Home health caregivers have been key to the Covid response – but they often work for low wages and without overtime, hazard pay, sick leave or insurance
In March, Sue Williams-Ward took a new job, with a $1-an-hour raise.
The employer, a home healthcare agency called Together We Can, was paying a premium – $13 an hour – after it started losing aides when Covid-19 safety concerns mounted.
Continue reading...Trump claims virus will ‘peter out’ in country with most cases and highest death toll
The US passed 8m recorded coronavirus cases on Friday, another unwelcome mark for the country with the most cases and the worst death toll from the global pandemic, approaching 220,000.
Despite there being no sign that the pandemic is under control in the US, on Thursday Donald Trump said that the virus would “peter out”.
Continue reading...Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in their TV ratings battle from their duelling town hall events, figures showed Friday, while the president faced condemnation over his failure to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Related: Biden's town hall drew 2 million more viewers than Trump's in early figures – live
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Joe Biden said at a town hall event Thursday night that he would announce before election day whether he favors expanding the supreme court.
Biden has repeatedly declined to lay out a stance on the issue amid an ongoing Republican sprint to install a third justice nominated by Donald Trump before the election, in what critics have called a naked power grab.
Related: Biden says he'll lay out stance on expanding supreme court before election
In a new interactive elections timeline, Alvin Chang has explained how various 2020 US election scenarios, including the case of Trump losing but refusing to concede, could play out.
Americans are used to a certain routine with presidential elections – but this year might be different, Alvin writes. If you’re not current on such concepts as the safe harbor deadline and wonder how states select electors, read about it here:
Related: Timeline: how 2020 US election scenarios could play out
Continue reading...Move follows criticism from Republicans and others over story about Joe Biden’s son
Twitter has softened its policies against the sharing of hacked material after the backlash over its decision to block a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son.
Republican senators declared their intention to subpoena the Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey next week, forcing him to explain the decision, after he apologised for the lack of communication about the blocking.
Continue reading...The Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, took to the stage in Pennsylvania in a modified town hall event, following the cancellation of the second debate. Biden gave detailed answers about his proposals on everything, from the coronavirus pandemic to tax reform – in a stark contrast to Donald Trump's combative event that took place in Miami at the same time
Continue reading...‘I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now,’ former New York mayor’s daughter writes in Vanity Fair
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter has endorsed Joe Biden for president in an essay for Vanity Fair, writing that in this historic election “none of us can afford to be silent”.
“My father is Rudy Giuliani,” Caroline Rose Giuliani said in the magazine. “We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a ‘Giuliani’ feels counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now.”
Continue reading...Trump rambled feverishly like ‘someone’s crazy uncle’ as Biden looked relaxed in an armchair like a grandfather with pipe
America is often described as a “split screen nation”, bitterly divided between two political tribes dwelling in echo chambers. But Thursday night at 8pm was a bit too on the nose.
The NBC network hosted a town hall event with Donald Trump. ABC hosted a simultaneous town hall event with his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. CBS, meanwhile, hosted the reality TV show Big Brother with Julie Chen Moonves.
Continue reading...PG&E began shutting off power Wednesday evening to customers in portions of 24 counties as a ‘last-resort option’ amid high fire risk
Thousands of people in northern California were without power on Thursday amid an autumn heatwave that brought another round of extreme wildfire danger.
The utility company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) began shutting off power Wednesday evening to about 50,000 customers – about 100,000 people – in portions of 24 counties, mainly in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the San Francisco Bay Area. Another 20,000 people were expected to lose power later on Thursday.
Continue reading...Berlin bar curfew suspended after court considers move ‘disproportionate’; Czech Republic records 9,721 new infections, Switzerland sees 3,105 cases
Bosnia’s new Covid-19 infections hit a record high for the third day in a row, with 621 cases on Friday, and authorities warned the healthcare system could collapse if the trend continues.
The country of around 3.3 million people has so far recorded 32,845 cases of the coronavirus with 980 deaths. Currently there are 7,262 active cases, or 1,512 more than a week ago.
“It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.”
Europe’s second wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their highest ever number of new infections.
Related: 'On the brink of disaster': Europe's Covid fight takes a turn for the worse
Continue reading...Number of physicians yearning for a move has increased substantially since the Covid-19 pandemic, recruitment firms say
When Dalilah Restrepo, then a New York-based physician, clicked on an email in 2018 asking if she was “looking for experiencing something abroad”, she was sceptical. “And then I opened it, and I was like … New Zealand? Gosh, that’s a bit drastic.”
Restrepo, who had been in private practice for “10 or 11 years”, was exhausted.
Continue reading...Combative president defends his record on coronavirus as Biden calls for far more robust national response
In a split-screen display, US voters heard dramatically different visions from Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his democratic challenger, at dueling town hall-style events on Thursday night, less than three weeks before the election.
Related: Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory during TV debate
Continue reading...Amy Coney Barrett spent most of her time avoiding key questions during three days of Senate hearings to confirm her as a supreme court justice.
Barrett would become the third justice on the court to be appointed by Donald Trump – and her confirmation would give conservatives a bulletproof, six-justice majority on the nine-member court, which decides cases by a simple majority.
Barrett, a conservative Christian who has criticized the high court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA), who has publicly opposed reproductive rights and who was a trustee at a school whose handbook included a stated opposition to same-sex marriage, is seen on the left as part of a power play by Donald Trump
Continue reading...Judiciary committee expected to confirm supreme court justice nomination on 22 October before advancing to full Senate ballot
The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said he has the votes to confirm the nomination of conservative Amy Coney Barrett as a supreme court justice as the upper chamber’s judiciary committee scheduled a vote for 22 October to advance the nomination towards a full Senate ballot shortly after.
Barrett’s progression towards taking up the seat vacated by the death of the liberal favorite Ruth Bader Ginsburg now appears virtually assured, but the unprecedented nomination of a new justice so close to a presidential election – and one who will shift the balance of the court rightward – has been contentious.
Continue reading...With millions of Americans casting their ballots by mail during the pandemic, The Guardian and ProPublica are tracking the votes in critical states to determine how many are counted, rejected and delayed
This piece is published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
An unprecedented number of Americans are voting by mail this year to avoid Covid-19 risk. Joe Biden’s supporters have said they are more likely to vote by mail while Donald Trump’s supporters say they are more likely to vote in person. With postal delays, rejected ballots and a dearth of funding, the process isn’t always smooth – ballots can be rejected for multiple reasons, and due to court challenges, election rules are changing even while voting is underway. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republican officials have spent the last months casting doubt on the mail-in voting process, paving the way for legal battles during the vote count.
Continue reading...Online giants felt forced to take unprecedented action as they struggle with role during divisive presidential battle
Mere hours after the publication of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, both Twitter and Facebook took unprecedented action to restrict distribution of the post.
Facebook, a company spokesman revealed, had immediately begun to “reduce its distribution on our platform”, altering how the company’s recommendation algorithm would normally react to such a viral story in order to buy its third-party fact checkers time to come to a conclusion about its veracity.
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Maggie Miller reports for the Hill this morning on an IT security study that suggests that half of battleground states are facing cybersecurity challenges ahead of the election. She writes:
IT security group SecurityScorecard evaluated and ranked all US states and territories on their overall cybersecurity posture between September and early October, examining state election-related websites, along with network security, information leaks, endpoint security and other cybersecurity issues.
The company awarded 75 percent of all states and territories a “C” rating or below, including traditional swing states such as Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio. Of these, 35 percent were awarded a “D” or below, with North Dakota, Puerto Rico and American Samoa awarded the lowest scores.
Jason Wilson reports for us on how scores of private actors have aided police in militarizing their operations and expanding their surveillance capacities, in a profit-making industry.
Scores of private firms, consultants and non-governmental organizations have provided software, equipment, training and information to law enforcement agencies in a burgeoning profit-making industry, according to documents from the so-called Blueleaks information dump.
The documents show how private actors – from major corporations to small-scale contractors – have aided police in militarizing their operations, expanding their surveillance capacities, and pursuing the so-called “war on drugs”.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:
Hi, Helen Sullivan here. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:
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It could be the most significant election for US foreign policy since 1940, with huge implications for the UK
The British government has a long history of misreading America – from Lord Palmerston expecting the Confederacy to survive the civil war, to Ernie Bevin being shocked that the US would not pay the UK’s postwar bills, to Tony Blair believing in 2003 that he could ride the US military tiger in Iraq and create a democracy.
Few serving or former British diplomats are confidently predicting the outcome of this November’s presidential election, or even whether an increasingly erratic Donald Trump will accept the result as legitimate. The collective delusion about the 2016 election hangs heavy.
Continue reading...Social media platforms move to limit spread of article amid questions over its veracity
Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.
In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.
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