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Barr echoes mail-in ballot falsehoods and denies racism in policing
William Barr
When asked to back up his claims on counterfeit ballots, the attorney general says he’s basing his assertion ‘on logic’ More
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'Get off Twitter': Joe Biden urges Trump to focus on safely reopening schools
Joe Biden
Democratic candidate sought to put virus at heart of the campaign as rivals gave duelling speeches on Wednesday
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Joe Biden tells Trump to ‘get off Twitter’ and focus on reopening schools – video
Joe Biden attempted to regain the narrative in the US presidential election on Wednesday, telling Donald Trump to “get off Twitter” and focus on safely reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democratic nominee sought to put the virus back at the heart of the campaign after two weeks that saw the president capitalise on sporadic violence in American cities, which has blighted largely peaceful protests over police brutality and systemic racism, to push a “law and order” theme and force Biden on to the back foot.
With opinion polls narrowing two months before election day, Trump and Biden gave duelling speeches, both in cities called Wilmington but in different states, as they entered the final sprint to 3 November.
Declaring reopening schools “a national emergency” as he spoke in his home town, Wilmington, Delaware, Biden demanded: “Mr President, where are you? Where are you? Why aren’t you working on this? We need emergency support funding for our schools and we need it now. Mr President, that’s your job, that’s your job.”
He added: “That’s what you should be focused on now, getting our kids back to school safely, keeping schools safely able to remain open once they open. Not whipping up fear and division, not inciting violence in our streets.
“Get off Twitter and start talking to the congressional leaders in both parties. Invite them to the Oval Office. You always talk about your ability to negotiate. Negotiate a deal. A deal for somebody other than yourself.”
Trump was in Wilmington, North Carolina, for ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the second world war.
Showcasing the symbolic power on an incumbent president, Trump marked his visit to a battleground state with a speech in front of battleship. His remarks mostly concerned the creation of the first “American World War II Heritage City”, but he included a reference to his key campaign theme.
“American warriors did not defeat fascism and oppression overseas only to watch our freedoms be trampled by violent mobs here at home,” Trump said.
The vast majority of protests have been peaceful. Those that have turned violent have involved factions from either side of the political divide.
“These people only know one thing,” Trump said, “and that’s strength. That’s all they know, strength.” More - in US Politics
Joe Biden tells Trump to 'get off Twitter' and focus on reopening schools – video
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Joe Biden has described school closures as a ‘national emergency’ as he sought to put the coronavirus pandemic back at the heart of the US election campaign, after two weeks of Trump seeking to capitalise on sporadic scenes of violence in cities to push a ‘law and order’ theme
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Covid cases could surge in battleground midwest during Labor Day holiday
As health officials warned that gatherings on the upcoming Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States could fuel the spread of coronavirus, political observers are closely watching attitudes about the virus in the midwest, where Donald Trump and Joe Biden are locked in a struggle that could decide the presidential election.Two new national polls published on Wednesday found that Trump retained the support of 40%-41% of voters – within the narrow band of support he has held since he took office, even as the confirmed death toll from Covid-19 in the United States approaches 200,000.One of the polls, for Grinnell College by the highly reputed Selzer & Company, found that Trump enjoys a 49-45 lead over Biden among voters ages 55 and older – precisely the group most vulnerable to serious complications or death from coronavirus.But in midwestern states such as Iowa and Minnesota, in particular, new warnings about coronavirus are being sounded just as the presidential election enters its final weeks and absentee voting begins.“We cannot afford to have this Labor Day weekend further accelerate the community spread, because if that happens, what comes next is going to be worse,” Jan Malcolm, the Minnesota health commissioner, told local MPR News on Monday. “For a while now, we feel we’ve been kind of walking on the edge of a cliff.”A White House coronavirus taskforce sent Iowa health officials a report this week warning that the state has the highest rate of cases in the United States, according to the Des Moines Register.The state has recorded just over 1,000 deaths from Covid-19, and the more than 65,000 confirmed cases have disproportionately affected communities tied to regional packing plants.Biden was scheduled to speak on Wednesday about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and on Thursday the former vice-president planned to hold a community meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of protests after the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer last month. More
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Eighty-one Nobel winners back 'pro-science' Biden for president
Eighty-one American winners of Nobel prizes in the fields of chemistry, medicine and physics have endorsed Joe Biden for president, based on the candidate’s support for science.An open letter signed by the laureates asserts that the United States is at a unique historical crossroads demanding that leaders “appreciate the value of science”. The Biden campaign released the letter on Wednesday.The letter from the Nobel laureates endorses Biden with three sentences:
At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy. During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research, and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country. As American citizens and as scientists, we wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President.
The letter does not make explicit reference to the coronavirus pandemic or to the climate emergency, but it does single out an issue outside the expertise of the signatories: immigration.Biden respects “the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country”, the letter says.In July, the Donald Trump administration advanced a plan to deport foreign students in the United States whose classes had moved online owing to the pandemic, but the plan was soon shelved.Trump has described climate change as a conspiracy advanced by China and he regularly undermines efforts by public health officials to communicate the most basic details about coronavirus transmission and safety measures.He has failed to get the pandemic under control, while claiming the virus will simply go away, and has put the US on the path to leaving the landmark international Paris climate accord the day after the presidential election, 4 November.The group endorsement was organized by Representative Bill Foster of Illinois, CNN reported. Before joining Congress, Foster worked as a high-energy physicist and particle accelerator designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was a member of the team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter, according to his official biography.The Nobel prizes were endowed in 1895 by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist whose pioneering work in explosives led to an industrial career and fortune. Laureates outside the sciences include Biden’s former running mate, Barack Obama, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel peace prize. More - in US Politics
The secret to Donald Trump's electoral strategy? Emotion, not policy | Arlie Russell Hochschild
Opinion
Donald Trump
The secret to Donald Trump’s electoral strategy? Emotion, not policy
Arlie Hochschild
All of Trump’s incoherence leads some analysts to conclude Trump has no strategy. But he does – and it works like magic More
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First Thing: Trump denies police racism is 'systemic' on Kenosha visit
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US president blamed police discrimination on ‘bad apples’. Plus, US refuses to join coronavirus vaccine cooperation over WHO stance
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Electoral college explained: how Biden faces an uphill battle in the US election
US elections 2020
Trump won the presidency in 2016 despite Clinton receiving almost 3m more votes, all because of the electoral college. How does the system work?
Wed 2 Sep 2020 02.30 EDT
Last modified on Wed 2 Sep 2020 02.31 EDT
Who elects the US president?
When Americans cast their ballots for the US president, they are actually voting for a representative of that candidate’s party known as an elector. There are 538 electors who then vote for the president on behalf of the people in their state.
Each state is assigned a certain number of these electoral votes, based on the number of congressional districts they have, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC is also assigned three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress. A majority of 270 of these votes is needed to win the presidency.
The process of nominating electors varies by state and by party, but is generally done one of two ways. Ahead of the election, political parties either choose electors at their national conventions, or they are voted for by the party’s central committee.
The electoral college nearly always operates with a winner-takes-all system, in which the candidate with the highest number of votes in a state claims all of that state’s electoral votes. For example, in 2016, Trump beat Clinton in Florida by a margin of just 2.2%, but that meant he claimed all 29 of Florida’s crucial electoral votes.
Such small margins in a handful of key swing states meant that, regardless of Clinton’s national vote lead, Trump was able to clinch victory in several swing states and therefore win more electoral college votes.
Biden could face the same hurdle in November, meaning he will need to focus his attention on a handful of battleground states to win the presidency.
A chart showing electoral college votes by state
The unequal distribution of electoral votes
While the number of electoral votes a state is assigned somewhat reflects its population, the minimum of three votes per state means that the relative value of electoral votes varies across America.
The least populous states like North and South Dakota and the smaller states of New England are overrepresented because of the required minimum of three electoral votes. Meanwhile, the states with the most people – California, Texas and Florida – are underrepresented in the electoral college.
Wyoming has one electoral college vote for every 193,000 people, compared with California’s rate of one electoral vote per 718,000 people. This means that each electoral vote in California represents over three times as many people as one in Wyoming. These disparities are repeated across the country.
A visual of population per electoral vote by state
Who does it favour?
Experts have warned that, after returning two presidents that got fewer votes than their opponents since 2000, the electoral college is flawed.
In 2000, Al Gore won over half a million more votes than Bush, yet Bush became president after winning Florida by just 537 votes.
A chart showing recent election outcomes by popular vote and electoral college margins
Professor George Edwards III, at Texas A&M University, said: “The electoral college violates the core tenet of democracy, that all votes count equally and allows the candidate finishing second to win the election. Why hold an election if we do not care who received the most votes?
“At the moment, the electoral college favours Republicans because of the way Republican votes are distributed across the country. They are more likely to occur in states that are closely divided between the parties.”
Under the winner-takes-all system, the margin of victory in a state becomes irrelevant. In 2016, Clinton’s substantial margins in states such as California and New York failed to earn her enough electoral votes, while close races in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan took Trump over the 270 majority.
A visual showing margins and electoral votes by state gained by Trump and Clinton in 2016
As candidates easily win the electoral votes of their solid states, the election plays out in a handful of key battlegrounds. In 2016, Trump won six such states – Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – adding 99 electoral votes to his total.
The demographics of these states differ from the national average. They are older, have more white voters without college degrees, and often have smaller non-white populations. These characteristics generally favour Republicans, and made up the base of Trump’s votes in 2016.
For example, 67% of non-college-educated white people voted for Trump in 2016. In all six swing states, this demographic is overrepresented by at least six percentage points more than the national average. More
