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      How a Republican plan to split a Black college campus backfired

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      She didn’t know it at the time, but when Jonezie Cobb first set foot on North Carolina A&T State’s 13,000-person campus as a freshman last fall, the university was split in two.
      In 2016, Republican state legislators had drawn a line down Laurel Street, which runs through the middle of campus, effectively dividing the nation’s largest historically black university into separate congressional districts.
      Walking from the library to the dining hall, Cobb would frequently cross from the state’s sixth district over into the 13th, both represented by white Republicans: Mark Walker and Ted Budd.
      Cobb, now a sophomore, remembers first learning about the distinct districts from student groups that were organizing calls, protests and even a visit to Walker and Budd’s offices in Washington DC. However, after a court decision late last year, for the first time since 2012, the university’s students will be voting in a general election under the umbrella of a single district.
      The newly minted sixth district, which includes all of A&T as well as the largely Black cities of Winston-Salem and Greensboro, is one of two North Carolina congressional seats likely to flip in favor of Democrats in the election. In the other – the state’s second district – Republican incumbent representative George Holding announced after the 2019 redistricting that he would not be seeking reelection.
      Cobb, who is 19 and studying political science, cast her vote on the first day of early voting at a polling station on campus. The station itself was another fight – last fall, dozens of A&T students packed the county’s board of elections meetings to lobby for a voting site at the university, a request that was eventually granted.
      These forms of suppression, intentional or not, made voting feel even more important, Cobb said.
      “As African Americans we pride ourselves in voting, because that’s what our ancestors fought for,” she said. “It’s something that I will never forget.”
      More than 37,000 people aged 18-29 have already voted in the sixth district, nearly twice the tally recorded in 2016. Statewide, of the 3.3m votes cast, 12% have come from Cobb’s age group, up more than a point over 2016.
      Rachel Weber, the North Carolina press secretary for voting advocacy group NextGen America, said she believes the uptick can be explained by young people feeling the effects of the political world on their day-to-day lives more than ever.
      “We have lived through four years of an administration that has attacked the issues near and dear to our hearts, whether it be racial justice or affordable healthcare,” Weber said. “Politics are closer to young people right now.”
      Students at A&T rallying against racially biased districting and maps “that don’t represent us and where we live” is a prime example of the youth activism and political engagement endemic in the current election, she added.
      A&T has a long history of organizing around politics and racial justice: the Greensboro Four – the group of Black activists whose sit-ins in 1960 at a local department store helped further the civil rights movement – were all students at the university.
      But in the past year, gerrymandering has been added to the list of seemingly evergreen conversation topics on campus that include economic inequality, criminal justice reform and systemic racism, said Derick Smith, a political science lecturer at the university.
      “[Students] became personally aware and highly agitated that they were being targeted by this particular suppression method,” Smith said. “They felt like diluting their voice and their vote was criminal.”
      The 2016 move to split the campus came after Republican legislators were forced to remake North Carolina’s congressional maps after a US supreme court ruling deemed the previous ones unconstitutionally gerrymandered. More

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      A win for Joe Biden would only scratch the surface of America’s afflictions | John Mulholland

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      On 18 September, the first day of early voting in the US, Jason Miller, a house painter from Minneapolis, became, according to the Washington Post, one of the first people in the country to vote. He cast his vote for Joe Biden, saying: “I’ve always said that I wanted to be the first person to vote against Donald Trump. For four years, I have waited to do this.” Close to 90 million people have already voted in the US and it is on track to record the highest turnout since 1908.We can thank Donald Trump for that, a man who attracts fierce loyalty from his supporters but who energises his opponents in equal measure. The country has been fixated by the White House occupant for the past four years. But there is a danger that progressives and liberals invest too much faith in Trump’s departure and too little in what will be needed to fix America. Getting rid of Trump might be one thing, fixing America is another.If the president loses, there will be much talk of a new normality and the need for a democratic reset. Hopes will be voiced for a return to constitutional norms. There will be calls for a return of civility in public discourse and a healing of the partisan divide that scars America. All of that is as it should be. But it ought to come with a recognition that America was broken long before it elected Trump and his departure would be no guarantee that the country will be mended. Many of the systemic issues that afflict the US predate Trump.His ugly and dysfunctional presidency has distracted from many of the fundamentals that have beset America for decades, even centuries. But they remain stubbornly in place. If he does lose, America will no longer have Trump to blame. Two two-term Democratic presidents over the past 30 years have not significantly affected the structural issues that corrode US democracy and society, and race is always at their heart. The past few months have drawn further attention to the systemic racism and brutality that characterise much policing. But racism in the States is not confined to the police. In fact, it is not confined at all. More

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      On my travels, I saw a vision of two Americas – but which one will triumph?

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      A stilt walker dressed as Uncle Sam lumbered between selfies, a lifesize dummy of Donald Trump – complete with bulging eye bags – sat motionless by the roadside, and families, young and old, waved Trump flags as cars tooted their horns in support.
      It was a grey autumn Saturday earlier this month at a Republican rally just outside Youngstown, Ohio – a once prosperous city in the heart of America’s rustbelt, embedded in a region that flipped to Donald Trump in 2016.
      What started as a casual political gathering, however, descended into a full-throated confrontation that encapsulated the stark divisions that underscore this seminal election, and perhaps the state of the country as a whole.
      A bashed up red Chevy pickup daubed in handmade “Dump Trump” signs pulled up slowly. And a lone protester, Chuckie Denison, a former factory worker at a local General Motors plant that closed last year, jumped out to berate the assembled crowd.
      “Two-hundred-and-twenty-thousand Americans have died under Trump. And our jobs have gone.” he shouted. “And all we ask is for somebody to represent all of us.”
      I’d come to Youngstown because Donald Trump had made direct promises to the people living here; to restore a failing economy and bring back manufacturing jobs after years of decay. But poverty and jobless rates continue to soar here.
      In that crowd of Trump supporters were people who had worked at the same plant as Denison, and others who had lost their jobs during the pandemic. And yet they still believed Trump would bring stability to their lives.
      “He’s probably paid,” said one Trump supporter – dismissing Denison, who had been accosted by a number of the flag wavers.
      Within minutes, Denison’s signs were ripped from his truck and he was sent away in a whirlwind of abusive language.

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      I have driven thousands of miles throughout this election season, for our Anywhere But Washington film series, visiting the battleground states of Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Florida and North Carolina. And it has often felt like reporting in two parallel dimensions, where common ground between two factions of the same nation can feel nonexistent.
      On one end, a feverish loyalty to the president, where not even the most sensational of scandals have a bearing on political belief. And where disinformation has given way to objective fact. On the other what often feels like a greater enthusiasm for removing Trump from office than for the Democrat on the top of the ticket. But still a constituency that increasingly reflects the diversity of the country itself.
      After two months of travel, and with most polls predicting an overwhelming victory for Biden, I’m still unsure who will win and whether any sort of victory has the power to reunite this fractured nation.
      ***
      The passionate public disagreement I saw in Youngstown felt emblematic of a divided country and there are dark forces underpinning much of it.
      Donald Trump has weaponized extremist misinformation to bolster his campaign and reverted to pushing conspiracy theories that cast doubt over election integrity, and, most recently, question the ethics of doctors working to save the lives of Covid-19 patients. He has declined to disavow QAnon, a baseless far-right conspiracy movement, which suggests Trump is the victim of a ‘deep state’ plot run by satanic paedophiles tied to the Democratic party. Instead, he described the movement as being filled with patriotic citizens “who love America”.
      Recent polling indicates that half of his supporters now believe in the conspiracy movement.
      On an intensely humid day in Peach county, central Georgia, I hitched a ride with organizers for Black Voters Matter, a voting rights advocacy group targeting marginalized Black communities in a bid to boost turnout and fight rampant voter suppression. Georgia is a battleground state for the first time in decades, and turning out voters in low-income minority neighborhoods could be the key to swinging it for the Democrats.
      But Fenika Miller, a regional organizer, already faces an uphill task – and pervasive disinformation has made it even harder.
      Miller remains upbeat, she registers voters with a smile and seems driven to get those in her community out to the polls. She blares James Brown’s funk classic Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud out of her van to draw people from their homes.

      The enthusiasm for Biden is palpable in many of the neighborhoods we visited. But one encounter was chilling.
      “Joe Biden, he’s trying to legalize paedophiles,” said one young man as he explained to Miller that he was already registered and voting for Trump.
      I ask where he got his information from. “Every morning I get on my phone and watch different videos and stuff. You just put two and two together.”
      Miller is coming into contact with these dangerous falsehoods on a daily basis.
      “We’re living in dangerous times under a dangerous administration,” she said. “It’s intentional misinformation they’re putting out specifically targeting young voters and Black voters.”
      She hugged the young man and asked him to be careful where he reads his news. But it was clear his mind was already made up. He was not the last person I came into contact with expressing belief in QAnon.
      ***
      Away from the sinister conspiracy movements, my travels through the US have often felt like wading through a sea of alternative facts, where flat-out lies and mistruth have become mainstream Republican talking points and often the only way to excuse the president’s catastrophic policy failures.
      In Texas, which for the first time in generations is now a battleground state after record early voter turnout, I met Rick Barnes, chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party in suburban Dallas. I asked him if Trump’s child separation policy at the southern border had ever given him pause to question the morality in his party.
      “That was not a policy that Trump put in place. That was a policy of the predecessor,” he replied.
      I pointed out this was untrue and that Trump’s former attorney general Jeff Sessions had specifically instructed his Justice Department to separate children from their parents as a deterrence, something unprecedented in US history.
      “That’s something we’d have to agree to disagree on,” he replied.
      In Florida, a critical swing state, I met Malcolm Out Loud, a conservative radio host who argued that Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert is “a fraud” and that the official Covid-19 death toll is inflated.
      “This entire pandemic has been a setup,” he said.
      I pointed out he had no public health background or any expertise to make such a claim.
      “We can agree to disagree,” he replied, mirroring the refrain from Barnes.

      ***
      The extreme policy and dark rhetoric of the past four years has punished the most vulnerable in US society. And it’s in many of these communities where I found the most fervent faith in Joe Biden and, more pointedly, a vision of America that marked a return to societal norms.
      In the southern border city of McAllen, Texas I visited the Ramirez family who have for six generations maintained a small chapel close to the US-Mexico border. It was once a site on the underground railroad, offering safe haven to escaped slaves. Dozens of the family’s ancestors are buried in its graveyard. But Donald Trump’s wall is being built just a few feet away.
      If building goes ahead – the foundations have been laid but not the wall itself – the family chapel will be effectively partitioned from the United States, and the Ramirez family will be forced to go through customs checks to visit their ancestors.
      “We are praying for Joe Biden, because him winning is the only thing that will stop this wall,” said Silvia Ramirez as she stood at the graveyard, now surrounded by rubble.
      Biden has pledged to immediately end construction of Trump’s wall if elected, which would most likely save the family’s chapel.
      Prayer for Biden is ongoing in the battleground state of North Carolina as well. Here I met a group of traveling evangelical preachers desperate to convince others in their denomination to change their minds. In 2016 white evangelicals made up over a quarter of voters in the country and 81% of them voted for Donald Trump.
      Many of the pastors on this national bus tour, named Vote Common Good, had themselves been loyal Republicans until Donald Trump came to office but his child separation policy along with attempts to ban Muslims from entering the country, inspired a number of them to speak out.
      “This is a diagnostic election that’s going to show us who we are,” said pastor Doug Pagitt, the group’s founder. “And if the Christian community in this country says: ‘this [Trump] is our guy’ again, that is an indictment.”

      ***
      Although opposition to Trump has galvanized a base of moral support for Biden, the former vice-president was far from a consensus candidate among progressives.
      But it is not simply Biden and Trump on the ballot this year, the president’s challenger is joined all over the country by a field of Democratic Party candidates that increasingly represent the diversity of America.
      2020 sees the largest number of Black women running for Congress and not all of them are full throated Biden backers.
      In Texas’s 24th congressional district, a stretch of suburban sprawl outside of Dallas, I met Candace Valenzuela, vying to become the first Afro-Latina elected to Congress. A few years ago this district was solid Republican, but now it’s a toss-up, a marker of the state’s rapidly evolving demographics and many suburban voters’ deep dislike of Trump.
      She is diplomatic when discussing whether a 77-year-old white man is really representative of the change occurring at the grassroots of her party.
      “I don’t think any one of us captures the essence of it,” she says. “It’s something that’s happening in aggregate.”

      But Ebony Carter, a 25-year-old first time candidate and Black Lives Matter activist, is more direct when describing the presidential candidate she will share a ballot with.
      I asked if she thought that Biden’s candidacy spoke to younger people of color in America.
      “No,” she replied. “I’ll be clear with that one.
      “However, I believe that Joe Biden is overwhelmingly the best choice for the job and I’m honored to be on any ticket with anyone who is actually going to fight for American lives, and I think that’s what he’s going to do.”
      Throughout my journey finding authentic, representative politics has been tough – given the nation’s monumental divisions.
      But Ebony Carter’s candidacy, in Georgia’s 110th statehouse district outside of Atlanta, another of those run by Republicans for decades, felt like a shining example of how this country might be unified.
      She is out every day canvassing in both Democratic and Republican neighborhoods with her mother Deborah, who serves as her unofficial campaign manager, and her one year-old daughter Nairobi, who sleeps in a pram as Ebony tries to convince anyone who will listen to turn up and vote. She is pushing healthcare reform and better funding for public education.
      But most importantly she is pushing to build a grassroots movement from the bottom up, trying to engage those who do not normally participate in the electoral process.
      “Why am I doing this?” she said as the sun began to set after a full day of canvassing and Nairobi began to wake up. “Because somebody has to. I want to show people that it’s possible. And I’m doing it for her.” More

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      'Crossroads of the climate crisis': swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

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      Even now, Ivan Moore can’t think why his father didn’t didn’t tell anyone that the air conditioning in their house was busted. “I honestly don’t know what was going through his mind,” he said.
      That week three years ago, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona were forecasted to top 115F (46C). Moore, his wife and two children went to the mountains for a camping trip, and his dad Gene, stayed behind. A few days later, Gene died.
      The air conditioning had been blowing hot air. “He’d opened a window but it was too hot,” Moore said. “My dad’s heart basically gave out on him.”
      Phoenix – America’s hottest city – is getting hotter and hotter, and Moore’s father is one of the hundreds of Arizonans who have succumbed to the desert heat in recent years. More

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      Joe Biden: from a campaign that came close to folding to the verge of victory

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      Just days before one of the most extraordinary presidential elections in US history, the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, finds himself flush with cash, polling ahead of Donald Trump in state and national polls, and on a bold last-minute campaign offensive in parts of the country his Republican opponent won in 2016, and would usually be able to depend on for support.
      After a year of a crippling pandemic, economic crisis and historic upheaval, according to some of the most important metrics, Biden is the favorite to win the 2020 presidential election and become the 46th president of the United States.
      Evoking the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who guided the country through the Great Depression and the second world war, Biden brought his closing arguments deep into Republican heartland this week in Warm Springs, Georgia, a tiny spa town Roosevelt would often visit to treat his paralysis.
      “God and history have called us to this moment and to this mission,” Biden said, appealing directly to voters who chose Trump in 2016, in a sign of how emboldened this campaign has become. “The Bible tells us there’s a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to heal. This is that time.”
      Biden’s mission was always certain: this election was a “battle for the soul of the nation”, he told voters when he announced his candidacy 18 months ago. But his fortunes haven’t always seemed so bright, and it was by no means a sure thing that he would even make it to this moment. More

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      The polls may have got it wrong in 2016, but not this time round. Surely?

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      If the poll numbers are to be believed, Joe Biden has already won this week’s US presidential race. But after the scarring experience of 2016, when Donald Trump unexpectedly came up from behind, few voters, election analysts, or even pollsters have complete faith in opinion-poll predictions.
      One exception is James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign strategist, who says a Biden landslide, plus a Democratic takeover of the Senate, is a dead cert. “This thing is not going to be close,” he said last month. His interviewer was too polite to point out that Carville also predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide four years ago.
      The hedging of bets by commentators is understandable but not wholly rational. By most polling measures, Biden has held a clear lead over Trump for months in the vast majority of national and swing (battleground) state polls.
      The race is perceptibly tightening. But with four days to go, Biden’s averaged-out national lead was 7.4%, or about 51% to 43%. As of 29 October, he also led in all the top swing states, namely Florida (by an average 1.9%), Pennsylvania (5.8%), Michigan (8.4%), Wisconsin (7.8%), North Carolina (2.1%) and Arizona (3.4%).
      Some of these margins are narrow. But under winner-takes-all rules, all a state’s electoral-college votes go to the candidate who comes out ahead, even if by only 0.1%. In 2016, Trump won the college, and thus the election, thanks to victories by less than 2% in four states, including Florida with its 29 college votes.
      This time around, polls suggest, the opposite may happen. In other words, Trump could be on the losing end of close results in swing states. There may also be surprises, for example in Georgia and even Texas, states that traditionally vote Republican but are judged competitive this year.
      Given that he lost the 2016 popular vote by nearly three million ballots, Trump may nevertheless pin his hopes on pulling off the electoral-college trick again. He has made plain his willingness to contest the outcome if it goes against him. He could ask the supreme court, with its newly enhanced conservative majority, to adjudicate – as it did in 2000 when George W Bush sneaked past Al Gore.
      Fence-sitters fearful of being caught out again should also study poll data such as Trump’s average approval ratings. Overall, 53% of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing, against 44% who approve. On the economy, he has a 2.3% positive score but on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he gets a 16.5% negative rating.
      Looked at another way, a current average of all polls suggests 50.4% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Biden, while Trump’s figure is 41.9%. In fact, Trump has not exceeded a 44% favourable rating at any time in his presidency. His under-performance is nothing if not consistent.
      US pollsters also assess voters by gender, race, education and religion. While Trump enjoys strong support from non-college-educated white men and Christian evangelicals, for example, Biden is said to be well ahead among all women voters, especially white suburban women, college graduates and Catholics.
      Biden is also counting on winning a large majority of black voters. It is thought that the Latino vote could split. Democratic successes in the 2018 midterm elections, when the party won control of the House of Representatives, were propelled by these groups.
      Meanwhile, some polling points towards a Democratic takeover in the 100-seat Senate. Republicans, who now hold a slim majority there, have most to lose. Seven out of nine “toss-ups” are held by GOP senators.
      It’s always possible that poll predictions of a Biden victory on Tuesday are overblown. But it seems unlikely that Trump can reverse voting intentions that have been firmly in place for months. Nearly 90 million Americans have already voted. It’s too late to change their minds. Even if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden’s margin of advantage is so great that he still wins. Probably. More

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      Liberal Privilege review: Donald Trump Jr, Maga porn – and the future of the Republican party

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      Donald Trump Jr will be a fixture in Republican politics in the years to come, regardless of whether his father wins re-election. Already, speculation runs rampant that the president’s oldest son will be on the presidential ballot in 2024.Triggered, Don Jr’s first book, was a better campaign autobiography than most. For all its vitriol, it was personally revealing and laced with humor. By contrast, Liberal Privilege is a nonstop attack on the Bidens, the Democratic party and the media.Think of it as Maga porn. As Steve Bannon told the Senate intelligence committee, Don Jr is “a guy who believes everything on Breitbart is true”. Don Jr is also the fellow who on Thursday proclaimed that Covid-19 deaths were “almost nothing” when, in reality, the US daily death toll had exceeded 1,000.Liberal Privilege offers a cornucopia of delectation for Trumpworld’s denizens. It is graced with endorsements from Laura Ingraham, Senator Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz, a Florida representative and key Trump ally. Inside, Trump Jr drops the word “bullshit” 12 times but also adds 30 pages of footnotes.Ivanka holds Donald Trump’s heart and gaze, but it is her brother who has captured the imagination of the faithfulSubstantively, Trump Jr endeavors to make the case that Biden is addled and his family is corrupt. Regarding Biden’s wellbeing, the author enlists the assistance of Ronny Jackson MD to take down the Democratic nominee.A former presidential physician, Jackson is currently a Republican congressional candidate. In 2018, he withdrew as nominee for secretary of veterans affairs after an array of misconduct allegations. Regarding Biden, Jackson declines to offer a formal diagnosis of dementia. That would be outside the bounds of medical practice. But he claims Biden “can’t form sentences” and “that something is not right”. In light of Biden’s debate wins, Jackson’s take on the Democrat’s mental acuity is best described as suspect – and that is being kind.Liberal Privilege offers no explanation for the president’s unscheduled visit to Walter Reed hospital in November 2019. Even more than the president’s finances, that trip remains shrouded in mystery.Biden can bound staircases and hold an ice cream cone. Trump required military assistance to walk down a ramp, and struggles to drink water without two hands. “Thighland” is a destination in the president’s malapropism-filled lexicon, when he isn’t dreaming of being Superman.When it comes to family members trading on public office, Liberal Privilege is on somewhat firmer ground. Back in 2014, Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private natural gas producer, announced that Hunter had joined its board. To which the White House could only reply: “Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice-president or president.” Then there are the allegations concerning Hunter and China.Trump and his presidency, however, are in a league of his own. Few norms remain unshattered, be it turning the federal government into a personal revenue stream, refusing to release tax returns, disparaging war dead or holding campaign rallies on the White House lawn.Only recently, the public learned from the New York Times that the president holds a Chinese bank account, paid the PRC more than $188,000 in taxes, but just $750 to the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, Ivanka, the first daughter, holds intellectual property rights in China, and Jared Kushner’s sister pitched Chinese investors on Kushner properties and US visas. And then there was the scramble for foreign funding to refinance the Kushner property at 666 Fifth Avenue.True to form, Liberal Privilege mentions cancel culture more than two dozen times without a peep of the president’s own censorship efforts. The justice department attempted to muzzle John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser. Trump’s personal lawyers sought to silence Mary Trump, his niece. Both had written unflattering books.The government is taking aim at Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump’s former personal aide. The Trump campaign’s arbitration claim against Omarosa appears to be going nowhere fast. Cancelation is definitely in the eyes of the beholder, and the Trumps do a great job of acting like the very snowflakes they claim to detest.Yet, when it comes to Liberal Privilege’s criticism of the media, the press would do well to pay heed: they are distrusted even as the public sees them as invaluable to democracy. By the numbers, a third of the US has no trust in the fourth estate and more than a quarter possess “not very much”.Trump Jr also looks to tether Biden to Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont. Here too, he generates more heat than light. By temperament and record, Biden is no socialist. He beat Sanders in the primaries. The financial industry has donated tens of millions to the Biden campaign.Indeed, out of a lack of confidence in Biden’s embrace of their agenda, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Squad” have demanded corporative executives be barred from serving in his cabinet. Good luck with that.While Liberal Privilege will change few votes, it sets the bar for the GOP’s future. Although Democrats and liberals may recoil, and Mike Pence must look over his shoulder, Don Jr has done himself a favor.Ivanka holds Donald Trump’s heart and gaze, but it is her brother who has captured the imagination of the faithful. He is the actual Republican. Their grievances are his armour. More

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      'Blue shift': why votes counted after election day skew to the Democrats

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      Americans are voting by mail in record numbers – and that could extend the counting process several days if not weeks. But Donald Trump says the winner should be decided quicker – on election day.
      “It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
      But not only is it completely legal for votes to be counted after election day – it’s also normal. In 1968, for example, the New York Times published the state-by-state results one day after the election. In most states there were a significant number of ballots still to be counted. More