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      in US Politics

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

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      The World’s Election

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons
      by Julian Borger in Washington

      Main image:
      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.
      All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.
      Also at stake is the idea of “the west” as a like-minded grouping of democracies who thought they had won the cold war three decades ago.
      “The Biden versus Trump showdown in November is probably the starkest choice between two different foreign policy visions that we’ve seen in any election in recent memory,” said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of An Open World, a new book on the contest for 21st-century global order.
      In an election which will determine so much about the future of America and the world, the Trump campaign has said very little about its intentions, producing what must be the shortest manifesto in the annals of US politics.
      It appeared late in the campaign and has 54 bullet points, of which five are about foreign policy – 41 words broken into a handful of slogans such as: “Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans”.
      The word “climate” does not appear, but there are two bullet points on partnering with other countries to “clean up” the oceans, and a pledge to “Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air”. (The phrase ignores a series of US scandals about poor water quality – and the fact that millions of Americans can no longer afford their water bills.)
      The US remains the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the average American’s carbon footprint is twice that of a European or Chinese citizen. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      'To Donald Trump, you're expendable': Joe Biden appeals to seniors – video

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      0:30

      Joe Biden says Donald Trump views older voters as ‘expendable’ and ‘forgettable’ as the Democratic presidential candidate sought to win fresh support in the battleground state of Florida.
      Biden’s visit on Tuesday came a day after the president’s own trip to Florida – his first outside Washington since his Covid-19 diagnosis.
      Covid crisis shows Trump sees older voters as ‘expendable’, says Biden

      Topics

      Joe Biden

      US politics

      Donald Trump

      US elections 2020 More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      It's not easy being the first but for Kamala Harris it has become a habit

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      It took less than one day after Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee for a racist and baseless “birther” conspiracy theory to start circulating among her critics.The morning after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, making her the first black woman and the first Asian American to join a major party’s presidential ticket, Newsweek published an op-ed casting doubt upon the California senator’s US citizenship because she was born to immigrant parents.The argument was immediately discredited by legal experts, who noted Harris was born in a hospital in Oakland, California, and was thus undeniably a US citizen.But that irrefutable evidence did not stop Donald Trump, one of the champions of the similarly baseless birther claims against Barack Obama, from stoking the conspiracy theory.“I just heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said at an August press conference. “But that’s a very serious, you’re saying that, they’re saying that she doesn’t qualify because she wasn’t born in this country.”The president has continued his attacks against Harris in the two months since, most recently calling her a “monster” after last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate.Trump’s efforts to demonize Harris have taken on an added element of desperation heading into the final weeks of the presidential election, as polls show Biden leading nationally and in major battleground states.The Democratic ticket’s significant polling advantage increases the likelihood that Harris will indeed become the country’s first female vice-president, potentially setting her up for a successful White House bid after Biden leaves office.But Trump’s comments have underscored a consistent theme of Harris’s entire political career, one that will probably only be amplified if she becomes vice-president: it’s not easy being the first.…Harris’s involvement with political activism started when she was a child, a fact that she has frequently touted on the campaign trail. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and became involved with the civil rights movement. More

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      in Elections

      Kamala Harris grilling prompts doubtful claim from Amy Coney Barrett

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      Amy Coney Barrett

      Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee condemns Republican push to overturn healthcare law and abortion rights

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      2:57

      Kamala Harris questions Amy Coney Barrett over the Affordable Care Act – video

      Kamala Harris delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican efforts to tear down healthcare and abortion access as she grilled Amy Coney Barrett, prompting the supreme court nominee to make the unbelievable claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare.
      Speaking via teleconference during Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee began with a campaign speech about the importance of accessible healthcare amid the coronavirus – highlighting the number of Americans who would lose insurance if the 2010 Affordable Care Act were repealed in five states where Republican senators are struggling to win re-election.
      She then addressed Barrett: “Prior to your nomination, were you aware of President Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who will strike down the Affordable Care Act? And I’d appreciate a yes or no answer.”
      Barrett maintained that before she was nominated to the supreme court, she was unaware of his public statements. “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements,” Barrett said.
      Harris asked how many months after Barrett wrote an article criticizing John Roberts’ decision upholding the Affordable Care Act she received her nomination for her appeals court position.
      “The Affordable Care Act and all of its protections hinge on this seat,” Harris said.
      “I would hope the committee would trust my integrity,” Barrett said, noting, as she has done throughout the hearings, that she has not made any commitments to rule a certain way on the healthcare law.
      The assertion, and Barrett’s implication that she had somehow tuned out the president’s loud, public criterion for judges he’d appoint, is difficult to believe.
      Harris, the former attorney general of California, is famous for her prosecutorial style of questioning. Her sharp interrogation of Donald Trump’s last Supreme Court nominee – now Justice Brett Kavanaugh – helped elevate her political profile.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      Complete exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris and Judge Kavanaugh on Mueller Investigation.Kavanaugh: “I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”Sen. Harris: “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” pic.twitter.com/3bP7rJ6u0L

      August 11, 2020

      Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it.
      Barrett was a member of a “right to life” organization that in 2016 promoted a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized for misleading and misdirecting vulnerable women seeking abortions. She has signed off on a newspaper ad calling Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 ruling protecting the right to choose – “barbaric”. A Notre Dame Magazine article from 2013 describes a lecture series during which Barrett “spoke … to her own conviction that life begins at conception”.
      As a federal judge, she has considered three laws restricting abortion and expressed misgivings about rulings that had struck down the laws. She joined the dissent against a decision to strike down an Indiana abortion rule – signed into law by Mike Pence when the vice-president was Indiana’s governor – that mandated the fetal remains be buried or cremated.
      “I would suggest that we not pretend that we don’t know how this nominee views a women’s right to choose or make her own decisions,” Harris said. The senator noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Barrett has cited as her model in declining to give any hints on how she would vote on future cases, was, unlike Barrett, much more forthcoming with her own personal views on abortion.
      Harris did not ask Barrett a direct question about Roe v Wade, driving home the point that her views have already been made plain.
      Harris ended by asking to enter into the record letters opposing Barrett’s nomination from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood.

      Topics

      Amy Coney Barrett

      Kamala Harris

      Republicans

      US elections 2020

      US supreme court

      US politics

      US Senate

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