the Democrats, they can reverse this trend. It may be the last chance – both for the Democrats and, more importantly, for American democracy.
      How?
      For starters, increase the size of the supreme court. The constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years, from as few as five justices under John Adams to 10 under Abraham Lincoln.
      Biden says if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack”. That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections.
      Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass.
      The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring 51 votes. There is growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged that the filibuster has become a negative force in government.
      The filibuster is not in the constitution either.
      The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate itself. For decades, rural states have been emptying as the US population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation, especially of nonwhite voters.
      For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40% of Americans will live in just five states, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.
      This distortion also skews the electoral college, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote.
      This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington DC. And given that one out of eight Americans now lives in California – whose economy, if it were a separate country, would be the ninth-largest in the world – why not split it into a North and South California?
      The constitution is also silent on the number of states.
      Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power. That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate or the presidency, yet secured control of all three.
      Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the power imbalance has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy.
      What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It is representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More

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      Trump told Republican donors holding Senate will be 'tough' – report

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      Shortly after Donald Trump insisted to reporters in Ohio he expected a “red wave” on election day, 3 November, it was reported on Saturday that he told Republican donors this week it would be “tough” for the party to hold on to the Senate.Trump trails Joe Biden in most national and battleground state polls. Democrats hold the House of Representatives and expect to keep it, while many forecasters think they have a good chance of re-taking the Senate, which Republicans hold 53-47, thereby achieving unified government.“I think the Senate is tough actually,” the Washington Post said Trump told donors in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday, before his last debate against Biden, according to an anonymous attendee. “The Senate is very tough.”The Post said Trump also insisted Republicans “are going to take back the House”. As Democrats hold that chamber by 232-197, few forecasters think there is much chance of that.Senate Republicans face defeat in Colorado, Maine, Arizona and perhaps North Carolina. Supposedly safer seats in Georgia, Iowa and Montana look far from secure. Trump reportedly told donors North Carolina would hold and Alabama would be taken back, but said there were “a couple” of senators he did not want to help.“There are a couple senators I can’t really get involved in,” the Post quoted him as saying. “I just can’t do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can’t help some of them. I don’t want to help some of them.”Trump has clashed with senators including Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who offered harsh criticism and predicted “a Republican bloodbath in the Senate”.Sasse is among conservatives eyeing post-Trump presidential runs. Others usually loyal but under pressure at the polls, such as John Cornyn in Texas and Martha McSally in Arizona, have mounted cautious bids to be seen as independent.Even Mitch McConnell, the ruthless architect of the Republicans’ push to install federal judges under Trump, has said he thinks his party has a “50-50” chance of keeping control. The majority leader, 78, set for re-election despite a tough fight in Kentucky, has rebuffed questions about his health after he appeared with severe bruising to his hands and face.Control of the Senate has allowed Republicans to rush through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court, thereby tipping it 6-3 in favour of conservatives.If the White House and Senate are lost, a reactionary court would be Republicans’ bulwark against a Biden legislative agenda that could include reform to the court and the Senate.The court is due to hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, on 10 November. Trump has said he wants the justices to bring the ACA down, thereby depriving millions of healthcare in a pandemic and kneecapping his own drive to defeat HIV.One senator who initially stood against the push for Barrett said during debate on Saturday she would vote to confirm. When the nomination comes to the floor on Monday, said Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, “I will be a yes. I have no doubt about her intellect … I have no doubt about her capability to do the job.”Generally a defender of abortion rights Democrats say Barrett will threaten, Murkowksi had said no new justice should be named before the election. More

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

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