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The Guardian - US
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Martin Farrer (now), Lois Beckett, Joan E Greve and Martin Belam (earlier)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Obama calls on Republicans to delay filling vacancy – as it happened

This blog is closing now but thanks for reading.

This our main story and you can also read about the politcal battles ahead here:

Summary

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart on the US supreme court for 27 years, has died at the age of 87. Her passing will set the stage for a bitter battle over how her vacant should be filled and who will fill it. Democrats led by former president Barack Obama have said Republicans must abide by the precedent they set in 2016 by refusing to allow him to nominate a justice beause it was an election year.

Here are of some of the key developments:

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the supreme court, has died in Washington, from complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87.
  • Trump will nominate a replacement for Ginsburg, and the Republican-controlled senate has the power to confirm that nominee to the supreme court.
  • But Republicans have only a slight voting majority, raising questions about whether they have the votes to push through a controversial nominee just weeks before a presidential election. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz suggested they should move fast. Potential Senate swing votes, like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, will face immense pressure as Republicans count their potential votes.
  • Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell released a statement saying that Trump’s nominee would get a vote in the Senate, but did not say exactly when. McConnell did make clear that he would ignore his own argument from 2016, when he suggested that confirming a president’s supreme court nominee months before a presidential election was inappropriate.
  • Joe Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton led calls for the process to be delayed until after the election.
  • Ginsburg made her own position clear, telling her granddaughter this week: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
  • Read our obituary of Ginsburg here

Updated

Hundreds of people gathered on the steps of the US supreme court in Washington to pay tribute to Ginsburg.

A little before midnight, a woman sang the mourners’ Kaddish, a traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Reuters reports.

Tributes at the supreme court.
Tributes at the supreme court. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

One of the crowd, Dominik Radawski, said: “It just feels so nice to be out here with other people who feel the same way.”

Celebrities have joined in the tributes along with the politicians.

Comedian Sarah Silverman said: “RIP RBG. Gutted. Sad. Grateful for all she did. And very very scared.”

Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer wrote: “She tried to hang in there for us!! Soar on angel’s wings”, while TV presenter Jameela Jamil commented: “What an icon we have lost.”

Marvel star Robert Downey Jr shared a picture of the late judge alongside a quote said to have been made by her.

Downey Jr said: “’Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.’ RIP, RBG.”

Mariah Carey also paid tribute, writing on Instagram: “Thank you for a lifetime of service. Thank you for changing history.

“We will never let it be undone. RIP RBG.”

Updated

Republicans must abide by 2016 precedent, says Obama

Barack Obama has made a strong call for Republicans to abide by the precedent they set in 2016 when thwarting the former president’s attempts to install Merrick Garland as a supreme court justice.

Paying tribute to Ginsburg, whom he called “a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist”, Obama said in a statement:

Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in.

A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican senators are now called to apply that standard.

Read his full statement here.

Updated

'I'm devastated,' says Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has been on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the impact of Ginsburg’s death, saying that her death was “a real threat to the steady march toward progress”.

I’m devastated by this. Just losing her is such a massive hole in my young adulthood, my becoming a lawyer, both practicing and teaching law, looking up to her and following her career. But much more than that, it is such a devastating loss for justice and equality. What Ruth Bader Ginsburg did was to make it abundantly clear that the Constitution had to explicitly, wherever possible, be interpreted as providing for the equal rights of men and women.

Asked about the decision by the Republicans not to allow Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, to be considered in the Senate in the last election year, 2016, she said:

I often wondered during that time when Mitch McConnell was truly wreaking havoc on our Senate and our norms, our values, and I would argue on the underlying original intent of the constitution and the founders, that presidents have a right to appoint judges to fill vacancies, and Mitch McConnell denied Barack Obama that right. And that set in motion a series of events that I think did great damage to the Senate that can only be remedied by removing Mitch McConnell as the leader of the Senate. That has to happen in this election by getting a Democratic Senate majority.”

She added that McConnell “only cared about power” and said Democrats had to make the most of Republican double standards on the issue.

Donald Trump ignored shouted questions about Ginsburg’s replacement as he returned to the White House from Minnesota just before midnight on Friday.

White House pool reporters said the US president looked at the media twice, “gave a couple of those waist-level waves but ignored questions about whether or when he would nominate a replacement for the late Justice Ginsburg”.

Trump walks from Marine One to the White House on Friday night.
Trump walks from Marine One to the White House on Friday night. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Flags at the White House and Eisenhower Executive Office building had been lowered to half-staff.

Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, confirmed in an earlier tweet that the flags were lowered out of respect for Justice Ginsburg, whom she called “a trailblazer for women”.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s vice-presidential candidate, has paid tribute to Ginsburg, calling on the nation to fight for the late justice’s legacy.

Harris, who could conceivably have a say in who succeeds Ginsburg if Trump does not get his nomination through, said “we mourn, we honor, and we pray” for Ginsburg and her family.

With the stage set for an epic political battle over who will succeed Ginsburg, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell indicated that the vote will go ahead quickly.

Although McConnell did not give any specific timing, he implied that Trump’s nominee for the vacant position would be put to the vote before the election in November.

Stand by to hear an awful lot about this process in the coming weeks. But in the meantime my colleague Lauren Gambino has the latest on the political battle ahead:

And just in case you’ve forgotten about the saga of Merrick Garland, Obama’s thwarted supreme court pick, here is a fateful piece from March 2016 about how it could influence that year’s election.

Updated

Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein says the Senate should not consider a replacement for the Ginsburg until after inauguration day in January.

The veteran California lawmaker called Ginsburg a trailblazer for women, “a once-in-a-generation legal mind and a passionate champion for the rights of all Americans”.

Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, pointed to the precedent set by Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell when he refused to hold a confirmation hearing for president Barack Obama’s supreme court pick, Merrick Garland, during an election year.

McConnell “made his position clear in 2016”, Feinstein said.

Feinstein said:

To jam through a lifetime appointment to the country’s highest court - particularly to replace an icon like Justice Ginsburg - would be the height of hypocrisy.

Hello, I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll continue to bring you more reaction to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A suitable place to start feels like the front page of the New York Times, her hometown newwspaper:

Evening summary: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. A massive battle begins.

The announcement that supreme court justice and progressive icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg died this evening has left many Americans shocked and grieving, and has launched an intense political battle within the US senate that could determine the basic rights of millions of Americans for decades to come.

I’m handing over our live politics coverage to our colleagues in Australia, who will continue to cover the reaction to Ginsburg’s death. Here’s summary of some of the key developments of this evening so far:

  • Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the supreme court, died tonight in Washington, from complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87.
  • Trump will nominate a replacement for Ginsburg, and the Republican-controlled senate has the power to confirm that nominee to the supreme court.
  • But Republicans have only a slight voting majority, raising questions about whether they have the votes to push through a controversial nominee just weeks before a presidential election. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz suggested they should move fast. Potential Senate swing votes, like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, will face immense pressure as Republicans count their potential votes.
  • Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell released a statement saying that Trump’s nominee would get a vote in the Senate, but did not say exactly when. McConnell did make clear that he would ignore his own argument from 2016, when he suggested that confirming a president’s supreme court nominee months before a presidential election was inappropriate.
  • It’s very possible that Republicans may have enough votes to push through a nominee of their choice before Election Day. But there’s also the risk of electoral backlash from liberal voters if they do so. McConnell might decide it’s more strategic to try to push through a Republican justice after Nov. 3, but before a new president is sworn in, should Trump lose to Biden.
  • What will happen if the supreme court is left to decide a crucial case about the outcome of the 2020 election with only eight justices, instead of nine (and with a 5-3 conservative majority) is also a pressing question.
  • Ginsburg made her own position clear, telling her granddaughter this week: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

What will Republicans do next?

Will Senate Republicans try to confirm a conservative supreme court justice immediately? Or will they wait until after the election, but before the inauguration, and try to push through a conservative just then?

Here’s what we know about what options Republicans are considering tonight:

Yes, Ginsburg’s death is a powerful opportunity for Trump, for Republicans, and for people who hope to make abortion illegal and advance other rightwing causes:

But the huge conservative victory of pushing through another Trump appointee could also backfire on election day, some Republicans are warning:

McConnell’s statement tonight pledging that Trump’s nominee will get a vote doesn’t necessarily mean a vote before election day, though Senator Ted Cruz is pushing for that:

And then there’s the question: what happens if there’s some kind of election crisis the supreme court is asked to decide, and it only has eight justices?

Updated

‘A person who dies on Rosh Hashanah is a person of great righteousness’

The political battle over replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg began barely an hour after the announcement of her death.

The outcome of that battle will have profound, even life-or-death consequences, and affect hundreds of millions of Americans for decades.

But many Americans are also mourning Ginsburg herself: the “notorious RBG,” Jewish feminist icon and inspiration.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg visited Ginsburg today before her death:

Updated

SCOTUSblog on Ginsburg as a fighter and feminist icon in the legal world

The note RGB’s husband left her when he died

Biden: Senate should wait to confirm Ginsburg's replacement

The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said that the Republican-controlled senate should wait until after the election to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement on the supreme court, following the precedent Republicans set in 2016.

The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has already announced that Republicans will do whatever they want and Trump’s nominee will get a swift vote.

Updated

‘She’s dead? Wow.’ Reporters inform Trump Ginsburg has died

NBC News has the moment on video:

Average number of days to confirm a supreme court justice: 69.6

Days until the 2020 presidential election: 45.

Updated

Romney spokesperson denies claim that he won’t support a nominee now

The Utah senator is seen as a potential Republican swing vote, part of a small handful of Republicans who might prevent the confirmation of a Trump appointee until after the November election.

But his spokesperson just called a claim that he would not support a nominee until after inauguration day “grossly false”.

Updated

Ted Cruz: confirm a conservative replacement for Ginsburg before election day

The Republican Senator Ted Cruz was added to Trump’s supreme court nominee short list earlier this month. Trump quipped at a campaign rally tonight that Trump would get an easy nomination to the court, with backing from even Senate Democrats, since they would all be so eager to get Cruz out of the Senate.

Updated

The crowd of mourners in front of the supreme court is growing

Updated

A historic war for the future of the supreme court, and for Americans’ rights

Ginsburg’s death has set up nothing short of a historic war for the future of the court – and American life under the law. Donald Trump and Republicans in the Senate are determined to replace Ginsburg with a conservative justice. Their doing so could decisively tilt the ideological balance of the court for a generation and would probably constitute the most lasting legacy of the Trump presidency.

At stake: reproductive rights, voting rights, protections from discrimination, the future of criminal justice, the power of the presidency, the rights of immigrants, tax rules and laws, and healthcare for millions of vulnerable Americans, to name a few issues. Every big issue in American life is on the line.

Updated

'It’s time for Roe v Wade to go': Trump's supreme court nominee list

Trump released an updated list of potential supreme court nominees, including current Republican senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, on 9 September.

Cotton’s response to being added to the list was to say that it’s time for the supreme court to make abortion illegal. Verbatim: “It’s time for Roe v Wade to go,” he said.

That landmark 1973 case found that women had a constitutional right to choose whether or not to have an abortion without excessive government interference.

As the Washington Post reported, Cotton also responded to Trump’s short list “by saying he ‘will always heed the call of service’ and that that he is ‘honored’ and ‘grateful’ to have the president’s confidence.”

Updated

Trump, before boarding Air Force One: ‘She just died? I didn’t know that’

The president offered brief comments to the press about Ginsburg before boarding Air Force One, according to the White House pool report:

“She just died? I didn’t know that.She led an amazing life, what else can you say? Whether you agree or not ... she led an amazing life.”

Updated

Trump avoids live reaction to news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death

For more than an hour, as the news of the death of a key liberal supreme court justice left Americans shaken, and as a fierce political battle began to confirm a supreme court nominee before the election, Trump was on camera, at a campaign event in Minnesota, talking and talking and talking.

He riffed on one issue and then another, returning more than once to the issue of the supreme court, apparently unaware of the fundamental change in the political landscape. None of his staff intervened to notify him. An NBC News reporter covering the rally noted that someone in the crowd tried to yell the news to Trump at least once, but did not appear to be heard.

Updated

Americans gather at the Supreme Court to mourn Ruth Bader Ginsburg

People gather in front of the supreme court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
People gather in front of the supreme court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Photograph: Alexander Drago/Reuters
A man kneels as he brings a megaphone to a vigil on the steps of the US supreme court.
A man kneels as he brings a megaphone to a vigil on the steps of the US supreme court. Photograph: Alexander Drago/Reuters
A bouquet of flowers is left outside of the supreme court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A bouquet of flowers is left outside of the supreme court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Photograph: Alexander Drago/Reuters
The supreme court following the death Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 18 September 2020.
The supreme court following the death Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 18 September 2020. Photograph: Alexander Drago/Reuters
Flowers and candles outside the supreme court.
Flowers and candles outside the supreme court. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Updated

Full text of McConnell’s pledge to get Trump a vote on his supreme court nominee

The full statement Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate majority leader, sent out, barely an hour after the news broke that liberal supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.

The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life. Justice Ginsburg overcame one personal challenge and professional barrier after another. She climbed from a modest Brooklyn upbringing to a seat on our nation’s highest court and into the pages of American history. Justice Ginsburg was thoroughly dedicated to the legal profession and to her 27 years of service on the Supreme Court. Her intelligence and determination earned her respect and admiration throughout the legal world, and indeed throughout the entire nation, which now grieves alongside her family, friends, and colleagues.

In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year. By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.

President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.

Updated

Trump is still talking about the supreme court, doesn’t know Ginsburg is dead

It’s truly bizarre to watch the president continue to speak publicly about the importance of the supreme court in the 2020 election at a campaign rally, apparently unaware that Ginsburg has just died. Trump will apparently learn about this news later than many Americans, who watching him speak and riff on different subjects with apparently no idea that the world has fundamentally changed.

Updated

McConnell pledges Trump's supreme court nominee will receive a rapid vote

Republican senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who argued that it would be wrong to confirm a Democratic president’s supreme court nominee in the year before a presidential election, now argues that it’s absolutely right to confirm a Republican supreme court nominee just 47 days before a presidential election.

This is how McConnell is justifying why the rules are simply different, depending on what benefits Republicans.

Updated

Key GOP senators who will face pressure not to vote to confirm Ginsburg’s replacement

Do Senate Republicans have the votes to replace Ginsburg?

Republicans have only a narrow majority in the Senate. Will enough Republicans decide to block the confirmation of a Trump-approved supreme court justice so close to the election?

Senator Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were both on the record as opposing, in theory, confirming a supreme court justice at a time that’s too close to the 2020 election.

But they will face tremendous pressure to change course:

And, as NBC’s Katy Tur points out, there is a real electoral cost for any GOP senator who votes against Trump on this key vote.

Updated

Trump still does not appear to know Ginsburg has died

Right now he’s talking about negotiating over the price of Boeing planes.

‘An extraordinary champion of justice and equal rights’

Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg: a Video Obituary

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life in Pictures

A powerful collection of images from the trailblazing lawyer and Supreme Court justice’s life.

Timeline of Ginsburg’s illness: May, July, September

My colleague Tom McCarthy has a more in-depth look at the timeline of statements about Ginsburg’s illness before the sudden announcement of her death:

In mid-July, Ginsburg had been admitted to hospital with a fever and chills but was released after about 24 hours, with the court reporting that she was recovering well.

After her discharge, Ginsburg announced that she had been undergoing chemotherapy since May to treat cancerous lesions on her liver. A scan on 7 July had revealed “reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease”, she said.

Ginsburg had survived four cancer treatments going back to 1999. She participated in oral arguments in May from a hospital bed while receiving treatments believed at the time to be for a malignant tumor on her pancreas diagnosed in 2019. Ginsburg had announced in January that she was cancer-free.

Reactions to the death of ‘Notorious RBG’ continue to roll in

NBC: Trump, onstage, still hasn’t been told about Ginsburg’s death

Updated

Before Ginsburg’s death, Murkowski said she would not confirm a replacement

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is a key swing vote in the Republican- controlled senate.

Hillary Clinton, others React to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death

Updated

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. The political battle starts now.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known, the Associated Press reports.

Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’s liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers. Young women especially seemed to embrace the court’s Jewish grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RBG, for her defense of the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.

She resisted calls by liberals to retire during Barack Obama’s presidency at a time when Democrats held the Senate and a replacement with similar views could have been confirmed. Instead, Trump will almost certainly try to push Ginsburg’s successor through the Republican-controlled Senate — and move the conservative court even more to the right.

When Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, also an election year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to act on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s surprising presidential victory. McConnell has said he would move to confirm a Trump nominee if there were a vacancy this year.

Reached by phone late Friday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, declined to disclose any plans. He said a statement would be forthcoming.

Updated

Supreme Court press release on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death

“Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died this evening surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87 years old. Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993. She was the second woman appointed to the Court and served more than 27 years...

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. said of Justice Ginsburg: “Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her -- a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961. From 1961–1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978.

In 1971, she was instrumental in launching the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. During her more than 40 years as a Judge and a Justice, she was served by 159 law clerks.

While on the Court, the Justice authored My Own Words (2016), a compilation of her speeches and writings.

A private interment service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery.”

Updated

Will Trump react on live TV to Ginsburg’s death?

Trump is currently speaking to a campaign rally in Minnesota, and has been speaking since just before the news of Ginsburg’s death was made public just minutes ago. It’s not clear what the president might know or not know about Ginsburg’s death, or whether he might react to the news of Ginsburg’s death in real time, while on live television.

He’s now talking about his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, including Ted Cruz.

Updated

Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead, court announces

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a beloved justice and a crucial liberal vote on the supreme court, died this evening from complications of pancreatic cancer, the supreme court just announced in a news release. She was 87 years old.

National Public Radio reports that one of Ginsburg’s final messages was a statement dictated to her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

Trump now has the power to nominate a replacement for Ginsburg, and the Republican-controlled Senate to confirm a replacement.

When conservative supreme court justice Antonin Scalia died in the last year of Barack Obama’s last presidential term in 2016, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked Obama from confirming a replacement for months, arguing that the appropriate choice was to wait for the voters to choose a new president.

McConnell, who still controls the senate, is not expected to apply that standard now that it would disadvantage Republicans, even though the election is in weeks, rather than months.

Updated

Trump leads campaign crowd in booing Somali refugees

More than 50,000 people in Minnesota report Somali ancestry, the most of any state. The state’s Somali community has been there for thirty years.

Trump opened his campaign rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, by talking about Somali refugees as a threat, encouraging the crowd to boo the idea of more Somali Americans in their state, and celebrating the accomplishment that “just today we deported dozens of Somali refugees.”

“Sleepy Joe will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp,” Trump said.

New York City’s school reopening is a mess. So is the NYC mayor’s leadership.

A new report from the New York Times highlights yet another example of the dysfunction of New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.

CDC director pulled strings to get a Nevada Trump supporter a scarce COVID test

In early March, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personally called the chief medical officer of Nevada to arrange a Covid-19 test for Adam Laxalt, a prominent Nevada Republican politician, National Rifle Association ally, and Trump supporter, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports.

Laxalt “believed he was exposed to the coronavirus while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference”, but he was not showing any symptoms at the time, so he could not get approved for a test through normal channels, the paper reported.

Updated

Trump’s belated aid to Puerto Rico is a ‘desperate political stunt’

In 2017, Trump tossed rolls of paper towels into the crowd of people at a disaster relief distribution center in Puerto Rico, which was still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Maria. In 2019, he told Republican lawmakers that he thought Puerto Rico had already received too much aid compared with Texas and Florida, and he did not want to give any more.

Earlier today, just weeks before election day, Trump announced a $13bn aid package to help Puerto Rico rebuild, in what is being widely reported as a transparent bid to pick up more support in Florida, where hurricane refugees are now considered a vital voting bloc in a state where just tens of thousands of voters could make a crucial difference.

Trump himself said as much today.

So did Biden’s Latino adviser, who called the aid package a “desperate political stunt”.

Updated

For a Democratic candidate, Biden is getting record support from white voters

A new poll finds that Joe Biden has support from 49% of white voters. That would be a record: the majority of white voters vote Republican, and exit poll data shows that going back to 1972, Democrats have never gotten more than 47% of the white vote, and it’s sometimes dropped into the 30s.

But the poll, from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist, also has what NPR reporter Domenico Montanaro calls a “warning sign” for Biden: his support among voters of color in the poll is much lower than the support Hillary Clinton received in 2016.

Biden leads Trump only 60% to 34% with nonwhite voters, “a smaller margin than the 74% to 21% Democrat Hillary Clinton won with them in 2016”, Montanaro notes.

Read the full NPR story here.

Updated

Poll finds Biden has lead over Trump among both registered and likely voters

This is Lois Beckett in the Guardian’s Los Angeles bureau picking up live political coverage for this evening.

A new poll finds that Biden has a 52% to 43% lead over Trump among likely voters, as well as a substantial lead among registered voters. (The poll’s margin of error among likely voters is +/- 4.3 percentage points.)

The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll focused for the first time on a subset of “likely voters,” those actually most likely to cast a ballot, as well as surveying a sample of people registered to vote.

Updated

Today so far

That’s it from me today. The Guardian’s west coast team will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its widely criticized recommendation on coronavirus testing. The CDC said today that anyone who has had contact with someone who tested positive for the virus should receive a test, virtually reinstating the agency’s previous recommendation. The announcement came one day after after the New York Times reported that CDC scientists did not write the altered August guideline and actively raised objections to it.
  • The Trump administration will ban downloads of TikTok and WeChat starting Sunday. US intelligence officials have warned the Chinese apps pose a national security threat. Normal use of the TikTok app is expected to be blocked starting 12 November.
  • Trump and Biden are both campaigning today in Minnesota, as early voting begins in the state. Biden delivered a speech at a union training center in Duluth, once again criticizing Trump by characterizing the presidential election as a race of “Park Avenue versus Scranton”. Trump will speak at a campaign rally in Bemidji this evening.
  • Trump announced his administration would send $13bn in aid to Puerto Rico, as the island continues to recover from Hurricane Maria. A reporter asked the president at his press conference why the administration was sending the aid now, when the hurricane struck in 2017. Trump insisted it was because his administration had been working on the plan for a while, dodging a question about whether it was related to Puerto Rican voters in the crucial swing state of Florida.
  • A firefighter died battling the wildfire in California’s San Bernardino national forest, the US Forest Service said today. The devastating wildfires have already killed at least three dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

Joe Biden has wrapped up his campaign speech at a union training center in Duluth, Minnesota.

The Democratic nominee closed the speech by calling for the country’s wealthiest citizens and companies to be taxed fairly.

“I’m not looking to punish anyone,” Biden said. “But dammit, it’s about time the super wealthy and corporate America start paying their fair share.”

The Democratic nominee also reminded Minnesotans to vote, given early voting in the state started today.

Joe Biden criticized Trump for not yet releasing his plans on infrastructure or health care, despite repeated promises to do so.

“He has no plan,” the Democratic nominee said of the president.

Speaking in Duluth, Biden made an experience-based pitch for his candidacy, saying he knows “how to do the job of being president.”

Biden said of Trump, “He doesn’t have a clue how to be president.”

Joe Biden began his Duluth speech by talking about the importance of union jobs, but the Democratic nominee quickly pivoted to criticizing Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden said if Trump had acted earlier to mitigate the spread of the virus, tens of thousands of Americans would not be dead and would instead be “sitting at the dinner table tonight”.

Echoing his comment at his CNN town hall last night, Biden said the presidential election was a race of “Park Avenue versus Scranton”.

“All Trump sees from Park Avenue is Wall Street,” Biden said, arguing the president only cares about the stock market and not average Americans.

Updated

Biden speaks in Minnesota as early voting begins

Joe Biden is now speaking at a union training center in Duluth, Minnesota, as early voting begins in the state.

The Democratic nominee was introduced by the state’s two Democratic senators, Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar.

Biden’s remarks are expected to focus on creating more union jobs in the US and preventing manufacturing jobs from being outsourced.

During his press conference, the president was asked if he believes he knows better than the experts in his administration, after Trump contradicted the directors of the CDC and the FBI this week.

“Yeah, in many cases, I do,” Trump replied.

Trump contradicted the Senate testimony of CDC director Robert Redfield on Wednesday, claiming Redfield was “confused” when he said a coronavirus vaccine would not be widely available until mid- to late 2021.

Last night, the president also took issue with the congressional testimony of FBI director Christopher Wray, who told the House that Russia was interfering in the 2020 elections “primarily to denigrate vice-president Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment”.

Trump told reporters today, “I think we have a bigger problem with China than we do with Russia.”

Trump closed his press conference by once again spreading falsehoods about voting by mail, which he described as “the scam of all time”.

The president also implied he was expecting federal judges to interfere with the election results to prevent fraud, even though voter fraud is very rare.

“I think it’s going to be a terrible time for this country, and we’re counting on federal judges to do a great constitutional job,” Trump said. “Hopefully they’ll be able to see this clearly and stop it.”

Exiting the briefing room, Trump ignored a reporter who asked, “Is it still a scam if you win, sir?”

Updated

Trump dodged a question about reports that the US Postal Service scrapped a plan to send 650 million masks to Americans.

“I don’t know. I don’t run it,” Trump said.

The president went on to criticize the management of USPS, claiming it had been “a mess for many, many generations”.

Updated

Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic national committee, quickly released a statement criticizing Trump’s announcement about sending $13bn in aid to Puerto Rico.

“Donald Trump has consistently treated Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens. His administration failed Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria made landfall and the people desperately needed help, and throughout the recovery process,” Perez said.

“Puerto Ricans will not be fooled by his empty promises – the deaths, the suffering, and the struggles Puerto Ricans still face are a constant reminder that Trump talks plenty but does very little.”

Updated

As Trump announces $13bn in aid to Puerto Rico, it’s important to remember how he has repeatedly disparaged the island’s leaders since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017.

Last year, the president attacked Puerto Rican leaders as “corrupt” and claimed the US territory had “squandered away or wasted” much of its aid money in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Updated

Trump announces $13bn in aid to Puerto Rico

Trump announced his administration was sending $13bn in aid to Puerto Rico, as the island continues to recover from Hurricane Maria.

After announcing the aid, Trump quickly pivoted to attacking his election opponent, Joe Biden.

“Biden’s devastated the island of Puerto Rico,” Trump said. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.”

Taking questions from reporters, Trump was asked why he was only sending the aid to Puerto Rico now, when Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017.

The president claimed his administration had been working on the package for a while. When asked whether the announcement had anything to do with Puerto Rican voters in the crucial swing state of Florida, Trump did not directly answer, instead attacking Biden’s tenure as vice-president under Barack Obama.

Updated

Trump claims vaccine will be available to 'every American' by April

Trump said the country will produce 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.

The president also said he expected that the vaccine would be available to “every American” by April of next year.

CDC director Robert Redfield said Wednesday that the vaccine will not be widely available to the American public until “late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”

Updated

Trump holds White House press conference

Trump has started his press conference at the White House, touting the progress toward developing a coronavirus vaccine.

The president said the eventual vaccine would help to save “millions of lives” and get the country back to “normal”.

As a reminder, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Robert Redfield, said Wednesday that a vaccine would not be widely available to the American public until mid- to late 2021.

Updated

As we await the start of Trump’s press conference, Joe Biden has arrived in Duluth, Minnesota, to tour a union training center.

As Biden was shown a welding station at the carpenters’ training facility, he exclaimed, “I’ll be damned!”

Biden is expected to deliver a speech in Duluth in about 45 minutes, which may very well clash with Trump’s press conference at this rate.

The president will also make a campaign appearance in Minnesota this evening, holding a rally in Bemidji.

Updated

The New York Times has obtained emails showing how HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo and his deputy sought to silence the CDC.

The Times reports:

On June 30, as the coronavirus was cresting toward its summer peak, Dr. Paul Alexander, a new science adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, composed a scathing two-page critique of an interview given by a revered scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a 32-year veteran of the C.D.C. and its principal deputy director, had appealed to Americans to wear masks and warned, ‘We have way too much virus across the country.’ But Dr. Alexander, a part-time assistant professor of health research methods, appeared sure he understood the coronavirus better.

‘Her aim is to embarrass the president,’ he wrote, commenting on Dr. Schuchat’s appeal for face masks in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. ...

Dr. Alexander’s point-by-point assessment, broken into seven parts and forwarded by Mr. Caputo to Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, was one of several emails obtained by The New York Times that illustrate how Mr. Caputo and Dr. Alexander attempted to browbeat career officials at the C.D.C. at the height of the pandemic, challenging the science behind their public statements and attempting to silence agency staff.

HHS announced earlier this week that Caputo was taking a 60-day leave of absence after making controversial statements about CDC scientists, and Alexander is permanently leaving the department.

Programming note: the president’s press conference, which was scheduled to start about 15 minutes ago, has been pushed back to 2:30 pm ET.

Trump is expected to discuss the timeline for developing a coronavirus vaccine. The president said earlier this week that a vaccine would be available within “weeks”, while Dr Anthony Fauci has said he is cautiously optimistic a vaccine will be available by the end of the year or early next year.

Updated

CDC reverses widely criticized testing guidelines

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its widely criticized guidelines on coronavirus testing, once again encouraging Americans to get tested if they have come in contact with someone who has received a positive test result.

The AP reports:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention essentially returned to its previous testing guidance, getting rid of language posted last month that said people who didn’t feel sick didn’t need to get tested. That change had set off a rash of criticism from health experts who couldn’t fathom why the nation’s top public health agency would say such a thing amid a pandemic that has been difficult to control.

Health officials were evasive about why they had made the change in August, and some speculated it was forced on the CDC by political appointees within the Trump administration.

The CDC now says anyone who has been within 6 feet of a person with documented infection for at least 15 minutes should get a test. The agency called the changes a ‘clarification’ that was needed ‘due to the significance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission’.

The update comes one day after the New York Times reported that CDC scientists had not written the August change to the testing guidelines and had raised serious objections to the altered recommendation, which was pushed through by officials at the department of health and human services.

Updated

Trump is reportedly expected to discuss the timeline for developing a coronavirus vaccine during his press conference, which is set to start in just a few minutes.

Politico’s Playbook reports:

He is expected to say the U.S. is on track to have 100 million doses of an approved vaccine distributed by year end – the distribution plan, which is overseen by Operation Warp Speed, is going better than the US anticipated, he will say.

The press conference comes two days after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Robert Redfield, testified to the Senate that a coronavirus vaccine would not be widely available to the American public until “late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”

That timeline is in line with other predictions from health experts, but Trump contradicted Redfield shortly after he testified, saying the CDC director was “confused” when he made the prediction.

Updated

Pelosi backs Biden backing science over Trump on vaccine

House speaker Nancy Pelosi warned in Washington moments ago that the American public could be doubtful about a vaccine against coronavirus if it has been rushed through without going through all the proper approval stages.

At a press briefing on Capitol Hill, Pelosi, the California Democrat said: “Unless there is confidence that the vaccine has gone through the clinical trials, and then is approved by the independent scientific advisory committee, as established to do just this, there will be doubts that people will have.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden indicated this week that he would trust a vaccine endorsed by Anthony Fauci, the top US public health expert on the White House coronavirus task force, but not one promoted by the president alone.

Donald Trump has been implying that a vaccine will be approved within weeks and widely available to Americans soon after, then undercut his director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, when that public health official told the Senate this week that any vaccine would not likely be available to the masses until at least the second half of next year.

This all bearing in mind that while there are a number of US vaccines in Stage 3 (the gold standard) clinical trials, one had not yet emerged from the process so, even amid “cautious optimism” from Fauci that one will be a safe and effective candidate, there is no approved Covid-19 vaccine in the US at this time for Trump to boast about.

Pelosi made it clear today that she also trusts America’s top scientists foremost, and that it’s imperative that it be approved safe and effective by expert standards before it’s distributed.

“Those are the tests, safety and efficacy. And we want it to be available in a widespread, ethical way. And the best — it’s not even an argument — but the best case for the vaccine is to have it as closely identified with the scientists who will be putting it forth,” she said.

One, masks. Two, a vaccine. Nancy Pelosi at a press briefing earlier today on Capitol Hill.
One, masks. Two, a vaccine. Nancy Pelosi at a press briefing earlier today on Capitol Hill. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Updated

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The Trump administration will ban downloads of TikTok and WeChat starting Sunday. US intelligence officials have warned the Chinese apps pose a national security threat. Normal use of the TikTok app is expected to be blocked starting November 12.
  • Trump and Biden will both campaign today in Minnesota, as early voting begins in the state. Early voting also began today in South Dakota and Virginia, where long lines were reported at polling places.
  • A firefighter died battling the wildfire in California’s San Bernardino National Forest, the US Forest Service said today. The devastating wildfires have already killed at least three dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The president’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, did not vote for Trump in 2016 -- because he didn’t vote at all, according to the Washington Post.

The Post reports:

The last time Bill Stepien voted, according to public records, was 2015 when he lived in New Jersey and was registered there.

Stepien registered to vote in Washington, D.C., where he has been living since 2017, at the end of July — two weeks after he was tapped to take over Trump’s reelection bid.

Stepien, a onetime aide to former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) first joined Trump’s team in August 2016. A senior campaign official said Stepien requested an absentee ballot that never arrived, so he did not vote in 2016.

He was not registered in either New Jersey or Washington to vote in the 2018 midterm elections.

The voting habits of the president and his top advisers have attracted more attention in recent weeks because of Trump’s repeated attacks against voting by mail.

The president has repeatedly suggested voting by mail is rife with fraud, but he has cast his own Florida ballot by mail as recently as last month. (Voter fraud is actually very rare, and US states have been collecting ballots through the mail for decades.)

Despite the president’s complaints about voting by mail, the Post counted 16 Trump administration officials who have mailed in their ballots in recent years.

Trump once again sought to compare the Obama administration’s response to swine flu to his response to coronavirus, even though coronavirus has killed far more Americans than swine flu did in 2009.

The president said in a tweet, “Biden FAILED BADLY with the Swine Flu. It was the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight’. He didn’t have a clue. We have done an incredible job with the much tougher China Virus!”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 12,469 Americans died of swine flu during the 2009 pandemic.

In comparison, 197,763 Americans have already died of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country’s death toll is expected to surpass 200,000 in the next few days.

Both of Virginia’s Democratic senators voted early today, the first day of in-person early voting in Virginia.

Senator Mark Warner arrived at his polling station in Alexandria, Virginia, moments ago to cast his ballot for Joe Biden.

Senator Tim Kaine, who was Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2016, also voted early this morning, and he encouraged his constituents to do the same.

Early voting also begins today in South Dakota and Minnesota, where Trump and Biden will both campaign later in the day.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

Michigan must accept ballots that are postmarked the day before election day and arrive in the weeks following, a judge ruled Friday in a decision that will likely result in thousands of more voters having their ballots counted in a key battleground state.

Michigan is one of many states that requires absentee ballots to arrive by election day in order to be counted. But the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with reports of mail delays, have made that deadline unrealistic, Judge Cynthia Diane Stevens of the Michigan court of claims wrote in her ruling on Friday.

Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson and congresswoman Rashida Tlaib rally in support of USPS in Detroit.
Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson and congresswoman Rashida Tlaib rally in support of USPS in Detroit. Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters

The decision is deeply consequential in Michigan, a key swing state Donald Trump won by around 10,000 votes in 2016. One of the top reasons mail-in ballots get rejected is because they arrive past the deadline to be counted. 6,405 ballots were rejected for arriving late during Michigan’s August primary and Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who serves as the state’s top election official, had called for extending the deadline.

“Applying the strict, 8:00 p.m. ballot receipt deadline on absent voter ballots imposes too great a restriction for the upcoming general election,” Stevens wrote in her opinion.

“Some flexibility must be built into the deadline in order to account for the significant inability of mail to arrive on what would typically be a reliable, predictable schedule.” She ordered ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by 2 November and arrive within 14 days of Election Day.

The Michigan ruling is the second in two days that extends ballot receipt deadlines in a key swing state. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court also blocked the state from enforcing an election night deadline for absentee ballots, instead ordering the state to count them as long as they were postmarked by election day and arrived by the following Friday.

The Michigan ruling came in a suit filed by Priorities USA, a top Democratic Super PAC.

Michigan also restricts who can return an absentee ballot on behalf of a voter. On Friday, Stevens, citing the pandemic, said the state could not enforce those restrictions from the Friday before election day through election night.

Joe Biden has started receiving classified intelligence briefings, according to NBC News.

NBC reported that Biden received a briefing in Wilmington on Wednesday, about a month after he formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.

Such briefings are usually only offered to candidates once they officially become nominees.

Biden referenced the briefings yesterday, during a virtual fundraiser with donors in Colorado.

The Democratic nominee criticized Trump for sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the election, saying, “It goes beyond what he’s saying. It goes to what he’s encouraging.”

Trump to hold press conference this afternoon

The White House has just added two events to Trump’s schedule today, including a press conference this afternoon.

At 11:45 am ET, the president will greet Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait.

Trump will then hold a press conference at 2 pm ET.

The president’s last press conference, on Wednesday, attracted criticism after Trump contradicted the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the timeline of developing a coronavirus vaccine.

Trump also controversially suggested the country’s coronavirus death toll would be much lower if Americans who died in Democratic-controlled states were not counted.

The polling analysis site FiveThirty unveiled its Senate election forecast today, and Democrats are currently “slightly favored” to take control of the chamber.

According to the FiveThirtyEight model, Democrats have an 80% chance of holding between 47 and 54 seats in the Senate.

The model considered 40,000 simulations for the outcome of the Senate races, and Democrats win control of the chamber in 58 in 100 scenarios.

A new set of polls shows Trump trailing Biden in Maine and Arizona, while the two are running neck and neck in North Carolina.

According to the New York Times-Siena College polls, Biden leads by 9 points among Arizona’s likely voters and 17 points among Maine’s likely voters.

In North Carolina, the two nominees are virtually tied, with Biden attracting the support of 45% of likely voters while Trump is the preferred candidate for 44% of likely voters.

Trump’s lagging performance appears to be having down-ballot effects on the Senate races in the three states.

According to the polls, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon leads Republican senator Susan Collins by 5 points, 49%-44%.

In Arizona, Democratic candidate Mark Kelly has pulled ahead of Republican senator Martha McSally by 8 points, 50%-42%.

And in North Carolina, Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham has opened up a larger lead than Biden in the state. Cunningham has a 5-point lead over Republican senator Thom Tillis, 42%-37%.

As a reminder, Democrats need to flip four Senate seats to take control of the chamber if they don’t win the White House. If Biden wins the presidential race, Democrats need to only flip three seats.

Two other states -- Virginia and South Dakota -- will also start early voting today, along with Minnesota.

At one early voting site n Richmond, Virginia, dozens of people lined up outside the polling station even before it opened.

Reminder: there are 46 days left until the presidential election on November 3.

Trump and Joe Biden are both campaigning today in Minnesota, a state that Hillary Clinton won by just 1.5 points in 2016.

The president will speak at a “Great American Comeback” event in Bemidji, and Biden will travel to Duluth for a tour of a union training center.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to flip Minnesota in November, but polls indicate Biden has a significant edge in the state.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week, Biden leads Trump by 16 points among Minnesota’s likely voters, 57%-41%.

But there is another reason Trump and Biden may both be invested in traveling to Minnesota today: it is the first day of early voting in the state.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

The AP has spoken to more migrant women who say they were operated on without their informed consent by a gynecologist, Dr Mahendra Amin, at an immigration detention center in Georgia.

The AP reports:

An Associated Press review of medical records for four women and interviews with lawyers revealed growing allegations that Amin performed surgeries and other procedures on detained immigrants that they never sought or didn’t fully understand. Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, the women’s lack of consent or knowledge raises severe legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.

Amin has performed surgery or other gynecological treatment on at least eight women detained at Irwin County Detention Center since 2017, including one hysterectomy, said Andrew Free, an immigration and civil rights lawyer working with attorneys to investigate medical treatment at the detention center. Doctors on behalf of the attorneys are examining new records and more women are coming forward to report their treatment by Amin, Free said.

‘The indication is there’s a systemic lack of truly informed and legally valid consent to perform procedures that could ultimately result — intentionally or unintentionally — in sterilization,’ he said.

The AP’s review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten alleged that many detained women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the ‘uterus collector’ because of how many hysterectomies he performed.

The lawyer who helped file the complaint previously told the Washington Post that she had not directly spoken to anyone from the detention center who had been forced to receive a hysterectomy, but rather she wanted to trigger an investigation into the possibility.

The complaint sparked immediately outcry and comparisons to past historical instances of the US government forcing women from marginalized communities to undergo forced sterilization. As the AP notes, 33 US states had forced sterilization programs in the 20th century.

In an alternative timeline that you imagine he often thinks about, Tim Kaine would probably be less then fifty days away from standing for election for a second term as vice president. He very much isn’t. But he has this morning urged Virginians to go out and cast their vote, as it is another state, like Minnesota, where early voting starts today.

It looks like it is busy already according to this report.

And with that, I’m now off to an alternative timeline myself, as I’m done for the day. Joan Greve will be with you shortly. Have a great weekend, take care and stay safe.

Stephen Collinson at CNN offers us this review of Joe Biden’s performance at the network’s own town hall last night, saying that the Deomcratic nominee “shows the qualities Trump lacks”

At a unique drive-in event that reflected the reality of America’s socially distanced election season, Biden lacerated the President over the pandemic, became apoplectic several times about Trump’s reported comments that US war dead were “suckers” and “losers,” and marveled that in a recent poll, foreigners expressed more trust in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping than in the President of the United States. The former vice president, in his element near his boyhood home of Scranton, Pennsylvania, also displayed the kind of sympathetic connection with voters that Trump, more at home in his rowdy rallies, struggles to approach.

Biden offered more compassion in a few moments for the victims of the Covid-19 disaster that has crushed the rhythms of normal life than the President has for most of this year.

But, as he notes:

While Biden offered coherence and demonstrated a facility of detail at the event, the central question of the election is whether Americans are looking for this kind of traditional presidential leadership. It’s still possible sufficient voters who prefer Trump’s cultural arguments rooted in race or his hardline law-and-order or economic message will give him an electoral college victory.

Read it here: CNN – Biden shows the qualities Trump lacks at CNN town hall

The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks throughout the year, and has called TikTok and WeChat “significant threats”.

TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and is especially popular among younger Americans. It was implicated earlier this year in the dismal attendance at the Trump campaign ‘comeback’ rally in Tulsa.

At the time Kenya Evelyn in Washington reported for us that K-pop fans and users of TikTok had claimed tickets to the rally in then did not use them, as part of a coordinated effort which helped to leave hundreds of seats empty in a 19,000-capacity venue.

The scheme stemmed from a 11 June tweet from the Trump campaign promoting free registration online and via cellphones. The scheme exploded on the TikTok app, where young users implored followers to join in.

“Trump has been actively trying to disenfranchise millions of Americans in so many ways, and to me, this was the protest I was able to perform,” Erin Hoffman, an 18-year-old New Yorker, told the New York Times, adding that she reserved two tickets and persuaded a parent to book two more.

WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early August. It is popular among Chinese students, ex-pats and some Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.

WeChat is an all-in-one mobile app that combines services similar to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Venmo. The app is an essential part of daily life for many in China and boasts more than 1 billion users.

Owners ByteDance have been going through the process of trying to sell the US operation of TikTok in a way that will satisfy both the US and the Chinese governments.

The US government is currently reviewing the plan for Oracle to acquire its US operation. However, earlier this week, Donald Trump questioned that acquisition.

“Conceptually I can tell you that I don’t like that,” Trump told a news conference on Wednesday when asked about a reported proposal to give Oracle only a minority share. “I’m not prepared to sign off on anything. They’re going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and I’ll let you know.”

Trump said he would be briefed about a proposal that calls for Oracle to become a “trusted technology provider” for TikTok’s American operations, but he did not favour the idea of having the Chinese firm retain control. “It has to be 100% as far as national security is concerned,” Trump said. “I have to see the deal.”

In August TikTok announced that it was to sue the US government over Trump’s executive order. In a blogpost, TikTok said it strongly disagreed with the White House’s position that the company was a national security threat, saying it had “taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data”.

Chief executive Kevin Mayer subsequently resigned at the end of August.

“In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for,” his resignation letter to employees said.

“Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company.”

In a statement, TikTok thanked Mayer for his time and wished him well. “We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role would be going forward, and fully respect his decision,” it said.

Speaking of polling, the New York Times widget on how polling might translate to Electoral College votes tells an interesting story today. They break it out into three separate categories.

If you only count states where one candidate or the other leads in the polls by at least three points, Joe Biden accumulates 291 Electoral College votes, easily enough to put him into the White House.

If the polls translate exactly to the results – which the New York Times says they clearly won’t – then Biden romps home with 353 votes to Donald Trump’s 185.

However, the one that will be giving Democratic strategists heart palpitation is the last one. They calculate what would happen with the Electoral College “if state polls are as wrong as they were in 2016”. That sees Trump re-elected 278-260.

In this week’s Politics Weekly Extra podcast, Jonathan Freedland speaks with our Washington DC bureau chief David Smith about why Joe Biden is seemingly doing better than Hillary Clinton did in the polls in 2016. You can listen to it here:

Lawyer claims Assange was told that Trump would pardon him if he exonerated Russia over DNC leaks

Meanwhile, in a court in London, it appears that Julian Assange’s lawyer has this morning claimed that Assange was informed that Donald Trump would offer him a pardon if he could confirm that Russia was not the source of the DNC leaks.

Assange’s lawyer, report Reuters, said she observed a meeting where former Republican US Representative Dana Rohrabacher and Charles Johnson, an associate known to have close ties to the Trump campaign, made the offer.

“The proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrabacher was that Mr. Assange identify the source for the 2016 election publications in return for some form of pardon,” Robinson said in a witness statement given to the court.

Australian-born Assange, 49, is fighting to stop being sent to the US, where he is charged with conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law over the release of confidential cables by WikiLeaks in 2010-2011.

Updated

Secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross has now issued an official confirmation that the commerce department plans to “prohibit WeChat and TikTok transactions to protect the national security of the United States”. The statement says:

In response to President Trump’s Executive Orders signed 6 August 6 2020, the Department of Commerce today announced prohibitions on transactions relating to mobile applications (apps) WeChat and TikTok to safeguard the national security of the United States. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the U.S. Today’s announced prohibitions, when combined, protect users in the U.S. by eliminating access to these applications and significantly reducing their functionality.

The statement goes on to say that as of September 20, 2020, the following transactions are prohibited:

  • Any provision of service to distribute or maintain the WeChat or TikTok mobile applications, constituent code, or application updates through an online mobile application store in the US
  • Any provision of services through the WeChat mobile application for the purpose of transferring funds or processing payments within the US

The statement adds that as of September 20, 2020, for WeChat and as of November 12, 2020, for TikTok, the following transactions are prohibited:

  • Any provision of internet hosting services enabling the functioning or optimization of the mobile application in the US
  • Any provision of content delivery network services enabling the functioning or optimization of the mobile application in the US
  • Any provision directly contracted or arranged internet transit or peering services enabling the function or optimization of the mobile application within the US
  • Any utilization of the mobile application’s constituent code, functions, or services in the functioning of software or services developed and/or accessible within the US

It also quotes Barr as saying:

Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party. At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of US laws and regulations.

Trump to block US downloads of TikTok, WeChat on Sunday – reports

Reuters have just posted up an exclusive where they report that the US commerce department plans to issue an order today that will bar people in the US from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on 20 September. David Shepardson writes:

The officials said the ban on new US downloads of TikTok could be still rescinded by President Donald Trump before it takes effect late Sunday as TikTok owner ByteDance races to clinch an agreement over the fate of its US operations.

ByteDance has been talks with Oracle Corp and others to create a new company, TikTok Global, that aims to address US concerns about the security of its users’ data. ByteDance still needs Trump’s approval to stave off a US ban.

The Commerce Department order will “deplatform” the two apps in the United States and bar Apple Inc’s app store, Alphabet Inc’s Google Play and others from offering the apps on any platform “that can be reached from within the United States,” a senior Commerce official told Reuters.

Read it here: Reuters – Trump to block US downloads of TikTok, WeChat on Sunda - officials

Texas is a big prize in a US presidential election - only California sends more electors than Texas’ 36. In 2016 the Lone Star state voted for Donald Trump, and a Democratic nominee hasn’t carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But one question constantly raised is the extent to which voter suppression keeps it a red state. Alexandra Villarreal reports for us:

Across the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has threatened the democratic process ahead of the presidential election. But the situation is even more acute in Texas, where Republicans have long devised a tortuous system that actively disadvantages minority communities who would generally lean Democratic. Long lines, voter intimidation, voting machine malfunctions and other issues afflicted almost 278,000 Texans during the midterm election in 2018, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Most recently, Harris county – by far Texas’s most populous county, which includes Houston and has the most Covid-19 cases and fatalities in the state – became embroiled in a court battle with the Texas attorney general over whether the county clerk can even send mail-in ballot applications to all voters (a state district judge’s recent decision says he can, but the Texas supreme court blocked him from doing so “until further order” as the state appeals).

From antiquated voter registration practices to a controversial voter ID law, “Republicans have spent the better part of the last two decades” finding ways to challenge Texas voters, said Rose Clouston, voter protection director for the Texas Democratic party. Now, the myriad ways in which they neglected to “bring Texas’s election into the 21st century are only exacerbated and more problematic in a pandemic”.

Read it here: Texas is a ‘voter suppression’ state and one of the hardest places to vote. Will it help Trump win?

White House press secretary Kayliegh McEnany has come out this morning attacking Vanity Fair for an “inaccurate and disgusting partisan hit job”.

Without being too glib about it, she possibly needed to be more specific about which article has aggravated her. The reference to the nation’s health makes me suspect she maybe means Bess Levin’s piece “Of course Trump nixed a masks plan that could’ve eradicated Covid-19 in April”.

Based off the reports yesterday that the Washington Post had seen documents showing that the USPS was in an advanced stage of planning the distribution of free face masks to the US population before the scheme was halted, Levin writes:

Responding to the scrapped plan, an administration official told the Post that “there was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or a panic,” which is the same sort of “logic” that Trump cited when explaining his decision to tell the public the virus was no worse than the flu, despite knowing it was much, much more lethal. Which obviously makes no sense whatsoever, and would be like withholding a blood transfusion so as not to worry the guy hemorrhaging in the ambulance. Don’t scare him! Just let him lose consciousness, slip into a coma, and die a few days later.

Or perhaps it might have been this one: “That’s Their Problem”: How Jared Kushner let the markets decide America’s Covid-19 fate. Katherine Eban’s piece from yesterday says:

Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”

One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction. “Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

Vanity Fair also published online yesterday Dan Alexander’s exposé titled “One of the most significant potential conflicts of interest in American history”: how everyone from foreign governments to federal contractors is quietly lining Trump’s pockets. That presumably didn’t win many fans at the White House either. So take your pick, I guess?

Updated

US Forest Service says firefighter died battling wildfire in San Bernardino National Forest

A firefighter died battling a wildfire in the San Bernardino National Forest in California, the US Forest Service said Friday.

The death occurred on Thursday as crews battled the El Dorado Fire, the agency said in a news release.

The name of the firefighter was being withheld until family members are notified. The cause of the death was under investigation.

“Our deepest sympathies are with the family, friends and fellow firefighters during this time,” spokesperson Zach Behrens said in the release.

Firefighters work to put out embers from the El Dorado fire in California earlier this week.
Firefighters work to put out embers from the El Dorado fire in California earlier this week. Photograph: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/REX/Shutterstock

The Associated Press report that the El Dorado Fire broke out in southern California on 5 September, and has burned more than 19,000 acres (7,700 hectares), according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It was about 66% contained.

Updated

Mike Bloomberg launches first ad as part of $100m campaign backing Biden in Florida

Here’s the first fruits of the $100 million Florida ad blitz that Mike Bloomberg is throwing behind Joe Biden. The ad from Priorities USA Action plays clips of Donald Trump’s statements that the coronavirus is going to go away, that numbers will be low, and that he likes to play down the virus against a chart of the nation’s rising death toll.

Anti-Trump ad about the coronavirus

Daniel Strauss in Washington reports for us on one person who is almost certain to win their November election – Marjorie Taylor Greene:

A Georgia businesswoman and conservative activist is all but certain to win a seat in Congress, meaning a believer in the growing QAnon conspiracy movement will be represented in the next Republican caucus.

But far from being shunned, Greene will instead be welcomed into the chamber by important and powerful groups of Republican colleagues who have expressed their support for her – and in some cases opened their wallets.

Greene’s nomination, out of a divided Republican primary and then a contentious runoff, was not without resistance from parts of her party. Top sitting Republican members of Congress endorsed Greene’s opponents. Until recently she also had a Democratic opponent, albeit a long shot who has now dropped out of the race.

Greene is one of the better known congressional candidates who follows the baseless QAnon movement – the set of conspiracy theories that argues, without evidence, that Donald Trump was put into the White House to fight a vast sex trafficking conspiracy run by a cabal of elites, Democrats and government officials.

Read more here: QAnon conspiracy theorist to feel warm embrace of Republicans in Congress

Graphic photos that surfaced online this week appear to show deep bruises on the face of a Black man who died following a police chase in Louisiana last year, raising new questions about whether his injuries were caused by the crash that ended the chase or an ensuing struggle with state troopers.

The family of 49-year-old Ronald Greene also released images of the SUV involved in the May 2019 crash showing that the vehicle appeared to have sustained only minor damage to its driver’s side.

“We were told that he died in a high-speed chase of head injuries after crashing into a tree,” Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, say. “There was no major damage to the car.”

This undated photo provided by the family of Ronald Greene shows his vehicle after it was released by the Louisiana State Police.
This undated photo provided by the family of Ronald Greene shows his vehicle after it was released by the Louisiana State Police. Photograph: AP

The Associated Press report that the juxtaposition fueled calls for state police to release body-camera footage of the chase and what the agency recently acknowledged was a “struggle” to take Greene into custody after he drove off the road in rural northern Louisiana near Monroe. State Police have declined to release the video or comment on the photos due to ongoing investigations of Greene’s death.

“These photos are atrocious,” said Eugene W. Collins, president of the Baton Rouge branch of the NAACP, who posted images of Greene’s body on his Facebook page. “We have to believe that, from Day One, the Louisiana State Police were not honest with the public.”

The two graphic photos – which we’ve opted not to publish – appear to have been taken in a medical setting and show apparent bruises and cuts to Greene’s face and scalp were provided by his family and had previously been shared on their social media.

Attorneys for Greene’s family said the images were consistent with the injuries identified in an independent autopsy they commissioned. Portions of it describe “blunt force injuries to the head/face; facial lacerations, abrasions, contusions” and multiple “scalp lacerations.”

Greene’s death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest. It has drawn new attention in recent months amid a national reckoning about racial inequality and police misconduct sparked by the widespread Black Lives Matter protest movement.

Greene’s family filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit in May alleging troopers “brutalized” Greene, used a stun gun on him three times and “left him beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest” before covering up his actual cause of death.

While more than a year has passed since the crash, the State Police have offered no public accounting of what caused Greene’s death.

Departing US ambassador to China blames Beijing for coronavirus

Departing US ambassador to China Terry Branstad has blamed Beijing in public for the spread of the coronavirus beyond its initial source late last year.

The former Iowa governor told CNN “What could have been contained in Wuhan ended up becoming a worldwide pandemic. [The] Chinese system was such that they covered it up and even penalized the doctors who pointed it out at the beginning. It’s really I think the communist system of China, and their unwillingness to admit wrongdoing that caused this whole thing to happen. And that’s the tragedy of it”

Branstad is expected to campaign for Donald Trump when he returns to the US, having served as ambassador since 2017 during a period when relations between the US and China have become quite tense.

“I think you always, as far as diplomacy is concerned, you want to build relationships with people. President Xi is a very strong leader for China, but this is a communist, authoritarian system, and unfortunately we have very different systems.”

He also said that the Chinese had misled the US president, who was initially willing to believe “what (China) said about the virus, and then he and the rest of the world found out what they said was not true.”

“Interest for people around the world in working with and supporting China has gone down dramatically, not just in the United States.”

Trump and Biden both head to Minnesota as early voting begins

Over at Reuters, Joseph Ax has written a scene-setter for today’s campaigning, when both president Donald Trump and Joe Biden will travel to the key midwestern state of Minnesota. Early voting for November’s election begins there today.

Trump, who trails Biden in national polls, is making a bid to capture the state he narrowly lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 while winning neighboring Wisconsin.

Recent opinion polls in Minnesota have given Biden a solid lead; the poll-tracking website RealClearPolitics showed Biden up by an average of 10.2 points as of Thursday.

Biden’s polling advantage underscores the extent to which the current electoral map favors the former vice president. He leads in all three former industrial “Rust Belt” states that Trump flipped from the Democratic column on his way to victory in 2016: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign rally at an airport in Bemidji, Minnesota, in the evening. Earlier in the day, Biden will tour a union training center in Duluth before delivering a speech.

The state was the flashpoint for a summer of protests about racism in the US, when George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for minutes even after he appeared to lose consciousness, sparking Black Lives Matter protests around the globe.

Biden has denounced the violence at some protests while expressing support for the protesters’ objections to racism and police brutality. He has blamed Trump’s divisive rhetoric for inflaming the situation.

Joe Biden was at a televised town hall last night, and returned to the them that he would trust what scientists tell him about a coronavirus vaccine, but not trust what Donald Trump says about the science. Trump has repeatedly hyped up treatments against coronavirus, and has been criticised for failing to follow evidence and science in his administration’s response to the Covid crisis.

Glenn Thrush at the New York Times has overnight described the Biden performance as “sturdy, if not especially electrifying”. His verdict:

Despite a few miscues, Mr. Biden was lucid, sprightly, relaxed and conversant with granular details on energy policy, international relations, the economy and agricultural policy. His entire political career has been based on his “Amtrak Joe” persona, and he wore it easily on Thursday.

A prominent American former magazine columnist who accused Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s has joined a chorus of voices supporting the latest woman to accuse Trump of sexually assaulting her, Amy Dorris.

E Jean Carroll, a writer and longtime columnist for Elle magazine who has accused Trump of rape and defamation, said Dorris had added to the voices of dozens of women whose descriptions of sexual misconduct by Trump bear striking similarities.

“Dear Amy Dorris: Hail, Gallant Woman!” Carroll wrote on Twitter. “When you came forward today with your story about @realDonaldTrump, you came forward in support of ALL WOMEN. Ravishing regards, E. Jean.”

Carroll linked to a recent interview she conducted with Karena Virginia, who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her at the same tennis tournament a year after Dorris was there.

Read more here: ‘Hail, gallant woman’: Amy Dorris praised for coming forward with Trump assault allegation

Good morning, and welcome to Friday’s edition of our live blog on US politics. Here’s a catch-up on what happened yesterday and overnight, and a bit on what is slated to happen today:

  • There were 849 new coronavirus deaths and 45,391 new cases reported in the US yesterday. The average number of new daily cases is down around 1% on the fortnight before, but yesterday is only the second time since 6 September that the number of new cases has leapt above 40,000. There are now fifteen states which have had a worrying daily average of at least 15 new cases per 100,000 people for the last week.
  • Joe Biden told a televised town hall that the president’s pandemic response is “close to criminal”. “I don’t trust the president on vaccines. I trust Dr Fauci” he said.
  • It has been reported that guidance about coronavirus testing posted in August on the CDC website was not written by the agency’s scientists, and was posted despite their objections.
  • Donald Trump attacked a Pulitzer Prize-winning education project on slavery and announced his own “patriotic education” plan. Critics condemned his rewrite of America’s legacy of racism. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the writer behind the 1619 Project, noted that Trump’s White House Conference on American History has “not a single Black historian on it”.
  • Amy Dorris came forward to claim that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1997. She’s been praised by some of the 26 other women who have made similar accusations against the president.
  • FBI chief Chris Wray warned of Russian interference in the elections, citing a “steady drumbeat of misinformation” that he said he feared could undermine confidence in the result.
  • Eric Trump said through his lawyers that he is willing to be interviewed by the New York attorney general’s office for its investigation into the Trump Organization – after the election.
  • Wildfires continued to burn across the US west coast, with smoke reaching as far as Europe. Forecast rain for the Pacific north-west prompted hopes of improved fire-fighting conditions in Washington state and Oregon.
  • The president will receive his intelligence briefing and then Trump will speak at a Great American Comeback event in Bemidji, Minnesota.
  • Biden is also campaiging in Minnesota, traveling to Duluth to tour a union training center and deliver a speech.

I’m Martin Belam and you can get in touch with me via email: martin.belam@theguardian.com

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