Trump gets grilled as Biden coasts: Takeaways from the dueling town halls

It came off less like a split screen than a breach in the political universe – “Die Hard” versus “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

At the edge of his seat at his town hall in Miami, Donald Trump refused to disavow QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory, and sidestepped questions about his coronavirus tests. On a more sober, distant stage in Philadelphia, Biden criticized Trump’s response to the pandemic and discussed the intricacies of racial injustice.

Each candidate played to type. Biden put in a workmanlike performance — steady, low-key, sometimes meandering. Trump was his usual combative self — occasionally to his own detriment, but hard to turn away from. In the end, nothing happened that’s likely to change the race. So, advantage Biden.

The town halls themselves were a loss for Trump. By declining to participate in a remote debate on Thursday — leading to the dueling town halls — he won’t have another chance to go toe-to-toe onstage with Biden until the final expected debate next week. Meanwhile, the president is down double digits nationally and consistently trailing in swing states and millions of voters cast their ballots early.

So, in a perfect distillation of our politics, Americans on Thursday were left to choose their news — one town hall or the other, with each candidate speaking to a partisan crowd and persuading probably no one.

In that spirit, we offer our superlatives for the debate night that wasn’t:

Biggest blunder

It wasn’t the first time he’s done it. But weeks before the election Trump again refused to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory, guaranteeing him criticism — perhaps even by members of his own party — and a spate of negative news stories.

His own FBI has labeled QAnon, which believes Trump is opposed by a cabal of pedophiles, a domestic terrorism threat. But Trump pleaded ignorance. “I know nothing about QAnon,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly praised Republican candidates who espouse the theory, even saying he appreciates QAnon supporters’ backing. When he was asked if he thought there was a ring of child traffickers in the federal government, Trump did take the opportunity to denounce pedophilia.

“I do know that they are very much against pedophilia,” Trump said of QAnon. “I agree with that.”

Sketchiest Punt

It’s an understatement at this point to call Biden’s handling of the Supreme Court “packing” question a dodge, if only because few politicians are so frank about their own evasiveness.

On Thursday, Biden said he is “not a fan” of adding justices to the Supreme Court. But he did not foreclose on the possibility, saying “it depends on how this turns out.”

Biden is not above swerving around a question. When he was asked whether he would push for mandatory coronavirus vaccines if elected, he also said it “depends." But his handling of the Supreme Court is something special.

When pressed, Biden said that voters deserved to have a clear answer on his position and pledged to give them one before Election Day. But Biden knows as well as anyone that millions of voters have already cast their ballots, and that millions more will before Election Day.

In deferring, he keeps a controversial issue out of the headlines for as long as possible.

Most surprising omission

Where’s Hunter? Trump often poses that question at his campaign rallies, referring to Biden’s son, whom he accuses of trading on his famous father’s name by earning millions of dollars in Ukraine and China. (His campaign even has T-shirts printed up with that question.).

But on Thursday, Trump never uttered Hunter Biden’s name, even though the town hall came a day after a new allegation Hunter Biden surfaced in the New York Post. Trump and his aides and allies have been amplifying the story for 24 hours but on Thursday the president didn’t mention it.

Best Network Adjustment

Biden might not have faced difficult questioning at previous town halls, but ABC pressed him on Thursday, and NBC was far rougher on Trump than it was on Biden last week.

From the start of Biden’s town hall, the second and third town hall participants to ask questions were Republicans, and George Stephanopoulos was eager with follow-ups.

Less than five minutes into the forum, Stephanopoulos pressed Biden on his assertion that he would listen to the science, saying scientists and economists will disagree. And he pushed back on Biden’s criticism of Trump’s early response to the pandemic, saying Biden did not initially call for aggressive interventions.

After the first commercial break, Biden was forced to explain the crime bill — in response to a questioner who said it “showed prejudice against minorities.” And not long after, Stephanopoulos pressed him on his position on expanding the Supreme Court. It was civil. But kid gloves, it wasn’t.

Trump’s toughest questions came not from the audience but the moderator, Savannah Guthrie, who asked Trump 15 minutes of questions before calling on members of the audience and repeatedly pushed back after he dodged questions.

“Savannah Guthrie is doing what I’ve been waiting four years for someone to do,” wrote Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko on Twitter.

She pressed him to explain why he retweeted a conspiracy theory that Biden had tried to cover up the fake death of Osama bin Laden, and who he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to, as outlined in a recent New York Times story on his taxes.

Trump repeatedly talked over her, and accused Guthrie of being tougher on him than Biden. “You always do this," he said to the NBC reporter in response to one question.

Most artful dodge

Trump refused repeatedly to say when he had his last negative Covid-19 test before he announced he tested positive Oct. 2.

"I don't know. I don't even remember," he said. “I test all the time. I can tell you this,” Trump said.

Trump said he gets tested regularly — though not every day — and wouldn’t say whether he had a test Sept. 29, the day of the first presidential debate in Cleveland. "Possibly I did. Possibly I didn't," he said.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the debates, required those who attended debate to be tested but moderator Chris Wallace said that was largely based on an honor system for the campaigns.

Two durable septuagenarians

Biden got multiple commercial breaks on Thursday night, but he also went 90 minutes from a white, cushioned chair. It’s a weird campaign when this matters, but Biden’s ability to endure without a major flub counts as a setback for Trump at this point.

It wouldn’t be, of course, if the race was closer or if Trump hadn’t relentlessly depicted Biden as a disoriented tool of the progressive left. But he has, and Biden made it another day without a lapse. Nineteen days until Election Day — and with millions of ballots already cast — every day that Biden doesn’t fall down is a problem for Trump.

The president, meanwhile, is somehow back in full-on campaign mode after his hospitalization for Covid-19.

Most likely to be played on loop if Biden loses

Biden, asked what it would say about America if he loses to Trump, said, “Well, it could say that I’m a lousy candidate and I didn’t do a good job.”

Wackiest comment

A woman who was described as a Hillary Clinton voter in 2016 delayed asking her question about immigration to give Trump a compliment.

“I have to say, Mr. President, you have a great smile,” she said. “He does. You're so handsome when you smile.”

Trump smiled awkwardly in response.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2FBiCoY
via 400 Since 1619

Inside Trump’s town hall: Plenty of sparring and a few cheers

MIAMI — His Democratic opponent was more than 1,000 miles away when he took the stage here, but that didn't stop President Donald Trump from delivering a performance every bit as defiant.

Fresh off a North Carolina campaign rally where a sea of mask-less supporters greeted him with adoration, Trump faced a vastly different environment when he sat down Thursday night — several feet away from NBC “Today" anchor Savannah Guthrie and dozens of socially distanced voters — for a televised town hall.

Within minutes, he was sparring with Guthrie on everything from rising Covid-19 infection rates that several states have faced this week to whether a far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles have infiltrated the federal government, is worthy of attention.

"I just don't know about QAnon. Let's waste a whole show. You start off with white supremacy? I denounced it. Why aren't you asking me about antifa? Why aren't you asking me about the radical left? I condemn pedophilia," Trump said, slamming Guthrie for her line of questioning.

It was an opportunity for Trump to dismiss the media, scientific experts, political opponents and anything else in his way with voting underway in most of the country. And Trump tried to make the most of it, despite an audience size that was set to be a small fraction of what an official presidential debate would’ve garnered.

Like a boxer consulting his coach during breaks, the president was egged on by aides when Guthrie and the audience paused for commercials. Some clustered around the president for several minutes during the breaks.

At the edge of the stage during the event stood White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah and senior campaign adviser David Bossie. Trump's daughter Tiffany and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of his eldest son Don Jr., were also seated among the audience.

During one TV break, Trump stood up and acknowledged a small audience behind him — some of whom delivered a whoop and cheer, another calling out “Latinos for Trump.”

It was a sticky, warm night — temperatures in the low 80s — for the event on an outdoor terrace at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The setting marked a starkly different scene from the flurry of rallies Trump has embarked upon in the final three weeks before Election Day. Most of the rallies feature crowds packed shoulder to shoulder just like they were pre-pandemic, many not wearing masks. Thursday’s town hall event forced Trump into an environment designed for social distancing, with many attendees shown wearing masks.

Similar to his pugnacious performance in the first presidential debate against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden last month, Trump repeatedly interrupted Guthrie amid questions about whether he would accept the 2020 election results and about his skepticism of protective face coverings after suffering from Covid-19 himself. When she pressed him to condemn the QAanon conspiracy theory, after questions about whether he would denounce white supremacists, he shot back, "So cute."

There were other moments when the president showed discipline that was all but absent from his first debate-stage performance, however.

When the moderator tried to pin down Trump on whether he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned, a move that would make abortion illegal, the president seemed to recognize the perils of a clear answer. Most voters do not support such a move, but Trump in 2016 argued for punishing women who got abortions and has clearly stated he‘d appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the law.

Answering a questioner at the town hall, Trump focused instead on getting his court pick in place. “I would like to see a brilliant jurist make a decision,” the president said carefully. “I did not tell her what decision she should make and I think it would be inappropriate to say so right now.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2FyaXaZ
via 400 Since 1619

Biden routs Trump in September fundraising, $383M to $248M

President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee and affiliated joint fundraising committees raised $247.8 million in September, Trump’s campaign announced, leaving him at a significant cash deficit to former Vice President Joe Biden entering the final stretch of the 2020 election.

Biden’s campaign and affiliated committees raised a record $383 million in September, and they had $432 million in reserves at the end of the month, his campaign announced Wednesday.

Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for Trump’s campaign, tweeted late Thursday that the president also had $251.4 million cash on hand to start October.

It is a major reversal from the spring, where Trump had a seemingly unbeatable fundraising head start against Biden, who entered the Democratic primary facing questions about his fundraising and had to run a lean campaign before taking off and securing the Democratic nomination.

Biden has taken advantage of his cash edge in recent weeks, expanding his TV spending into traditionally Republican states like Texas while Trump gets significantly outspent on the airwaves.

Murtaugh said that Trump had the resources necessary to win the election, despite Biden's financial dominance.

“President Trump hits final stretch with strength, resources, record & huge ground game needed to spread message and secure re-election,” Murtaugh tweeted.

Biden’s fundraising advantage comes as Democratic grassroots donors flood campaigns up-and-down the ballot with donations. ActBlue, the Democratic online payment processor, handled $1.5 billion in the quarter, including $758 million just in September. WinRed, its Republican counterpart, processed over $623.5 million in the third quarter.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Adelson have rushed to try to fill the fundraising gap between the president and Biden. They donated $75 million to the super PAC Preserve America during the last month.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3j4yOMY
via 400 Since 1619

QAnon finds a new home in Trump’s MAGA movement

The QAnon world is no longer simply a social media community trafficking in conspiracy theories. It’s increasingly a new constituency for the GOP — one that’s fired up like the rest of the MAGA movement, warring with tech giants and ready to battle through Election Day on behalf of a struggling president.

Just this month, President Donald Trump has retweeted and highlighted several accounts with a history of posting QAnon content. He’s stoked conspiracy theories that originated in the QAnon world, even to the detriment of his own supporters. And along with other Republicans, he’s increasingly allowed into the arms of his MAGA movement a group that had been dismissed as fringe nonsense.

While both groups started from very different places, both MAGA and QAnon supporters share the belief that Trump is fighting conspiracies emanating from inside the Deep State — a notion Trump himself has invoked. “MAGA world kind of sees Trump as this epic hero, and QAnon does the same exact thing,” said Kristen Doerer, managing editor of Right Wing Watch, a nonprofit that tracks far-right groups.

The QAnon movement suffered another blow on Thursday when YouTube became the latest platform to block some content from QAnon believers. Facebook in August announced a ban on QAnon groups with “discussions of potential violence,” expanding it to a blanket ban on QAnon-affiliated groups and pages in early October. Twitter’s approach was narrower, simply banning nearly 7,000 accounts back in July. The Facebook and Twitter moves came in response to reports that QAnon pages had been spreading pandemic-related misinformation, as well as inspiring acts of violence nationwide.

But QAnon has already found other ways to survive. Parts of the GOP are falling into an uneasy relationship with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges in part that a cabal of demon-worshipping, pedophile elites live in Washington and will stop at nothing to maintain their power.

At a NBC News town hall on Thursday night, Trump himself refused to denounce QAnon when asked about the movement. “I know nothing about QAnon. I know very little,” the president said. “I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard.”

The vast majority of current House Republicans have openly condemned QAnon, with all but 17 signing onto a recent House resolution calling it a “conspiracy theory.” But Republicans are starting with deal with potential QAnon adherents joining their party in Congress, and some have started reaching out to these believers. At least one sitting GOP member of Congress has appeared on programs that promote QAnon content, and even more candidates have gone to these networks to appeal for money. Major Republicans and ambassadors of the Trump orbit have appeared at events with QAnon adherents, and most notably, none has withdrawn endorsements of candidates specifically because of their affinity with QAnon — though they did make a point of withdrawing their endorsement of Greene for her anti-semitic and racist statements.

In effect, QAnon has become a voter bloc within the MAGAfied version of the Republican Party. As the official networks housing Q theories get taken down — platforms shutting down groups, Twitter cracking down on hashtags — the QAnon movement has found a home inside the MAGA movement.

As Trump has courted a wide range of supporters to expand his base, the beliefs of this mushrooming community are seeping into the Republican base. A recent Morning Consult poll found that 38 percent of Republicans believe that at least parts of the QAnon conspiracy are true, and 12 percent of all social media users who are familiar with QAnon have positively engaged with the theory on social media. A Pew Research survey last month found that 41 percent of Republicans believed that QAnon was “somewhat” or “very good” for the country.

Trump himself is at the center of the shift. He’s the public face of QAnon adulation, a focus since the beginning of the movement. At the core of QAnon’s belief is the hope that one day, the “Storm” will come, referring to a day where the satanic pedophiles get purged from government, arrested and possibly executed.

As the outsider, Trump would be at the vanguard. For months, QAnon supporters would obsess over his various gestures and nods, dissect videos to see whether he’d drawn a “q” with his fingers and eagerly disseminate content tied to moments when Trump mentioned storms and hurricanes.

Trump has, either intentionally or not, stoked that obsession through his online content. Over the past year, his habit of retweeting QAnon-linked content, and sharing conspiracy theories that originate from the Q swamps, has skyrocketed. On July 4 alone, he posted 14 tweets from accounts that were QAnon-linked. In the past week, he tweeted content from similar accounts: one that has theorized that Stephen Colbert had interviewed a John Bolton body double, and one from high-profile QAnon supporter Joy Villa.

Trump’s most attention-grabbing retweet of the week was from an account with Q references in its name, promoting a belief that President Barack Obama had actually killed Osama bin Laden’s body double. That retweet led Robert O’Neill — a Navy SEAL who claims he put the bullet in bin Laden’s head in 2011, and a high-profile Trump supporter himself — to openly denounce Trump and his QAnon adherents.

“You can sort of clock the velocity and intensity and craziness of the Q posts by the real political peril in which Trump finds himself over time,” said Rick Wilson, a former GOP strategist who is now part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, and had for years been a subject of QAnon intrigue.

The hardcore QAnon believers, in turn, have become major MAGA power players. Some of the splashy QAnon celebrities, such as those who have been retweeted by the president, have gained a big enough following that they’ve been invited to conferences where they’ve spoken on panels with Trump allies such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Roger Stone. Kelly Loeffler, fighting for her Senate seat in Georgia, has been touting her endorsement from Greene.

Last month, Vice President Mike Pence was forced to cancel an appearance at a Montana fundraiser after it was revealed his hosts were sharing memes and following QAnon groups on Facebook.

Less publicly, the GOP has made outreaches to QAnon through less obvious means: appearing on podcasts and video channels that focus on making QAnon messaging and sharing it to millions of followers. At least eight GOP congressional candidates — including sitting Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) — have made appearances on QAnon programs in this cycle alone, according to Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. One, Utah candidate Burgess Owens, had appeared on at least two QAnon-linked programs — Patriots’ Soapbox, a livestreamed pro-QAnon show, and Flocktop, a podcast that has boosted QAnon content in the past — to raise money.

“There is no audience and no part of the Trump universe that is more dedicated, more active and in terms of just pure producing work, consuming content, hours spent, than QAnon adherents,” Carusone said. “And so if you're thinking about it from that perspective, this is the most diehard audience you could possibly have.”

Researchers who’ve followed the rise of the QAnon movement believe that part of the reason the MAGA movement has embraced QAnon is that while the FBI has classified the group as a domestic terrorism threat, it views the movement as an overly enthusiastic but relatively harmless group of pro-Trump enthusiasts who share his content in their spaces.

“That’s likely why pro-Trump commentator Bill Mitchell of YourVoice America argued that people should not criticize the QAnon movement because even if it’s false, Q is giving people confidence in Trump as Election Day approaches,” said Doerer of Right Wing Watch. “This seems to sum up the Republican strategy: Don’t criticize the QAnon movement because the movement is useful to Trump’s reelection prospects.”

It could also be that the movement was simply too big to ignore at this point, said Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher and co-host of the podcast “QAnon Anonymous.“

“Imagine any political movement going from not existing to having elected representatives in just three years,” he said, referring to the extremely high likelihood that Marjorie Taylor Greene — a prominent proponent of conspiracy theories regarding QAnon and anti-semitic tropes — would be a member of congress in 2020. “That is a stunning political success story.”

Regardless of Trump’s fortunes, the QAnon community will be inclined to follow someone as a leader in Washington. “The true believers are too radicalized to let go of it now after dedicating years of their lives to the movement,” View said.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/31bz1rO
via 400 Since 1619

Trump refuses to denounce QAnon — and other key moments from tonight’s town halls

The second presidential debate is off, but President Donald Trump and Joe Biden still spent Thursday night on national TV, answering questions from voters in separate town hall events.

The forums come as Trump ramps his public schedule back up following his hospitalization with coronavirus, which prompted the Commission on Presidential Debates to call for a virtual debate — and led Trump to back out of the rematch with Biden altogether.

The Democratic ticket is dealing with its own brush with the virus, as at least three people who have been around Biden or Sen. Kamala Harris announced positive tests Thursday, temporarily sidelining the vice presidential nominee. (Both members of the ticket tested negative Thursday.)

Here are the key moments from the two events:

Trump won’t say whether he was tested for Covid on day of first debate

Trump, appearing on NBC from Miami, wouldn’t say whether he took a coronavirus test on the day of the first presidential debate, saying he couldn’t recall.

“I don’t know, I don’t even remember,” the president told the moderator, Savannah Guthrie. “I test all the time. I can tell you this,” Trump said.

Trump said he gets tested regularly and couldn’t remember whether he was tested just before taking the debate stage on Sept. 29. The Commission on Presidential Debates required all people in the debate venue to be tested before entering. Candidates were tested by their campaigns and reported results largely based on an honor system, according to moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News.

Trump tested positive for the virus only a few days after the debate. He was hospitalized the following weekend to be treated for the disease.

Biden punts on whether he’d support making a Covid vaccine mandatory

Asked whether he would make a coronavirus vaccine mandatory, Biden acknowledged that such a requirement would be tricky to implement, and beyond that, it’s unclear just what the specifics of approved vaccines are going to be.

“It depends on the state of the nature of the vaccine when it comes out, and how it's being distributed,” Biden said.

Biden did note that children are required to be inoculated against measles and other infectious diseases in order to attend school. But he said he would lean on the nation’s governors and other elected officials to implement the vaccination recommendations put forward by medical experts.

Biden also said he believes there is “real progress” toward having a safe and effective vaccine, though it likely would not be widely available until early next year — longer than the timeline Trump has said he wants — and that he would personally get a vaccine once it is deemed safe.

Trump refuses to denounce QAnon

Trump refused to denounce the conspiracy theory QAnon, saying he doesn’t know whether there is a secret government cabal of pedophiles as the theory claims.

When asked about the viral phenomenon, which has been deemed a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI, Trump said, “I know nothing about QAnon,” even though Guthrie had just explained the theory to him.

“I do know that they are very much against pedophilia,” Trump said. “I agree with that.”

Trump has praised Republican candidates who espouse the theory, which has been repeatedly debunked. Even after Guthrie pushed Trump, asking him whether there was a ring of child traffickers in the heart of the government, the president said it was impossible to know.

Covid didn’t change Trump’s view on masks

Trump said his stance on wearing masks hasn’t changed since contracting coronavirus, adding that there are “two stories” on whether wearing them is necessary.

“You have a story where they want, a story where they don't want,” Trump said.

The president has repeatedly come under fire for not urging the public to wear masks, despite the consensus among his health experts that it could help curb the disease. Trump often asked reporters to remove their masks during White House news briefings, and his campaign events frequently have scant enforcement on mask wearing.

Trump cited his adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, whom he misidentified as Scott Atkins, who has cast doubt on the efficacy of mask wearing. But Guthrie pointed out Atlas is not an infectious disease expert and that numerous studies have gone contrary to his claims.

Biden says ’94 crime bill was a mistake

Biden said he believed the 1994 criminal justice package he penned was flawed after it contributed to mass incarceration, particularly for people of color.

After answering a woman’s question about the law by touting its support at the time, Biden was asked specifically if in hindsight the law was a mistake. “Yes, it was,” Biden said, though he maintained that the main problem was how the new law was implemented at the state and local level.

Biden said that “things have changed drastically” in the quarter-century since his crime bill’s passage, and some of its components have not aged well.

“It had a lot of other things in it that turned out to be both bad and good,” Biden said.

Biden touted other legislation he’s supported — including the Violence Against Women Act and a ban on assault weapons that has expired ­— and argued his record should be viewed in its entirety.

Trump and his allies have hammered Biden over the bill, particularly in the hope of drawing away traditionally Democratic-leaning Black and Latino voters.

Biden also said he still supports his decades-old comments endorsing more police officers on the streets — “if they’re involved with community policing, not jump squads.”

Biden has also fended off accusations by Trump that he supports the effort to “defund the police,” repeatedly disavowing the idea.

Trump doesn’t deny he owes over $400 million in debt

Trump denied owing any money to foreign entities, but would not deny having a debt of more than $400 million that was reported in an investigative report by The New York Times.

When asked whom he owed the debt to, Trump stumbled over his defense, saying The Times had illegally obtained his tax records. He also claimed that amount of debt was “peanuts” compared with his overall assets.

Guthrie pushed Trump, saying he seemed to be confirming that he has over $400 million in debt. Trump responded by saying, “What I'm saying is that it's a tiny percentage of my net worth.”

He also claimed that none of his debts are to foreign banks or Russian actors. He said he “will probably, because it's so easy to solve … let you know who I owe money to.” But when asked why he doesn’t release his tax returns as all other modern presidents have done, Trump said that “common sense and intelligence” were keeping him from releasing them.

Biden keeps Supreme Court changes on the table

Biden said that while he is “not a fan” of so-called “court packing” or otherwise overhauling the federal judicial system, the calculus changes if Republicans successfully push through Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination before the election.

“It depends on how this turns out,” Biden said. “It depends on how much they rush this.”

Biden has been coy about his position on altering the Supreme Court, saying definitive answers on the question would be a distraction and overshadow the GOP’s effort to seat Barrett during the homestretch of a presidential election.

If Barrett is confirmed, which is expected to happen barring any last-minute surprises, Biden said he is “open to considering what happens from that point on,” and he said he would make his position on the Supreme Court clear before Election Day. But “it depends on how they handle this,” Biden said of Senate Republicans.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/342q6L9
via 400 Since 1619

The inside story of how Ice Cube joined forces with Donald Trump

This is the story of how Ice Cube wound up in a room with Jared Kushner less than two months before the election — then locked arms with Donald Trump in a move that delighted the president’s supporters and angered many African Americans.

Late last month, the iconic rapper quietly slipped into Washington, D.C., for a three-hour meeting near the White House with Kushner and other senior advisers to Trump. After a summer of racial unrest, Ice Cube was promoting a “Contract with Black America” to help lift African Americans economically. He wanted the administration’s ear.

Eager to siphon off a slice of Joe Biden’s black support, Trump had been wooing African Americans for months. Landing Ice Cube’s endorsement was a stretch, but a collaboration with the famous rapper would still be a big get. Even heading off an Ice Cube endorsement of Joe Biden would send a message, Trump allies thought.

After that sitdown, White House aides went back and forth with Ice Cube over his 13-point blueprint — parts of which they agreed with, others they did not. But a few weeks later, when Trump released his own proposal to boost African Americans, it included Ice Cube’s biggest ask: a $500 billion capital infusion into the Black community.

After the Trump campaign revealed Wednesday that Ice Cube had helped shape the president’s plan, an array of Black commentators responded with fury. Touré said the artist was “being used”; Roxane Gay asked: “How ... does the guy from NWA become MAGA?”

A person familiar with the discussions said Ice Cube touched base with Biden’s campaign, too, but received only a vague commitment to have “a seat at the table” if the former vice president won. So Ice Cube moved ahead with Trump, saying he would take political support from anyone for his plan, regardless of party.

The White House engaged in a weekslong courtship of Ice Cube, a transformational figure in the rap world as well as mainstream Hollywood. Trump aides had invited Ice Cube’s representatives to the White House and heard them out on conference calls, at least one of which included the performer. There was a lunch at the president’s Bedminster golf club with Ice Cube’s manager.

The endeavor underscores the extent to which Trump has made outreach to Blacks a centerpiece of his reelection bid. The president is waging an uphill effort to improve on 2016, when he received just 8 percent of the African American vote. While Trump’s advisers concede he’s unlikely ever to win a substantial amount of Black support, even a small uptick could sway the outcome in a close swing state or two, they say.

The talks began in late August, after Ice Cube took to Twitter to promote his newly released plan. To the surprise of the president’s aides, it seemed possible the 51-year-old entertainer and businessman, who earlier this year called for exempting African Americans from paying income taxes, would be open to their overtures. In a video released alongside his proposal, he said he’d been watching the Democratic National Convention and that “from the way it look, they don’t have a plan.”

“What I didn’t hear is, what’s in it for us? What’s in it for the Black community besides the same old thing we’ve been getting from these parties? What’s in it for us for real?” he added.

As it turned out, Ken Kurson, a friend of Kushner's who served as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer when the Trump aide was publisher, had a connection to Ice Cube. Kurson had known Ice Cube's business partner Jeff Kwatinetz since the 1990s, when Kurson was bassist for the Chicago indy rock group Green.

In August, Kurson sent Kushner a text message. Forging a partnership with Ice Cube, he wrote, could be a plus for the White House. Kurson, whose website tracks the music scene, noted that Ice Cube had major sway in the Black community, adding that he considered N.W.A’s 1988 album “Straight Outta Compton” — Ice Cube was a core member of the gangsta rap group — “to be a work of American genius on par with” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Kwatinetz, who’s represented the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias and is a former business partner of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, was invited to the White House in early September.

Participants said the multihour discussion focused on policy and didn't touch the campaign. Kwatinetz lobbied for Ice Cube’s proposal, stressing that he was particularly focused on addressing the wealth gap between African Americans and whites.

Ice Cube did not attend the meeting, wanting to know the White House was serious about his proposal and wasn't simply using him for an election season photo op.

Over the Labor Day weekend, Kurson and his wife invited Kwatinetz to Bedminster. Kushner stopped by their table to chat as they ate.

Democrats, too, were interested in cultivating the rapper. On Sept. 8, Cube and his team had a conversation over Zoom with Biden’s campaign, which was represented by Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and senior adviser Symone Sanders.

But Ice Cube’s team left with the impression that Biden’s team was less committed. According to a person familiar with the discussion, Biden aides told the rapper they agreed with much of his plan but that they wouldn’t engage more fully until after the election.

Kamau Marshall, the Biden campaign’s director of strategic communications, did not deny the account but said Trump “does not have a record to stand on when it comes to the Black community.”

As September wore on, Ice Cube and his advisers continued to lobby the White House during conference calls. On Sept. 14, the performer and his representatives — again not eager to be seen at the White House — quietly met in a Washington hotel with a group of Trump aides including Kushner, Ja’Ron Smith, and Brooke Rollins. Ice Cube's group had prepped for the meeting by consulting with Claud Anderson, a Black economist and author who has argued that African Americans are being served poorly by both parties.

In the following days, Ice Cube's team continued to hash out ideas with the White House and eventually elicited a promise of $500 billion in funding to be included in Trump’s election-year plan.

But that was hardly the end of it.

On Oct. 11, Cube released a video in which he made clear that he wasn’t endorsing Biden or Trump. But he expressed criticism of Democrats, saying they hadn't done enough to put forward a plan for African Americans, while noting that Trump had altered his proposal after receiving input from him.

“Straight up, I believe the Democrats, they’ve been nice, they’ve been cordial so to speak, I don’t really see them pushing their policies in any particular direction. It’s still ‘minority, minority, minority, people of color’ shit that don’t necessarily include us, that don’t necessarily include Black Americans,” he said.

Acknowledging he’d been under pressure, Ice Cube added: “Everybody’s been mad at me because I haven’t been on … the gravy train of these candidates, especially Joe Biden and [Kamala] Harris.

Then, on Wednesday, Trump adviser Katrina Pierson announced that Ice Cube had played a role in developing the administration’s plan. Many of his supporters expressed shock, especially considering that in 2016 he said he would “never endorse” Trump and that in his 2018 song “Arrest the President,” he called Trump “Russian intelligence.”

Responding to a Twitter user who accused him of “working with the Darkside,” Ice Cube argued that it was incumbent upon African Americans to negotiate with whoever could make a difference for them.

“Every side is the Darkside for us here in America,” he wrote. “Our justice is bipartisan.”

Ice Cube isn’t the only Black cultural figure playing a role in the race. Rapper and fashion designer Kanye West, whose wife, Kim Kardashian West, has been involved in the White House’s criminal reform push, is waging a third-party presidential bid and has qualified for the ballot in several states. Republican operatives have been helping West’s campaign, stoking speculation they are trying to siphon off Black votes that would otherwise go to Biden.

Kushner confirmed that in August he met with West in Colorado, though Trump aides have denied they are propping up the rapper’s candidacy. Like Ice Cube, West offered advice in the crafting of the new Trump proposal, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

Another major figure, billionaire BET founder Robert Johnson, recently took to CNBC to hint at his support for Trump in the election.

Doubts remain, however, whether Trump will succeed in his push for Black support. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday shows Biden leading the president 91 to 4 percent among African American voters, representing a decline in support since 2016.

But Ice Cube appears unbowed. On Twitter Thursday morning, he stood by his decision to work with the White House.

“Talking truth to power,” he wrote, “is part of the process.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2H4xD2W
via 400 Since 1619

Republicans widen counterattack on Facebook and Twitter

The GOP fury at Facebook's and Twitter's handling of unproven allegations against Democratic hopeful Joe Biden morphed Thursday into a broad assault on the online industry's most-cherished legal protections — drawing even some once-skeptical Republicans to back President Donald Trump's crusade against Silicon Valley.

The two social networks refused to back down from their decisions Wednesday to limit the spread of a disputed New York Post story about the Biden family, a decision that drew praise from some past critics of the industry's handling of misinformation. Twitter even locked the account of Trump's reelection campaign for a few hours Thursday for posting a video related to the article.

Trump, in turn, seized on the companies' efforts at preelection fact-checking as the latest evidence for his charge that the big U.S. tech platforms suppress conservative messages. And more GOP leaders joined his call for Washington to reexamine, water down or revoke a 1996 law that limits people's ability to sue online companies — a change that would threaten the tech giants' fortunes.

"Censorship over political differences, whether done by the government or a tech company, is un-American," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee, Thursday during a POLITICO summit on artificial intelligence.

McMorris Rodgers warned a year ago that weakening the 1996 statute could chill free speech, but on Thursday she urged Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to hold a hearing on changes to the law. "These top platforms must be held accountable for the content bias and how they're influencing the election," she said.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went even further Thursday by calling for repealing the statute, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives broad impunity to internet companies to moderate content on their sites. "It's clear Section 230 in its current form is no longer working," the California Republican said. "It is time to scrap the law and start over."

More concretely, Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai ended months of suspense by announcing Thursday that his agency would take its own look at whether the liability protections should be narrowed, as Trump had requested in May. The same day, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they will vote next week on subpoenaing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify about the Post flap.

Trump, who has already called for repealing Section 230, told Fox Business cryptically Thursday that the companies' actions will bring consequences. "It’s going to all end up in a big lawsuit,” he said.

Rare praise for Silicon Valley: On the other hand, Twitter's and Facebook's handling of the Post story got support Thursday from people who have criticized the tech industry for being too slow to clamp down on false and divisive messages.

"There are a host of red flags about this deeply irresponsible story, and tech companies have the right to act cautiously if they so choose," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who wrote Section 230 when he was in the House. He added, "The First Amendment gives private companies the right to decide what's on their sites, and the government can't force them to host debunked stories based on dubious hacked material just because it’s in the president's interest.”

Tech watchdog groups called the companies' stance a welcome change, saying it's far more effective to curtail potential misinformation before it goes viral than to claw it back afterward. Facebook in particular has faced criticism for its failure to squelch — or even fact-check — Russian-generated disinformation about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

“There is nothing biased or unreasonable about Facebook or Twitter restricting virality of a news story to ensure accuracy," said Hany Farid, a misinformation expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "And there is certainly nothing unreasonable about this in the weeks before a national election.”

Jessica González, the co-CEO of the progressive advocacy group Free Press, agreed.

“They often don't get it right and frankly haven't been robust enough in protecting folks from hate and disinformation," she said. "But I think, in this instance, this is a move in the right direction."

A role they never wanted: Playing referee during a deeply divisive presidential race is not the role either company sought out. And it's not one they have necessarily handled nimbly — Dorsey confessed in a tweet late Wednesday that it was "unacceptable" for Twitter to block sharing of the Post story without providing "context as to why we’re blocking."

The squeeze is particularly acute for Facebook, whose CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, went to great lengths to avoid judgment calls about political speech and advertisements only to find them inescapable. Saturday marks one year since Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown University in which he pledged to "uphold as wide of a definition of freedom of expression as possible."

Now, just weeks before Election Day, Silicon Valley faces relentless pressure to avoid a repeat of 2016, when Russian operatives used social media to spread lies that U.S. intelligence agencies later concluded were meant to help Trump win.

That turnaround has forced Twitter and Facebook to make politically treacherous decisions about fact-checking misleading posts from prominent political leaders, most notably Trump himself. But some advocacy groups say the companies are going too far in the other direction — and the New York Post drama is a classic example.

"Twitter and Facebook are dead wrong on this, though the First Amendment protects their right to be wrong," said Jesse Blumenthal, who oversees tech policy for the libertarian Charles Koch Institute and its affiliate, Stand Together. "The answer to bad speech is more speech, not ineffective attempts to suppress information.”

Beyond misinformation, the companies are haunted by the Russian hacking and releasing of Democratic Party emails on the eve of the 2016 election, which drew widespread attention from news outlets and social media.

Facebook’s head of security, Nathaniel Gleicher, warned last month that foreign adversaries could pursue hack-and-leak operations in which stolen and manipulated content is released to media outlets to sow chaos. He specifically warned in a Sept. 24 tweet that operatives may “trick journalists into doing their amplification for them,” a sentiment he reupped following the New York Post story.

The blowback in Washington: But taking aim at domestic political content carries potentially dire consequences for the companies. They've already marshaled their lobbyists and trade associations to defend Section 230 from bipartisan criticism in Washington, only for the Post issue to ramp up the fury on the GOP side.

Trump signed an executive order in May that called on the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission to write rules that could curtail liability protections for internet companies. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas added his support for the cause on Tuesday, writing that courts have expanded the liability shield beyond what Congress intended when it passed the law in 1996.

The Section 230 scrutiny isn't likely to evaporate if voters oust Trump from office, even if Democrats refuse to sign onto Trump's efforts to protect pro-GOP content from filtering or fact-checking.

Biden told The New York Times in January that he also supports revoking the law, though for much different reasons — he accused Facebook of "propagating falsehoods they know to be false." Democrats on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have also said the law deserves reconsideration, especially after Facebook refused to take down a doctored video that falsely made Pelosi appear drunk.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/356BFA2
via 400 Since 1619

Florida Republicans cut Democrats’ registration edge to historic low

TALLAHASSEE — Republicans in Florida, a must-win state for President Donald Trump, have narrowed the voter registration gap with Democrats to the lowest level in at least three decades, giving the GOP a shot of momentum as they continue to trail in early turnout.

Republicans now lag Democrats by just 134,242 registered voters, down from 327,483 when Trump won Florida by fewer than 113,000 votes in 2016. The gain is a byproduct of the Trump campaign’s extensive face-to-face ground game and voter registration operation, which continued as Joe Biden and Florida Democrats pulled back from those traditional activities after the coronavirus pandemic erupted in March.

The shift means the two parties, statistically speaking, are almost evenly matched when it comes to raw numbers, with Democrats holding a narrow 1 percent lead. Final voter registration data released Thursday by Florida election officials show 5.3 million Democrats, 5.1 million Republicans and 3.7 million people with no major party affiliation.

Florida Democrats turned much of their focus to boosting vote-by-mail turnout, which has helped them bank 430,000 more votes than Republicans three weeks ahead of Election Day.

Democrats can’t compete with the Trump campaign’s “superior ground game and infrastructure,” Trump Victory spokesperson Emma Vaughn said in an email. “The Sunshine State is ready to deliver.”

The Biden campaign has no regrets about pulling back traditional get-out-the-vote activities amid a global pandemic, even as Democrats’ once-dominant advantage has been whittled down.

“Democrats have amassed an overwhelming vote by mail advantage and turned out in historic numbers for the primary election in August,” Biden Florida communications director Carlie Waibel said in an email. “Democrats are leading in the metrics that will determine this election and returning their ballots at a higher rate than Republicans — and we aren't letting up."

Trump has vilified voting by mail, telling his supporters without evidence that it is ripe for widespread fraud. As a result, Republicans are expected to vote in huge numbers on Election Day, a wave Trump is banking on to overcome Democrats’ early voting advantages.

While Biden’s team remains confident, others in the party have expressed concern about the campaign’s turn away from traditional registration efforts.

“It’s late in the game now,” state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Miami Democrat, told POLITICO in late September. “There’s been no pushback from us, meaning that for every 100 doors that Republicans have proverbially knocked on, it’s not like they pissed people off to the point where they’ve run to the Democratic Party because they’re pissed at the GOP.“

While the Biden campaign and Florida Democratic Party have limited in-person registration activities, outside groups continued to register votes. That includes Forward Florida Action, a group led until recently by Democrat Andrew Gillum, who pledged to register 1 million voters after his narrow loss to Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2018.

The group worked with a collection of progressive groups to submit 250,000 voter registration applications. It also shifted to a more digital strategy as the coronavirus pandemic intensified over the summer.

“While Democrats were preparing our voters to vote safely by mail in the pandemic and building up an 800,000 vote-by-mail request advantage, the Republicans continued to put the public at risk by conducting in-person voter registration activities and simultaneously discouraging their voters from vote-by-mail,” said Ryan Hurst, the group’s executive director.

In addition to their topline lead, Democrats also have turned out low-propensity voters, people who do not consistently cast a ballot in election years. Of the more than 2 million votes cast in Florida so far, Democrats have banked 113,000 more ballots than Republicans from people who didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election.

“These are no party affiliated voters who sat out 2016 because they thought their vote wouldn't matter,” Democratic consultant Kevin Cate tweeted. “Well, they’ve changed their minds this year.”

In the hope of building a wave of in-person Election Day voters, Republicans continued to register huge numbers of people until the final days of Florida’s registration period, which ended Oct. 5. The Democratic advantage was down to 185,000 voters in late September, a number that Republicans whittled down by more than 50,000 in the final two weeks.

“There is clearly a strong correlation in voter registration advantage and Democrat’s success in Florida,” said Ryan Tyson, a Republican pollster and strategist. “That advantage appears to have dissipated.”

Democrats have long held large voter registration advantages in Florida even as Republicans dominated state-level elections, in part because of North Florida Dixiecrats, registered Democrats who for years have voted Republican.

The Democrat lead peaked during Barack Obama’s first run in 2008, when he defeated Republican John McCain in Florida by 3 percentage points. That cycle, Democrats held a 637,777-person registration advantage.

Four years later, the margin had narrowed, but Democrats still outpaced Republicans by 535,987 voters when Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney by 2 percentage points.

Public polling has shown Biden up in Florida by 3 or 4 percentage points, near or within the margin of error for most surveys, and there is an expectation that this year’s presidential race will be won on a razor-thin margin just as it was in 2016, when Trump eked out a one-point victory.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to whose folks are most motivated,” said incoming co-House Minority Leader Evan Jenne, a Broward County Democrat helping run the party’s statehouse races this cycle. “It always comes down to energy, it will again this year.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3k6qXzO
via 400 Since 1619

Bloomberg teams up with top Latino group for Florida ad buy

MIAMI — Latino Victory Fund and billionaire Mike Bloomberg are launching a $2.4 million digital ad campaign to get Florida Latinos out to the polls to defeat President Donald Trump in his must-win state.

Democrats have been scrambling in recent days to increase their neighborhood canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts amid concerns from party strategists and officials in Florida about the absence of a Joe Biden ground game due to the pandemic. Against that backdrop, Florida Republicans have managed to cut into Democrats’ longtime statewide voter registration advantage this year.

While Democrats are still not out campaigning door-to-door to the same degree as the Trump campaign, the progressive PAC is aiming to use Bloomberg’s money to reach the state’s Latinos — who make up about 17 percent of the state’s electorate. The goal is to ensure they’ve either registered to vote by mail or know when and where they’ll be going to cast their vote. Early voting in Florida begins on Monday and runs until Nov. 1.

"Voter turnout among Latinos in Florida could mean the difference for a Biden-Harris win in Florida," Bloomberg said in a statement.

The $2.4 million for the digital ads is part of Bloomberg’s commitment to spend up to $100 million to defeat Trump in Florida. Last month, Bloomberg also gave $4 million to three PACs for canvassing efforts in Florida aimed at minority and “underrepresented” groups.

Latino Victory Fund said it will use the funds for English and Spanish ads that will route voters to votaflorida.com, which will allow the group to track voters and ensure they get their ballots in or know where their polling place is located.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg gave $500,000 to the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous county and a liberal bastion. Biden has little chance of winning the state
without a big winning margin and high turnout in Miami-Dade. But for much of the campaign, Biden has underperformed among Democratic-leaning, non-Cuban Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade and throughout Florida relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Both campaigns have aggressively pursued Latino voters in Florida, and Biden and Trump have made multiple trips to South and Central Florida — home to most of the state’s Latinos. Florida’s Latino vote is largely made up of Republican-leaning Cubans in Miami-Dade and a growing number of Democratic-leaning voters with Puerto Rican, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Dominican and Venezuelan heritage in Miami, Orlando and elsewhere in the state.

Other outside groups have also jumped in to help mobilize voters in Florida. Entertainment mogul Tyler Perry on Thursday announced he would help fund a $500,000 voter mobilization effort in Florida to help turn out at least 250,000 Black voters. Perry has partnered with Equal Ground Education Fund, a Florida-based group that aims to get Black voters out to vote, to host “Park & Praise” events at sites in 25 counties across the state.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3j7knrr
via 400 Since 1619

Opinion | Confirmation Hearings Shouldn’t Be So Worthless

Judge Amy Coney Barrett acquitted herself very well at her confirmation hearings, which means, quite often, she refused to answer questions.

Barrett is an exemplary nominee, who was knowledgeable, clear and composed throughout the three days of questioning, but not always responsive.

She can’t be blamed for this. She played the game as the rules have been established for decades, and played it well. It is to take nothing away from her to wonder whether this longstanding norm of nominees running away from many substantive questions serves the Senate or the country well.

The court has taken on an outsize role in our politics and national life, while at the same time nominees say less than ever about their views during the one chance the senators charged with confirming them get to publicly vet them. This is a bizarre disconnect. You’d think we’d want to hear more from a prospective member of a body that elections are explicitly fought over and that, for better or (mostly) worse, determines how we are governed.

In the sweep of American history, public hearings featuring the testimony of Supreme Court nominees are a relatively recent innovation, taking hold in the mid-20th century.

It was the confirmation battle over Robert Bork, of course, that changed everything. As Ilya Shapiro notes in his recent book, "Supreme Disorder," there were 12 days of hearings on his nomination, with the printed record running more than 6,000 pages. Five days of the hearings involved Bork himself, who was highly accomplished but gruff and acerbic. He wouldn’t allow anyone to persuade him to take the edge off his persona or soft-pedal his views.

The journalist Theodore White famously said upon hearing Barry Goldwater’s unapologetic 1964 convention speech, “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater!” Likewise, Bork testified as Bork — brilliant and provocative — and it was a debacle. Public opinion swung against him, and he lost in the Judiciary Committee 5-9. As a matter of principle, he refused to withdraw before the inevitable loss in a floor vote.

Subsequent nominees and administrations took the same attitude to the Bork experience as the French philosopher Voltaire when he was invited to an orgy for the second time. He declined on grounds that once is an experiment, twice would be perverse.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, invoked repeatedly by Barrett this week, set the standard going forward. As Shapiro writes, Ginsburg executed a kind of “pincer movement” at her hearings, refusing to discuss both specific fact patterns (because they might come up before the court) and abstract matters (because “a judge could deal in specifics only”).

This didn’t leave much to discuss. She was willing, Shapiro notes, to engage on topics on which she’d written, but shut down much else. She preferred not to answer about the religious clauses of the First Amendment, about school choice programs or gay rights. She demurred, too, on the Supreme Court’s handiwork. “I have religiously tried to refrain from commenting,” she explained, “on a number of court decisions that have been raised in these last couple of days.”

No one was going to provide unnecessary material for a “borking” ever again, and Ginsburg’s performance became the rule.

John Roberts deflected the same way she had, and Elena Kagan, a past critic of evasions by judicial nominees, did the same.

Barrett relentlessly hewed to the Ginsburg rule, commenting on her own past writings, decisions and general legal philosophy, but refusing to get drawn out on much anything else, from campaign finance to climate change to President Donald Trump’s outrageous statements.

For long stretches, the only drama in the hearings was whether she could say, once again, that she couldn’t answer without betraying any impatience with senators asking the same thing over and over again.

The rationale for this, going back to Ginsburg, is that a judge can’t comment on matters that might come before the court, a category so capacious that it includes pretty much anything of public interest.

This is much too far-reaching a standard. It’s one thing to commit to vote a certain way in a given case, which we shouldn’t want any judge to do; it’s another to conceal basic views on the law — for instance, was Roe v. Wade wrongly decided or not? — behind a curtain of judicial impartiality.

On top of this, the Ginsburg rule renders what a nominee will talk about completely arbitrary. We know a fair amount about how Barrett views gun rights because she wrote a dissent in a notable gun case and couldn’t avoid discussing it. But if she could talk about that in some detail, why not other important questions?

No fair-minded person would conclude that, having engaged on the Second Amendment openly in a confirmation hearing, she is now unfit to hear gun cases on the Supreme Court. Indeed, if making your views clear on such matters is disqualifying, all the current Supreme Court justices — extensively on the record about an enormous number of legally fraught questions — should step down to be replaced by people with no known views.

The Ginsburg rule is highly convenient to all administrations when they make appointments. A change would have to be forced by the Senate, acting collectively to demand that future nominees, right or left or in between, come to discuss and debate the law with a forthrightness we haven’t seen since Bork, or else go unconfirmed. But that won’t happen. Neither party would want to make the process even harder on its nominees and, more broadly, Congress is the least self-respecting branch, almost never standing up for its prerogatives.

Senators can express great frustration at not getting answers to their questions, but this is a practice they’ve long tolerated and won’t change.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2H3cQNa
via 400 Since 1619

Millions of workers face jobless benefits cliff with lifeline set to expire

A failure by Congress to enact a new economic relief package would prolong the pain of the coronavirus crisis for many Americans, but those without jobs face a special threat — millions could run out of unemployment benefits altogether by the end of the year.

The Senate reconvenes on Monday, giving lawmakers about two weeks to send legislation to President Donald Trump before the Nov. 3 election. But the sides are far apart, with Democrats demanding at least $2 trillion in funds, Republicans pushing for $500 billion, and the White House attempting to bridge the gap even as Trump sends conflicting signals about what he wants.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is inching closer to a Dec. 31 deadline when several key federal jobless aid programs created under the March CARES Act will be cut off entirely. If the government doesn't pass legislation, more than half of those receiving unemployment benefits — about 13.4 million people — stand to be left with no income.

“We're making a deeply fundamental mistake not reauthorizing all our unemployment insurance programs,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), vice chair of Congress's Joint Economic Committee, told POLITICO. “When we take the money away, that's what's been propping up consumer spending and the ability of people to get by.”

Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a new program that has provided jobless benefits to gig workers and others not traditionally eligible for help, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which extends state unemployment benefits an additional 13 weeks, are both set to lapse at the end of the year. Another program — Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation — provided an extra $600 a week in jobless aid for four months before it expired on July 31, and Democrats are pushing to restore it.

Those workers “don't know how they're going to make it through the month,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-N.V.) said. “I have nearly 200,000 Nevadans who are contacting my office on a regular basis and other members of our delegation to express their anxiety with the situation.”

States “have very few options available to them. And that is why it is really only the federal government that can help at this critical time.”

With the pandemic nearing its 30th week, millions of Americans have now been unemployed for more than six months. Regular state benefits typically last only 26 weeks, meaning that many workers are tapping into the extra weeks of benefits funded by the CARES Act.

Already, more than 352,000 workers have used up the 13 weeks of Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation created under the March package. Now, they’re relying on an additional federal safety net program known as "Extended Benefits,” which allows states to offer an additional 13 to 20 weeks of jobless aid during periods of high unemployment.

The resulting shock to states and workers should these programs be allowed to lapse could set off a downward spiral as Americans stop buying goods and are unable to pay rent, economists and lawmakers warn.

“It will have so many reverberating effects,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said. “We haven't even seen the full extent of it.”

Currently, 46 states and territories are participating in Extended Benefits and more workers are expected to pour into this program as they use up the 39 weeks of jobless aid provided in the CARES Act. But without an extension of coronavirus aid, states may no longer be able to afford to participate. Extended Benefits requires them to share 50 percent of the tab. The CARES Act offered full federal funding for the program, but only until Dec. 31.

Republicans have been opposed to extending the beefed-up pandemic jobless aid past December, arguing that the benefits paid people more to be unemployed than they were making on the job, taking away their incentive to rejoin the workforce. They also point out that the states have not even tapped into $150 billion that Congress set aside for them in the CARES Act.

With a historically high number of individuals pushed out of work, states are already struggling to pay regular unemployment benefits. Forced to take loans from a federal trust fund, several states may be facing a cliff of their own.

Twenty-one states have borrowed a total of some $36 billion from the Treasury Department, according to the most recent data. Though those states have not yet been required to pay interest on the loans, they are slated to start on Jan. 1 — and may soon be forced to start cutting costs.

“If you put the states in a big financial bind on [unemployment insurance], they immediately start pulling back access,” said Morna Miller, staff director of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Worker and Family Support. “Because the only way that they have, if they’re out of money, to pay benefits is to make it harder for people to apply for them and receive them.”

Another option may be raising taxes on businesses, many of which are already battling to stay afloat. In fact, some states have automatic triggers that raise taxes as soon as their unemployment insurance trust funds are fully depleted.

Doing so "would be incredibly damaging to the many small businesses struggling to hang on during pandemic conditions," National Governors Association spokesperson James Nash said. It could also create more unemployment if businesses must shed jobs.

As it stands, an updated version of the Democratic-backed Heroes Act, which passed the House earlier this month, would only extend the provisions until Jan. 31 — weeks into a new presidential term and new session of Congress.

That would still give a new Congress little wiggle room to extend the benefits before they expire. The presidential inauguration is scheduled for Jan. 20, 2021, giving a new Congress a few weeks to hammer out another deal.

“The Jan. 31 end date was a Heroes-wide policy set by the Speaker’s office essentially intended to give us a couple weeks into the next administration and the next Congress to get things extended or fixed or addressed in the future before anybody got cut off,” said a Democratic policy aide involved in the drafting process. The idea was “to set the cliff close enough that there was some chance Republicans would agree to the package but enough time that we could be ready.”

Another factor was an unwillingness to admit that the recession may still be in full swing come 2021, the aide said. “People are unwilling to provide for unemployment benefits in February because they’re unwilling to admit that a lot of people are going to be unemployed in February.”

Some conservatives say they oppose the Democrats' sweeping economic relief plans because a one-size-fits all approach may no longer be helpful for the economy. Rachel Greszler of the Heritage Foundation notes that the unemployment rate varies widely across the country. In August, the rate was 4 percent in Nebraska and 13.2 percent in Nevada.

“Now’s the time that state and local policymakers should be thinking about their unique residence constituents and also what's just happening in their economies,” Greszler said. States have some funding left over from the CARES Act to adjust the benefits they offer once the federal programs expire, she said.

Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, said the states have been holding onto the $150 billion that Congress allocated in March with the hope that certain costs, like unemployment benefits, would be eventually funded in a future relief package

“There are a lot of states still sitting on coronavirus relief fund money that they’re allowed to be spending on unemployment compensation benefits right now and are not,” Walczak said.

For Beyer, the debate isn't over boosting the economy but keeping people afloat.

“This isn't really stimulus, it’s more of a life preserver,” he said. “It isn't like we're trying to make the economy come back, we're just trying to help people that have been terribly hurt by the economy, allow them to get through without hunger without eviction.”

Katherine Landergan contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2H9Dfco
via 400 Since 1619

How Biden would use trade agreements to fight global warming

Presidential nominee Joe Biden and some Democrats in Congress want to use trade agreements to combat global warming, breaking from decades of U.S. trade policy that largely ignored climate change.

The move would add financial teeth to international pacts to reduce carbon emissions, which until now have relied on voluntary participation by the countries signing them. It would also mark a departure from the Trump administration strategy of boosting fossil-fuel exports.

Democrats and environmentalists say the shift is necessary because the worst impacts of climate change can’t be averted unless the whole world cuts carbon emissions. And the U.S. has the economic might to push that change.

“The U.S. is in a globally unique position,” said Todd Tucker, a trade and climate researcher at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. “It’s got the largest consumer market in the world and with that comes a lot of leverage over foreign governments.”

Biden’s trade agenda calls for a global ban on fossil-fuel subsidies, tariffs on imports that produce a lot of carbon, and trade deals that include commitments to reduce emissions. Key Democratic trade leaders in Congress say they are on board.

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to work with a Biden administration to, in a cooperative way, make sure that we are taking into account carbon emissions,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), head of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade. “We can look at things like having a carbon border adjustment tariff, so that we don’t have countries importing or exporting carbon pollution.”

Republicans warn that Biden risks alienating the Rust Belt voters who will have sent him to the White House if he becomes president and his policies reduce exports of heavy manufactured goods or fossil fuels like oil and natural gas, even if that’s accompanied by a drop in imports from other countries.

“Biden is going to have a big problem if he really goes in this direction in a vigorous way,” said Clete Willems, a former career staffer at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office who later advised President Donald Trump on the National Economic Council. “If you start adopting policies that shut down exports you’re going to have a lot of unhappy people in politically important states.”

But even some Democrats from Midwestern states, where the party has lost working-class voters to the GOP, say they are ready to add climate concerns to their trade agenda. They are gearing up for a battle next year when Congress will need to reauthorize Trade Promotion Authority, which lays out rules for the executive branch to negotiate new trade deals.

“I think all of us recognize we need to use every opportunity we have, especially when it comes to TPA or renegotiating any other trade agreements, that this has got to be front and center,” said Rep. Tim Ryan, (D-Ohio), who ran for president last year on a platform of rebuilding Democratic support in the Rust Belt.

The carbon pollution from global trade is immense. About a quarter of worldwide carbon emissions comes from producing products that are eventually consumed in another country, reported a 2012 article in the journal Biogeosciences.

The U.S. emits about a sixth of global carbon emissions from within its borders, but its imports also accounted for 400 million tons of carbon in 2017, according to Oxford university researchers, raising overall U.S. emissions by almost 8 percent.

But researchers say the true U.S. contribution is even larger than that because so many of the world’s largest companies are American. One paper from last year estimated that carbon emissions from U.S-based companies’ overseas operations alone would rank as the 12th largest national emitter, more than any European nation.

The U.S. “is home to some of the largest multinationals that are responsible domestically and globally for a lot of carbon emissions,” Tucker said. “In theory, [the federal government] can use its market access as leverage and compel its corporations to follow certain rules of the road.”

That would be a clean break from the Trump administration’s policies. Today, U.S. trade negotiators cannot make deals that require domestic carbon cuts, under a TPA provision Republicans inserted in 2016.

And the Trump White House has spent four years hawking American fossil fuels around the world. That solidified the U.S. position as a leading global exporter of oil and gas.

Trade experts don’t expect Biden to push for an outright ban on those oil and gas exports, which only began during the Obama administration, when the president agreed to lift the decades-old oil export ban in a deal that extended domestic wind and solar subsidies.

Instead, Biden is widely expected to work on multilateral deals to reduce global demand for fossil fuels, rather than attack mining and drilling directly. That strategy would hearken back to the Obama administration’s climate diplomacy, when the former president struck a deal with Beijing in 2014 that committed China to capping its emissions, paving the way for the 190-nation Paris Accord a year later. Trump pulled out of the pact soon after becoming president in 2017, but withdrawal can’t be completed until after the November election.

“We have a very aggressive plan to move on this internationally — not just rejoining Paris, but also working to get our allies, partners and others to raise their ambitions,” Tony Blinken, a Biden campaign adviser who served as deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration, said on a Chamber of Commerce webinar last month. “I’d like to think that’s a place where the U.S. and Europe can lead together.”

The Biden camp has been reluctant to release details about how he would push down emissions, but figures close to the campaign are floating ambitious plans. Jennifer Hillman, a former U.S. trade official, said a Biden White House could embrace a bill sponsored by Blumenauer (H.R. 4926) to impose a carbon tax at home and new climate tariffs at the border.

Under that plan, coal, oil and gas would be taxed as they are mined and drilled, raising the price of the fossil fuels and discouraging consumers from buying them, said Hillman. Imports from countries without a carbon price would get hit with a tariff, while exports would get a rebate from the tax.

The Biden campaign declined to comment on Hillman’s remarks, delivered during a POLITICO virtual event this week. But a spokesperson said she is not an official adviser and noted Biden’s climate plan does not endorse a domestic carbon tax, going no further than to call for “an enforcement mechanism” to cut emissions.

Biden’s “Buy American” economic plan, however, does endorse a “carbon adjustment fee” at the border, and other trade leaders say they are open to the idea.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who would chair the Finance Committee if the Democrats retake the Senate, will only support a domestic tax on carbon “if it includes a well-designed border adjustment,” a spokesperson said, "to ensure American workers are on a level playing field with overseas competitors.”

Biden’s plans are likely to encounter opposition from the energy industry. The American Petroleum Institute says it has not engaged on trade policy with the Biden camp, but warns it will oppose regulations or taxes that increase the price of U.S. oil and gas exports, which it argues could lead other nations to build dirtier coal plants instead.

“In many markets, for the first time, natural gas prices are genuinely competitive with coal and in our mind that is a profound shift in the global energy landscape,” said Dustin Meyer, director of market development for the API. “Any sort of policymaking in the U.S. that would restrict global access to U.S. natural gas would threaten that.”

Earlier efforts in the Obama administration to regulate carbon emissions, like a 2009 cap-and-trade bill from California Democrat Henry Waxman and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, died despite Democratic control of Congress. But Blumenauer said he thinks greater global pressure to cut emissions — like efforts to impose a border carbon tax in Europe — will beat back opposition from fossil-fuel producers.

“You look at what is going on with the oil industry, their position has really diminished dramatically,” he said. “This is a different ballgame going forward. I think the politics will be different with the Democrats in charge of the House, with an administration that will work with us, rather than fighting us, and we have a wide array of trading partners that are deeply concerned about the climate crisis. I think it’s a whole new era.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3dz8NEv
via 400 Since 1619

Minnesota shows few signs of flipping — despite Trump's best efforts

Donald Trump has fixated on Minnesota since his narrow loss to Hillary Clinton there four years ago. But with less than a month until the election, his prospects there are dimming.

Joe Biden’s polling lead remains solid. Even after heavy campaign spending and recent visits to the state by the president and top surrogates, Biden was running ahead of Trump by more than 9 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

“I haven’t heard from anyone on the Republican side who’s to some degree confident,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “I think the best you’ll hear from a Republican in Minnesota is they think that the race is close.”

Four years ago, it was close. Trump lost the state by fewer than 45,000 votes, and immediately after the election began signaling his infatuation with Minnesota. It was one of his few offensive opportunities on the 2020 battleground map.

If he could limit his losses in the Twin Cities and their suburbs and run up turnout in more rural, conservative reaches of the state, Republicans and Democrats alike believed he had a credible chance of winning — something no Republican has done since Richard Nixon in 1972.

The president has traveled to Northern Minnesota twice in recent weeks in an effort to juice his base in a region culturally distant from the Democratic-heavy cities Minneapolis and St. Paul. Before largely white crowds in Bemidji in mid-September and Duluth two weeks ago, Trump mocked Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American and former refugee who represents a Minneapolis-based district. At both events, he said Biden would “turn Minnesota into a refugee camp.”

“History suggests Minnesota is an uphill climb for any Republican candidate for president,” Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, said in an email. “But Trump has a better shot than most.”

The problem for Trump is that the numbers aren’t breaking for him the way they did in 2016. Four years ago, Trump won Minnesota white voters by 7 percentage points and independents by 2 percentage points. It was a major advantage in a state where 87 percent of voters that year were white.

But Biden is now carrying both of those groups — whites by 2 points and independents by 20 percentage points, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey. Even among whites without college degrees, Trump’s most reliable demographic, Biden has cut sharply into Trump’s lead, according to the poll.

In part, that has more to do with Biden than with Trump. One reason Trump came close to carrying Minnesota four year ago was that Clinton alienated many voters there, especially in rural western areas of the state and in northeastern Minnesota, in and around the blue-collar Iron Range. Trump only drew about as many votes in Minnesota that year as Mitt Romney did in his losing effort four years earlier, but Clinton’s underperformance put the state in play.

Biden appears to be a far more palatable nominee for Democrats. His profile is less like Clinton's than that of the state’s moderate Democratic governor, Tim Walz, who won office in 2018 by more than 11 percentage points. With a relatively high approval rating, Walz is a benefit to Biden in the state, and the two appeared together in Duluth last month.

In addition, Biden is bombarding the state with paid advertising, overwhelming Trump's presence there. Throughout September, as early voting began in Minnesota, Biden spent nearly $6 million on TV and radio in Minnesota, more than double what Trump spent, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. Trump, meanwhile, appears to be cutting back.

“There was definitely concern in early September that the race was tightening here,” said Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. “But right now, we feel very good about the position we’re in … This is an election where I wish the election were tomorrow.”

It has already started. By Friday, the state had recorded more than 635,000 ballots cast, still weeks before Election Day. Minnesota does not register voters by party, but Democrats and Republicans expected a large majority of the early vote to tilt Democratic, with Republicans more likely to vote on Election Day.

Jennifer Carnahan, chairwoman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said “it’s still a very tight race."

Carnahan and other Republicans in Minnesota believe, as Trump supporters do elsewhere, that polls are under-counting Trump’s support. On the same night that Trump campaigned in Duluth, Chuck Novak, the mayor of Ely, a small town at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, marveled at the size of a recent “Trump train” of supportive motorists. And he said he is certain that other Trump supporters remain hesitant to share publicly — or with pollsters — their true feelings about the president. In his Iron Range city, he said he knows who they are “if they have a pro-mining sign” on their lawn.

As for the polls, Novak said, “I like the polls the way they’re reading. I do, because it will keep the Democrats home on Election Day.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/375XiTO
via 400 Since 1619

Covid crisis colors Wisconsin race

Joe Biden for months has held a steady polling lead of about 5 or 6 percentage points in Wisconsin. But after Hillary Clinton blew it in the state in 2016 — helping swing the race to Trump — the lead was never enough to put Democrats at ease.

Until recently. A confluence of events over the past month — all seeming to favor Democrats — has shifted the dynamic in this Rust Belt battleground.

Wisconsin plunged into its worst bout with Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, reminding voters of the uneven response from the Trump administration as well as the president’s early attempts to dismiss the severity of the virus. A Green Party candidate was not allowed on the ballot — erasing the prospect of a third-party siphoning of votes that contributed to Clinton’s razor-thin defeat. And there are increasing signs that key constituencies that Donald Trump needs to defeat Biden, including suburban and swing voters, are moving away from him.

“I’d be surprised if Joe Biden loses Wisconsin,” says Sachin Chheda, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist. “All of the data tell us Republicans are seeing declining margins in the suburbs. He’s changed the math around suburban women. He has to keep the independents he had in 2016 to win. I think he’s losing them, not winning them.”

Republicans scoff at recent polling, noting Trump was also pegged to lose Wisconsin in 2016 before pulling off a surprise victory by fewer than 23,000 votes. But data show voters have more hardened views of the candidates this time around, suggesting that Biden’s steady lead isn’t off base.

Four years ago, undecided voters in Wisconsin broke hard for Trump late in the race. Today, there are half as many persuadable voters that there were at this point in 2016, said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll. Back then, nearly 20 percent of Wisconsin voters said they were undecided or that they would vote for a third party candidate. Now, that same cohort of voters stands at 9 percent, meaning there is less likely to be wild fluctuation on Nov. 3, Franklin said.

Republicans feel confident it’s still a tight race. On Thursday, a federal appeals court dealt a blow to Democrats by denying their request that mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day be counted, even if they are received up to six days after the election. The ruling provides an advantage for Republicans who have grossly lagged Democrats in absentee ballot drives.

They’re so far behind in absentee balloting that the Trump campaign recently sent texts to Wisconsin voters from Trump family members urging absentee voting — even as the president himself has undermined the process with his statements against mail-in voting. The state party has also made phone calls urging absentee voting.

Wisconsin isn’t likely to have full results on Election Day, since the state is not allowed to begin counting absentee ballots until then.

While there’s much discussion about how much Trump can drive up margins in the so-called WOW counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, the suburban Milwaukee counties that provide a treasure trove of Republican votes — state GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt said the more telling battleground will be a trio of counties in the northeastern part of the state.

Trump won Brown (Green Bay), Outagamie (Appleton) and Winnebago (Oshkosh) counties, or the so-called BOW counties in 2016, but Hitt said the party is working a ground game to further drive up turnout in this area.

He expects Trump will again dominate the rural counties that he won in northern Wisconsin in 2016.

“They’re glowing bright red,” Hitt said of the rural counties. “We really have no concerns that the rural vote is going to turn out for the president.”

Yet that same region, with Green Bay as the epicenter, has been thrust into crisis, experiencing the steepest rise in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Brown County medical officials wrote an open letter saying their systems were overwhelmed. Shortly afterwards, the Green Bay Packers announced they would indefinitely place a hold on hosting fans at legendary Lambeau Field. The Green Bay area has the highest coronavirus infection rate of any media market in the NFL.

The spike in cases isn’t limited to one place. Wisconsin just saw its highest daily case count at 3,000 and the death rate spiked 187 percent over a 14-day period. Last week, the state issued a new order limiting public gatherings and announced it would open a field hospital on state fairgrounds to handle overflow from hospitals hurtling toward capacity.

This is all bad news for Trump. An Ipsos/Reuters poll released last week showed that the coronavirus was top of mind for Wisconsin voters.

“More and more Wisconsinites are experiencing the impact of this virus in their own lives and voters who go into polling places, between now and November 3, thinking about coronavirus, are going to leave having voted for change,” said state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “Republicans’ refusal to support common sense, science-based measures to protect the public's health are torpedoing Trump's chances and putting at risk their own chances for reelection in districts across the state.”

Republicans, who dominate both chambers of the state legislature, have come under fire for blocking efforts by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to contain the spread of the virus. They’ve advocated overturning a mask mandate, forced an in-person primary election during an early peak of the pandemic in April, and won a repeal of a stay-at-home order.

Evers has also faced blowback — including from within his own party — over his unsuccessful clashes with Republicans over implementing safety measures. Still, for months polls have shown voters give the governor high marks over how he’s handled Covid. His overall numbers, however, did drop in the wake of riots in Kenosha amid criticism he did not do enough to tamp down violence that broke out following the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.

Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W. Bush's 2004 winning reelection campaign in Wisconsin, conceded the turbulence confronting Trump but pointed to the depth of support among Trump’s voters, arguing they would stick with him regardless.

“In the 25 years I’ve been working on politics in Wisconsin, I have never seen the kind of loyalty to a candidate that Donald Trump has from his supporters,” Graul said.

That level of commitment is critical in a deeply polarized state where the presidential contest will come down to turnout.

“I don’t think there are a lot of persuadable people out there. It’s more about persuading people to vote,” Graul said. “That is the challenge the campaigns are going to have. Which team executes their ground game the best? The Republicans in Wisconsin have a pretty good track record over the last 12 years.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3j0YNVy
via 400 Since 1619