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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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      Biden campaign says Trump supporters tried to force bus off highway

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      Trucks with Trump signs and flags surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway on Friday and attempted to slow the vehicle down and run it off the road, the Biden campaign said on Saturday.
      Several video clips posted on social media by both Biden and Trump supporters showed the trucks surrounding the bus. The trucks then tried to slow the bus down and run it off the road before staff called 911, according to the Biden campaign.
      The president himself appeared to endorse the behavior of his supporters, tweeting a video of the incident on Saturday evening along with the comment “I LOVE TEXAS!”
      “They’re literally escorting him out of town,” one man says, laughing as he narrates one clip of the incident shared by Trump supporters.
      Some of the Trump supporters surrounding the Biden campaign bus were armed, according to Democratic state representative Rafael Anchía and other observers.
      While the vice-presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, was campaigning in Texas that day, she not on the bus, a spokesman for a state Democratic representative confirmed.
      The incident happened on the I-35 highway in Texas as the bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin, the Biden campaign said, adding that local law enforcement responded to the campaign’s calls and assisted the bus in reaching its destination.
      The campaign did not identify the law enforcement agency.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L

      November 1, 2020

      A group of the same 12 cars has been following the Biden bus all over the country, CBS News Austin reported, citing Texas Democrats.
      Texas state Democrats also said they cancelled a campaign event on Friday evening for “public safety and security reasons.”
      A Democratic campaign event scheduled for Friday evening in Pflugerville was cancelled due to security concerns related to the cars following the Biden bus, Sheryl Cole, a Democratic state representative, tweeted on Friday.
      “Unfortunately, pro-Trump Protesters have escalated well beyond safe limits,” she wrote.
      The decision to cancel the Pflugerville event came after Democrats received reports in the late afternoon that there had been some kind of collision between a pro-Trump vehicle and another vehicle on I-35, André Treiber, a spokesperson for Cole, told the Guardian. The details of the incident on the highway are still not clear, Treiber said, including whether the collision turned out to be “an accident or an escalation”.
      “When you have two hours to make the call, you make the safe call,” Treiber said. “We wanted to make sure everyone was safe.”
      An event with Democratic politicians in Austin was also cancelled on Friday and law enforcement were present to ensure staff could leave the bus safely, the Biden campaign said.
      When the Biden-Harris bus stopped briefly in Austin earlier on Friday, Trump supporters heckled and faced off with Democrats, with Trump supporters calling Biden a “Chinese communist”, CBS Austin reported.
      The cars following the bus include a pro-Trump hearse emblazoned with the slogan, “Vote like your life depends on it,” according to social media and news reports.
      Republicans apologized after Trump supporters brought a casket to a Biden event outside Houston, with a dark-haired mannequin that some viewers saw as representing Kamala Harris, a local Fox News affiliate reported.
      Texans have flocked to the polls in recent days with more than 9.6 million having voted ahead of election day, surpassing the total number of votes cast four years ago.
      In what has been a reliably red state with low voter participation, 30.4% of this year’s ballots have been cast by voters who didn’t participate in 2016 at all, according to Tom Bonier, chief executive of political data firm TargetSmart. Turnout has surged especially among Asian, college-educated white and young Texans.
      “You can definitively say now, more voters under the age of 30 have voted already in Texas than have ever voted in any election, and that’s remarkable,” Bonier said.
      Trump is still slightly favored to win Texas – a state he took by nine points in 2016 – though polls showing a close race have ignited a firestorm of speculation about whether this is the year the state turns blue.
      “We feel good with where we’re at, but we need to keep on going, and you know, we’re not there yet,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic party. More

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      US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours

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      [embedded content]
      The US has set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to one count with just over 100,000 new infections recorded.
      The daily caseload of 100,233 – as counted by Reuters – surpassed 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September.
      The news came three days before the presidential election, and as Donald Trump continued to stage large-scale events at which Covid mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing are not enforced. The president himself, the first lady, senior aides and Republican leaders contracted the virus after attending such events.
      Trump, who spent time in hospital, has insisted the US is “rounding the corner” in the fight to contain the pandemic. This week his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, a key campaign surrogate, said deaths from Covid-19 were “almost nothing”.
      According to Johns Hopkins University – which counted nearly 99,000 US cases on Friday – nearly 230,000 of more than 9m US cases of Covid-19 have resulted in death.
      The president and his campaign have sought to present a contrast to Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s promise to implement another lockdown if necessary.
      On Saturday, Biden said in a statement: “President Trump still has no plan to address Covid-19. He quit on you, on your family, on America. He just wants us to grow numb to the horrors of the death toll and the pain. We cannot afford another four years of his failed leadership.”
      On Friday, scientists at Stanford University released a study which said recent Trump rallies produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.
      The authors set out to “investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.
      “Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.
      “Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of Covid-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees)”.
      The US has exceeded its previous single-day record, of 77,299 cases registered in July, five times in the past 10 days. The number of daily infections reported in the last two days suggests the country is reporting more than one new case every second.
      Despite the overall figure, the US has a rate of about 28,100 cases per million people, which places it about 14th in the world for prevalence.
      Many states experiencing surges in case numbers are re-instituting social restrictions. In New York on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters most people arriving in the state must now quarantine for at least three days before taking a coronavirus test. If that test comes back negative, the traveler can leave quarantine.
      The requirements will not apply to residents of “contiguous” states, Cuomo told reporters, and there will be different requirements for New Yorkers who leave the state for less than 24 hours.
      The governor named Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as examples of contiguous states, home to many commuters to New York City. But it was unclear if neighbouring Vermont and Massachusetts would also be exempt. Cuomo’s office did not reply to questions seeking clarification on Saturday. More

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      Obama lends a hand as Biden and Trump launch final campaign blitz

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      [embedded content]
      America was on edge on Saturday as Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched a final campaign blitz amid a surging pandemic, record early voting and gnawing uncertainty over when the outcome of the presidential election will be known.
      Trailing in the polls, Trump began a frenzied schedule of 14 rallies in three days, even as the coronavirus scythed through the country. The US recorded more than 99,000 cases on Friday, its biggest ever single-day total. Many of the worst outbreaks are in the battleground states where the president is travelling.
      Biden campaigned with Barack Obama at drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential in the fight for Michigan. Stevie Wonder was to perform in Detroit.
      In Flint, Obama decried Trump as a president “who goes out of his way to insult people just because they don’t support them”.
      “With Joe and Kamala at the helm,” he said, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about him every day. It won’t be so exhausting. You’ll be able to get on with your lives.”
      Obama also went after Trump’s idea of masculinity, saying that being a man once meant “taking care of other people”, rather than “strutting and showing off, acting important, bullying people”.
      Following the former president on stage, Biden briefly slipped back into much-criticised attack lines against Trump, who he has previously said he would like to fight. “When you were in high school wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” he asked, before apparently remembering to keep to the high road.
      “That’s a different story … but anyway. [Trump is] macho man.”
      Both men repeated Biden’s vow to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. But with record numbers of infections, and record numbers of voters casting ballots early, the dominant narratives of 2020 were still hurtling towards a potentially destabilising climax. There was intense anxiety over whether Tuesday will deliver a clear verdict or a prolonged, agonising vote count, over days or even weeks.
      More than eight in 10 Americans (86%) are somewhat or very worried there will be violent protests following the election, the Public Religion Research Institute found. Businesses in New York, Washington and other cities were boarding up in case of trouble.
      Trump has spent months claiming, without evidence, that he can only lose if it the vote is rigged. He has threatened to challenge the outcome and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In rural Pennsylvania on Saturday, the president told supporters they should scrutinise polls in Philadelphia, a Democratic city, on election day.
      Democrats have called for massive turnout, to put the result beyond doubt.
      The election comes after a year that has seen an impeachment trial, an economic crisis and a reckoning over racial injustice. But Covid-19 remains the defining issue and the candidates’ closing arguments could not be more different.
      Biden has been driving home the message that Trump mismanaged a pandemic that has infected 9 million and killed 229,000. “He’s doing nothing,” the former vice-president said this week. “We’re learning to die with it. Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to the virus.”
      In Florida on Thursday, the president, who spent three nights in hospital after becoming infected, said: “You know the bottom line, though? You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast.”
      On Friday, he baselessly claimed: “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid.’”
      The president was to hold four rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday, then five on Sunday and five on Monday across Iowa, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Observing mostly maskless supporters crammed together, critics have branded such rallies “super-spreader events”.
      Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who advised Al Gore and John Kerry, said: “Trump is frantically flying around the country in Air Force One giving these rally speeches, which I think motivate his base but also alienate a lot of other voters because they look at the pictures where people are cheek by jowl and there’s no masking.”
      Noting an outbreak among Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff, Shrum added: “You have just had Covid invade the White House for a second time, so I think it adds to the sense that that he can’t handle Covid.”
      Polls show Biden with a consistent lead nationally and up by smaller margins in the states that will decide the electoral college. Democrats could also win a majority in the Senate, potentially ending years of gridlock.
      But few are complacent. The final Fox News poll in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 48% to 44%; the final Fox News poll this year has Biden up 52%-44%. Analysts say that if polls are off by the same margin, Biden will still win.
      Bob Woodward, author of two bestselling books about Trump, said: “It looks like Biden’s going to win but I would not bet more than a dollar on it. I think it’s quite possible that Trump will win.” More

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      Where to watch US election day live results in Australia

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      It’s been dubbed the most important US presidential election in recent history – one everyone in the world, including Australians, will be watching with great anticipation.
      Held amid a historic pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Americans, and the most widespread civil rights protests in US history, this is an election that will define the course America takes.
      [embedded content]
      What will a Biden victory – who has vowed to take action on climate change – mean for Australia’s climate policy?
      What will a Trump victory mean for far right extremism, which has become a growing threat in Australia since his last election victory?
      How will either of them handle increasingly tense relations with our biggest trading partner, China, which has already placed Australian industries – such as barley and wine – in the crosshairs?
      A lot is at stake, not just for the US, but indeed for Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the entire world.
      Election day is Tuesday 3 November but for the Australians watching, most of the action will be taking place on Wednesday 4 November.
      So if you’re staying home or venturing out to a party, how and where can you watch the US election results live in Australia?
      Who will be televising it?
      Just like with past elections, Australian television stations will be holding special election day coverage. ABC TV, SBS, channels Seven, Nine and Ten will all be covering the election.
      The coverage begins at roughly 11am across the board, with ABC and Channel Seven starting earlier at 10am, and most going on until around 5.00pm.
      On cable, you’ll be able to watch rolling election coverage on BBC, CNN, Sky News, Fox News, and Al Jazeera English.
      Can I follow live results and commentary online?
      Of course there will be extensive coverage online.
      The Guardian will be running a liveblog covering the election throughout the day, in addition to the continued extensive US election coverage and will include a live results tracker.
      Major news broadcasters in the US such as NBC, ABC and CBS are expected to livestream their election coverage on YouTube, as they did in 2016.
      Traditional news publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, and digital platforms like Vice and Huffington Post, also held livestreams for election coverage in 2016.
      You’ll also be able to read live blogs at most major news platforms. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News and Fox News will all be running a live blog on the night.
      Where are watch parties being held in my city?
      Adelaide
      Gilbert St Hotel, 88 Gilbert St, Adelaide.
      UniBar, Union House, Ground The University of Adelaide, Adelaide.
      Brisbane
      Pig & Whistle, Riverside Centre 123 Eagle St, Brisbane City.
      Canberra
      PJ O’Reilly’s, 52 Alinga St, Canberra.
      The Well, University of Canberra, 20 Telita St, Bruce.
      Melbourne
      Online watch party only.
      Perth
      The Windsor Hotel, 112 Mill Point Rd, South Perth.
      Sydney
      3 Wise Monkeys, 555 George St, Sydney.
      Cheers Sports Bar, 561 George Street, Sydney.
      CPAC, Doltone House, Darling Island, Pyrmont.
      There’s a relative dearth of election viewing parties this year, mostly due to the ongoing pandemic.
      Nonetheless, there are a couple of events being held across the country.
      Democrats Abroad, an official arm of the Democratic party, has organised watch parties across the country. In Brisbane, they’ll be at Pig & Whistle, in Sydney they’re at 3 Wise Monkeys, and in Canberra they’ll be at PJ O’Reilly’s. They’ll also be hosting parties in Adelaide and Perth, but unfortunately for Melburnians, they’ll be hosting an online watch party.
      A group of American expats in Sydney have also organised a bi-partisan watch party at Cheers bar, with the group encouraging people to “chuck a sickie” to join them.
      At the University of Canberra, a student group has organised a watch party at The Well. Similarly, students at the University of Adelaide have put together a watch party at the UniBar.
      Also in Adelaide, an election watch party is being hosted at the Gilbert St Hotel, with attendees encouraged to join up and cry “tears of joy or fear”.
      Finally, CPAC, Australia’s largest conservative conference, will be doubling up as a de facto election watch party. The initial allocation of tickets has been exhausted, although the conference is advertising a “standby” ticket if restrictions ease next week.
      What time will polls close in the US?
      Poll opening and closing times varies state-to-state, but they all open between 6am and 9am, and close between 7pm and 9pm local time.
      For Australians, that roughly translates to polls opening at 9pm AEST on 3 November and the latest poll, that being in Alaska, closing at 3pm AEST on 4 November.
      What are the key states to keep an eye on?
      Because of the presidential voting system, where a president is decided by how many electoral college votes they win, a handful of swing states will probably be where the election is won or lost.
      Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Iowa are the states you’ll need to keep an eye on, with a majority of them having flipped from supporting Obama to Trump in 2016.
      When will the victor be announced?
      Over 70 million Americans have already voted, more than half of the people who voted in 2016, with experts expecting a historic turnout.
      Counting begins on election day, which means that throughout the day, winners will be declared in each state once a candidate has a clear lead there, and results are usually declared on election day, by 10pm ET in the US.
      That means a winner would normally be declared between 1pm and 3pm on Wednesday. However, with so many people voting by mail, the result could potentially still be up in the air by the end of the day.
      The numbers of people voting by mail is unprecedented, and coupled with the challenges of holding an election during a pandemic, it could be anyone’s guess when we’ll formally get a victor. More

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      Joe Biden supporters won't believe in victory until it is theirs | Greg Jericho

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      A defining characteristic of progressive voters around the world is that they believe they can lose an election when ahead in the polls, and that they cannot win an election when they are behind in them.
      To be fair there is some justification for such belief. Progressives have become quite good at losing elections they should win.
      [embedded content]
      Graph not appearing? View here
      As we all look to the US presidential election this coming week, those working, hoping, and praying for a Biden win remain ever distrustful of the polls that have Biden up by eight points.
      Maybe we should not trust them, but we all know that were Biden down eight points, no one would think there was any hope left.
      The different attitude was nicely summarised by former Republican party consultant Stuart Stevens, who told Battleground podcast last week:

      I seem to remember losing to the Democrats in the popular vote every time since 1988, except 2004, so it’s like ‘you guys are winning, we’re losing’ and I just think there is a timidity to the idea that this can’t be a huge victory for Joe Biden … If I ran the Democratic party I would say ‘Look, this is ours, there is more of us than them, we just have to go and take it … rout them, rout them from the field and know that you are just.

      It’s true that since 1988 the Democratic candidate has won the national vote in six of the seven presidential elections (and is almost certain to do so again this time). And yet they have won just four of those times.
      The US electoral system, with its allocation of winner-takes-all electoral college votes, is so disjointed from the national vote that 538’s Nate Silver estimates that if Biden was ahead 1% in the popular vote he would only have a 6% chance of winning the election.
      Add in legitimate concerns about voter suppression (both before and after the election) and Biden supporters won’t believe the victory is won until he has his hand on the Bible delivering the oath of office.
      And even then …
      After all, we are talking about a country in which Walmart has announced that it is temporarily taking ammunition and guns off its shelves out of fear of violence in the wake of the election result. It is such a stunning announcement you kind of gloss over that this means guns and ammunition are normally on the shelves of Walmart stores.
      We’re also talking about a country where 40% of Florida voters in a recent poll said they thought Donald Trump was “compassionate” and 43% thought he was “truthful”. Words no longer have meaning at such times.
      In the past month everyone has been waiting for an “October surprise”.
      But the Trump party’s (that rancid combination of the Republican party and conservative media) attempt to smear Biden by way of his son were as arousing to voters as watching Rudy Giuliani “tuck in his shirt” while lying on a bed.
      Only the deluded and the desperate cared.
      But what about good economic news that will turn voters back to Trump? Late this past week there were reports of “record” GDP growth figures, with headlines that in the September quarter America’s economy grew 33%.
      It didn’t.
      America for some bizarre reason likes to annualise quarterly growth. The economy actually grew 7.4% in the September quarter after falling 9% in June – both figures were records.
      The US economy remains 3.5% smaller than it was before the pandemic took hold. There are also 11 million fewer Americans employed than there were in February. That is not a boom.
      But nothing – neither the polls, the economy, nor the horrendous spread of the virus – will give Biden supporters any sense that the election is his to win.
      And fair enough – the stakes are too high.
      A Trump victory would signal the failure of the US democratic experiment and the triumph of authoritarianism. Given his administration’s utter inability to deal with the virus it would also mean not only many more deaths but also a brake on the global economy for many years to come.
      It would also end hopes for limiting climate change at a global level.
      On the other side of the ledger is the hope a Biden administration with a Senate majority might be able to undo some of the damage and do some good over the next four years.
      There is no balance, and so we hold on, hoping there remains some good news for 2020 to deliver. More

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      US Congress hopeful Nancy Goroff: 'We need more scientists in public office'

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      Nancy Goroff will be the first female research scientist to serve in the US Congress if she is elected this November. The Democratic candidate is running for one of Long Island’s seats in the House of Representatives against incumbent Republican, Lee Zeldin, an ardent President Trump supporter who has described her as a “radical professor”. Facing a tight race with issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change looming large, Goroff, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is stressing her science credentials.
      You’ve worked at Stony Brook University for more than two decades developing new organic molecules for solar cells and eco-friendly lighting in your lab. What made you decide to run for Congress?I decided in late 2018, when the issues top of mind were climate change, the environment and healthcare. It came from being frustrated and infuriated with the denigration of science and expertise by the Trump administration. I’ve always advocated causes that I believe in – I sit on the Union of Concerned Scientist’s National Advisory Board – but it just didn’t seem like enough any more. I couldn’t stand by.
      Given the pandemic and climate emergency, is this election a referendum on whether politicians should listen to scientific advice?It seems to be. We hear from voters that they’re frustrated with politicians for not paying attention to the science and leading us to where we are now. Biden has said he is going to be a big proponent of science.
      We need to use facts to guide us through the coronavirus pandemic. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testified recently that the most important thing we can do to get ahead of the pandemic – more important than a vaccine – is to have everyone wear masks. That didn’t fit Trump’s narrative, so he said the CDC director misspoke. Rather than contradicting the CDC, he should be amplifying its message. That [Trump] won’t wear a mask and denigrates people for wearing masks is just unconscionable to me.
      What would the fallout for science be if Trump was re-elected?There would be a lot of pain and suffering. The pandemic will last much longer. I also worry about a continued lack of action on climate change, lack of concern about providing healthcare to people and the further undermining of experts in every government agency. People have been pushed out and there is a huge amount of work to do to rebuild that expertise.
      You’re not specifically supporting the Green New Deal, the progressive environmental package introduced last year by two Democrats including New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It sets an aggressive goal of developing a carbon neutral economy in 10 years. If elected, what would you do instead?There are many different versions of the Green New Deal. If I say I’m for the Green New Deal, the Republicans will decide that I’m for the most extreme version. I am for the US aiming to be carbon neutral in our energy production by 2035 and carbon neutral overall, including all sources, as soon after as we can. To achieve that we need to deploy the renewable energy technologies we have as quickly as possible and invest in research to develop new ones.
      I want to make sure Covid-19 stimulus spending is focused on investment in clean energy infrastructure. That will bring jobs and move us closer to a carbon neutral future. Then – I’m a scientist, I am well versed in the data – I want my office to be a resource for every member of Congress on scientific questions.
      You are backed by 314 Action, a Democratic committee whose mission is to get scientists elected to public office. Why do we need more scientists in Congress and does gender matter?We need more scientists, regardless of gender. We have a lot of lawyers and business people and that’s fine, but you want people from diverse backgrounds when you are trying to make complicated policy decisions. So many of our big challenges as a country have a scientific or technical component. There is only one research scientist in Congress now [Bill Foster, a Democratic physicist from Illinois]. As a woman in science, I know what it means to be an underrepresented group and I think that will be helpful for making sure my constituents get their voices amplified. More