James.galbraith

Not sure what’s happening with Donald Trump in his (maybe) post-COVID campaigning. Is it the drugs? Is it a creeping realization of impending doom? Or maybe it’s just Trump being as inexplicably random and weird as always. Because for a man who has obsessed over appearing strong and in command, his campaign trail rhetoric is weak and defeated, replete with loser talk. 

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Remember, he needed to get to the hospital as soon as he could, clearly before it was wise, because of fears that he would demotivate his base. So why is he openly talking about losing? 

If he’s strong and winning and the polls are rigged, why is he talking about the possibility of losing? There is nothing more demotivating to a campaign’s supporters than to hear their candidate talk about losing, and then threaten the audience with taking his ball and going home. 

I’m truly surprised he’s letting himself sound this sad and pathetic. It’s loser talk. Begging, on his knees, the same women he once bragged about, unapologetically, of grabbing their you-know-what. The power dynamic is now fully inverted, and Trump’s best argument is “I don’t have time to stop being an asshole, which is why I lost your vote, but I could do it if I wanted to, just trust me, even though I’ve never done it.” And then, for emphasis, one hour later, he tweeted this: 

Got it? He doesn’t have time to be nice, since he’s too busy insulting white seniors—literally his most loyal demographic outside the Proud Boys scene.

And more loser talk. 

Trump is literally saying that he could lose to “the worst presidential candidate of all time.” If that’s the case, what does that make Trump? 

So in one night, Trump betrayed fear that he was losing to “the worst candidate of all time” and begged suburban women to like him, while refusing to do the thing that he knows would help him with those women (i.e. not be an asshole). 

But to be fair, Trump’s rallies weren’t all loser talk. There was some of that well-honed famous Trump message discipline: 

“Be nice? Nah. Gotta punch some seniors. No time to be nice. But how about an extended soliloquy on the television situation on Air Force One? Will that work?” 

Nope.

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In her first day of questioning from senators, Supreme Court nominee Amy Comey Barrett wouldn’t say how she would rule on abortion cases. Or Obamacare cases. Or gun rights cases. Or really anything else. She wouldn’t even say how she would rule if President Trump tried to move the election to another date, as he suggested he might do earlier this year. (There is no real indication that Trump will follow through on that idea.)

Barrett’s refusal to offer her views on virtually every issue wasn’t surprising — almost all judicial nominees from both parties do that. But that approach turned Tuesday’s hearings into … OK, I’ll just say it: a farce.

Barrett is a one-time clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and describes him as a role model. She’s aligned herself with anti-abortion causes and groups. She’s been championed by the conservative Federalist Society, was part of a group of conservative judges appointed by the Trump administration at the lower-court level and has issued a number of conservative rulings in her time as an appeals court judge. Her repeatedly implying that she is not sure how she would rule on some of these hot-button issues is misleading — even if it’s par for the course in present-day judicial confirmation processes.

Democratic senators repeatedly asking Barrett about her views on these questions was a pointless exercise, as a result. It seemed, for example, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, of California, thought that if she asked Barrett for her views on abortion enough times that Barrett would somehow be tricked or guilted into answering. Barrett, of course, stuck with the non-committal approach.

We left the hearing, therefore, largely where we began it in terms of our picture of what kind of justice Barrett might be: She would likely vote to further dismantle Obamacare, uphold abortion limits that would make it impossible to get an abortion in some states, invalidate most regulations on guns and back corporations over individuals in most legal matters. She does not seem inclined to recuse herself from a case involving Trump’s election, even as the president has implied that he wants Barrett confirmed, in part, to rule in his favor if election-related issues reach the Supreme Court.

But, again, all of that was largely clear before the hearing. Barrett didn’t say anything on Tuesday to contradict our understanding of her ideological leanings based on her past rulings, past statements and biography. So it’s still a good bet that Barrett, if confirmed, would be to the ideological right of both Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — making her one of the more conservative members of the six Republicans on the court.

So there wasn’t much legal news on Tuesday, and there wasn’t much electoral news either. In theory, a Supreme Court nomination process taking place three weeks before the end of the general election and with people across the country already voting might have some electoral impact. And perhaps this process overall will affect the election — polls show that a clear majority of Americans believe that the winner of the election should choose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement. But the hearings themselves appear unlikely to have an effect, at least so far. Barrett didn’t promise to reverse Roe v. Wade or strike down Obamacare — or, less plausibly, say she would vote to keep Obamacare and/or Roe in place. She didn’t say anything to annoy Republicans or win over Democrats. And, of course, that was the point.

Discovering that terrorists can look like the guys next door is a jarring thing, especially if that’s not how you’ve been conditioned to think of such matters. In Michigan this week, cognitive dissonance has been thick on the ground—especially as public officials who came too close to the plotters and their incendiary rhetoric have tried to wrestle with the consequences of last week’s arrests of 13 Michigan militiamen who schemed to kidnap and assassinate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

A local sheriff who had appeared onstage at an anti-Whitmer rally this spring suggested to a TV interviewer that maybe the plotters—some of whom he knows personally—were just trying to make a citizen’s arrest. A Republican state legislative candidate opined that the arrests were “a totally bogus sham.” And the state’s Republican Speaker of the House, who has helped stoke the incendiary “tyranny” rhetoric that fueled the plotters, chastised Whitmer for pointing out the connection between the plotters’ actions and the rhetoric used by Donald Trump and Michigan Republicans.

Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County—where two of the accused domestic terrorists, William and Michael Null, reside and were arrested by the FBI Thursday—told a Grand Rapids interviewer that he believed the men might have been within their rights.

“It’s just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it's a felony, make a felony arrest,” Leaf told Fox17 reporter Aaron Parshegian.

He added: “The two gentlemen that I know of from my county, were they involved in that? I don't know. They're innocent till proven guilty. And we really, really should be careful, trying to try them in the media.”

The evidence unveiled by the FBI included multiple instances of surveillance of Whitmer’s summer home, where the militiamen—who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen—planned to abduct her, as well as multiple instances in which the men discussed killing her. The evidence also showed that not only had the men originally planned a paramilitary assault on the state capitol, they also made plans to kill law enforcement officers. The discussion of a “citizen’s arrest” of Whitmer was largely rhetorical.

Leaf’s comments created an uproar. Shortly after the interview aired, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, ripped into him on Twitter:

As Michigan’s top law enforcement official, let me make this abundantly clear-Persons who are not sworn, licensed members of a law enforcement agency cannot and should not “arrest” government offficials with whom they have disagreements. These comments are dangerous.

Leaf tried to defend the remarks subsequently by insisting that he only wanted to ensure that the men weren’t being “tried in the media.”

"I don’t want anybody to think I’m sympathetic towards these charges, right, these are very, very serious charges," he said. "What I don’t want is I don’t want us to be trying it in the media and we mess it up in the justice system somewhere, 'cause they can’t get a fair trial.”

Leaf told MLive: “The governor has the right to govern and also the right to be safe.” Yet he went on to criticize officials like Whitmer and Nessel for blaming people like Trump and himself for creating an atmosphere empowering fringe groups. Leaf said the militia movement “has been brewing for quite some time” over what he described as “a gradual and growing loss of rights.”

In fact, as Jen Hayden explored earlier, Leaf is a member of a law enforcement organization closely aligned with the “Patriot” militia movement with which the plotters identified. He also was an outspoken critic of Whitmer’s anti-coronavirus pandemic orders.

At a May 18 “Michigan Patriots Rally” held at Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids, Leaf had appeared onstage with several militiamen, including Michael Null. In his speech, he compared Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders to being held unlawfully under house arrest. Leaf had also described Owosso barber Karl Manke—who had defied the governor’s order by opening his shop—as a “little version of Rosa Parks.”

Meanwhile, Republican legislative candidate Paul Smith of Sterling Heights angrily denounced the arrests on Twitter.

"What a totally bogus sham," Smith commented. "These citizens never did anything illegal. Law enforcement is employed to punish people who COMMIT crimes, not people The Governess simply HATES. You can legally hurt Whitmer by voting out her minions."

State Republican leaders were appalled, and announced they had withdrawn financial and other support for Smith’s candidacy, calling the remarks “conspiracy theories and hateful remarks.”

"If you can’t denounce the evil plans and actions of these white nationalists, we don’t want you in our caucus," Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield said. "In fact, if there’s any 'Republican' who thinks like this guy, we don’t want your vote either. We don’t support domestic terrorism."

Chatfield, however, also chastised Whitmer for her remarks laying some of the blame at Trump’s feet that week: “Just last week, the president of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups,” Whitmer said, adding that extremists had “heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry—as a call to action.”

In a Twitter thread, Chatfield criticized Whitmer, claiming she had kept the investigation under wraps: “Why weren’t we warned of the plot to take hostages at the Capitol? The plot by these terrorists was against us too. Why weren’t House sergeants warned? You knew and we weren’t even given a warning. We had people working in the building and their lives matter too.” However, it was the FBI, and not Whitmer, who had overseen the sharing of information with potential victims.

Chatfield also suggested that Whitmer shared in the blame: “Hatred and violence are wrong, and that’s why I’ve continually denounced it,” he wrote. “And I agree, it’s time to tone the partisan rhetoric and ‘the heat down.’ Will you do the same for President Trump? Will the [lieutenant governor] do it to the entire GOP? We have to make this decision together.”

However, Chatfield and other leading Michigan Republicans had played their own not-insignificant roles in whipping up anti-Whitmer hysteria, as Michigan journalist Joshua Pugh pointed out on Twitter. When Patriot protesters had locked down Lansing with an anti-Whitmer protest on April 15 that featured Confederate flags and incendiary rhetoric, Chatfield had greeted them by waving a flag out his window and tweeting out encouragement.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey had been even more incendiary. On the floor of the Senate during a subsequent Lansing protest—during which armed militia members were watching from the gallery above—Shirkey had called the governor a tyrant: "If she does not recognize the end of the emergency declaration, we have no other choice but to act," he said, not clarifying what kind of action he intended.

After Thursday’s arrests, Shirkey was defiant: “This is no time to be weak in our commitment to freedom,” Shirkey told a “Let MI People Go” rally at the capitol. “We need to be strong…and not be afraid of those who are taking our freedoms away from us.”

Shirkey also told the crowd at Thursday’s rally that they were not the same people involved in the plot to kill the governor. However, the Detroit Free Press identified several of the arrestees as participants at the earlier protests against Whitmer’s orders.

In Barry County, Leaf’s remarks sparked calls for his resignation. Local residents organized a protest demanding he step down or face a recall movement—but that protest was called off when organizers became concerned about the safety of participants amid the likelihood of armed right-wing counterprotesters.

“Whereas I truly believe in the statement we were trying to make, I cannot in good conscience compromise the safety of my fellow Barry County residents,” organizer Olivia Bennett wrote on the event’s Facebook page.

“I have come to this conclusion for a couple reasons. First, there were many concerns about confrontational counter protesters. Second, this protest garnered enough attention this weekend that crowd size was a concern given short notice, security, and capacity at the commissioners' meeting."

Bennett tried to clarify that she and other protesters aren’t suggesting the sheriff was a participant. “We are not accusing him of having known about the kidnapping plot and we are not accusing him of being a part of it at all,” Bennett told MLive. “What I am suggesting is his actions and his words embolden people who would attempt to do such things.”

Show you’ve got Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s back by clicking here to make a small donation to the Daily Kos-endorsed Michigan legislative candidates who might just flip the legislature blue in November.

The Supreme Court has granted an emergency stay allowing Trump's Commerce Department, headed by Wilbur Ross, to end the 2020 census count early. This will, with certainty, lead to an undercount of the United States population. It may also impact the reapportionment of congressional seats. A lower court decision had required the Census Bureau to continue the count until Oct. 31.

In a dissent, Justice Sotomayor noted that the Census Bureau itself had previously selected the Oct. 31 date as necessary to maintain census accuracy despite pandemic disruptions, and that the government has already asserted that it will not be able to meet the Dec. 31 statutory deadline for reporting the results whether the count was continued through October or was halted.

"Moreover, meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress. This Court normally does not grant extraordinary relief on such a painfully disproportionate balance of harms."

The stay will have gigantic and irreparable effects on United States governance, but the Supreme Court majority gave no explanation—literally none—for its emergency intervention.

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Improving batteries has always been hampered by slow experimentation and discovery processes. Machine learning is speeding it up by orders of magnitude. From a report: Inside a lab at Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy, there are a half dozen refrigerator-sized cabinets designed to kill batteries as fast as they can. Each holds around 100 lithium-ion cells secured in trays that can charge and discharge the batteries dozens of times per day. Ordinarily, the batteries that go into these electrochemical torture chambers would be found inside gadgets or electric vehicles, but when they're put in these hulking machines, they aren't powering anything at all. Instead, energy is dumped in and out of these cells as fast as possible to generate reams of performance data that will teach artificial intelligence how to build a better battery. In 2019, a team of researchers from Stanford, MIT, and the Toyota Research Institute used AI trained on data generated from these machines to predict the performance of lithium-ion batteries over the lifetime of the cells before their performance had started to slip. Ordinarily, AI would need data from after a battery had started to degrade in order to predict how it would perform in the future. It might take months to cycle the battery enough times to get that data. But the researchers' AI could predict lifetime performance after only hours of data collection, while the battery was still at its peak. "Prior to our work, nobody thought that was possible," says William Chueh, a materials scientist at Stanford and one of the lead authors of the 2019 paper. And earlier this year, Chueh and his colleagues did it again. In a paper published in Nature in February, Chueh and his colleagues described an experiment in which an AI was able to discover the optimal method for 10-minute fast-charging a lithium-ion battery. Many experts think fast-charging batteries will be critical for electric vehicle adoption, but dumping enough energy to recharge a cell in the same amount of time it takes to fill up a tank of gas can quickly kill its performance. To get fast-charging batteries out of the lab and into the real world means finding the sweet spot between charge speed and battery lifetime. The problem is that there is effectively an infinite number of ways to deliver charge to a battery; Chueh compares it to searching for the best way to pour water into a bucket. Experimentally sifting through all those possibilities to find the best one is a slow and arduous task -- but that's where AI can help.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett listens on the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on October 13, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Barrett said that Roe is not a “super-precedent” and dodged questions on health care.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett spent much of the first day of questions in her confirmation hearing invoking what’s known as the “Ginsburg rule” and refusing to provide a position on whether she agreed with past precedents. It’s an approach made famous by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (though she actually spoke much more freely on some subjects) — and it provides little additional insight regarding Barrett’s positions on issues including reproductive rights and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Barrett did, however, comment more broadly. She noted that she was not “hostile” to the ACA, despite criticizing past decisions that upheld the law. She also said repeatedly that she did not have an “agenda” to overturn Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 decision that reaffirmed someone’s right to an abortion, though her past opinions signal an openness to limiting these rights.

“I’ve made no commitment to anyone about how I would decide any case,” Barrett emphasized, noting that President Donald Trump and his staffers had not discussed how she’d rule on specific cases — a concern many Democrats have highlighted given his previously stated promises to appoint anti-abortion nominees and judges who’d overturn the ACA.

Barrett also noted repeatedly that she adhered to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s judicial philosophy of originalism, but emphasized that she’d bring her own perspective to the role. “If I were confirmed, you’d be getting Justice Barrett, not Justice Scalia,” she said.

Here are seven of the key moments from the confirmation hearing so far.

1) Barrett doesn’t say that the president is unable to single-handedly delay an election

Congress, not the president, would have to pass a law to delay an election, but Barrett declined to make this point when she was asked about the subject.

As Vox’s Aaron Rupar wrote, when Barrett was pressed directly about the president’s power to delay an election, she punted, indicating that she was unwilling to take a straightforward position on the question.

“If that question ever came before me, I’d need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process,” she said. “So, you know, if I give off-the-cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit, and I don’t think we want judges to be legal pundits. I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind.”

2) Barrett won’t commit to recusal on cases about the election or the ACA

When asked whether she’d recuse herself on cases reviewing the outcome of the upcoming election or the preservation of the Affordable Care Act, Barrett said she wouldn’t be able to commit to such a move at this point.

“That’s not a question I can answer in the abstract,” Barrett said when pressed about whether she’d participate in the upcoming November case about the ACA. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has previously argued that Barrett should recuse herself from the case because of her criticisms of past decisions preserving the law — and because of Trump’s comments about picking judges who’d undo it.

Similarly, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) probed a possible conflict of interest, Barrett wouldn’t agree to recuse herself if a case related to the election were before the Court. In Leahy’s exchange with Barrett, Leahy wondered whether Trump could be choosing someone for the Court who would favor his position if a case about the election’s outcome came before it.

“I commit to you to fully and faithfully apply the law of recusal,” Barrett said. “I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.”

“I would certainly hope that all members of this committee would have confidence in my integrity than to think that I would allow myself to be used as a pawn to decide this election for the American people,” she later emphasized.

3) Barrett declined to take a position on whether Roe was wrongly decided

Barrett was asked repeatedly whether she believed that Roe was wrongly decided, like Scalia did, and she dodged the question several times — citing the same reasoning that other nominees have in the past.

“I’m going to invoke Justice Kagan’s description, which I think is perfectly put,” she said, “She said that she was not going to grade precedent or give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.”

Barrett’s judicial track record signals that she’d likely be open to further restricting abortion access, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser has previously explained:

In Planned Parenthood v. Box (2019), Barrett joined a brief dissent arguing that her court should rehear a case that blocked an anti-abortion law before that law took effect. That opinion argued that “preventing a state statute from taking effect is a judicial act of extraordinary gravity in our federal structure” — suggesting that Barrett would have prevented her court from blocking the anti-abortion law at the heart of that case if given the chance.

“I don’t have an agenda. I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey,” Barrett said.

In an exchange with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), she also declined to classify Roe v. Wade as a “super-precedent” like Brown v. Board of Education. The term “super-precedent” refers to court decisions that Barrett described as settled to the degree “that no political actors push further overruling.”

“Roe is not a super-precedent,” she said. “But that does not mean it should be overruled.”

4) Barrett said she can’t take a position on the upcoming ACA case

The impending ACA case was another area where Barrett declined to provide more specifics. “The canons of judicial conduct would prevent me from expressing a view,” she said, when pressed on her perspective about the arguments involved.

In the lawsuit, a group of Republican state attorneys general is arguing that the individual mandate — which no longer includes a penalty — is no longer a tax, and is unconstitutional as a result. Justices will also weigh whether the broader law is unconstitutional if the individual mandate is deemed as such.

Barrett in the past has criticized Justice John Roberts’s reasoning for upholding the ACA in NFIB v. Sebelius in 2012, though she argued that this pushback did not mean she was broadly “hostile” toward the law itself.

“I am not hostile to the ACA. I am not hostile to any statute that you pass,” Barrett said. “I apply the law, I follow the law, you make the policy.”

5) Barrett says she would set aside personal beliefs while making judicial decisions

The relationship between Barrett’s religious views and potential judicial decisions was a focus of Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court, though it has not been raised by Democrats to the same degree during this year’s panel. This is in part because of how some lawmakers botched the subject last time, making it seem as though they were attacking her faith and not its connection to her role as a judge.

Barrett is a devout Catholic, and she’s previously written about how a judge’s Catholic faith could impact their approach to cases involving capital punishment. On Tuesday, Barrett said she’d continue to set aside her Catholic beliefs, and her broader personal beliefs, while making judicial decisions — and emphasized the process she would take to interpret the law.

“Judges can’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda. I like guns, I hate guns. I like abortion, I hate abortion,’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world,” she said. “You have to wait for cases and controversies, which is the language of the Constitution, to wind their way through the process.”

6) Barrett used a “dog whistle” term while discussing LGBTQ rights

Barrett declined, too, to offer her stance on Obergefell v. Hodges, a 2015 case that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry, noting that she didn’t expect a challenge to make it to the Supreme Court. While describing her position on protections for the LGBTQ community, however, she used the term “sexual preference,” which prompted outcry from many LGBTQ rights organizations who noted that “sexual orientation” is the correct term.

“I have no agenda, and I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference,” Barrett said as part of her answer.

“The term ‘sexual preference’ is used by opponents of equality to suggest that being #LGBTQ is a choice,” Lambda Legal, a legal advocacy group, noted in a tweet.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) later confronted Barrett about her use of the term, prompting her to issue an apology. “I would never mean to use a term that would cause offense in the LGBTQ community,” Barrett said. “So if I did, I greatly apologize for that.”

7) Barrett acknowledges implicit bias in criminal justice system, after questioning from Sen. Cory Booker

Sen. Cory Booker pressed Barrett about the presence of implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system — something that Vice President Mike Pence dismissed in a recent debate.

Reading off data points, including one that described how prosecutors were more likely to charge Black defendants with offenses that carry harsh mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants in comparable cases, Booker asked if the data surprised Barrett.

Booker focused on the subject as part of a series of questions he asked Barrett about racial justice, including an opinion she had written in a prior case about a hostile work environment.

Barrett said she’d seen studies about bias and eventually acknowledged its existence in a somewhat roundabout way. “It would be hard to imagine a criminal justice system as big as ours without having any implicit bias in it,” she said.

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A man watches a television showing North Korea’s military parade while at the Seoul Railway Station on October 10, 2020, in Seoul, South Korea. | Chung Sung-jun/Getty Images

North Korea has become a stronger nuclear power on Trump’s watch.

North Korea’s display of new, dangerous weapons on Saturday made one thing perfectly clear: Over the last four years, President Donald Trump has failed to curb the nuclear threat from Pyongyang.

Trump made a big bet that meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times and sending him flattering letters might convince Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear and missile arsenals once and for all. But during the country’s 75th annual military parade celebrating the founding of its ruling party, Kim made sure to signal to the entire world that Trump has made no progress on that front. In fact, matters have only gotten worse.

Among other revelations, North Korea showed off a large intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could potentially overwhelm US defenses; more trucks from which to shoot ICBMs than previously known; and more advanced shorter-range rockets to more precisely threaten South Korea.

Which means North Korea now has a greater ability to threaten America and its regional allies today than it did when Trump entered office. Trump is by no means the first president to fall short of reversing Pyongyang’s nuclear progress, but he’s now the latest.

According to a source familiar with his comments, Trump has been telling White House aides he’s “really angry about [North Korea’s] missile parade” and “really disappointed” in Kim personally. But that same person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about internal discussions, noted Trump is unlikely to change his stance toward North Korea unless it tests a new ICBM or a nuclear device.

Perhaps to assuage Trump’s and the world’s concerns, Kim noted the intentions of the buildup during a speech to open the parade.

“We will continue to strengthen the war deterrent, the righteous self-defense means, so as to contain and control all the dangerous attempts and intimidatory acts by the hostile forces, including their sustained and aggravating nuclear threat,” Kim, dressed in a gray Western-style suit, said, clearly referring to the United States. Such weapons “will never be abused or used as a means for preemptive strike.”

“But, if, and if, any forces infringe upon the security of our state and attempt to have recourse to military force against us, I will enlist all our most powerful offensive strength in advance to punish them,” he continued.

Put together, experts say Kim aimed to convey that his nation is more prepared than ever to defend itself and, if necessary, fight back — but only if attacked first. He’s threading a needle in the hope of improving his arsenal while minimizing public backlash.

That play may have mostly worked: Leaders in South Korea and Japan have conveyed their displeasure publicly, but Trump — who seems content with the status quo as long as North Korea doesn’t test these weapons — hasn’t said anything openly about the parade.

Some experts say there’s still an opportunity to improve the situation. “Both sides need to take even greater conciliatory steps to overcome the growing trust deficit caused by the security spiral,” said Frank Aum, the senior expert on North Korea at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC.

If the US and North Korea don’t, there could be a repeat of 2017’s “fire and fury” era in the next four years — but this time with Pyongyang in possession of more lethal weaponry.

“The temperature is down because Trump is happy to live in denial,” MIT nuclear strategy expert Vipin Narang told me. “The problem with that is when the temperature inevitably turns back up.”

The main three weapons North Korea displayed, and their dangers, explained

The October 10 parade commemorated the 75th year of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which has outlasted the Soviet Union’s 74 years as a nation. During recent iterations, this annual celebration has provided Kim the chance to showcase not only his hold on power, as his father and grandfather did before him, but also the new weapons he has to safeguard that power.

The 2020 event was no different, save for it confusingly taking place at night instead of during the day (it’s still unclear exactly why). But this year’s display was one of the most troubling in years because of what North Korea’s military rolled through the streets of Pyongyang.

Let’s take each in turn.

A new intercontinental ballistic missile

In December 2019, Kim promised his nation a “new strategic weapon” — which experts interpreted as code for a bigger, more capable missile to deliver a nuclear weapon to targets nearby, or even as far away as the United States.

He finally unveiled the promised weapon this past weekend, and, well, just look at it.

Experts say the four showcased missiles are the biggest ever seen in North Korea. But more than that, they are the largest road-mobile missiles with their own truck-based launchers in the entire world. This means that, in case of a war, North Korea’s military could roll these missiles out of underground bunkers, place them somewhere on land, and shoot them at the United States.

However, the missile is propelled by liquid, so it needs to be fueled before launch. That probably gives US defenses enough time to track the missile and destroy it before it ever gets off the ground. “North Korea is betting that ‘probably’ won’t be very reassuring to US leaders in a crisis where US cities are at risk of nuclear attack in defense of an ally,” Georgetown University’s Caitlin Talmadge, whose research focuses in part on nuclear deterrence and escalation, tweeted Saturday.

(North Korea did display a missile that looks like it’s propelled by solid fuel, meaning it’s ready to launch right out of the gate, which shows the country is getting better at making those, too.)

Why would North Korea want to make such a big ICBM, though, especially when it already tested one in 2017 that theoretically could strike America? Most analysts suspect its bigger size allows it to hold multiple bombs, roughly three or four (along with decoys, perhaps), which could overwhelm US missile defenses. The US has just 44 ground-based interceptors (missiles) in Alaska and California to shoot weapons out of the sky, using four interceptors to destroy each individual warhead.

If North Korea wanted to shoot 12 missiles with one warhead on top, the missile defense system is already overwhelmed. But why do that when you could shoot three missiles, each with four warheads attached to it?

If the US wanted to beef up the number of interceptors at its disposal, experts note it’ll cost a lot of money. “Each one of these missiles that North Korea builds will cost the US about $1 billion to defend against,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, tweeted Saturday. “At that cost, I am pretty sure North Korea can add warheads faster than we can add interceptors.”

Importantly, the new ICBM — likely to be named the Hwasong-16, since it’s the latest ICBM after North Korea’s Hwasong-15 — hasn’t been tested yet. It’s possible it may have issues that North Korea still needs to fix.

That’s why many experts predict Pyongyang will probably test the massive weapon in early 2021, in part to see how it goes and to also send a message to whoever is in the White House for the next four years: North Korea is a nuclear power, and you can’t do anything about it.

All of that is scary enough, but another revelation may actually be the biggest and most troubling news.

More trucks from which to shoot ICBMs — and, potentially, the ability to make more

Melissa Hanham, deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network, tweeted that the biggest news from the parade wasn’t the four new ICBMs but rather the four trucks carrying them.

Here’s why: Until Saturday, experts could only confirm that North Korea had six total truck-erected launchers (TELs) — that is, trucks that serve as a platform for shooting missiles — for ICBMs. But the parade featured four trucks carrying the new ICBM and another four with a previously unveiled ICBM on top. That’s eight, which last I checked was more than six.

And by the looks of them, they’re different from those North Korea had imported from China. Simply put, the newer TELs have more axles — the number of sets of wheels — than the older versions.

Scott LaFoy, a satellite-imagery and ballistic-missile analyst based in Virginia, said this implies two things: Either North Korea is somehow importing trucks or truck parts from and making changes to suit their needs, or it’s gained the ability to produce these trucks locally.

If it’s the latter, and there’s evidence to that effect, it’s a big deal. Indeed, satellite imagery suggests North Korea has built factories to produce the missile-launching trucks at home, avoiding the need to buy them from China or someplace else.

If that’s the case, North Korea could conceivably make the same number of TELs as ICBMs in its arsenal — if it doesn’t have them already. “Their ICBM arsenal is, hypothetically, not constrained by a lack of launchers,” said LaFoy. “So long as North Korea opts to launch its ICBMs from trucks, then being able to make trucks means being able to make more ICBMs.”

Which means North Korea could be capable — either today or in the near future — of scattering and preparing multiple ICBMs to launch off of trucks during a crisis, lowering the likelihood the US or South Korea could destroy them all before they take flight.

Improved shorter-range missiles that threaten South Korea

Although North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs get all the attention, a seriously underappreciated threat comes from its arsenal of conventional weapons, including the world’s largest artillery force.

South Korea’s capital city, Seoul, is a so-called “megacity” with a whopping 25 million residents living in the greater metropolitan area. It also happens to be within direct firing range of thousands of pieces of North Korean artillery already lined up along the border, also known as the Demilitarized Zone. According to the National Interest, by some estimates Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.”

The biggest critique of North Korea’s shorter-range missiles has been that they are old, creaky, and unreliable. Kim set out to allay those fears, showing his military has also spent ample time beefing up those weapons along with the longer-range nuclear ones.

Korean Central News Agency

LaFoy told me these weapons, particularly the multiple launch rocket systems pictured above, are “more precise” because of enhanced GPS and “augment or replace older artillery pieces.” In other words, North Korea now has more reliable weapons with which to destroy Seoul and kill hundreds of thousands of people in days, if it so chooses.

The message was unmistakable: North Korea doesn’t need to use its nuclear weapons to threaten South Korea and the 25,000 US troops stationed in the country.

This means Trump’s boast that he ended the threat from North Korea is just that: a boast. If anything, he led the US during a massive expansion of Pyongyang’s military and nuclear power, with little indication of a reversal any time soon.

Some experts, including Jessica Lee, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s East Asia Program, say there’s still a chance for progress. “North Korea has always used external threats to justify its nuclear program,” she told me. “The more the United States acts like a threat, the more it will legitimize the North Korean regime’s nuclear buildup.”

But if the parade is any indication, North Korea will remain a threat to the US, South Korea, and Japan — regardless of America’s position.

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Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett isn’t going to answer any of the big questions truthfully, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse knew that. So instead of inviting Barrett to be dishonest, Whitehouse explained the forces that put her in that Senate hearing room with the specific agenda—killing the Affordable Care Act, ending marriage equality, overturning Roe v. Wade—she is on the record as having (but is currently pretending not to have).

Whitehouse described the Senate hearing room as being like a puppet theater, with “forces outside of this room who are pulling strings and pushing sticks and causing the puppet theater to react.” Highlighting the hypocrisy from Senate Republicans who claimed in 2016 that they would oppose filling a Supreme Court seat in 2020 only to push to do exactly that after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whitehouse said “When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows.” He then spent his time shining a light on the power in the shadows—the right-wing dark money behind the Republican takeover of the courts and the use of the courts to move U.S. policy ever to the right.

You really have to find the time to watch the whole thing, because it is an education in how right-wing dark money has corrupted the courts—and in how the end result is a corrupt Supreme Court. Whitehouse identified the groups like the National Federation of Independent Business, the Federalist Society, and the Judicial Crisis Network, into which secret donors have poured tens of millions of dollars. These groups select Republican judicial nominees, promote and lobby for those nominees, submit giant piles of amicus briefs in cases before the courts, all in a well-funded scheme to change U.S. law through the courts. Huge amounts of money, Whitehouse noted, come through an organization called Donors Trust, a “gigantic identity-scrubbing device for the right wing” that exists to funnel anonymous money into the campaign to control the courts.

Adding it all up, the right wing has spent $250 million for control of the courts. “$250 million is a lot of money to spend if you’re not getting anything for it,” Whitehouse said. “So that raises the question, what are they getting for it? Well, I showed the slide earlier on the Affordable Care Act, and on Obergefell, and on Roe v. Wade. That’s where they lost. But with another judge, that could change. That’s where the contest is.”

And while Republicans have lost on those three big issues Whitehouse identified, they’ve won on a lot. He counted 80 cases decided by what he called “the Roberts Five” on the Supreme Court, without a single vote from a justice appointed by a Democratic president. “And t’s important to look at where those cases went, because they’re not about big, public issues like getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, undoing Roe v. Wade, and undoing same-sex marriage. They’re about power,” Whitehouse said. Power as in “there is an identifiable Republican donor interest in those cases, and in every single case that donor interest won.” 

Whitehouse identified four areas around which these judgments center: “unlimited and dark money in politics,” curtailing the power of the civil jury, weakening regulatory agencies, and limiting voting rights. On the civil jury, he said, “You can’t bribe them, you’re not allowed to. It’s a crime to tamper with a jury. It’s standard practice to tamper with Congress.”

It’s a stunning, detailed indictment of how Republicans have bought the supposedly nonpartisan courts. Watch the whole thing if you can.

The Supreme Court is the last bulwark of their minority rule, and they're determined to keep it.

Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The question has an easy, straightforward answer. Barrett didn’t provide it.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett refused to give a clear response to a question that shouldn’t have been hard for her to answer during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Asked by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) if “the Constitution gives the President of the United States the authority to unilaterally delay an election under any circumstances,” Barrett punted.

“Well, Senator, if that question ever came before me, I’d need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process,” she said. “So, you know, if I give off the cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit, and I don’t think we want judges to be legal pundits. I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind.”

Watch:

But there’s really no need for “an open mind” when it comes to questions about whether Trump or any other president can delay the election, because the law is clear: the president doesn’t have this power.

As my colleague Ian Millhiser detailed in July after Trump posted a tweet suggesting the country should “Delay the Election” due to unfounded fears of election fraud, the only way the date of the election could be changed would be through an act of Congress — and there’s no way that the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would go along with that.

A trio of federal laws set Election Day for presidential electors, senators, and US representatives as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” If Republicans want to change this law, they would need to go through the Democratic House.

The 20th Amendment, moreover, provides that “the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” Thus, even if the election were somehow canceled, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s terms would still expire as scheduled.

Of course, it’s standard practice for SCOTUS nominees to avoid weighing in on hot button issues during their confirmation hearings. Along those lines, Barrett on Tuesday dodged questions about her views on the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade.

But whether Trump has the power to cancel an election is not a hot button issue. The fact of the matter is he doesn’t. And Barrett’s refusal to say so doesn’t speak well for her willingness to stand up to the president in the event that the Supreme Court ends up hearing a challenge to the results of an election that it looks like Trump is increasingly unlikely to win at the ballot box.

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Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sought to dodge a question Tuesday about her view of the high court's historic 2015 ruling striking down same-sex marriage bans nationwide. 

While refusing to answer the question directly, Barrett offered, "I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would never discriminate on the basis of sexual preference."

That may have seemed anodyne enough to many viewers, but her use of the term sexual preference rather than sexual orientation says everything we need to know about Barrett's social circles and her approach to legal doctrine concerning the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. 

From a social standpoint, only someone stuck in the mindset of last-century anti-LGBTQ dogma would embrace use of the term “preference.” Gay individuals don't wake up one day and decide they prefer dating people of the same sex like they prefer chocolate chip cookies to oatmeal raisin. Did Barrett wake up one morning and decide dating men was a choice for her?

No. But the notion that anyone chooses to be gay or date people of the same sex is not only antiquated, it's the also the baseline that anti-LGBTQ activists have used for decades to advance and defend laws expressly discriminating against gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans. It's the verbiage of someone who lives in a highly conservative social bubble and traffics in anti-gay legal doctrine. The bigoted legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) was no doubt over the moon with the wink from Barrett.

Indeed, Barrett noted in her financial disclosures for her 7th Circuit nomination that she spoke twice at ADF's Blackstone Legal Fellowship for law students. Reporting by Sarah Posner further clarifies that, in order to get those speaking gigs, Barrett would have been sent the ADF's dos and don'ts for speaking about LGBTQ rights, starting with the notion that they're not constitutionally protected rights, rather they're "demands." Here's Posner writing for Rolling Stone:

But a paper trail shows Barrett would have not only known about ADF’s policy positions, but would have had to agree with them to speak at the seminar. Documents obtained by Type Investigations since that time show that Barrett, while a professor at Notre Dame Law School, spoke twice at Blackstone seminars, in 2013 and 2015, delivering a speech titled, “Construction and/or Interpretation: Navigating the Scylla & Charybdis.” ADF sent faculty emails regarding rules and logistics for the gathering, and thanking them for “your commitment to the Lord’s Kingdom work through Blackstone.” The materials included a confidential “lexicon” containing a list of phrases participants should and should not use when speaking. Participants were told to use the phrase “defending biblical, religious principles, convictions,” but not “bigotry, anti-tolerance;” and to use “demands of/by the homosexual legal agenda, demands of/by advocates of homosexual behavior, special privileges,” but not “homosexual/gay rights, hate-crimes legislation, anti-discrimination laws,” noting that Alan Sears, one of the co-founders of ADF, has written that “the goals and agenda of advocates of homosexual behavior are not ‘rights,’ but ‘demands.’” Similarly, ADF’s lexicon called for using “homosexual behavior,” not “homosexuality or gay,” because “homosexuality is a personal struggle” and “the word ‘gay’ was conceived by advocates of homosexual behavior to destigmatize their behavior and advance their agenda.” Because ADF frequently litigates Supreme Court cases, taking positions against abortion, LGBTQ rights, and church-state separation, it is likely that if Barrett, who is only 48, is confirmed, she will be hearing arguments from ADF attorneys for many years to come.  

The ADF is very specific about its framing of LGBTQ issues (i.e., confidential lexicon) precisely to avoid legitimizing the struggle of queer Americans to gain equal rights under the law. 

If you believe sexual orientation is a preference, why grant same-sex marital rights to people who could choose otherwise? 

And if you believe sexual orientation is a preference, then conversion therapy becomes a legitimate remedy. In fact, perhaps all these state bans on the traumatizing and inhumane use of conversion therapy then infringe on religious liberties. 

But Barrett's embrace of anti-gay bigotry isn't just theoretical. A New York Times report on Barrett's faith revealed that she has actually practiced that bigotry while serving on the board of Trinity School—the private school in South Bend, Indiana, that some of her children attend—from 2015 to 2017.

In 2014, the board of trustees of Trinity Schools Incorporated, which also runs two other schools, adopted a policy not to accept children of unmarried couples. Indiana was then in the middle of an intense legal battle to overturn its ban on same-sex marriage.

Jon Balsbaugh, the organization’s president, said the school’s position then and now was that marriage should be between a man and woman, and ex-Trinity staff members said the admissions policy effectively excluded students of gay parents.

Barrett doesn’t appear to have been involved in the inception of the anti-gay policy, but she sat on the board that actively enforced it and explicitly chose to send her children there. So while Barrett may not have directly answered the question about her view of the 2015 Obergefell decision that cemented same-sex marriage rights nationwide, she said everything we need to know. 

Preference was not only a dog whistle to anti-LGBTQ conservatives, it's also the legal basis on which they have sought to deprive gay and transgender Americans of numerous constitutional protections and will continue to do so moving forward.

One suburban Karen’s last nerve has been worked. A woman was filmed on her neighbor’s ‘ring’ doorbell threatening to sue over the neighbor’s Biden yard sign. The clip has racked up more than a million views on various social media platforms.

Yelled the woman, who identifies herself as Zelda: “I want to show you something. … Get out your neighborhood bylaws. In section 5.20, no sign shall be in the yard. If you don’t take this terrorist Biden sh*t down, I will sue you! And I was going to have you sell my house but that’s not going to happen now and you’re going to lose a lot of business because of this crap. You get out your neighborhood association bylaws! Section 5.20!”

Trump supporter threatens to sue neighbors for having a Biden sign on their yard pic.twitter.com/7XmsxBd8M2

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) October 12, 2020

The post ‘Karen’ Explodes at Neighbor, Threatens to Sue Over Biden Sign: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Senator Dianne Feinstein grilled SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett on whether she thinks marriage equality is protected. Barrett wouldn’t say, and also used the anti-LGBTQ buzzphrase “sexual preference” to describe orientation, indicating that she believes it is a choice.

Feinstein’s asked Barrett about the DOMA and Obergefell rulings: “Both decisions were decided by a 5-4 margin. Justice Ginsburg was in the majority. Justice Scalia dissented in both cases. You said in your acceptance speech for this nomination that Justice Scalia’s philosophy is your philosophy. Do you agree with this particular point of Justice Scalia’s view that the U.S. Constitution does not afford gay people the fundamental right to marry?”

Replied Barrett: “If I were confirmed, you would be getting Justice Barrett not Justice Scalia so I don’t think that anybody should assume that just because Justice Scalia decided a decision a certain way that I would too. But i’m not going to express a view on whether I agree or disagree with Justice Scalia for the same reasons that I’ve been giving. Now, Justice Ginsburg, with her characteristic pithiness, used this to describe how a nominee should comport herself at a hearing. No hints, no previews, no forecasts. That had been the practice of nominees before her but everybody calls it the Ginsburg rule because she stated it so concisely and it’s been the practice of every nominee since. So I can’t, and I’m sorry to not be able to embrace or disavow Justice Scalia’s position but I really can’t do that on any point of law.”

“Well that’s really too bad because it’s really a fundamental point for large numbers of people in this country,” Feinstein continued. “I understand you don’t want to answer these questions directly but you identify yourself with a Justice that you, like him, would be a consistent vote to roll back hard fought freedoms and protections for the LGBT community. And what I was hoping that you would say is that this would be a point of difference where those freedoms would be respected and you haven’t said that.”

“Senator, I have no agenda and I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference,” Barrett replied. “Like racism, I think discrimination is important. On the questions of law, however, I just, because I’m a sitting judge and because you can’t answer questions without going through the judicial process, can’t give answers to those very specific questions.”

Marriage equality portion begins at 24:09.

Coney Barrett also refused to say whether she thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

Amy Coney Barrett won't answer Feinstein's questions about whether she thinks Roe was wrongly decided pic.twitter.com/kgSQ3rckux

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2020

The post Amy Coney Barrett Won’t Say if Same-Sex Marriage Rights are Protected, Uses Anti-LGBTQ Buzzword ‘Preference’ to Describe Sexual Orientation: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Partisan Republican efforts to make it more difficult to vote—at least for people in Democratic-leaning urban areas—continue to be backed up by partisan Republican judges. Monday night, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s vote-suppressing order allowing just one ballot drop-off location per county. 

That order, which according to the three Trump-appointed judges on the panel does not put an added burden on some voters during the pandemic, means that, for instance, Harris County, with a population of 4.7 million and an area greater than the state of Rhode Island, has the same number of drop-off locations as the state’s smallest rural county. Harris County, which not coincidentally is home to 25% of the state’s Black residents and 18% of the Latino ones, had to close 11 of its 12 drop-off spots.

Can we win Texas? Absolutely. Get on the phones on Thursday with Turnout2020, and help Democratic voters in the Lone Star State request absentee ballots to flip the state blue. When you sign up, please remember to mark "Daily Kos" as the volunteer team that recruited you.

But, the Trump judges said, Abbott’s Oct. 1 order for counties to close drop-off locations on Oct. 2 was not a restriction of the ability to vote because it was a downgrading of an earlier expansion, in which Abbott suspended a state law allowing mail ballots to be hand-delivered only on Election Day.

So: On July 27, Abbott said mail ballots could be hand-delivered. Counties set up locations for that. On Oct. 1, after months of Donald Trump attacking vote-by-mail, Abbott said whoa whoa whoa, nope, only one location per county, no matter how many people that county has and no many square miles it is. According to the 5th Circuit panel: “How this expansion of voting opportunities burdens anyone’s right to vote is a mystery. Indeed, one strains to see how it burdens voting at all.” 

Hmm. Well, for starters, Texas only allows no-excuse voting by mail for people who are over 65 or have a disability—exactly the people who are most at risk in the coronavirus pandemic. So the population of people voting by mail is disproportionately vulnerable, and as we know, Black and Latino people are also disproportionately vulnerable, but Abbott’s order puts ballot drop-off most out of reach for people in the parts of the state with the highest Black and Latino populations. It will take some Texans more than an hour to drop off ballots.

That’s why, in the order overturned by the 5th Circuit, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote: “Older and disabled voters living in Texas’ largest and most populous counties must travel further distances to more crowded ballot return centers where they would be at an increased risk of being infected by the coronavirus in order to exercise their right to vote and have it counted.”

Early voting started in Texas Tuesday morning with long lines at some voting locations.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I used to watch a lot of news and commentary until one day I tried to tally up what I had learned during a month of it and found the quantity of facts could fit on a postage stamp.

Today's News:

Donald Trump returned to the superspreader circuit on Monday evening. The theme for the evening: Stop looking at all the people that Trump killed through his purposeful mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis and check out all the people he hasn’t killed … yet.

Throughout the evening, Trump claimed repeatedly to have “saved” two million people. Presumably, that’s a reference to models that were circulated in February showing how many Americans would die if the White House attempted to reach “herd immunity” by simply allowing the disease to run its course. But it wasn’t Trump who decided not to follow that model. No matter how many times he says it at rallies and debates, Trump never “shut down” the nation, because there never was a national lockdown or stay-at-home order. It was individual state governors who chose to take action—from closing schools to limiting businesses—all of it over Trump’s objections. Governors, particularly Democratic governors in the nation’s most populous states, saved lives. No matter how hard Trump tried to get in their way.

Of course, not every governor joined in the efforts to save their citizens. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis underlined that fact after appearing at Trump’s Orlando rally notably lacking a mask and ignoring any effort at social distancing. Masks and any efforts at safety were in very limited view at the airport event, with people crowding against the line and Trump-supporting politicians streaming by barefaced in a tight pack. DeSantis and other Republicans officials were crowded together, as were the MAGA crowd, in a spittle-flinging appearance that will undoubtedly be the source of new cases in coming days.

But then, since DeSantis has worked hard to make sure Florida stopped accurately reporting coronavirus cases months ago, and has even prevented county medical examiners from reporting deaths, Florida is the perfect place to hold the first stop in a Superspreader Tour that is also scheduled to bring the Trump virus to Iowa and Pennsylvania. 

While giving the gathered crowd a fist-closed salute, Trump declared, “I just feel so powerful,” and announced that he was “immune” to COVID-19. "I'll kiss everyone in that audience,” said Trump. “I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women and the... I'll just give you a big, fat kiss." He did not, thank goodness, appear to carry out this threat.

Earlier in the day, Dr. Sean Conley released a statement that Trump had tested negative for COVID-19, but there were two glaring problems with Conley’s statement. First, Conley said that Trump had tested negative “on two consecutive days,” but did not say which days those were—or even if they were after Trump had tested positive. Also, Conley stated that Trump had tested negative … on the antigen-based quick test. That should not have happened, because not only should Trump have mounted an immune response by this point, he was also directly injected with a four-times normal dose of experimental antibodies. If Trump did actually test negative on the antibody test, then he explicitly is not immune to COVID-19. Conley said that Trump was taking a PCR swab test, but did not announce any results, even though there has easily been sufficient time to process such a test.

On Tuesday morning, Trump is tweeting again, making fun of Dr. Anthony Fauci and once again laying claim to “saving two million.” In these tweets, Trump claims that the World Health Organization—that would be the organization Trump has blamed for the pandemic during his round robin game of “anyone but me”—has now come out against lockdowns. Trump repeated a story on Fox News that ran on Monday using selective quotes from a WHO official. That official actually said what WHO has said all along: Lockdowns are a blunt tool, one that should only be used until a nation has developed a system of testing and contact tracing along with other effective steps like mask mandates. 

Meanwhile the head of WHO spoke out again on Monday to remind everyone that allowing COVID-19 to spread now is just as bad a decision as it was at the beginning. 

Here’s how grim things look for House Republicans three weeks out from the election: They’re struggling to win back seats even in conservative bastions like Oklahoma and South Carolina, where Democrats staged shocking upsets in 2018.

About a half-dozen seats fall in that category — the lowest of low-hanging fruit for Republicans. But most private and public surveys from both parties show either dead heats or the Democratic incumbent with a modest lead, a startling position for a crop of candidates running in Trump country. The seats were won in 2018 by Reps. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.), Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), Max Rose (D-N.Y.), Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), Ben McAdams (D-Utah) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.).

Their success stems from Democrats’ massive fundraising advantage as well as some Republican recruitment struggles. And in a few places, Trump has become so toxic that he’s dragging down GOP candidates where he was once overwhelmingly popular.

“They continue to run rubber stamps for the president,” Cunningham said in a recent interview outside the Capitol. “Even though the district is more conservative, it doesn’t want a rubber stamp for the president.”

Privately, Republicans concede their chances of reclaiming Cunningham's coastal South Carolina district are dimming. He's leading Republican Nancy Mace by a staggering 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, according to an early October poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the independent-expenditure arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and shared with POLITICO. And he has even managed to outflank Mace on the right, warning she will raise taxes 23 percent on prescription drugs and groceries.

Trump won the seat by 13 points in 2016. But he is polling significantly lower now. "It’s definitely not the margin that he had last time against Hillary," Cunningham said.

Not only are Republicans struggling to pick off Cunningham — a sign they have little chance of reclaiming the majority — but a few Democrats even believe there’s a slim possibility they don’t lose any incumbents next month.

House GOP super PACs have reserved and spent millions into these seats, trying to keep pace with well-funded Democratic incumbents — in some cases, without much movement in the polls. Republicans' 2020 argument was that President Donald Trump would be a boon to their prospects in flipping the 30 Democratic-held districts he carried in 2016. In reality, they are seriously contesting perhaps a dozen of them, and Democrats could even expand their majority.

Democrats increasingly believe that the 2016 presidential race represented close to a low-water mark for the party's downballot candidates, said Dan Sena, former executive director of the DCCC.

"One of the things we saw in 2018 was that Clinton’s win margin in 2016 was really more of the base for Democrats. It wasn’t indicative of how far Democrats could go," Sena said. "Simply looking at the Trump number really isn’t the correct margin or the best indicator."

Some Republican strategists believe their best chance to oust a freshman is in upstate New York, where Brindisi faces a rematch with former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney. In a district that Trump carried by 16 points, Brindisi has tried to focus on local issues, including his work to secure contracts for a manufacturing company in the district and to crack down on Spectrum, the much-hated cable company in the region.

In an interview, Tenney railed against Brindisi as a faux-moderate with a record that doesn't match his centrist brand. But she conceded that she would be in a better position if she could match Brindisi's TV ad spending. He has so far reserved $1.6 million in ads to her $200,000, according to media buying data.

Outside groups on both sides are heavily invested in the race. The National Republican Congressional Committee and its ally, the Congressional Leadership Fund, have dropped a whopping $8.4 million on ads. They are attempting to push Tenney over the finish line, a strategy that underscores a benefit of Democrats' fundraising edge.

"People think I raised their cable rates, that I’m giving Spectrum a tax cut that gave them a $9 billion windfall," Tenney said in an interview. "Nobody’s fact-checking that in the media. We’re trying to get it out there with a fraction of the resources that he has. He’s running nonstop negative ads making me out to be a monster on every issue, that I’m against people with pre-existing conditions."

Candidates purchase ads at cheaper rates than super PACs and they can also drive their own messaging. Tenney, who voted in 2017 for the House GOP's replacement for the 2010 health care law, bemoaned the fact that she can't invest more in digital ads or put more positive spots on the air.

Top Democratic operatives appear more worried about holding a rural seat in southern New Mexico held by Torres Small, another vulnerable freshman. Recent polling shows a virtually tied race, and Republicans are dumping money on ads casting her as an acolyte of Speaker Nancy Pelosi who won't support the state's oil and gas industry.

But like in the Brindisi-Tenney race, Torres Small is also facing a rematch against Yvette Herrell, the woman she beat in 2018 — and Democrats are hammering Herrell over the same ethics issues they litigated two years ago. And Herrell is also leaning heavily on outside help: Torres Small is outspending her opponent by a nearly five-to-one margin on TV ads.

Republicans' outlays against a handful of the most beatable Democrats have hampered their ability to craft a serious path back to the majority. Democrats have seized on their cash advantage to contest districts in deep-red territory, forcing the GOP to retrench and protect incumbents and open seats.

As of mid-October, national Republicans are playing more defense than offense, airing TV ads in 28 GOP-held districts compared to 25 Democratic-held ones, according to a POLITICO analysis of data from Advertising Analytics, a TV tracking firm.

“We’re able to flip the tables and focus on expanding the map. And I do think that that’s a shift,” said Abby Curran Horrell, the executive director of House Majority PAC, Democrats' main House super PAC. "They are tied down in districts that I think they expected that they would be able to win easily. But it is not that type of year."

Meanwhile, Democrats are feeling more optimistic about a Richmond, Va.-area seat held by Spanberger. Republicans have trotted out a failed 2018 attack slamming the congresswoman for teaching at a Saudi-funded school in Virginia, dubbing it “Terror High.” And in Utah, GOP operatives privately concede that Democratic ads bashing their nominee, Burgess Owens, over bankruptcy and debt are helping McAdams.

One bright spot for the GOP lies in Western Minnesota, where longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, facing massive headwinds, has slipped in some private polling. The GOP recruit, former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach, is well-funded and plans to ride Trump's coattails in a seat he won by 31 points.

Ironically, Democrats are growing increasingly nervous about two members in seats that Clinton won by double digits in 2016: Rep. TJ Cox in California's Central Valley and Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in South Florida.

In the closing weeks, national Republicans have begun to hone in on crime, warning in countless ads that Democrats plan to "defund the police." And they are most optimistic about this line of attack in the Staten Island-based district with a heavy law-enforcement presence, where Rose is locked in a tight race with state Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis.

In most well-educated suburban districts, Trump is proving just as burdensome as he was in the 2018 midterms. In Oklahoma's 5th District, Horn shocked the political world by upsetting an unprepared incumbent. Trump won the seat by 13 points, but some private polling now indicates a tight presidential contest there.

It's still a top pickup opportunity for Republicans. But they don't have a clear lead yet, despite millions in outside spending and a more compelling and well-funded nominee in state Sen. Stephanie Bice.

"If we don’t win Congressional District 5, there’s probably a lot of other places we don’t win," said Chad Alexander, a former Oklahoma state GOP chair. "So that would be a very bad night for Republicans."

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yay

The latest polls and rankings show Democrats have a real chance at winning the White House, adding 15 seats to their US House majority, and taking back the US Senate in November.

You can donate to the Democrats in the top US Senate races here, and the top US House races here.

Democrats need 3 to 4 seats to take back the Senate

For today, let’s focus on the US Senate. The Senate currently has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with Democrats. Democrats therefore need to pick up three or four seats in November, depending on which party wins the presidency, since the vice president gets to break a tie in the Senate.

As things currently stand, Democrats might just do it because a number of key races are either tied, leaning towards the Democratic candidate, or leaning towards the Republican candidate (which is still good for Democrats).

Four Senate seats Democrats have a good chance of winning

These are our four best chances (donate to these Senate candidates here):

• Jaime Harrison (D) vs. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina – toss up.
• Sara Gideon (D) vs. Susan Collins in Maine – toss up.
• Mark Kelly (D) vs. Martha McSally in Arizona – leans Democrat.
• John Hickenlooper (D) vs. Cory Gardner in Colorado – leans Democrat, per Cook’s Political Report.

Five more Senate seats Democrats also have a good chance of winning

In these five, we have a really good shot (donate to these Senate candidates here):

• Jon Ossoff (D) vs. David Perdue in Georgia – toss up.
• Steve Bullock (D) vs. Steve Daines in Montana – toss up.
• Barbara Bollier (D) vs. Roger Marshall in Kansas – leans GOP.
• Cal Cunningham (D) vs. Thom Tillis in North Carolina – toss up.
• Theresa Greenfield (D) vs. Joni Ernst in Iowa – toss up.

Four more Senate seats in play if Democrats have a big night

Four other Senate races to watch if Democrats have a big night (donate to these Senate candidates here):

• Mary Jennings (M.J.) Hegar(D) vs. John Cornyn in Texas.
• Mike Espy (D) vs. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi.
• Amy McGrath (D) vs. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
• Al Gross (I – The Democratic party is supporting Gross) vs. Dan Sullivan in Alaska.

Biden is ahead in the national and battleground state polls

As you know, Biden is doing well in national polls — and in particular with constituencies that were for Trump in 2016, but not this time (i.e., suburbanites, seniors, white women), but Biden is also doing well in key state polls. Here’s the average spread (average of latest polls) between Trump and Biden in the battleground states, per RealClearPolitics:

Wisconsin: Biden ahead by 6% points.
Michigan: Biden ahead by 7% points.
Florida: Biden ahead by 3.7% points.
Pennsylvania: ahead Biden by 7.1% points.
North Carolina: ahead Biden by 1.4% points.
Arizona: Biden ahead by 2.7% points.

It’s not a done deal till election day, but Biden is doing extremely well — much better than Hillary was doing at this point in 2016. While Hillary’s lead over Trump kept rising and shrinking, and at times even disappearing, Biden has maintained a consistent lead over Trump for three years now.

As for the Senate, for the longest time, we didn’t think we had a chance to win it back this year. But Trump has proven to be such a weight on Republican candidates, that Democrats now have a real chance.

Chip in to help Democrats take back the Senate

I’ve set up a few ActBlue pages where you can donate to a variety of the US Senate candidates above. Here’s Gideon, Harrison, Kelly, Hickenlooper and McGrath; and here’s those five plus Ossoff, Greenfield, Cunningham, Bullock, Gross, Hegar, Bollier and Espy.

The post Democrats on verge of taking back US Senate: How you can make it happen appeared first on AMERICAblog News.

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Trump speaks from a White House balcony on Saturday. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci isn’t pulling punches about how irresponsible they are from a public health standpoint.

President Donald Trump is rushing to get back on the campaign trail just one week after leaving the hospital, and before it’s even clear that he’s tested negative for the coronavirus. (Minutes before this story was published, Trump’s physician released a letter claiming that Trump “has tested NEGATIVE, on consecutive days, using the Abbott BinaxNOW antigen card.”)

With polling showing the presidential race trending toward a Biden landslide, Trump is scheduled to hold a rally on Monday evening in Sanford, Florida. It will be his first since a trip to Minnesota on September 30 during which White House aide Hope Hicks fell ill with Covid-19, and marks the beginning of what is shaping up to be an extraordinarily intense three weeks of campaigning for the president. Trump has reportedly asked his campaign to schedule in-person events for him every night between Monday and Election Day. One adviser expressed worry to Axios that Trump is “going to kill himself.”

While Trump’s recent TV and radio interviews indicate he’s at least feeling better physically than he was in the days immediately following his October 2 announcement that he tested positive for the coronavirus, the president wants people to believe he’s the first person in the world to test positive and then actually feel better a week later.

During a Sunday morning appearance on Fox News, for instance, Trump claimed without evidence that he’s “immune” to the virus, but didn’t answer a question about what precautions his campaign will take to try to keep people safe at his rallies. Along the same lines, during a separate Fox News appearance, Trump campaign official Lara Trump deflected questions about the safety of Trump holding in-person events.

The fact of the matter is it doesn’t appear Trump’s campaign plans to do much. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says large gatherings where it’s hard to maintain physical distance from others (like political rallies) present the “highest risk” of becoming spreading events, but the campaign’s response to questions about how they’re flouting government guidance has been to suggest the right of assembly trumps public health.

Rally attendees are still required to sign a waiver absolving the campaign of any responsibility if they contract Covid-19. And early images from Sanford indicate that there won’t be much social distancing or mask-wearing.

While Trump’s event on Monday is scheduled to take place outdoors, that doesn’t mean it’s totally safe. Consider, for instance, the fallout from Trump’s September 18 rally in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Trump’s latest Minnesota rallies left a trail of Covid-19 in their wake

The Bemidji rally is perhaps best remembered for Trump praising his almost entirely white audience for their “good genes,” and for the fact that it began right as news broke of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. But it was back in the news late last week after the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) announced that nine coronavirus cases — including two requiring hospitalization, and one that put a person in the ICU — were linked to it.

While it’s impossible to know for sure that the nine infections were contracted at the rally, MDH spokesperson Doug Schultz told Politico that all nine people “attended the rally during the time when they were likely to have been exposed to the virus that made them ill (i.e. 14 days prior to illness onset).” He added that it’s likely at least one person was infectious at the rally.

Trump’s last rally before he announced his coronavirus diagnosis was held about three hours away from Bemidji in Duluth, Minnesota, on September 30 — about 48 hours before Trump ended up in the hospital with his own coronavirus diagnosis. The MDH sounded the alarm about the Duluth event as well, releasing a statement noting that “Community transmission of COVID-19 was high in St. Louis County prior to this week’s rally, and people attending the rally may have been infectious without realizing it.”

“People should consider getting tested even if they do not have symptoms because some people may not develop or recognize symptoms and people can spread the virus even without displaying symptoms,” the statement added.

Yet on Monday night, the Trump campaign is using unreliable temperature checks to try to identify possible coronavirus carriers. Put it all together and you can understand why Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN on Monday that Trump’s pandemic rallies are a bad idea from a public health standpoint.

“We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that. We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves,” Fauci said, adding that the rallies are an extra bad idea right now since new coronavirus cases are again on the rise throughout the country.

Trump is still selling false hope about the coronavirus magically going away

If you hoped Trump’s coronavirus hospitalization might cause him to rethink the wisdom of holding rallies during a pandemic, he dispelled that even before he left Walter Reed medical center with a tweet in which he advised people, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

But that talking point is cold comfort to loved ones of the nearly 215,000 Americans who have lost their lives to Covid-19, not to mentions the thousands of others who survived with damaged health. And as CNN detailed on Monday, the latest case numbers indicate things are trending in the wrong direction:

The virus is now trending up in 31 states and is receding in only three, according to Johns Hopkins University. On Saturday alone, there were more than 54,000 new infections recorded with a further 618 deaths. The high baseline of cases means that a coming spike could be even more serious than the viral storm that raged through the northeast and the south in the spring and summer.

The latest forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine projects that there could be nearly 395,000 US coronavirus deaths by February 1.

Voters are blaming Trump. A new Washington Post-ABC poll indicates that the failed coronavirus response is a major headwind for his campaign, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying they don’t think Trump took appropriate precaution to reduce the chance he’d get the disease himself.

But instead of engaging with that reality, Trump on Saturday falsely insisted the coronavirus is “disappearing.”

And on Sunday, Trump compared his response favorably with a projection from the early days of the pandemic based on a model in which the US government did nothing to slow the spread of the virus.

While it’s debatable whether it’s good politics for Trump to hit the campaign trail to recklessly hold rallies fresh off a bout with the coronavirus that he likely contracted in the course of holding reckless events, it’s certainly not good public health practice.

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Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett gives her opening statement during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 12, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Erin Schaff/Getty Images

“Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life.”

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett delivered her opening statement in her Senate confirmation hearing this Monday — a relatively straightforward recounting of her life story and her position on the role of the courts — setting the stage for intensive questioning yet to come this week.

Democrats have expressed widespread opposition to Barrett’s nomination, and emphasized that she could solidify a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court that could overturn the Affordable Care Act and undo Roe v. Wade. In her opening remarks, Barrett did not touch on specific cases or issue areas, but emphasized that she viewed the Court’s role as a body that’s not intended to create policy — a commonly used Republican talking point.

“Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society,” Barrett said. “But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life.”

“The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people,” she continued. “The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.”

Barrett also offered some indication of the influences behind her approach to the law. She spoke, for example, about her respect for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whom she clerked for and whose judicial philosophy she’s widely expected to emulate. Since that clerkship, Barrett has served as a law professor at Notre Dame University and as a Seventh Circuit Court judge.

Additionally, Barrett talked extensively about her family and how they’ve supported her professional endeavors. “I am used to being in a group of nine — my family,” she said.

Barrett’s personal attributes, including her role as a parent of seven children, are among those that Republicans have sought to highlight in addition to her professional qualifications for the job of Supreme Court justice. If she were confirmed, Barrett would be the fifth woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court, and the youngest current justice at 48.

You can read Barrett’s remarks in their entirety below.

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Chairman [Lindsey] Graham, Ranking Member [Dianne] Feinstein, and members of the committee: I am honored and humbled to appear before you as a nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

I thank the president for entrusting me with this profound responsibility, as well as for the graciousness that he and the first lady have shown my family throughout this process.

I thank Senator [Todd] Young for introducing me, as he did at my hearing to serve on the Seventh Circuit. I thank Senator [Mike] Braun for his generous support. And I am especially grateful to former Dean Patty O’Hara of Notre Dame Law School. She hired me as a professor nearly 20 years ago and has been a mentor, colleague, and friend ever since.

I thank the members of this committee — and your other colleagues in the Senate — who have taken the time to meet with me since my nomination. It has been a privilege to meet you.

As I said when I was nominated to serve as a Justice, I am used to being in a group of nine — my family. Nothing is more important to me, and I am so proud to have them behind me.

My husband Jesse and I have been married for 21 years. He has been a selfless and wonderful partner at every step along the way. I once asked my sister, “Why do people say marriage is hard? I think it’s easy.” She said, “Maybe you should ask Jesse if he agrees.” I decided not to take her advice. I know that I am far luckier in love than I deserve.

Jesse and I are parents to seven wonderful children. Emma is a sophomore in college who just might follow her parents into a career in the law. Vivian came to us from Haiti. When she arrived, she was so weak that we were told she might never walk or talk normally. She now deadlifts as much as the male athletes at our gym, and I assure you that she has no trouble talking. Tess is 16, and while she shares her parents’ love for the liberal arts, she also has a math gene that seems to have skipped her parents’ generation. John Peter joined us shortly after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and Jesse, who brought him home, still describes the shock on JP’s face when he got off the plane in wintertime Chicago. Once that shock wore off, JP assumed the happy-go-lucky attitude that is still his signature trait. Liam is smart, strong, and kind, and to our delight, he still loves watching movies with Mom and Dad. Ten-year-old Juliet is already pursuing her goal of becoming an author by writing multiple essays and short stories, including one she recently submitted for publication. And our youngest — Benjamin, who has Down syndrome — is the unanimous favorite of the family.

My own siblings are here, some in the hearing room and some nearby. Carrie, Megan, Eileen, Amanda, Vivian, and Michael are my oldest and dearest friends. We’ve seen each other through both the happy and hard parts of life, and I am so grateful that they are with me now.

My parents, Mike and Linda Coney, are watching from their New Orleans home. My father was a lawyer and my mother was a teacher, which explains how I ended up as a law professor. More important, my parents modeled for me and my six siblings a life of service, principle, faith, and love. I remember preparing for a grade-school spelling bee against a boy in my class. To boost my confidence, Dad sang, “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.” At least as I remember it, I spelled my way to victory.

I received similar encouragement from the devoted teachers at St. Mary’s Dominican, my all-girls high school in New Orleans. When I went to college, it never occurred to me that anyone would consider girls to be less capable than boys. My freshman year, I took a literature class filled with upperclassmen English majors. When I did my first presentation — on Breakfast at Tiffany’s — I feared I had failed. But my professor filled me with confidence, became a mentor, and — when I graduated with a degree in English — gave me Truman Capote’s collected works.

Although I considered graduate studies in English, I decided my passion for words was better suited to deciphering statutes than novels. I was fortunate to have wonderful legal mentors — in particular, the judges for whom I clerked. The legendary Judge Laurence Silberman of the DC Circuit gave me my first job in the law and continues to teach me today. He was by my side during my Seventh Circuit hearing and investiture, and he is cheering me on from his living room now.

I also clerked for Justice Scalia, and like many law students, I felt like I knew the justice before I ever met him, because I had read so many of his colorful, accessible opinions. More than the style of his writing, though, it was the content of Justice Scalia’s reasoning that shaped me. His judicial philosophy was straightforward: A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were. Sometimes that approach meant reaching results that he did not like. But as he put it in one of his best known opinions, that is what it means to say we have a government of laws, not of men.

Justice Scalia taught me more than just law. He was devoted to his family, resolute in his beliefs, and fearless of criticism. And as I embarked on my own legal career, I resolved to maintain that same perspective. There is a tendency in our profession to treat the practice of law as all-consuming, while losing sight of everything else. But that makes for a shallow and unfulfilling life. I worked hard as a lawyer and a professor; I owed that to my clients, my students, and myself. But I never let the law define my identity or crowd out the rest of my life.

A similar principle applies to the role of courts. Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.

That is the approach I have strived to follow as a judge on the Seventh Circuit. In every case, I have carefully considered the arguments presented by the parties, discussed the issues with my colleagues on the court, and done my utmost to reach the result required by the law, whatever my own preferences might be. I try to remain mindful that, while my court decides thousands of cases a year, each case is the most important one to the parties involved. After all, cases are not like statutes, which are often named for their authors. Cases are named for the parties who stand to gain or lose in the real world, often through their liberty or livelihood.

When I write an opinion resolving a case, I read every word from the perspective of the losing party. I ask myself how would I view the decision if one of my children was the party I was ruling against: Even though I would not like the result, would I understand that the decision was fairly reasoned and grounded in the law? That is the standard I set for myself in every case, and it is the standard I will follow as long as I am a judge on any court.

When the president offered this nomination, I was deeply honored. But it was not a position I had sought out, and I thought carefully before accepting. The confirmation process—and the work of serving on the Court if I am confirmed — requires sacrifices, particularly from my family. I chose to accept the nomination because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the place of the Supreme Court in our Nation. I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written. And I believe I can serve my country by playing that role.

I come before this committee with humility about the responsibility I have been asked to undertake, and with appreciation for those who came before me. I was nine years old when Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to sit in this seat. She was a model of grace and dignity throughout her distinguished tenure on the Court. When I was 21 years old and just beginning my career, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat in this seat. She told the committee, “What has become of me could only happen in America.” I have been nominated to fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat, but no one will ever take her place. I will be forever grateful for the path she marked and the life she led.

If confirmed, it would be the honor of a lifetime to serve alongside the chief justice and seven associate justices. I admire them all and would consider each a valued colleague. And I might bring a few new perspectives to the bench. As the president noted when he announced my nomination, I would be the first mother of school-age children to serve on the Court. I would be the first Justice to join the Court from the Seventh Circuit in 45 years. And I would be the only sitting justice who didn’t attend law school at Harvard or Yale. I am confident that Notre Dame will hold its own, and maybe I could even teach them a thing or two about football.

As a final note, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the many Americans from all walks of life who have reached out with messages of support over the course of my nomination. I believe in the power of prayer, and it has been uplifting to hear that so many people are praying for me. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions over the coming days. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed, I pledge to faithfully and impartially discharge my duties to the American people as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Thank you.

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Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

When a campaign piddles away precious resources on advertising in Washington, D.C. so the candidate can see himself on TV, sometimes it's not the smartest move. The Trump campaign clearly made many other not-so-smart financial moves too.

And so, three weeks out from an election in which Trump is trailing by double-digits nationally and running weak or even behind in must-win states, the Trump campaign is now making some painful advertising choices that include mostly abandoning the Midwest.

Trump, for instance, "yanked more than $17 million" from Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire in the six weeks since the GOP convention, according to the L.A. Times. That's particularly notable because Trump needs Ohio and Iowa to win and he's running almost even with Joe Biden in both states. 

Trump has also cut $11 million in ad space since the end of August in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin. By a handful of points or more, Biden is running solidly ahead in every one of those states in polling aggregates, and in 2016 Michigan and Wisconsin both helped push Trump across the 270 electoral vote threshold.

Those decisions appear to have all been made so Trump can push resources to states he absolutely has to defend in Sunbelt region. In the last six weeks, the Times notes Trump has directed an extra $18 million to ad buys in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona.

Pennsylvania appears to be the one Rust Belt state the Trump campaign can't afford to surrender. The campaign reportedly pulled $2 million in ads from the state in September but has been increasing spending there in recent weeks.

Nonetheless, Biden maintains a gigantic edge in spending, maintaining his presence in the key Midwestern states that narrowly swung Trump's direction in 2016, while pushing into other states that weren't originally viewed as competitive: Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, and Texas. In the past week ending Monday, the Biden campaign spent twice as much on TV and radio ads as Trump's campaign, $36 million to $18 million. A similar picture emerges since early September, with Biden spending nearly $95 million on TV spots to Trump's $41 million. But CNBC reports that the two campaigns spent roughly the same amount—a little over $5 million—on Facebook ads over the past week.

Hillary Clinton also outspent Trump on ads during the 2016, but one thing Trump hasn't been getting the luxury of this cycle is the enormous amount of free earned media coverage he got at nearly every raucous rally he held. Particularly in these closing months, Trump's rallies have been limited and the mere fact of him holding events that both can and have turned into superspreader events cuts both ways in any case.

Nonetheless, Trump addressed several hundred people from the White House balcony Saturday for roughly 18 minutes, and he has rallies planned this week in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and North Carolina. On Sunday, Trump declared himself "totally negative" for COVID-19 but provided no evidence for that. 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) speaks during Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 12, 2020, in Washington, DC.  | Erin Schaff/Getty Images

Who do you think you’re fooling, Senator Lee?

The first day of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing was a mind-numbing series of opening statements from senators — traditionally, the nominee doesn’t actually face questions until the second day — with Democrats largely focusing on the danger that Barrett would vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

Many Republicans, meanwhile, claimed they were outraged by suggestions that the Supreme Court engages in policymaking or even rank politics. The most explicit of these claims came from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

Unmasked while he spoke, and fresh off a fairly recent Covid-19 diagnosis, the Utah senator spent much of his remarks calling attention to Supreme Court decisions that were not decided by a closely divided 5-4 vote. “Most of the Supreme Court’s docket doesn’t even consist of the hot-button issues,” Lee said — a fact that is simultaneously true and irrelevant to the millions of Americans who could lose their health coverage due to the Court. Or who could lose their right to vote. Or their access to abortions and other reproductive care.

He then delivered the biggest whopper of the entire day — the judiciary, Lee claimed, is “the one branch of the federal government that is not political.”

Lee’s claim is refuted by his party’s behavior over the past half-decade. While individual justices rarely view themselves as pure partisans, these judges are nominated by a partisan president and confirmed by partisans in the Senate. Presidents can choose judges who are likely to rule in their party’s favor in the kinds of “hot button” cases that Lee attempted to downplay.

There was a time when Republican Supreme Court nominees were not so reliably conservative. Justice David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee, famously emerged as a left-leaning centrist after he joined the Supreme Court. But conservative activists made “No More Souters” a rallying cry after Souter’s apostasy became apparent, and they’ve built a sophisticated network over the past several decades to screen nominees to ensure that they are reliably conservative.

President Trump has relied heavily on the Federalist Society, a kind of bar association for conservative lawyers, to identify loyal conservative judicial nominees.

If the Supreme Court were, in fact, above politics, then one would expect Lee’s party to be fairly indifferent to who serves on the federal courts, provided that an individual judicial nominee has the experience, talent, and work ethic necessary to perform well as a federal judge. But, of course, that’s not how Lee’s Republican Party has behaved. Republicans blocked Judge Merrick Garland, an exquisitely qualified judge whom President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, because those Republicans correctly realized that a solid conservative like Justice Neil Gorsuch (who was eventually confirmed to that seat) was more likely to deliver policy victories to the GOP than a moderate liberal like Garland.

Similarly, in less than one term in office, Trump has filled nearly as many federal appellate judgeships as Obama did in two terms. The reason is that Republicans controlled the Senate during Obama’s final two years in office, and they used that control to block nearly every person Obama nominated to an appellate judgeship. Trump got to fill all the seats that came open during his term, plus nearly all the seats that Obama should have been able to fill in the closing years of his presidency.

It’s unlikely that Republicans stopped Obama from filling these seats because they thought politics is irrelevant in the federal judiciary.

Republicans are also taking a considerable risk by racing to confirm Barrett before the votes are counted in an ongoing presidential election. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a slim majority of registered voters (52 percent) believe the vacancy on the Supreme Court should be filled by the winner of the presidential election.

Similarly, a recent CNN poll found that a plurality of Americans (46 to 42 percent) oppose confirming Barrett. According to CNN, “initial reactions to Barrett are among the worst in CNN and Gallup polling on 12 potential justices dating back to Robert Bork, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan and rejected by the Senate.”

So why are Republicans pushing an unpopular confirmation just weeks before the voters could throw many of them out of office? A possible answer is that they hope a 6-3 Republican Supreme Court will help them stay in office. Trump, for example, has predicted that the presidential election “will end up at the Supreme Court,” and he’s said that “it’s very important that we have nine justices” to resolve such a dispute.

But it’s at least as likely that Republicans understand that an additional Supreme Court seat would be such a boon to the GOP that it’s worth losing a few Senate seats over it — or even a presidential election. Contrary to Lee’s suggestion that the Court is somehow beyond politics, data shows quite clearly that the best predictor of how a judge will rule in a politically charged case is often their partisan affiliation.

In 2014, the last time a judicial attack on Obamacare was making its way up to the Supreme Court, the Washington Times examined how judges appointed by either political party handled challenges to the Affordable Care Act. It found that “Democratic appointees ruled in favor of Obamacare more than 90 percent of the time, while Republican appointees ruled against it nearly 80 percent of the time.”

The courts, simply put, are political. Lee’s own behavior — and that of his fellow Republicans, both in the Senate and on the federal bench — leaves little doubt of that reality.

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Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what’s happening in the news, from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world: Contribute today from as little as $3.