An economic forecast from Moody's indicated that a Biden presidency would create 7 million more jobs compared to a second Trump term.
"The Moody's analysis tells us the Biden plan would result in more jobs, a stronger economy, and higher incomes for the middle class," economics expert Michael Linden said.
Household incomes would also rise nearly $5,000 under Biden, but stay unchanged if Trump is reelected to another term.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's economic agenda would lead to 7 million more jobs created compared to President Donald Trump's, according to a new analysis from Moody's Analytics, a research firm.
The study, conducted by Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros, evaluated the economy's trajectory under four different scenarios. But it found that a Democratic sweep where Biden is elected and Democrats recapture the Senate would lead to a significant increase in federal spending. They assume it would be largely "deficit-financed," meaning the government racks up a bigger federal debt.
The spending, though, wouldn't be a drag on overall growth. Instead, 18.6 million jobs would be created during Biden's first term, and lift the average American's household after-tax income by $4,800. That's 7 million more jobs compared to a scenario where Trump is reelected and Republicans hold onto the Senate. Household incomes largely stay the same should the GOP control both the legislative and executive branches.
Graphic from Moody's Analytics/BEA
"The Moody's analysis tells us the Biden plan would result in more jobs, a stronger economy, and higher incomes for the middle class," Michael Linden, a fellow at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, told Business Insider.
The unemployment rate would drop below 4% in late 2022 in a Biden presidency. Under Trump, that would occur in the first half of 2024 — a 1.5 year difference.
The analysis sought to predict the economy's trajectory under several different scenarios, including a period of divided government. Details around Trump's economic plan are scarce, though he has pledged another round of middle-class tax cuts without elaborating, among other measures to aid wealthy investors.
Linden said increasing federal spending helps prop up the economy during a recession.
"Every dollar of additional government spending in the next couple of years is going to produce more than a dollar's worth of new growth and more economic activity, which creates more jobs," Linden said. "The bang for the buck is massive."
He added that Biden's endorsement of policies such as paid family leave and stronger access to childcare also shores up the number of jobs created in the analysis.
Biden has unveiled an ambitious suite of spending proposals that would generate $4 trillion in new revenue over 10 years. He recently incorporated an overhaul of the child tax credit into his economic platform, which would allow parents with children under 17 years old to receive up to $300 in monthly federal payments next year.
Ryan Murphy's third series for Netflix as part of his massive deal with the streamer, the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" prequel "Ratched," quickly grabbed viewers' attention to become Netflix's most popular series this week.
"Schitt's Creek" also surged in popularity after its Emmys sweep last Sunday, winning all seven of the comedy categories presented during the telecast, including best comedy series, direction, writing, and all four acting awards.
Netflix introduced daily top 10 lists of its most viewed movies and TV shows in February (it counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a title).
Every week, the streaming search engine Reelgood compiles for Business Insider a list of which TV shows have been most prominent on Netflix's daily lists that week.
Below are Netflix's 9 most popular TV shows of the week in the US:
9. "Schitt's Creek" (Pop TV, 2015-2020)
Pop
Description: "Suddenly broke, the formerly filthy-rich Rose family is reduced to living in a ramshackle motel in a town they once bought as a joke: Schitt's Creek."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 92%
What critics said: "With sentimentality and wry humor, Season 6 further homes in on how the siblings' affection for their unlikely home of three years runs parallel to the romances they've found there." — The Atlantic (season 6)
8. "Challenger: The Final Flight" (Netflix original, 2020)
Netflix
Description: "Engineers, officials and the crew members' families provide their perspective on the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and its aftermath."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A
What critics said: N/A
7. "The American Barbecue Showdown" (Netflix original, 2020-present)
Netflix
Description: "Eight of the country's best backyard smokers and pitmasters vie for the title of American Barbecue Champion in a fierce but friendly faceoff."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A
What critics said: N/A
6. "Cocomelon" (Netflix original, 2020-present)
Netflix
Description: "Learn letters, numbers, animal sounds and more with J.J. in this musical series that brings fun times with nursery rhymes for the whole family!"
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A
What critics said: N/A
5. "The Blacklist" (NBC, 2013-present)
Sony Pictures Television/NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Description: "After turning himself in, a brilliant fugitive offers to help the FBI bag other baddies, but only if rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen is his partner."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 91%
What critics said: "Where previous seasons may have asked us to bring something back from the long and winding serialization of Red-and-Lizzie, the premiere of season 6-is working on more of a minute-by-minute recall time." — Entertainment Weekly (season 6)
4. "Away" (Netflix original, 2020-present)
Ray Panthaki and Hilary Swank in "Away."
Diyah Pera/Netflix
Description: "Commander Emma Green leaves behind her husband and daughter to lead an international crew of astronauts on a perilous three-year mission to Mars."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 59%
What critics said: "Away is unapologetically maudlin and manipulative, often playing too much like an old-fashioned drama than a show with anything modern to say." — RogerEbert.com (season 1)
3. "Cobra Kai" (Netflix original, 2018-present)
Netflix
Description: "Decades after the tournament that changed their lives, the rivalry between Johnny and Daniel reignites in this sequel to the 'Karate Kid' films."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 94%
What critics said: "The series remains entertaining despite its flaws, and fortunately it has a hero that negotiates this disconnect between retro mindset and contemporary consciousness." — Indiewire (season 2)
Description: "Six teens invited to attend a state-of-the-art adventure camp on Isla Nublar must band together to survive when the dinosaurs break out of captivity."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A
What critics said: N/A
1. "Ratched" (Netflix original, 2020)
Netflix
Description: "In 1947, Mildred Ratched begins working as a nurse at a leading psychiatric hospital. But beneath her stylish exterior lurks a growing darkness."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 60%
What critics said: "No longer a chilling avatar of implacable, self-satisfied state violence who needs no reason to exist other than that the system will always find people like her to keep running, Nurse Ratched is now just another poor, misunderstood antihero." — Slate
A US Marine on the beach during an amphibious exercise in the Philippines, October 12, 2019.
US Marine Corps/Cpl. Harrison Rakhshani
The US Marine Corps, like the other military branches, is preparing for a future conflict against an adversary with similar capabilities.
That kind of conflict is rare, but it would bring with it a level of casualties that the US public has not had to face in decades, the Marine Corps' top general said this week.
The US public is not used to the heavy casualties that are likely in a future conflict between similarly powerful forces, the Marine Corps' top general said this week.
The Corps, like other military branches, is reorienting to face a rival with comparable capabilities — namely Russia or China — in an era of renewed great-power competition.
Such a fight would mean heavy combat losses, which has its own deterrent effect, Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said at a Defense One event Thursday.
"We're not resigned to high casualties, but we should not think that in a great power competition it's going to be clean," Berger said in response to a question comparing a future conflict in Asia to World War II.
In a scenario where both adversaries are "pretty strong," neither would look for "head-on-head" conflict but rather seek out the other's weaknesses, Berger said.
US Marines train in an urban terrain complex during an amphibious exercise in Thailand, February 28, 2020.
US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Hannah Hall
History suggests a direct clash between nuclear powers is unlikely. The US, Russia, and China have fought numerous proxy conflicts, but the only nuclear-armed states to go to war with each other are India and Pakistan, who share a disputed border and antipathy dating to their traumatic founding.
But there is still a risk, Berger said. "Great power competition, as does counterinsurgency, comes with casualties if it comes to a scrap."
Berger is just the most recent senior officer to make such a warning.
In his first major strategic document, published this month, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said the US has had "a historically-anomalous period of dominance" in the air since the first Gulf War.
Brown cautioned that future airmen "must be prepared" for "combat attrition rates ... more akin to the World War II era."
Air losses in World War II were heavy. Between 1942 and 1945, more than 26,000 members of the Eighth Air Force were killed over Europe. About 7,000 US troops have been killed in the post-September 11 wars in the Middle East. (Direct deaths of combatants and civilians in those wars are close to 800,000.)
"We haven't had that kind of high number of casualties in a long while," Berger said Thursday. "The public is not sensitized to that today, on either side. Hence ... neither side wants that kind of a conventional force-on-force fight ... that doesn't work to your advantage."
Soft spots
A US Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey over Wake Island, May 22, 2019.
US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Dalton S. Swanbeck
Berger has pursued a force redesign to make the Marines lighter, more mobile, and better suited to operate in small units on islands across the Pacific.
That has meant a number of dramatic changes, like getting rid of "big, heavy things" like tanks and artillery, cutting aviation units, and reducing overall force size.
"We have to distribute the forces, first of all, to give the adversary a lot of looks from a lot of different directions in every single domain," Berger said Thursday. By presenting "a lot of different looks," he added, "you make it very difficult for them to focus their strengths."
That distribution can mitigate casualties, but Berger emphasized the overarching operational goal: deterrence.
"It's a distributed way of fighting and maneuvering so that you can put the enemy in a dilemma, and he says 'OK, it's not worth it today.'"
US Marines conduct medical evacuation drills during an exercise Bulgaria, August 2, 2018.
US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Angel D. Travis
Berger has noted the logistical challenges of a dispersed conflict, which the service hasn't faced decades. Similarly, medical care will be a greater challenge over those distances, he said Thursday.
The Corps has the "mechanics" needed to deal with combat casualties, but Marines also have to "sensitize ourselves," Berger said, citing the impracticality of the "golden hour," the period between wounding and reaching appropriate medical care that became the norm in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"That's not reasonable when you're fighting a distributed fight, so that means we have to have a medical capability more forward than we did before," Berger said.
Wounded troops were often able to reach level-three trauma care in that "golden hour," but a distributed fight means that could take "four hours or four days," Berger added. "We have to deliver medical capabilities [and] logistics far forward in a different way than we needed to in Afghanistan or Iraq."
A peer adversary will target that "logistical backside" or any other "soft spot," Berger said. "They will try to put pressure on us in any weak spot that they see. We're going to do the same."
US Marines, Philippine marines, and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force members after an amphibious exercise in the Philippines, October 12, 2019.
US Marine Corps/Cpl. Harrison Rakhshani
The Marine Corps will reexamine where it's postured in the Asia-Pacific region as the service prepares for possible conflict with China, the Corps' top officer said this week.
As the Defense Department assesses where it stages troops worldwide, Marines in the Pacific will "have to spread out," Gen. David Berger said.
The Marine Corps will reexamine where it's postured in the Asia-Pacific region as the service prepares for possible conflict with China, the commandant said this week.
Tens of thousands of Marines are based in California, Hawaii and Japan — "pointed like an arrow" at the Korean Peninsula, Commandant Gen. David Berger said Wednesday. It's a layout that leaders put in place at the end of World War II and has been successful for decades, he said.
Looking ahead 10 years from now, though, "it's not a great posture for the joint force," Berger said.
"We need to relook at [it] for the Marines," he said at the annual Modern Day Marine event, which was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
South Korean marines, in blue headbands and US Marines during amphibious landing drill in Pohang, South Korea, March 12, 2016.
Thomson Reuters
US troops in the Asia-Pacific region are still based largely where they were 30 or 40 years ago — in Japan and on the Korean peninsula. As the Defense Department assesses where it stages troops worldwide, Berger said Marines in the Pacific "have to spread out."
"We have to factor in Guam," he said. "We have to have a dispersed distributed force laydown in the Pacific that allows us to work with all the allies and partners in the region — and deter countries, like [China's] People's Liberation Army Navy, from asserting themselves in a manner that that tries to rewrite all of the global ... norms that have been well established for 50, 60, 70 years."
The Marine Corps is undergoing a service-wide redesign that will shed personnel and heavy equipment and refocus the force for possible island-hopping missions in the Pacific. The plan focuses heavily on naval integration, bringing the Marine Corps back to its roots, in which it'll head ashore from ships after many years of ground conflict in the Middle East.
The Defense Department has been reviewing whether it has the right mix of personnel in each of its global combatant commands as the US competes with sophisticated adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran. Berger said it's likely not only the Marines' positioning in the Pacific that will change, but other branches too.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently visited Palau in the Western Pacific. He was the first defense secretary to visit the country, which includes hundreds of islands east of the Philippines. Following the visit, Palau offered to build ports, airfields and bases the US military can use, The Wall Street Journal reported.
US Marines and Australian soldiers during an exercise in Australia, July 6, 2016.
Experts told Military.com last year the US could also be eyeing partnerships in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia or other spots farther from Northeast Asia if the military's presence in the region increases.
The Marine Corps, under the Obama administration's Pacific pivot strategy, began rotating through Australia each year, expanding the service's footprint in the region and working with new partners alongside the Aussies. The service also plans to shift thousands of personnel and dependents from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam in coming years.
Maj. Gen. Paul Rock, with Marine Corps Plans, Policies and Operations' strategy and plans, who recently oversaw the service's installations in the Pacific, discussed Wednesday the challenges and opportunities the Marine Corps faces in the Indo-Pacific region. In a call with reporters, he declined to say whether there are specific countries where the Marine Corps could soon rotate forces or conduct new exercises.
"We live in a very fluid, evolving situation in the Western Pacific," Rock said. "Fortunately, China's doing a lot of the work for us as far as driving people our way with their behavior. So, opportunities are being presented to do more, closer work with a variety of countries."
The "ironclad alliances" the US has with the Australians, Japanese and South Koreans will remain important to what the Marine Corps is doing in the Pacific, he added.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump both spoke about the Jacob Blake police shooting and resulting protests on August 31, 2020.
REUTERS/Leah Millis; REUTERS/Alan Freed; Insider
Joe Biden has compared President Donald Trump to Joseph Goebbels, who masterminded Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine.
"You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge" Biden explained.
The former vice president also compared Trump to Fidel Castro.
The Republican Jewish Coalition called on the former vice president to retract and apologize for his comments.
Donald Trump is like the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Joe Biden has said, as he accused the president of deliberately spreading lies about him on the campaign trail.
The Democratic presidential nominee told MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle that the president was "sort of like Goebbels," referring to Hitler's propaganda machine's mastermind.
"You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge," he explained in reference to Trump's attempts to paint him as a socialist.
The former vice president said that Trump was attempting to distract voters from his failings, adding that the president himself had similarities with Fidel Castro.
"I think people see very clearly the difference between me and Donald Trump," Biden said in comments reported by Politico.
"Trump is clearing protests in front of the White House that are peaceful, you know, with the military. This guy is more Castro than Churchill."
The Republican Jewish Coalition called on Biden to retract his "egregious" comments and apologize.
"The rule in debate is that if your only argument is to call your opponent a Nazi, you have no argument at all. Instead of engaging in a debate on policy, Joe Biden has descended to name-calling and Holocaust references," they said in a statement on Saturday.
"There is no place in political discourse for Holocaust imagery or comparing candidates to Nazis. It's offensive and it demeans the memory of the Holocaust, the suffering of the victims, and the lessons we must learn from that terribly dark chapter of history.
"Joe Biden has been in politics long enough to know this. To diminish the horrors of Goebbels and the Nazis by trying to attack the President with that comparison is, as we say, a shanda. We call on Joe Biden to retract and apologize for that egregious comment."
In a rush following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Democratic candidates and groups across the country raised more than $100 million to boost their chances in November.
Much of the rush of funds was motivated by anger against Senate Majority Leader McConnell's announcement that he will hold a vote on President Trump's nominee to replace Ginsburg, despite the fact that there are only a few weeks between now and the election. The move was a reversal of McConnell's stance when he refused to confirm President Obama's Court nominee in 2016 because the election was too close.
Enraged at McConnell, some Democrats advocated for giving more money to his opponent: former Marine pilot Amy McGrath. As a Kentuckian, and a progressive, I share the desire to push back against McConnell. But there are better ways to prevent him from being Majority Leader come January than pouring tens of millions of dollars into McGrath's campaign — which is almost certainly doomed to fail.
A huge war chest, but not built in Kentucky
In recent weeks, like many other registered Democrats in Kentucky, I received multiple phone calls, text messages, and postcards from the McGrath campaign and those supporting her. As someone that has phone banked in the past, and plans to vote for her, I wasn't annoyed by the calls, but I was surprised where they were coming from. Area codes from New York, Connecticut, and California, rather than Kentucky. This is part of a pattern.
McGrath has raised a record-breaking $46 million (and counting) for her senatorial campaign, but more than 95% of that money is not from the Bluegrass State. The Center for Responsive Politics has found that McGrath raised more money from the New York City, Los Angeles, DC, and Boston metro areas individually than from the state that she's running in.
To be clear: this isn't disqualifying. Her opponent, Republican six-term incumbent, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has similarly raised more than 90% of his campaign funds from out of state. Both campaigns recently reported having more than $16 million cash on hand. And in a state with cheap media markets, neither one needs much more for the remaining five weeks between now and the election.
Ironically, by throwing insane amounts of money into her campaign, national Democrats have actually made it more difficult for McGrath to win. In one of the reddest states in the country, her best shot at succeeding is by winning over conservatives. This would require her saying things that are not popular with Democrats in California, New York, and other blue states.
For example, McGrath announcing her support for the Kavanaugh nomination was probably a savvy political decision. But within 36 hours, national forces pressured her to reverse course. If her donors from out of state actually wanted to beat McConnell, they needed to give McGrath more wiggle room to reflect the political landscape of Kentucky.
A long shot
In 2016, Trump won 62.5% of the vote in Kentucky. The state leaned almost 32 points more Republican than the nation. So even if Joe Biden won the election in a landslide this November, winning by 10%, for example, Kentucky would be still expected to vote by Trump with a margin greater than 20 points. Therefore, for McGrath to win, even with a Biden wave, she would need roughly one in every six Trump voters to cast their ballot for her
Today, there are only 11 senators that represent a state (including independents that caucus with Democrats) that their respective party did not win in the 2016 Presidential election. And that number looks bound to drop even further in 2020.
No state that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 sent a Democrat to the US Senate; the same is true in states that Hillary Clinton won. This hasn't always been the case (as recently as 2000, the ticket splitting rate was closer to 30%). But in today's hyper-polarized climate, the likelihood of McGrath being able to win a Senate seat in Kentucky, as Trump carries the state by 20 points, is next to none. According to data site FiveThirtyEight's latest forecast, McGrath has just a 4% shot to beat McConnell in November.
But even without preventing McConnell's reelection, there is hope for ending his tenure as Majority Leader. In fact, the Cook Political Report currently ranks at least 10 Republican US Senate elections as more competitive than Kentucky's (Democrats only need to net gain 4 seats in order to take a majority in the chamber).
And unlike McGrath, many of these nominees are not flush with money. For example, in Georgia, where there are two competitive Senate races, the Democratic candidates (Ossoff and Warnock) combined have raised only about a quarter of McGrath's haul.
Kentuckians, in all likelihood, will need to wait a long time to be represented by a Democrat in the US Senate. But there is no reason for Kentuckians to suffer another two years of a Republican Senate majority that will either enable President Trump or obstruct a President Biden. Democrats cannot afford to misallocate resources this fall and botch their chance at capturing the chamber. I say this as a Kentuckian: please stop giving money to Amy McGrath.
Zachariah Sippy is a student from Lexington, Kentucky. He studies political history and legal philosophy, as an undergraduate at Princeton University. He is currently taking a leave of absence between his sophomore and junior years. He works as an analyst for the Princeton Election Consortium. He also served as the Editorial Chair for The Daily Princetonian.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Harrisburg International Airport in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on September 26, 2020.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
President Donald Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee on Saturday sued to stop North Carolina election officials from enforcing rule changes that could increase the number of ballots counted.
Last week, the state elections board issued new guidance to allow mail-in absentee ballots with deficient information to be fixed without forcing the voter to fill out a new blank ballot.
Under the change, voters who neglect to provide complete information on their envelope about a witness will only have to turn in an affidavit confirming they filled out the original ballot.
President Donald Trump's campaign committee and the Republican National Committee sued Saturday to block North Carolina election officials from enforcing rule changes that could boost the number of ballots counted in the presidential battleground state.
The Republicans' lawsuit claims a new system adopted by the state Board of Elections will allow for absentee ballots to be cast late and without proper witness verification "which invites fraud, coercion, theft, and otherwise illegitimate voting."
The state elections board on Tuesday issued new guidance allowing mail-in absentee ballots with deficient information to be fixed without forcing the voter to fill out a new blank ballot for November's general election.
The change means absentee voters who don't provide complete information on their envelope about a witness who saw them fill out the ballot won't have to complete a new ballot and locate another witness. A voter will just have to turn in an affidavit confirming they filled out the original ballot.
North Carolina is one of eight states with witness and or notary public requirements for absentee ballots, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The Republicans' federal lawsuit claims the state elections board made a partisan "backroom deal" that undermines state lawmakers' "carefully-considered, balanced structure of election laws." The suit claims the board's guidance usurps a law that says a ballot may only be accepted if it has a witness signature on it.
"While touted as allowing greater access to voters during the current pandemic — an objective already addressed in recent months by the General Assembly — the actual effect is to undermine protections that help ensure the upcoming election will be not only safe and accessible but secure, fair, and credible," the suit says.
The GOP lawsuit also accuses the board of trying to override state law in saying that ballots postmarked on or before Election Day can be counted if they are received within nine days of the election instead of the three days prescribed by law.
The state elections board and its chairman, Damon Circosta, are among the defendants named in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs also include two Republican congressmen from North Carolina, U.S. Reps. Greg Murphy and Dan Bishop.
North Carolina and other states expect a major surge in absentee voting for the Nov. 3 election amid the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 1 million voters in North Carolina already had requested an absentee ballot as of Sept. 24 and that nearly 240,00 completed ballots had already been returned, the lawsuit says.
The state elections board's new guidance to county boards means residents won't be forced to start over from scratch in casting votes if a witness fails to sign or provide an address on the envelope containing their absentee ballot. The guidance means that the ballot now won't be considered "spoiled," and the voter will be sent an affidavit to sign to rectify the problem.
Issues with deficient witness information on mail-in ballots have disproportionately affected Black voters. Ballots cast by African Americans account for about 43 percent of those classified as having incomplete witness information, according to state elections data. Yet Black residents account for 16 percent of overall ballots returned.
President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested, without evidence, that former Vice President Joe Biden utilized drugs to enhance previous debate performances.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images; Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that he was "strongly demanding" Democratic nominee Joe Biden take a "Drug Test" either before or after Tuesday's first presidential debate.
"Naturally, I will agree to take one also," the president tweeted. "His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly."
Trump has previously speculated, without evidence, that Biden had taken drugs to improve his performance at the Democratic Party's primary debates.
In 2016, Trump also floated the unfounded accusations that then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had used drugs to improve her performance at a debate.
President Donald Trump on Sunday said is "strongly demanding" the Democratic nominee Joe Biden take a drug test ahead of this week's first presidential debate.
"I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night," Trump tweeted Sunday. "Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???"
The Biden campaign did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on Sunday.
"I think there's probably – possibly – drugs involved," Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. "That's what I hear. I mean, there's possibly drugs. I don't know how you can go from being so bad where you can't even get out a sentence.
"You saw some of those debates with a large number of people on the stage," Trump added. "He was, I mean, I used to say, 'How is it possible that he can go forward?'"
In an August interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump likewise suggested — without evidence — that Biden's debate performance was influenced by drugs and that he would require Biden take a drug test prior to the first debate.
"Nobody thought that he was even going to win," Trump told the conservative news outlet. "Because his debate performances were so bad. Frankly, his best performance was against Bernie. We're going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie."
He added: "It wasn't that he was Winston Churchill because he wasn't, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test because there's no way — you can't do that."
If you had told me two years ago that in September of 2020, I'd be in my apartment, spending 10 hours or more each day doing video conferences on Zoom, I'd have asked what I did to get put under house arrest.
And yet, here I am, mostly quarantined, in a community battling a deadly pandemic while surrounded by devastating wildfires and choking smoke. And I'm running for Congress.
Given the wild circumstances — in the world, the country, the state — people ask me "why" all the time. Why run for Congress? Why subject yourself to the unfair criticism, the constant fundraising? Why step down from a startup you founded and loved to enter the political arena?
My answer is simple: we can't fix politics from outside that arena. The challenges we face require new leadership, and a change in approach.
The problems we face
I grew up in a rural community that struggled to adapt to economic changes. Plants closed, crime grew, schools deteriorated, and people lost hope.
My mom is a conservative who runs a small town store. My late father, a military veteran and the first in our family to go to college, was a liberal and a teacher. Both fought tough battles with cancer and a broken healthcare system.
Politics was something we discussed at the dinner table because it mattered in our lives. We didn't get hung up on the spectacle or on partisan differences. Above all, we believed in the system and in the American Dream. I was taught to work hard, to accept personal responsibility, to give back to the community.
At the business I started, Topia, we were doing well and doing good: we created new solutions to help companies adapt to changes in the way people work, and even before the pandemic, made it easier for employees to work from anywhere and create more prosperity outside of coastal cities. Our mission--years before COVID-19--was to enable people to work from anywhere, to have the flexibility to take care of a child or elderly parent, to live in more affordable places, or to work on the go.
As our solutions gained traction, I talked to members of Congress and other lawmakers about the policy implications, and how the government could be more responsive—on everything from STEM education and universal broadband, to tax and regulatory policy.
What I saw in Washington appalled me. I knew we were polarized, but I had no idea that partisanship and pettiness consumed almost everything. Members of Congress in both parties agreed with the ideas but had to check with party leaders to make sure they could support them. Politicians wouldn't even sit down with folks from the other party. And very few understood that while they were fiddling and fighting, the world was changing—profoundly.
In business, I was told "groupthink" was the enemy, that you always want to surround yourself with a diversity of viewpoints, backgrounds and opinions. In Washington, "groupthink" seems to be a way of life. The more I saw, the more I thought: we can't go on like this.
The question became not just: what are we going to do about it? It was also: what am I going to do about it? That's why I've decided that I had to jump in and offer a different perspective—a middle class millennial, a businesswoman, and someone committed to bringing people together and getting things done.
How to fix them
Since I announced my candidacy, the historic health, economic, and environmental crises we face have only strengthened my view that the perspective of a problem-solver and consensus-builder is sorely needed.
Look at where we are:
No COVID relief package even as schools are struggling to safely reopen,people need to get back to work and states and localities are having trouble funding basic services like public safety,
No new aid to small business—the lifeblood of our economy—which is facing the greatest crisis since the Great Depression,
No national strategy on masks and PPE so that we can not only safely re-open—but sustain it,
No plan to train and equip people for the more mobile economy that COVID has accelerated, or to build the physical and digital infrastructure we need to support job growth in this new environment,
No aggressive federal plan to manage our public lands, our energy system, or the fire-prone urban-wildland interface that is destroying communities across the West in real time.
This is unacceptable. It has to change. When I'm in Congress I will work to bring people together to support real COVID relief for our workers and small businesses, aid for our state and local governments to fund schools and first responders, and a national strategy to reopen better than before — with training to prepare our workers for high paying jobs, the broadband and transportation infrastructure our economy needs, and a plan to protect our forests and communities.
That's why I'm in my apartment all day on Zoom calls, making my case, and asking everybody I've ever met for their support.
I hope not just to win but to inspire others to run—even if you're a different age, or in a different party, or from a different background. If you are tired of toxic partisanship and brain-dead politics, I'm rooting for you.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said in an ABC News interview Sunday that Democrats can slow down the Supreme Court nomination but "can't stop the outcome."
President Donald Trump nominated conservative Amy Coney Barrett to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
If nominated, Barrett would give the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative majority, shifting the court's ideological balance more to the right.
Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday that Democrats won't be able to prevent the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick.
"We can slow it down perhaps a matter of hours, maybe days at the most, but we can't stop the outcome," Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said in an interview on ABC's "This Week."
Barrett, if nominated, would give the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative majority, shifting the court's ideological balance more to the right.
Interest groups and high-profile lawmakers have urged Congress to delay the nomination, arguing that the nominee should be chosen after the presidential election in November. Meanwhile, Republicans have been eager to push Barrett through, with Sen. Mitch McConnell vowing that "President Trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate floor."
At least two Republican lawmakers — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — so far have indicated that they support waiting until after the election to fill the seat.
"If two others decide over the course of the debate to stand up and take the same position, then we can have a different timing, perhaps a different outcome," Durbin said Sunday.
Supreme Court justices must be confirmed to the bench by the Senate, according to the United States Constitution. Republicans, with 53 seats in the Senate, form the majority of the upper chamber of Congress.
Joe Biden holds a sizable but steady lead over President Trump in the 2020 election, according to two national polls released on Sunday.
Among likely voters, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Biden leading Trump 49%-41%, while a Washington Post/ABC Poll found Biden ahead 54%-44%.
Both polls show majority support for the winner of the election to nominate a successor to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Both polls also reveal a wide gender gap, with Biden performing extremely well with women while Trump leads the male vote.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden maintains a sizable but steady lead over President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, according to two national polls released on Sunday.
The Times/Siena College poll, with a 3.5% margin of error and conducted from Sept. 22-24, after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, revealed that voters would prefer the winner of the presidential election to choose Ginsburg's replacement by a 56%-41% margin.
On Saturday, President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative 48-year-old judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, to replace Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Democrats are firmly opposed to the pick, not only because they fear that the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights would be a risk with a Barrett appointment, but they're still seething over the refusal of Senate Republicans to consider Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court in 2016, a presidential election year.
"More striking, the voters Mr. Trump and endangered Senate Republicans must reclaim to close the gap in the polls are even more opposed to a hasty pick: 62 percent of women, 63 percent of independents and 60 percent of college-educated white voters said they wanted the winner of the campaign to fill the seat," The Times reported.
Some other key findings from the Times/Siena College poll:
Sixty percent (60%) of voters said abortion "should be legal all or some of the time," compared to 33% who want to ban or severely curtail the procedure.
Biden and Trump are both tied with men at 45%, but Biden has a 16% lead with women (53%-37%).
Biden has a narrow lead (48%-45%) with seniors over 65, a group that Democrats haven't won in a presidential election since Al Gore in 2000.
The Washington Post/ABC poll, with a 3.5% margin of error and conducted from Sept. 21-24, showed a massive gender gap which would likely be historic if the results hold true on Election Day.
"Trump has a lead of 55 percent to 42 percent among male likely voters, but Biden has an even larger 65 percent to 34 percent advantage among female likely voters," the Post reported. "Trump's lead among men is about the same as his margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Biden's lead among women is more than twice as large as Clinton's was then."
Some other key findings from the Washington Post/ABC poll:
A clear majority of voters (57%) believe the winner of the presidential election should fill Ginsburg's seat, with 38% saying that Trump should nominate a new justice.
Roughly 70% of Biden supporters feel that a Trump reelection would represent a crisis, opposed to 59% of Trump voters who feel the same way about Biden.
Trump is still seen positively when it comes to the economy, with 52% of likely voters approving of his performance on the issue.
President Donald Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka Trump, talks with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, at the Oval Office in the White House on April 24, 2017.
Susan Walsh/AP Photo
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins will be in space during the upcoming general election, but won't let that stop her from voting.
"We consider it an honor to be able to vote from space, and so we fill out a form and we vote via absentee ballot," she told the Associated Press.
Texas, where most US astronauts live, allows them to vote via a secure electronic ballot, which, once completed, is forwarded to the country clerk by Mission Control.
"I think it's really important for everybody to vote, and if we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground too," Rubins told AP.
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins plans to vote from space during the upcoming general election.
Rubins told The Associated Press on Friday that astronauts cast votes from the orbit because they "feel that it's very important."
"It's critical to participate in our democracy," she said. "We consider it an honor to be able to vote from space, and so we fill out a form and we vote via absentee ballot, and I plan on doing that in November."
Rubins is in Star City, Russia, the AP reported, where she is getting ready for a mid-October launch to the International Space Station. She will spend six months there.
Most American astronauts live in Houston, Texas, the AP said. The state's law permits them to use a secure electronic ballot to cast a vote, which Mission Control sends to the county clerk, once it's completed.
"I think it's really important for everybody to vote, and if we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground too," Rubins said.
Rubins and her fellow astronaut Shane Kimbrough voted from space during the 2016 presidential election, per AP.
The travel industry has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Even as stay-at-home orders are lifted, travel activity remains at depressed levels with people continuing to worry about safety and opting to stay put.
In August, Booking Holdings — which owns Kayak, Booking.com, Priceline, Rentalcars.com, OpenTable, and Agoda — reported that gross bookings fell by 91% in the second quarter. Revenue additionally fell 84% from the same period last year to $630 million.
Glenn Fogel, the company's CEO, has worked at Booking Holdings in various capacities for almost 21 years.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, he said looking at how travel fared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is "a good analogy for today."
"Each crisis, when you're in the middle of it, you're at first afraid that travel is never going to come back. Is this going to be something that's going to go on forever? And when will it stop? But after you've been through a few of these, you realize it's always going to come back," he said.
He lived in Manhattan at the time of 9/11 and remembers some people uttering they would never get on a plane again.
"But it wasn't that long before people started traveling again. Yes, there were changes. The security was much stronger," he said.
Airlines including Delta and JetBlue are currently blocking out the middle seat to allow for social distancing on flights. An August survey found that travelers are willing to pay as much as 17% more to fly with an airline that is blocking out middle seats.
Airlines are also requiring passengers to wear masks on planes, and airports have signs reminding people to stay six feet apart from each other.
Meanwhile, hotels are advertising their revamped cleaning protocols to entice travelers to book a stay. Hilton, for example, partnered with Lysol maker RB and the Mayo Clinic to come up with a new set of procedures amid the pandemic.
Today, Fogel is hopeful that more protections and technology will be rolled out so that people feel safer traveling.
"I think people just have an innate desire to travel," Fogel said. "We're gonna take a little bit of time, but I assure you travel in a few years will be bigger than it was before this terrible epidemic."
Six years ago, Jen Glantz took the idea of being a bridesmaid for strangers and made it a reality.
Jen Glantz
After being a bridesmaid for many friends, Jen Glantz wondered if she could turn the role into a paying job.
She posted an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone would want to hire a professional bridesmaid, and after receiving hundreds of interested emails, Glantz decided to make her idea a reality.
First, she identified the main requests from her clients and strategized what services she could offer that would be beneficial to brides in need.
She built a website, and worked her first handful of weddings as case studies.
Since starting the business over six years ago, Glantz has worked with hundreds of clients and continually finds ways to optimize and improve her services.
I first got the idea to start a company called Bridesmaid for Hire after I'd been a bridesmaid at over a dozen of my friend's weddings. One night, two distant friends called me up and asked me to be their bridesmaid, and I thought to myself, " Jen! You hardly speak to these people. This should be a job! You should get paid."
I acted on that idea shortly after, posting an ad on Craigslist offering my services to strangers as their hired bridesmaid for the day. I knew the idea was worthy of a full business plan because so many people vented about how their friends just couldn't be the support system they needed on their wedding day. Other people said they didn't have a lineup of people to pick from them, and had to ask distant relatives or friends they hadn't spoken to in years.
After I started the business, so many people told me they thought of this idea years ago, but never acted on it. And while having a business idea is great, it doesn't mean much if you don't act on it. I did, and turned my idea into a business that's serviced hundreds of clients over the years. Here's the five steps I took.
First, I tested the idea with an audience
Once the idea popped into my head, I acted instantly. I knew if I asked people in my life what they thought about me starting a business where strangers could hire me to be their bridesmaid, they'd probably laugh or completely dismiss it. But they weren't my target audience.
So I went to a place where a lot of people go to look and search for things — Craigslist. I posted an ad there offering my services as a professional bridesmaid. I hoped the ad would tell me if there was general interest in this idea, and also the reason behind the interest. I posted the ad and got hundreds of emails from potential customers who wanted to hire me. This helped me validate the idea and then start designing a business model.
I now had to identify the 'why' behind the problem
I went through the hundreds of emails I received, started to read through the problems and reasons behind why these people wanted to hire me, and began to notice common things.
People wanted to hire me because they had friends who were filled with drama or had complicated, busy lives. People wanted to hire me because they didn't have close friends anymore, but craved a support system for their wedding. People wanted to hire me to have an unbiased person to vent to and provide advice along the way. After identifying these buckets of problems, I was able to create my initial package offerings to attract customers based on their specific needs.
Next, I built the infrastructure for my business
Within days of the ad getting a lot of traction, I built a website, shared package details, and gave people an opportunity to reach out to me if they were interested. This allowed me to establish a brand for the business, build credibility, and give the idea a home.
I was able to educate potential customers, share details of what to expect using a brand new service that never existed, and even allowed them to learn more about me as the business owner and service provider. Doing this allowed me to put the idea into motion and legitimize the business quickly.
I launched with a few test weddings
I booked my first five weddings in less than a week after posting the Craigslist ad. They were all paying customers, but I used their weddings as case studies to help me understand how to improve my business. They taught me what details I needed to add into customer contracts before we worked together, how to restructure my pricing to account for pre-wedding phone calls and meetings, and more. These test weddings allowed me to get mistakes out of the way and improve the business fast.
I continued to optimize and improve over the first year
To make sure the business continued to grow and be successful, I had to innovate a lot during the first year. Within months of launching, I added new packages (virtual bridesmaid and packages for maids-of-honor) and hired people to help me work the influx of weddings that were coming in. Keeping a growth mindset allowed my business to grow and scale fast.
The best businesses start off with an idea you can't forget about. But what makes one person take the idea and run away with it first is a strong passion, a tight strategy, and the determination to not let rejection or failure stop them.
Charles Koch, head of Koch Industries, is seen in a February 26, 2007 file photograph.
Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group backed by billionaire Charles Koch is campaigning in support of President Trump's new nominee to the Supreme Court, the group said in a press release.
The "significant national ad campaign" will focus on 11 key states after Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett just one week after liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death set off concerns among some lawmakers, who called for Congress to delay a vote on Trump's pick.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a political advocacy group backed by billionaire Charles Koch, is campaigning to support President Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, the group said in a press release Saturday.
"[AFP] today commended President Trump for nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court," the group said in the release, adding that it "now commits the full weight of its permanent grassroots infrastructure to drive her confirmation to the high court."
AFP said it will launch its campaign with "several waves of targeted direct-mail, layered digital, and other tactics to follow in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia."
The group said in addition to its grassroots efforts, it had set up a website for constituents to contact their senators in those key states after advocacy groups and congressional lawmakers called for Congress to hold off on or delay a nomination from Trump.
Trump's nomination announcement on Saturday came one week after liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death and reports detailing her dying wish as dictated to her granddaughter, that her Supreme Court seat remains vacant "until a new president is installed."
This campaign is the latest in the group's history of rallying Trump's supreme court nominations that includes efforts backing Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.
US President Donald Trump attends meeting in the Oval Office on June 24, 2020.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that it will be "a big WIN" for the US if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
"Obamacare will be replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative if it is terminated in the Supreme Court," he wrote, less than a day after nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Democrats condemned Trump's message with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeting that the president had all but admitted that he plans to invalidate Obamacare.
"She will be the vote that takes away health care for millions of Americans, including 130 million people and counting with pre-existing conditions," Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow told Fox News about Barrett.
President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday that it will be a victory for the United States if the Supreme Court dismantles the Affordable Care Act.
"Obamacare will be replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative if it is terminated in the Supreme Court. Would be a big WIN for the USA!" he wrote.
This comes less than a day after the president nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, died on Sept. 18.
Barrett, a deeply conservative judge, has in the past spoken out against the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — which was signed into law by President Barack Obama.
In 2017, she criticized Chief Justice John Roberts, writing that he "pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute."
She continued: "He construed the penalty imposed on those without health insurance as a tax, which permitted him to sustain the statute as a valid exercise of the taxing power; had he treated the payment as the statute did — as a penalty — he would have had to invalidate the statute as lying beyond Congress's commerce power."
Trump's tweet on Sunday drew widespread backlash from Democrats.
"It's no mystery about what's happening here: President Trump is trying to throw out the Affordable Care Act," Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said. "He's been trying to do it for the last four years. The Republican Party has been trying to eliminate it for a decade."
Biden rebuked Trump for trying to push through the nomination and installation of a Supreme Court justice while a presidential election is underway. "It defies every precedent, every expectation of a nation where the people ... are sovereign and the rule of law reigns," he said.
Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for eight months in 2016, Biden said, adding, "Now, all of a sudden, this administration believes they've found a loophole in the tragedy of Justice Ginsburg's death ... All that does matter is that they see an opportunity to overturn the Affordable Care Act."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seconded the sentiment.
"President Trump just admitted his nominee will strike down the Affordable Care Act," he wrote on Twitter.
Schumer also held a news conference where he said, "A vote for Coney Barrett is a vote to strip away healthcare from over a hundred million Americans."
The New York senators also told reporters that he doesn't plan to meet Barrett "because I believe, first, that the whole process has been illegitimate and, second, because she has already stated that she is for overturning the ACA."
Meanwhile, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Barrett's confirmation will deal a devastating blow to American people with preexisting medical conditions.
"What I am concerned about is anyone that President Trump would have appointed is there to undo the Affordable Care Act. That is why he's in such a hurry," Pelosi said.
On "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, said that Barrett's stance on the Affordable Care Act is evident and has the potential to strip millions of necessary health insurance in the midst of a pandemic, the Hill reported.
"It's very clear from her writings, multiple writings, that she will be the vote that takes away health care for millions of Americans, including 130 million people and counting with pre-existing conditions, and of course those are going up every day because of the health pandemic," Stabenow said.
Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, expressed concern on NBC's "Meet the Press" because "what ... President Trump's nominee has put up is that she will tear down the Affordable Care Act," he said, according to the Hill.
Booker added: "This is part of his litmus test, and, unfortunately, Americans are about to see a Supreme Court that's going to turn against a law that has provided really basic protections that the majority of Americans really want, so this is about high stakes."
And Rep. Frank Pallone, also of New Jersey, tweeted that Trump and Barrett are poised "to destroy our health care."
Senate Republicans plan to begin Barrett's confirmation proceedings on Oct. 12, with the goal of having her on the bench by Election Day on Nov. 3. A week later, on Nov. 10, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a challenge to the constitutionality of Obamacare.
Amy Coney Barrett has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 2017.
After a week of reports cast Coney Barrett as the favorite to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Donald Trump on September 26 announced her as his nominee for the seat.
She was previously considered by President Trump to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Justice Anthony Kennedy and filled eventually by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Barrett previously clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court.
Justice Ginsburg died September 18 at age 87 due to complications from cancer. Shortly after the news broke of her death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in a statement that whoever Trump nominates to replace her will receive a vote on the Senate floor.
Trump previously nominated two men: Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the court, but said after Ginsburg's death his nominee to replace her would be a woman.
Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic and a favored pick of social conservatives, is a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School and was nominated and confirmed to serve on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2017.
She and her husband have seven children, two of whom are adopted. Coney Barrett visited the White House on Monday, September 21, as CNN reported that while Trump's thinking was still evolving, Coney Barrett was his "overwhelming favorite."
And at age 48, Coney Barrett would serve on the high court for decades to come if nominated and confirmed. Here's what you need to know about her:
Coney Barrett's early life and education:
Coney Barrett is originally from Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, where she attended St. Mary's Dominican High School. She later went on to receive a bachelor's degree in English from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee in 1994 and earned her JD from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1997, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Who she clerked for
Coney Barrett served in clerkships for Judge Laurence Silberman of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for former Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court. Coney Barrett was one of Scalia's favorite clerks, and largely embodies his judicial philosophy of textualism, The New York Times reported.
Her positions
Previously an associate at law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larocca, and Lewin in Washington, DC
Appointed by Trump and confirmed by the US Senate to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago in 2017.
Consideration for Kennedy Supreme Court seat
Barrett had been in the top four candidates under consideration by the president to fill the seat opened by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, which was later filled by current Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In July 2019, Jonathan Swan and Sam Baker at Axios reported that Trump had told several people "I'm saving her for Ginsburg," of Coney Barrett, implying that in the event of a vacancy, she would be an immediate contender.
For the Kennedy seat, some analysts believed Barrett's staked-out positions on abortion would make it difficult for a number of key Republican senators, specifically Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to support her.
Rulings and writings on abortion
A devout Catholic, Barrett has been on the bench for a short time, but she's written extensively on the subject of abortion in her career, which would likely become a lightning-rod issue in her confirmation proceedings if she were nominated to the high court.
In a law review article published in 1998 that Barrett wrote while a third-year law student, she and a co-author argued Catholic judges should be allowed to recuse themselves from certain cases involving abortion or the death penalty.
"Would I or could I say, sitting here today, that that article and its every particular reflects how I think about these questions today with, as you say, the benefit of 20 years of experience and also the ability to speak solely in my own voice? No, it would not," she said.
Barrett has also said she believes it highly unlikely for the landmark case Roe v. Wade to be overturned, but doesn't see it as a "super-precedent" case, like Marbury v. Madison, that no court would ever overturn.
She advocated in a 2013 law review article for a more "flexible" application of stare decisis, or the principle of respecting precedent in court cases. Those writings combined with her personal belief that life begins at conception had some critics concerned about what her presence on the court could mean for future abortion rights cases when she was floated for Kennedy's seat in 2018.
In her time on the 7th Circuit, Coney Barrett has voted in favor of re-hearing challenges to two abortion-related laws: a case challenging parental consent laws for minors seeking an abortion, and a case over an Indiana law that barred abortions for sex or disability and required the burial of fetal remains, Reuters and the Washington Post noted.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden gives a speech on the Supreme Court in Wilmington, Del., on Sept. 27, 2020.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Joe Biden on Sunday made a plea to Senate Republicans to hold off on voting for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, and wait for the results of the November election.
Biden said that Republicans should respect the will of American citizens, who have already started voting and returning ballots.
"I urge the American people to keep voting and let your current senators know that you want to be heard before the vote on confirmation of a new justice," he said.
Biden has made healthcare a pillar of his argument against voting for Barrett's nomination.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sunday asked for the Senate to hold off on voting for President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and wait for the results of the November general election.
Biden, speaking from the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, appealed to Republican Senators in asking that they respect the will of the voters and allow them to participate in the process.
"If we're going to call ourselves a democracy, their voices must be heard," Biden said. "I urge the American people to keep voting and let your current senators know that you want to be heard before the vote on confirmation of a new justice. I urge every senator to take a step back from the brink."
Biden's comments came after days Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death set off a political fight among congressional lawmakers over Trump's intention to nominate a replacement before the election.
Top Democrats suggested extraordinary action might be taken to block a nomination after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that Trump's nominee would receive a vote on the Senate floor, breaking with his previously described reasoning for blocking President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016.
Biden encouraged lawmakers to "take off the blinders of politics for just one critical moment and stand up for the Constitution that you swore to uphold."
He continued, saying that "Just because you have the power to do something doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to do right by the American people."
Biden reiterated that Trump should proceed with the Barrett nomination if he is reelected to a second term, but should withdraw Barrett's name if he loses the election.
When asked about possibly expanding the Supreme Court, Biden demurred, saying that he wasn't going to make that issue "the headline" of his comments and instead emphasized the importance of protections for Americans with preexisting conditions.
"I am focused on one thing — making sure that the American people understand that they're being cut out of this process that they're entitled to be a part of," he said. "The cutout is designed to take away the Affordable Care Act and your health care in the midst of a pandemic."
Biden was then asked what he hoped to accomplish at the first presidential debate on Tuesday.
"Just tell the truth," he said, before walking offstage.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Harrisburg International Airport in Middletown, Pennsylvania on September 26, 2020.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Amid President Donald Trump's opposition to mail-in voting, his campaign for re-election has so far filed lawsuits in several states, including Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nevada, New Jersey, and Montana.
The president's campaign also filed a motion against members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, who are suing the state in an attempt to extend the state's deadline for counting their mailed-in ballots, although a federal judge later denied the campaign's request to join the lawsuit.
Trump has for months opposed state efforts to make it easier for residents to cast their ballot by mail, arguing without evidence that such plans would lead to widespread voter fraud.
Beginning in June, the Trump campaign has taken legal action against several states, including New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Montana, over their plans to more easily allow voters to cast their ballot by mail. The president's campaign similarly attempted to take aim against a group of six members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, who are suing the state to extend the deadline to receive and count mail-in ballots.
The fight over mail-in voting is poised to continue until and likely past Election Day, Politico reported Sunday, as the Trump campaign has hired a "massive legal network" consisting of dozens of attorneys to help support current and potential legal challenges in key battleground states.
Two Iowa judges sides with the Trump campaign in the cases in Linn and Woodbury counties, according to The Hill. About 50,000 people in Linn County will need to request another absentee ballot and at least 14,000 in Woodbury will due to the rulings, according to the report. As The Hill noted, the litigation in Johnson County is ongoing.
The Iowa secretary of state on Friday announced all registered voters would receive an absentee ballot request form sent to their home via USPS, and encouraged any resident who had previously used a pre-filled request form in Linn or Woodbury counties to resubmit using the new forms that were being distributed statewide, according to The Hill.
"Unfortunately, we had a few county auditors who made reckless decisions that have confused voters and possibly disenfranchised them," said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, in a statement. "This mailing from my office will help ensure those Iowans receive ballots and are able to vote."
Nevada
On August 4, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Nevada over its plan to send ballots to every "active registered voter" in the state, CNN reported.
At the beginning of August, the Nevada state legislature passed a bill to reform the state's election process amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill passed along party lines and was signed into law by Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, according to CNN.
According to the report, in addition to automatically sending ballots to voters, the legislation also extends the deadline for when mail-in ballots can be counted. Ballots in Nevada will still be counted so long as they arrive within a week of November 3, according to the report.
The bill — AB 4 — also relaxed previous restrictions for who can is permitted handle ballots on behalf of another person. Republicans have claimed this change could lead to voter fraud, CNN reported.
A federal judge in Nevada dismissed the campaign's lawsuit on September 18, The Nevada Independent reported.
New Jersey
The Trump campaign on August 18 filed a lawsuit against New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, over his executive order to administer the upcoming election mostly by mail.
Earlier in August, Murphy signed an executive order directing active registered voters in the state be sent mail-in ballots, which they had the options of returning via the postal service, placing in secure drop boxes, or delivering to poll workers on Election Day, according to Politico. New Jersey residents who want to cast their vote in-person can cast a provisional ballot at polling places, according to the report.
Lawyers for the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming the governor's order violated both the US Constitution's Electors and Elections Clauses and 14th Amendment. While the campaign lawyers argued only the state legislature had the power to make broad changes to elections and that they could not be made by the governor in an executive order, the New Jersey state legislature last week voted to codify Murphy's order, according to the report.
As Politico noted, the Trump campaign later changed strategy its New Jersey lawsuit, arguing on September 11 that the New Jersey election directly violates both the US Constitution and federal statutes relating to Election Day.
North Carolina
Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee on September 26 sued to stop North Carolina election officials from enforcing rule changes that could increase the number of ballots counted, The Associated Press reported. Last week, the state elections board issued new guidance to allow mail-in absentee ballots with deficient information to be fixed without forcing the voter to fill out a new blank ballot.
Under the change, voters who neglect to provide complete information on their envelope about a witness will only have to turn in an affidavit confirming they filled out the original ballot. Previously, voters would need to fill out an entirely new ballot in order to replace their incomplete ballot.
"While touted as allowing greater access to voters during the current pandemic — an objective already addressed in recent months by the General Assembly — the actual effect is to undermine protections that help ensure the upcoming election will be not only safe and accessible but secure, fair, and credible," the suit says, according to the report.
Montana
The president's campaign and other GOP groups sued the state of Montana on September 2 over Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock's plan to grant counties the decision to run their elections entirely by mail, according to The Associated Press.
The lawsuit targets both Bullock and Corey Stapleton, the state's Republican secretary of state, according to the report.
"This template lawsuit appears to be part of a pattern of lawsuits across the country by Republican Party operatives to limit access to voting during the pandemic," Bullock said in a statement, the AP reported. "Voting by mail in Montana is safe, secure, and was requested by a bipartisan coalition of Montana election officials seeking to reduce the risk of COVID-19 and keep Montanans safe and healthy."
Pennsylvania
In June, the Trump campaign sued Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar in an effort to ban the use drop boxes for mail-in ballots, to disqualify ballots sent in without the proper envelope, and to allow poll watchers to volunteer in counties that they do not live in, as Politico reported.
In August, a federal judge in the state had asked the campaign to provide evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in the state, which it failed to do, according to court documents first obtained by The Guardian. According to Politico, the president's reelection campaign will on Tuesday present findings before the court, just days after the Department of Justice released a "bizarre" statement saying it was investigating "potential issues with mail-in ballots" in the state.
Navajo Nation
On September 3, the Trump campaign filed a motion against a group of six Navajo Nation residents who are suing the state of Arizona, arguing against a state policy requiring mail-in ballots to be received before 7 p.m. on Election Day, NBC News reported. The plaintiffs argued the policy could lead to disenfranchisement among Native American voters, citing USPS delays to the reservation.
But in filing a motion against the lawsuit on Thursday, lawyers for the president's campaign argued their "unwarranted delay in bringing their claims on the eve of a General Election threatens the orderly administration of that election."
On August 26, the six plaintiffs filed their lawsuit Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, requesting the state of Arizona count ballots sent by members of the Navajo Nation postmarked on or before Election Day and received within 10 days, according to the report.
"Plaintiffs seek to create a race and geography-based exception to a long-standing, generally applicable state law that would give certain citizens more time to return their requested early ballots than every other Arizona voter in the upcoming General Election," Brett Johnson, an attorney for the Trump campaign, wrote in the filing, according to NBC News.
A federal judge later denied the Trump administration's request to join the lawsuit, The Hill reported.
An anonymous Facebook executive said conservatives' success on the platform is due to having content that is "always more engaging," according to a Politico report.
Politico reported that the executive, who identifies as a "center-left progressive" said the right's focus on "nation, protection, the other, anger, fear" has always been an effective tactic, pointing to the 1930s.
The comments come as Facebook has been criticized by the right and left for having a political bias, with social media platforms drawing attention from both President Trump and Joe Biden.
An anonymous Facebook executive told Politico that right-wing pages see more engagement because of their emotional pull, instead of the platform's algorithm, according to a report published Friday.
The publication reported that the executive said that "right-wing populism is always more engaging," because of its focus on "nation, protection, the other, anger, fear" — the same dynamic present in the 1930's, the executive told Politico.
"This wasn't invented 15 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook," Politico reported the executive said.
Facebook hasn't responded to a Business Insider request for comment at the time of publication.
The data assessed "engagement" or the total number of likes, comments and shares a post received, prompting Facebook's head of News Feed John Hegeman to respond that a more apt metric would be "reach," or total number of people who saw a link in their news feed. Facebook doesn't publish "reach" numbers, but Hegeman shared data that showed that reach favored more traditional non-partisan outlets.
The anonymous Facebook executive, who identified as "a center-left progressive," said the left's debate about how to engage their supporters is "as old as the hills," and predates the company.
"All center-left campaigners and politicians always ask themselves, 'Why can't [we] seem to rile their supporters as much as right-wing populists have?'" Politico reported the executive said.
In recent months, the tech platform has been intensely criticized by prominent Democrats and Republicans for political bias. During the Democratic presidential primary, former Vice President Joe Biden told the New York Times Editorial Board that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a "real problem."
"He knows better," Biden said.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump spoke with a group of nine state Attorney Generals, Senator Josh Hawley, and Attorney General Bill Bar, about taking "concrete legal steps" to prevent social media platforms from censoring conservative users.
"At the urging of the radical left, these platforms have become intolerant of diverse political views and abusive toward their own users," President Trump said.
Trump singled out Twitter for restricting his own tweets, as the platform has added notices to some of his tweets that contain misinformation about voting.
