Category Archives: Democrats

‘Follow your conscience,’ Biden urges Republicans as Trump pushes for supreme court nominee – video

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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden makes a plea to Senate Republicans, asking them to 'follow their conscience' and defy president Donald Trump's push to name his nominee for the supreme court ahead of November's election. Trump says he plans to nominate a women for the seat as soon as possible, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died aged 87 six weeks out from the US election. 'I appeal to those few Senate Republicans, that handful who really will decide what happens. Please follow your conscience,' Biden says. 'Don't vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created. Don't go there. Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience'

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Supreme court: Biden accuses Trump and Republicans of abuse of power

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Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, made an urgent plea on Sunday to the conscience of Senate Republicans, asking them to defy Donald Trump and refuse to ram through his nominee to the supreme court before the November election.

Related: Rushing to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, McConnell shows power trumps principle | Robert Reich

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Trump vows to select Ginsburg replacement ‘without delay’ – live

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Tim Alberta, the chap I quoted a while back re Mitch “Mule Piss” McConnell and his single-minded pursuit of judicial appointments, has a fascinating piece up at Politico.

“If there’s one Republican who could be convinced that filling the sudden supreme court vacancy is a bad idea,” he writes, “it’s President Donald Trump.”

Related: Trump names three sitting senators among 20 possible supreme court picks

Any number of variables could tip the scales in such a tight election. But it’s not difficult to deduce that had a supreme court seat not been hanging in the balance, Hillary Clinton would be president right now. When I offered this theory last year to McConnell … he grinned.

“I agree,” McConnell said.

Having been reminded countless times over the past 45 months that his Supreme Court gambit won him the trust of social conservatives – which, in turn, won him the election – Trump surely realizes that this is a moment of maximum leverage. Maybe he doesn’t bother using it; maybe he automatically produces more of the goods, keeping his most important customers satisfied, believing it’s one more accomplishment to point to.

But the president is transactional to his core. This was exactly the word– “transactional” – that Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, used when we discussed the supreme court list Trump unveiled in 2016.

News is starting to come out of the Senate Democrats’ caucus call today…

Per source Schumer started with moment of silence for RBG and said “nothing is off the table” next year if GOP moves forward w/nominating process

Related: Battle hymn of the Democrats: why it's time for liberals to fight dirty

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How Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death could affect Senate races – and Trump v Biden

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Susan Collins of Maine is among vulnerable Republican senators as polls indicate voters trust Biden more on justice picks

On the question of supreme court nominees, the Republican senator Susan Collins has repeatedly threaded the same political needle. It is one with a shrinking eye.

Related: Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed America long before she joined the supreme court | Moira Donegan

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: death of liberal justice gives Trump chance to reshape the US for generations

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The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sparked a titanic political fight that could shape the future of US supreme court decisions on abortion rights, voting rights and other fundamental issues for a generation.

Related: What does Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death mean for the supreme court?

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Nancy Pelosi demands investigation into hysterectomy claims at Ice centre

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  • Whistleblower cited alarming rate of surgery for detainees
  • House speaker concerned at ‘staggering abuse of human rights’

The top congressional Democrat, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has joined mounting calls for an investigation into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre in Georgia accused of performing hysterectomies on migrant women held there without their full consent.

Pelosi branded the substance of allegations presented by a whistleblowing nurse “a staggering abuse of human rights”.

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Black voting power: the fight for change in Milwaukee, one of America’s most segregated cities

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Guardian US reporter Kenya Evelyn travels home to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the most segregated cities in the country to find out what Joe Biden and the Democratic party can do to truly earn the votes of Black Americans.  

Democrats dealt Milwaukee another economic blow by moving their national convention online, crushing Black residents already feeling the brunt of a national crisis. They’re fed up, calling out racial inequality and a party some say ignores their issues until it’s time to vote. From generations of moderate elders leaving their legacy, to their young, progressive peers taking to the streets, Black Milwaukeeans are using the power of their voices and votes to demand change

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Just 50 days until a US election both sides see as an existential struggle

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Joe Biden holds a steady lead in the polls but plenty of time remains for surprises and even the act of voting is controversial

The election to decide whether Donald Trump will serve a second term as president has already begun, with voters in North Carolina filling out absentee ballots, Minnesotans preparing to start early in-person voting on Friday and other states revving up their election machinery.

But for most Americans, today marks 50 days until election day, 3 November, when voters will take varying degrees of health risks – and face hurdles to voting of varying heights – to cast their ballots in person for Trump or his potential Democratic successor, Joe Biden.

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Has Trump spent his election war chest before the war really starts?

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The president’s campaign has paid out $800m, but at a crucial phase he is making cuts while Joe Biden is outspending him

More than $180,000 per second. That is what Donald Trump’s two TV ads during the Super Bowl worked out at in February, offering vivid proof of the outsized role of money in American politics – and of his re-election campaign’s premature and profligate spending.

The 2020 presidential election has been described by both sides as the most important in living memory and is certainly proving the most expensive. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded both campaigns and, in the pandemic-enforced absence of shaking hands and kissing babies, may prove even more influential than usual.

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Go west: Trump and Biden take campaign to Arizona and Nevada

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Donald Trump was headed for Nevada on Saturday, aiming to erode poll leads enjoyed by Joe Biden there and in Arizona, another key state, as the 3 November presidential election draws near.

Related: Trump in Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs

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As fires burn the west, top Democrats stay quiet on the climate crisis

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Nancy Pelosi has been notably tepid on green legislation – so are the Democrats serious about fighting climate change?

With hundreds of thousands of Americans forced to evacuate their homes in the western US, Donald Trump hasn’t said a word about the wildfires blazing across multiple states in nearly three weeks.

Related: Oregon fires force hundreds of thousands to flee as deaths rise

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‘Rest in peace Jay’: sympathy for the far right foretells Trump’s election strategy

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The president has shown a lifelong penchant for inflaming racist hatreds and fears – expect much more of this before November

Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump tweeted a rare statement of condolences, as the confirmed death toll in the US climbed past 183,000.

Related: Biden to accuse Trump of stoking violence in US after Portland clashes

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‘It’s a coin toss here’: will swing voters in this Wisconsin county stick by Trump?

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In Forest county, Wisconsin – which backed Obama before Trump – voters voice doubts about both major candidates

Joe Biden has blown his chance to win over Kristen, to be found selling home-baked cakes and pies at a farmer’s market in Forest county, northern Wisconsin.

The 46-year-old was once a fan of Barack Obama, voting for him twice before switching her allegiance to Donald Trump four years ago. Kristen, who doesn’t want her last name used, was minded to back Trump again in November but was holding off to see who Biden chose as his vice-presidential running mate.

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‘Two visions of the US’: Trump and Biden offer contrasts on race, Covid and economy

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The Democratic and Republican national conventions offered two radically different diagnoses of the problems confronting America

One version told of a president who is callous and cruel. “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” said Kristin Urquiza, whose father voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and died from Covid-19 in June. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump – and for that he paid with his life.”

The other spoke of a president blessed with compassion. Kayleigh McEnany recalled taking a phone call as she recovered from a preventative mastectomy. “It was President Trump, calling to check on me,” she said. “I was blown away. Here was the leader of the free world caring about me.”

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Michael Moore warns that Donald Trump is on course to repeat 2016 win

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Film-maker says enthusiasm for president in swing states is ‘off the charts’ and urges everyone to commit to getting 100 people to vote

The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.

“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.

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‘DemExit’: virtual convention aims to create US leftwing alternative

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The Movement for a People’s Party believes Democrats and Republicans will always choose profits over people, and 12,000 have signed up to hear more

Joe Biden’s acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic national convention made one reference to “middle class” and one to “working families”. It never mentioned the word “poverty”.

Related: Biden feared 'ideological jihad' from Sanders after primary win

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Trump announces emergency authorization for coronavirus plasma treatment – as it happened

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Here’s a rundown of Sunday’s events. We’ll be back tomorrow for all Monday’s news.

More a campaign-style press announcement than traditional news conference, Trump abruptly ends the proceedings after taking only three questions, including one from One America News Network.

The US president insisted today’s announcement, which comes one day after he accused “the deep state, or whoever, over at” the FDA of deliberately slowing coronavirus vaccine and therapy development, “has nothing to do with politics” despite its conspicuous timing on the eve of the Republican national convention.

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Joe Biden picks Seamus Heaney to add to his appeal

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Presidential frontrunner quotes Irish wordsmith in his nomination acceptance speech

Joe Biden is not the first nor is he likely to be the last politician to summon political spirits with poetry, but choosing verse from The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney’s free translation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, for his Democratic party nomination acceptance speech on Thursday had scholars of the poet’s work and the political class eating out of his hand.

Biden pulled out Heaney’s lines close to the end of an address that also won over conservative pundits and Fox News anchors – “an enormously effective speech”, said Chris Wallace – and left Donald Trump, for once, without response on Twitter. Biden quoted Heaney saying: “History says, Don’t hope / On this side of the grave. / But then, once in a lifetime / The longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme.”

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Joe Biden vows to ‘listen to scientists’ on coronavirus – US politics live

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New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the state will give voters a chance to correct missing signatures and other clerical errors so their absentee ballots can be counted in anticipation of a wave of mail-in voting for the November election.

Election officials are expecting an even bigger flood of mail-in votes in November than for the June primary, after which results were delayed for six weeks.

Cuomo said late Friday he’d sign yet temporarily tweak legislation that calls for notifying voters about such problems and provides for fixing them.

Under the version that passed the Legislature last month, the voter would have seven business days to file a form to fix the problem after a notice was mailed, in many situations.

The Associated Press has more from Portland, Oregon, where protesters against police brutality and structural racism clashed again with federal agents and law enforcement officers overnight. Such confrontations were the subject of a Trump tweet this morning, in which the president once again expressed his willingness to send in the national guard:

About 200 people marched to a police precinct station on yet another night of violence for Oregon’s largest city.

Demonstrators hurled bottles and rocks at officers and pointed lasers at them, damaging police cars and causing minor injuries for several officers, Portland police said.

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Trouble for Trump as Fox News praises ‘enormously effective’ Biden speech

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Republican pundits accept success of Biden’s convention address as Trump’s bid to portray Democratic rival as radical leftist falls flat

Under pressure on the last day of the Democratic convention, Joe Biden “hit a home run” with an “enormously effective” speech that blew “a big hole” in Donald Trump’s efforts to paint him as a mentally faltering captive of his party’s left wing.

And that was to hear Fox News hosts Dana Perino and Chris Wallace tell it.

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