President Donald Trump has signed off on a business proposal between TikTok, Walmart and Oracle that would allow the social networking app to continue to operate in the U.S.
One of Trump’s stipulations for approving the deal was a $5 billion commitment from the companies to create an education initiative that teaches children America’s “real history,” the President said.
Trump first mentioned the education fund on Saturday as he left the White House for a campaign rally in North Carolina. “We’re going to be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youth,” Trump told reporters as he announced “conceptually” signing off on the TikTok venture.
“That’ll be great. That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for,” Trump added.
During a campaign speech later that evening, Trump laid out more details surrounding how the proposed education commitment unfolded.
He told the audience in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that when talking with the heads of the companies, he asked them to “do me a favor, could you put up $5 billion into a fund for education, so we can educate people as to real history of our country. The real history, not the fake history.”
The Trump-approved, U.S.-based version of TikTok will employ 25,000 people and likely be headquartered in Texas, the President said.
Trump’s education announcement comes days after he slammed the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project curriculum, which reframes the way American history and slavery is taught in schools.
“The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies. There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project,” Trump said Thursday during a speech at the National Archives in Washington.
He claimed the project rewrites “American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.”
Trump also said he would create a national “1776 commission” to would “promote patriotic education.”
Just looking at the presidential campaign committees themselves, Biden ended August with nearly $181 million on hand to Trump’s $121 million.
Meanwhile, in August, Biden also outspent Trump more than 2-to-1, $130 million to $61 million — a disparity felt most acutely on TV, when the Trump campaign went dark in several key states.
Trump’s TV ad cutback stunned Republicans last month, but campaign manager Bill Stepien has said that he is trying to “carefully manage” the budget of the massive reelection campaign. Despite slashingtelevision spending, Sunday’s Federal Election Commission filings detailing August expenses show that Trump spent just as much as he did in July, with digital advertising shooting up, but an opaque financing structure shielding spending from line-item scrutiny.
Trump began the general election versus Biden with a nine-figure head start over the Democrat, after the former vice president battled through an expensive primary contest while Trump raised money for years in preparation for 2020. Biden’s record-breaking fundraising pace, especially over the last month, has changed everything, while Trump’s campaign is suddenly watching what it spends.
POLITICO dug through the numbers. Here’s what stands out from the presidential campaigns’ latest reports, including what we can tell about where the Trump campaign is spending its money, despite trimming its TV advertising.
One company obscures how most of Trump’s money gets spent
Three-quarters of the cash that the Trump campaign spent last month was directed through American Made Media Consultants LLC, which FEC filings describe as responsible for making and placing the campaign’s TV and digital ads, as well as text message advertising and web development and hosting services.
If the Trump campaign is trying to trim its budget, the biggest place to cut is inside this LLC. But the lump sum, totaling $46.2 million last month, doesn’t shed much light on just how the money was spent because the consultancy can send the money back out to other subcontractors without disclosing them.
Indeed, American Made Media Consultants was the subject of a campaign finance complaint for allegedly being a “pass-through” to vendors and obscuring campaign disbursements. The complaint from the Campaign Legal Center said that by “failing to report payments to the campaign’s true vendors and employees, the Trump campaign and Trump Make America Great Again Committee have violated” campaign finance law.
Brad Parscale, who served as the campaign manager at the time, called the complaint “political theater 100 days out.” The Trump campaign also insisted it’s in full compliance with campaign finance law, saying AMMC “builds efficiencies and saves the campaign money by providing these in-house services that otherwise would be done by outside vendors.”
It’s unclear exactly where the money goes after it hits AMMC’s account, but we know some of the destinations. Federal Communications Commission documents show the Trump campaign uses a media firm called Harris Sikes to place its TV advertising, for example, though the firm’s name doesn’t appear in Trump’s FEC report.
Notably, a number of top campaign officials are not listed as salaried employees in the Trump campaign’s filings in August, including Stepien, the campaign manager, senior adviser Jason Miller and others. But from the outside, it’s unclear what other places might be final destinations for money going to the vendor responsible for most of the Trump campaign’s budget.
Trump outspent on TV …
Last month, the Trump campaign significantly reined in its TV advertising, even going off the air at times in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota. Biden ended up outspending Trump more than 3-to-1 on TV in August, $69.9 million to $18.8 million, according to Advertising Analytics.
The cuts to Trump’s TV spending reflected a growing fear of a cash crunch for the campaign, as Biden caught up in fundraising. But Trump officials have pushed back on the notion that they’re facing financial problems, pointing to a focus on digital and in-person campaigning, among other things.
… but spending big on the web
Trump had the campaign spending edge on two of the biggest digital ad platforms in August.
The Trump campaign spent more than $13 million advertising on Google alone during two weeks in August, including expensive ads on YouTube’s front page to counter-message the Democratic convention, and it totaled $17 million in the month of August. The Trump campaign spent another $4.4 million on ads through the president’s Facebook page in August, according to the digital giants’ political ad disclosures.
Biden spent $10 million on Google and another $1.5 million on Facebook in August. Biden-aligned fundraising committees made up some of the gap, as groups affiliated with Trump and Biden both spent tens of millions more dollars on the platforms prospecting for online donors and attacking the other side.
Facebook and Google are not the only places to buy online political ads, and the Biden campaign’s FEC report showed $28.7 million in digital ad spending, which could also include some ads booked to run in the future. Trump’s FEC report did not include anything approaching Biden’s online ad number from August.
Events restart, driving up campaign costs
The coronavirus pandemic drove in-person campaign events to a near halt over the spring and summer, but in August, Trump picked up his busy rally schedule again, appearing in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. That meant the costs associated with those rallies returned, too.
Trump and the RNC spent a combined $6.8 million directly on events-related expenses, with more on event security and other related charges. The expenses included $640,000 to the National Park Service and $185,000 to the U.S. Treasury. A RNC official said those costs were related to the Republican convention, which was partially held at the White House.
The Biden campaign, which has ramped up its travel in September, spent significantly less than the Trump campaign on events-related expenses in August, totaling just $120,000. The DNC also spent $120,000 on event production and site rentals, a reflection of the party’s mostly virtual convention.
As Biden’s money builds, GOP super PACs get a fundraising edge over Democrats
While the Trump campaign’s fundraising is sagging, super PACs aligned with the president are ramping up — and outraising their Democratic counterparts.
America First Action, the primary pro-Trump outside group, reported raising $22 million in August, surpassing its totals in previous months this year. America First Action’s biggest donor was Texas energy executive Kelcy Warren, who gave $10 million.
That by itself surpassed the August totals for Priorities USA Action, the pro-Biden super PAC, which raked in $8.5 million. Meanwhile, Unite the Country, another pro-Biden super PAC, raised $2.8 million and is sitting on $6.6 million.
Preserve America, another pro-Trump group which began spending early this month, will not report its fundraising figures until next month. But they are expected to be substantial. The group has spent $55 million this month alone, and it is expected to receive funding from GOP megadonors including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Seventh in a series on swing states
How did the home of Barry Goldwater become a swing state? If it flips from red to blue this year, the question — not hard to answer — might be why it didn’t flip sooner. One in 4 voters are non-White, an electorate that’s heavily Democratic here, and a slim majority of voters were college graduates, according to the 2016 exit polls.
Every other state with that profile, every other state with rapid urban growth, has been moving briskly toward Democrats since 2016. By nominating Arizona’s senior senator for president in 2008, and by picking the first-ever Mormon nominee in 2012, Republicans ran stronger here in other states with similar Latino populations and similar urban-rural splits.
“The Arizona electorate is primed for the Democratic Party,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has represented downtown Phoenix in Congress since 2015. “If the Democratic Party is doing well in highly educated, urbanized, suburbanized areas, we’re doing well in Arizona — it’s 80 percent urban and suburban, and the same time, we have a rising young Latino community that is voting Democratic. Just one of those would make the state competitive, but you add them together and we’re seeing a surge.”
Arizona’s shift from 2012 to 2016
Phoenix swung hard left, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the GOP advantage in the state.
Dem. won by
50k votes
GOP won
by 150k
TIE
50k
100k
Tucson
Phoenix
2016
margin
2012
Red East
Red West
Statewide 2016 margin
Democrats narrowly lost the state in 2016, and they won two statewide races in 2018 thanks to a further leftward shift in the once-solidly Republican suburbs of Phoenix.
How Arizona shifted from 2012 to 2016
Phoenix and Tucson swung hard to the left, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the GOP advantage in the state.
Dem. won by
50k votes
GOP won
by 150k
TIE
50k
100k
Tucson
Phoenix
2016
margin
2012
Red East
Red West
Statewide 2016 margin
Democrats narrowly lost the state in 2016, and they won two statewide races in 2018 thanks to a further leftward shift in the once-solidly Republican suburbs of Phoenix.
How Arizona shifted from 2012 to 2016
Phoenix and Tucson swung hard to the left, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Republican advantage in the state.
Dem. won by
50k votes
GOP won
by 150k
TIE
50k
100k
Tucson
Phoenix
2016
margin
2012
Red East
Red West
Statewide 2016 margin
Democrats narrowly lost the state in 2016, and they won two statewide races in 2018 thanks to a further leftward shift in the once-solidly Republican suburbs of Phoenix.
On paper, Republicans can win the presidency without Arizona, but they never have before. The advent of air conditioning transformed Arizona from a collection of small cities and sprawling Native American reservation to a beacon for people — often retirees — fleeing the Midwest. One in 11 Arizonans are military veterans, and for a long time, the suburbs blossoming across Maricopa County gave the GOP an unbeatable advantage in presidential elections.
Always conservative, Arizona’s Republicans moved further to the right since 2008 — and it has cost them. The 2010 passage of S.B. 1070, one of the country’s strictest anti-immigration laws, won votes at first but galvanized the left and the Latino vote. The late senator John McCain faced conservative challengers in his final two campaigns; former senator Jeff Flake retired rather than face likely defeat over his criticism of President Trump.
But the conservatives were losing, too, with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio ousted by voters in 2016 and Republicans ceding a Senate seat and the secretary of state’s office in 2018. The state’s GOP chair, Kelli Ward, made her name as a fringe Senate candidate (“Chemtrail Kelli”). And the state’s Republican legislative majority is seen as vulnerable, both because of the parties’ shifts and because of voter unhappiness with how Gov. Doug Ducey (R) responded to the coronavirus.
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The president has a devoted base in Arizona and made one of his very first campaign stops here, alongside Arpaio, when some media outlets did not take him seriously. Immigration, which has often reshaped politics in the state, has been subsumed by other issues this year, and one Democratic bet is that Trump, who pardoned Arpaio in 2017, has taken the wrong side of the state’s culture wars.
Democrats also look fondly at Arizona for a very 2020 reason: Like Florida, it has a robust early-voting tradition and allows votes to be counted before Election Day. Though it’s one of the last states to close polls Nov. 3, Arizona, like Florida, could offer the first clues to how the election is going, as election officials count early votes before Election Day begins. And it could tell us whether vote patterns are looking more like 2016, when Republicans held enough suburban voters to win, or 2018, when they didn’t.
To understand Arizona, we’ve split it into four political “states.” The biggest by far is Phoenix, or Maricopa County, which casts so much of the state’s vote that a win there usually ends the race. The Tucson area is and has been a stronghold for Democrats, even when they lose statewide. The Red West is the most Republican part of the state; the Red East has big pockets of Democrats, but it has more of the conservative voters the president needs to win.
This is the seventh in a series breaking down the key swing states of 2020, showing how electoral trends played out over the past few years and where the shift in votes really mattered.
Phoenix
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
The modern Republican Party’s strength in Arizona came from Maricopa County. In the past 25 years, its population doubled, and from the start of the century until 2016, no Republican nominee for president won it by fewer than 10 points. In 1948, the last time a Democratic nominee carried the county, the city of Scottsdale didn’t even exist. But even then, Maricopa dominated state politics. It cast 45 percent of Arizona’s votes in 1948; by 2016, it was casting 53 percent.
Nine of Arizona’s biggest cities are here, from deep blue Phoenix and Tempe to deep red Peoria and Surprise. Demographics explain much of the political difference, with White voters making up about three-quarters of the electorate in the reddest cities and less than half of it in Phoenix. By advancing in these suburbs, Democrats have put the whole state in play; in 2018, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema won practically everything here inside the 101 and 202 highway loops. Even Mesa, founded by Mormons and still shaped by their politics, swung to the left.
The result, in 2016, was a collapse in the Republican margin. Mitt Romney came out of Maricopa with a 146,597-vote lead, while Trump won it by 45,467. Polling has found Trump trailing Joe Biden in the county, and losing it by any margin would make it hard for the ticket to win statewide.
2016 vote totals
Counties included: Maricopa
Tucson
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Democrats dominate southeastern Arizona, and in 2016, they carried all but three precincts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their strength here comes from three blue centers: the cities of Tucson and Nogales, and the Tohono O’odham Nation, 4,500 square miles in the middle of Pima County. In 2020, growth and Democratic turnout in Tucson was enough to flip the 2nd Congressional District, which Sen. Martha McSally (R) won twice as a member of Congress — and which former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the wife of this year’s Democratic Senate nominee, won before her.
Tucson, where the University of Arizona has helped grow a year-round liberal political culture, has given Democrats bigger margins every four years. That’s given the party more of a cushion as it competes in the rest of the state. In 2016, Donald Trump got 555 fewer votes in the region than George W. Bush did in his reelection campaign; Hillary Clinton ran 36,314 votes ahead of John F. Kerry.
2016 vote totals
Counties included: Pima, Santa Cruz
Red East
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Before Tucson and Phoenix became party strongholds, Democrats’ strongest vote in Arizona came in the Native American reservations here. The Apache and Navajo nations cover nearly half of the region and contain more than 200,000 Arizonans. Democrats have also added votes in the city of Flagstaff, the biggest population center that isn’t an exurb of Phoenix, where Mormon voters have struggled with aspects of Trump’s personality and presidency.
Still, those exurbs give the region a red hue — Pinal County, which contains those conservative towns down Interstate 10, is the most populous part of Arizona that actually moved toward Trump in 2016. He won more votes in that region than Democrats won in Flagstaff, growing the GOP margin in eastern Arizona from 25,236 votes in 2012 to 32,251 votes in 2016. For every vote Trump picked up here, Democrats picked up seven in Maricopa, and further movement in that direction would let Trump win most of the region while clearly losing the state.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Arizona’s “west coast” is now the most strongly Republican part of the state, with a few small White-majority cities that have exploded in population. Outside the southwestern corner of the state, where the city of Yuma and border town of Somerton represent a sizable, majority-Latino Democratic vote, Republicans carried all but three precincts here in 2016, and the retirees from more liberal states who’ve moved here over the past few decades are just as solid for him today.
The president makes an ideal cultural fit for the region, just as he is in northeastern Pennsylvania or central Wisconsin — pro-gun rights, antiabortion and anti-immigration. The question is how many more votes there are to win. Trump improved on Romney by nearly 20,000 votes here, but Clinton ran 6,000 votes ahead of Barack Obama, running so strong around Yuma that she nearly flipped the county.
“The United States expects all UN Member States to fully comply with their obligations to implement these measures,” Pompeo said in a statement.“In addition to the arms embargo, this includes restrictions such as the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development by Iran, and sanctions on the transfer of nuclear- and missile-related technologies to Iran, among others.”
Pompeo said that if UN Member States don’t back the sanctions, the U.S. “is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.”
“In the coming days, the United States will announce a range of additional measures to strengthen implementation of UN sanctions and hold violators accountable,” Pompeo added.
Other UN members have rejected the idea that the U.S. could reimpose the UN sanctions that had been lifted under the Iran Nuclear Deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018. The UNSC will likely not recognize the snapback sanctions.
Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, said the sanctions were “null and void.”
“US’ illegal & false ‘deadline’ has come and gone.” Ravanchi wrote on Twitter, warning that the U.S. “swimming against int’l currents will only bring it more isolation.”
According to The Guardian Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the sanctions a “false claim” that will not happen.
“The Americans claim that … within a few hours, the resolutions [sanctions] will return. But they themselves realize that this is a false claim,” Zarif reportedly said on a state television network. “The Americans as a rule act as a bully and impose sanction … The world community should decide how to act towards bullying.”
When Christine Baglow moved from New Orleans to South Bend, Indiana, two years ago, she found herself at a dinner party with a woman with a formidable resume: former supreme court clerk, professor at Notre Dame Law School, a judge on the US district court of appeals for the seventh circuit.
The woman was Amy Coney Barrett, and she and Baglow had mutual friends.
The judge came across as “tremendously friendly”, Baglow said. “I found her a very gracious and very thoughtful person. Very kind and authentic.
“I probably had the least degrees or education of anyone at that table, but to be courteously listened to and have my opinion sought, particularly on things related to kids and teens, I thought was very nice.”
Baglow, 49, is director of youth ministry at St Joseph Catholic Church in South Bend, which Barrett and her family attend.
“Not everyone with her level of education responds that way to people and she definitely did,” Baglow said.
Now, as America absorbs news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, amid frenzied speculation over who will replace the liberal justice and when, Barrett’s name has come to the fore.
Donald Trump tweeted that he would select Ginsburg’s replacement “without delay”, then said he would select a woman.
But the presidential election is on 3 November and early voting has started. In a bitterly divided country, Senate Republicans’ rush to fill the supreme court vacancy has become yet another lightning rod. On Sunday, the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, called Trump’s plan to immediately fill Ginsburg’s seat an “abuse of power”.
Barrett has some experience of the storm. She was on Trump’s list of possible nominees in 2018, when he was considering who would replace Anthony Kennedy, a justice who retired. But the president had other plans for Barrett.
“I’m saving her for Ginsburg,” Trump said, according to an Axios report last year.
In Barrett, 48, conservatives see a young, strict constructionist who interprets the constitution through what she thinks its writers intended – a jurist in the mold of Antonin Scalia, the conservative justice (and close friend of Ginsburg), who died in February 2016 and for whom Barrett clerked.
That the devout Catholic mother of seven – she and her husband, Jesse M Barrett, have five biological children and adopted two from Haiti – is seen as a potential successor to Ginsburg has raised concerns among progressives. Many fear that if confirmed on the bench, Barrett would vote to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which safeguards the right to abortion.
Barrett opposes abortion. And she has already fielded questions about her faith and its role in how she views the law.
During a 2017 confirmation hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California commented: “The dogma lives loudly in you.”
Some said the remark was discriminatory against Catholics. But some who know Barrett said the line of questioning went to the heart of what makes her a good candidate for the supreme court, as her responses showed a dispassionate temperament and calm demeanor.
“Some of the senators raised the question of whether her religious convictions might affect the way she interprets the law,” said a colleague, Notre Dame law professor Paolo G Carozza. “I just found it, to be honest, kind of laughable.
“Knowing her as well as I do and having seen the way she operates, the only way in which her religious convictions are going to affect what she does as a judge is that they give her the humility to say, ‘What I do is all about the law and all about interpreting the law and the basic values of upholding the rule of law and the legal system and nothing else.’”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Republicans and Democrats draw battle lines over replacement – video
As Barrett’s star has risen, the media and Democrats’ focus on her views on abortion has frustrated others in the Notre Dame community. Former student Alex Blair, now an attorney at the Chicago firm Segal McCambridge Singer & Mahoney, referred the Guardian to a comment he gave to the South Bend Tribune.
“It’s been disorienting to see the smartest person I know reduced to how she might vote on one issue when she is so much more than that,” he said in 2018.
Carozza remembers Barrett as a top law student when he came on to faculty at Notre Dame in 1996. He said he found such questioning from Senate Democrats unfair, in that Barrett does not write her religion into her opinions and is not one to proselytize.
“I don’t think it’s unfair to question someone who’s a judicial appointee about their religious beliefs,” he said. “If someone says, ‘I’m going to interpret the law according to what the Qur’an says or what the Bible says,’ that’s something that in our republic we wouldn’t want.
“What makes it unfair in her case is that it was asserted on solely on the basis of knowing that she is a religious person, rather than any evidence in the things that she’s written or in the way that she behaved that might interfere with the administration of the law.”
Published: 22:53 EDT, 20 September 2020 | Updated: 01:21 EDT, 21 September 2020
A new poll suggests the race for the White House between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump is getting closer in the battleground state of Florida with just a 2 point gap between the two candidates.
Biden has the edge of Trump, 48 percent to 46 percent according to a new poll by CBS News that was published on Sunday.
But the Democrat’s lead has been slashed, after a similar poll in July showed him to be 6 points in front.
The latest survey, conducted between September 15th and 18th, asked 1,200 voters who they would be voting for.
Florida remains a close battleground state in the presidential election with the current margin between Trump and Biden just 2 percentage points
There is currently just 2 percentage points between Trump and Biden in a new CBS News poll
Trump narrowly won Florida by just over 100,000 votes in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and will almost certainly need it this time around too
The poll has a 3.7 percent margin of error, while around five per cent of voters say they are still ‘not sure’ who they wish to vote for.
In terms of demographics, Trump is leading among white people likely to vote in Florida, with 59 percent saying they will vote for the president.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads Trump up by 2 points in the Sunshine State
However, Biden appears to have a lead among Hispanic voters, by a similar margin – 56 percent compared to Trump’s 36 percent.
Trump narrowly carried the state in 2016 with 49% of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 47%.
The state is likely to be just as crucial this time around if the Democrats are to be successful at voting Trump out of office.
The economy appears to be one of the most important issues for voters with many of those surveyed saying Trump’s policies are aiding a recovery.
Potential voters said they feel the president’s economic policies would better help their family’s financial situation than Biden’s proposals.
Also, despite coronavirus cases still rising, Florida voters appear to feel more positive about efforts to combat the virus than efforts earlier in the summer, although largely along party lines.
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ByteDance also confirmed that it would do a small round of pre-IPO (initial public offering) financing. TikTok Global will become an 80% holding subsidiary of ByteDance as a result, giving it majority control. As part of the Oracle and Walmart deal, the companies said they would work toward a public listing in the U.S. within a year.
Over the weekend, Trump said the new TikTok Global will “have nothing to do with any outside land, any outside country, it will have nothing to do with China. It’ll be totally secure. That’ll be part of the deal.”
Beijing-based ByteDance’s majority ownership of TikTok appears to contradict that. But ByteDance is 40% owned by U.S. venture capital firms, so the Trump administration can technically claim TikTok Global is now majority owned by U.S. money.
Last month, as the TikTok deal appeared to be coming to a conclusion, China threw a spanner in the works by updating its list of technologies subject to export restrictions. One of the technologies on the list related to recommendation algorithms. After Beijing made this move, ByteDance said it would comply with the rules.
Washington claimed that TikTok represents a national security threat because it collects American users’ data which could be accessed by Beijing. TikTok has repeatedly denied this and says it stores the data of Americans in the U.S. with a backup in Singapore.
In August, Trump issued an executive order that would have banned transactions with ByteDance and effectively shut down TikTok in the U.S. That was set to come into effect on September 20. But the Department of Commerce said in a statement that it has delayed that by a week.
Schumer, who spoke from James Madison High School in Brooklyn where Ginsburg was an alumnus, claimed that a Trump court nominee would increase global warming, decimate voting rights and set the country back decades. He also asked for two more Republican senators to cross party lines and promise to only vote on a nominee after the presidential contest is decided.
“We’re here to protect the rights of women — their rights to their body, to choose, their rights to health care and equality would go down the drain if that wish were not realized,” Schumer said. “A court with a kind of nominee President Trump will choose will undo all of that and not make global warming less likely but more likely and it will come quicker… We do not want to turn the clock back. And we only need two more senators who will abide by RGB’s wish. Two said it. We need two more.”
So far Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have signaled that they oppose holding a Senate confirmation hearing before this year’s general election.
Schumer referred to Ginsburg as a “saintly” and “brilliant” woman who deserves to have her wishes honored. Ginsburg told her daughter shortly before her death that she wanted the person who would fill the seat she vacated to be selected after the election.
The New York lawmaker on Sunday also cited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to refuse Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court, as precedent for such a delay.
Ocasio-Cortez was then given the mic and almost immediately called on political activists to begin organizing and targeting Republican lawmakers who are slated to vote on the next Justice.
“With an early appointment, all of our rights… that so many people died for — voting rights, reproductive rights, health care rights all of those rights are at risk with this appointment,” she said. “So we need to make sure that we mobilize on an unprecedented scale to ensure that this vacancy is reserved for the next president. And we must use every tool at our disposal – from everyday people, especially in swing states. We need everyday people to call on senators, to call on folks on the bubble… to ensure that we buy ourselves the time necessary.”
“We all need to be more courageous and we all must act in unprecedented ways to make sure that our rights are stabilized,” she added. “And to Mitch McConnell, we need to tell him that he is playing with fire. We need to make sure that this vacancy is protected, that our election continues and that the American people have their say.”
Ginsburg passed away Friday at the age of 87 from complications stemming from her ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer.
The president’s reelection campaign shared a statement with Fox News on Sunday about Trump’s intention is to fill the vacancy as quickly as possible and to do so with a female nominee.
“Voters elected Donald J. Trump president in 2016 and gave Republicans an expanded majority in 2018, so the people already have spoken,” communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement.
Senate Republicans are expected to consider the president’s nominee before the November election and have publicly stated their intention to hold a confirmation vote without delay, per McConnell.
Heavy rains from Tropical Storm Beta could soak much of south Louisiana over the coming days and put most of the area, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, under a Flash Flood Watch beginning Sunday afternoon.
The Flash Flood Watch is expected to remain in effect through Wednesday as a band of heavy rainfall that detached from Beta — which is forecast to miss Louisiana and hit Texas — moves over Louisiana and dumps potentially significant amounts of rain. The National Weather Service predicted 3 to 5 inches of rain across the area, which extends southwest of a line between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, with higher totals possible in some local areas.
The heaviest downpours likely to occur on Tuesday and Tuesday night. This could potentially lead to flash flooding and a rise in river levels, with some potentially reaching flood stage.
🌧️ A prolonged wet period with locally heavy rain could lead to flash flooding through portions of the area.
💧 3-5″ of rain with locally higher amounts is possible through Wednesday in the flash flood watch area#lawx#mswx (3/4) pic.twitter.com/H6lRJ7aiP4
The city will lift its ban on parking cars on the neutral ground at 6 p.m. Sunday and is urging caution as Tropical Storm Beta moves toward th…
“We are becoming more concerned about the threat of heavy rainfall beginning Monday night (and) possibly lasting into Wednesday. A band of heavy rain detached from Beta is expected to develop across the area (with) the heaviest rain likely Tuesday (and) Tuesday night,” the National Weather Service office in Slidell said Sunday morning.
Moderate coastal flooding was already beginning on Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service, which said at 2 p.m. that flood gauges at Shell Beach and the Bonnet Carre Spillway had reached moderate flood stage.
As of 4 p.m., Beta was moving at west-northwest at 6 mph with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.
Beta is expected to make landfall on the central Texas coast late Monday night.
A storm surge warning remains in effect from Port Aransas, Texas to the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, and a tropical storm warning remains in effect from Port Aransas to Morgan City, Louisiana.
Coastal flood warnings — with potential inundation at high tide of 2 to 4 feet — were in effect for Orleans, Upper Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The National Weather Service also issued a coastal flood warning — with potential inundation of 1 to 2 feet — for the North Shore, coastal Acadiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Part of Louisiana’s coast is now under a storm surge warning along with an earlier issued tropical storm warning as Beta slowly inches its way…
But another moderate senator, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a retiring Republican considered by many to be a strong defender of Senate traditions, on Sunday joined the growing ranks of Republicans in support of confirming Mr. Trump’s pick.
“No one should be surprised that a Republican Senate majority would vote on a Republican president’s Supreme Court nomination, even during a presidential election year,” Mr. Alexander said in a statement. “The Constitution gives senators the power to do it. The voters who elected them expect it.”
Ms. Murkowski’s stance against a vote ahead of the November election was striking, particularly given signals from the White House that the administration hopes to nominate someone for the position in the coming days. Ms. Murkowski took care to hold to her position from 2016, but several other Republicans who resisted confirming Merrick B. Garland, President Obama’s choice for the Scalia vacancy, are now arguing that the Senate should vote to confirm President Trump’s nominee. Several sought Sunday to deflect charges of hypocrisy.
“What we’re proposing is completely consistent, completely consistent with the precedent,” Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and a member of the Senate leadership, claimed speaking on “Meet the Press.” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and one of the names on Mr. Trump’s short list for the open seat, said on Fox News Sunday that “the Senate majority is performing our constitutional duty and fulfilling the mandate that voters gave us in 2016 and 2018.”
It remains unclear, however, whether Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, will hold a vote on a Supreme Court nominee before November, though on Friday he vowed that the Senate would vote on Mr. Trump’s nominee.
With Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Collins both publicly voicing their objections to such a timeline, Mr. McConnell can only afford to lose the support of two more Republican senators. And Mr. McConnell, who is up for re-election, is cognizant of the tough races a number of his members are facing and how such a political fight could further galvanize voters. He had gone so far as to encourage his members to “keep their powder dry” when asked about a vacancy.
There were continuing signs that the looming confirmation fight was motivating Democratic donors: ActBlue, the donation-processing site, announced Sunday that small-dollar donors had contributed $100 million since Friday night.
Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion (£1.55tn) of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.
The leak focuses on more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Banks and other financial institutions file SARs when they believe a client is using their services for potential criminal activity.
However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question.
The documents are said to suggest major banks provided financial services to high-risk individuals from around the world, in some cases even after they had been placed under sanctions by the US government.
According to the ICIJ the documents relate to more than $2tn of transactions dating from between 1999 and 2017.
One of those named in the SARs is Paul Manafort, a political strategist who led Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign for several months.
He stepped down from the role after his consultancy work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was exposed, and he was later convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
According to the ICIJ, banks began flagging activity linked to Manafort as suspicious beginning in 2012. In 2017 JP Morgan Chase filed a report on wire transfers worth over $300m involving shell companies in Cyprus that had done business with Manafort.
The ICIJ said Manafort’s lawyer did not respond to an invitation to comment.
A separate report details over $1bn in wire transfers by JP Morgan Chase that the bank later came to suspect were linked to Semion Mogilevich, an alleged Russian organised crime boss who is named on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list.
A JP Morgan Chase spokesperson told the BBC: “We follow all laws and regulations in support of the government’s work to combat financial crimes. We devote thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to this important work.”
According to BBC Panorama, the British bank HSBC allowed a group of criminals to transfer millions of dollars from a Ponzi scheme through its accounts, even after it had identified their fraud.
HSBC said in a statement: “Starting in 2012, HSBC embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime across more than 60 jurisdictions.” It added: “HSBC is a much safer institution than it was in 2012.”
“The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several years ago,” it stated.
“As FinCEN has stated previously, the unauthorised disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports.”
Published: 13:34 EDT, 20 September 2020 | Updated: 17:31 EDT, 20 September 2020
Former Vice President Joe Biden holds an eight-point lead over President Donald Trump in a new poll that has the president’s approval rating underwater and Biden running up a huge lead among mail-in voters.
The lead is basically unchanged from last month, when Biden’s lead in the poll was 50 to 41 per cent – amid ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd and Trump’s call for ‘law and order’ after property destruction in cities.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 50 to 41 per cent in a new NBC / Wall Street Journal poll
More than 50 per cent disapprove of President Trump, a troubling sign for the incumbent, who has amped up his attacks on rival in the preceding weeks, claiming he would be captive to ‘anarchists’ and ‘socialists.’
‘So far, despite major upheavals in the country, little has changed,’ said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who helped conduct the poll.
There are stark divisions in the poll based on how people intend to vote.
A plurality of 42 per cent plan to vote in person election day, with just short of a third, 32 percent, planning to vote early in person on election day and 21 per cent planning to vote early in person.
More than 50 per cent disapprove of President Trump in the new poll
A very long line of voters wait to cast their ballots at the Fairfax County Government Center for the November presidential election on first day of early voting in Virginia in Fairfax, VA on September 18, 2020
When broken down by preference, mail-in voters back Biden 74 per cent to 20 per cent for Trump. Trump has regularly attacked mail-in voting, as he did Sunday.
Those who plan to vote in person on Election day back Trump 62 to 32 per cent, and those who plan to vote early in person back Biden 58 to 39 per cent.
Those numbers set up a scenario where votes that come in first on Election Day show Trump performing well, only to have his lead undercut by a steady stream of mail-in ballots that Trump has already attacked as rife with fraud.
Almost 90 per cent of voters have made up their minds, even as candidates head into presidential debates starting later this month.
The poll was taken before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a development with the potential to galvanize members of both parties.
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Weary firefighters stand guard at Mt. Wilson Saturday off defending the facility from the Bobcat Fire. Image courtesy Angeles National Forest
The Bobcat Fire in the Angeles National Forest has prompted new evacuation orders in the foothills of the Antelope Valley as homes were destroyed and firefighters braced for an overnight fight made tougher by the possibility of wind gusts of up to 30 miles an hour.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Saturday afternoon that all residents were ordered to leave in an “evacuation box” south of 138th Street East, north of Big Pine Highway and Highway 2, west of 263rd East and east of Largo Vista Road. Saturday evening, the unified fire command issued new evacuation orders for people living northwest of Mt. Emma, southeast of Highway 122 and west of Cheeseboro Road.
The fire has scorched 91,017 acres and remains at 15% containment Saturday, with full containment estimated by Oct. 30.
Structures have been damaged and losses were expected, according to Vince Pena, unified incident commander with the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The number of homes affected was not available.
Earlier broadcast reports from the scene showed structures that appeared to be homes burning in the Juniper Hills area, but the U.S. Forest Service could not confirm that.
The Los Angeles Fire Department is now sending two strike teams under the mutual aid agreement to help fight the Bobcat Fire, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said.
The agency said Saturday morning that crews would be focusing “on securing the fire’s perimeter in the north in an effort to stop any additional spread, especially to the communities in the northeast and northwest. Expect fire growth towards Wrightwood on north and west around Chilao.”
At around 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the fire was making a hard push west toward Cheseboro Road near the Little Rock Reservoir, and air support was requested to slow it down.
On the fire’s southern end, evacuation warnings were lifted as of 4 p.m. for the communities of Sierra Madre, Arcadia, Monrovia, Bradbury and Duarte in the San Gabriel Valley, while the warnings for Altadena and Pasadena remained in effect.
“No additional strategic aerial firing will be occurring today near the San Gabriel Reservoir,” the ANF tweeted Saturday. “Large pockets of unburned islands of fuel remain within the perimeter that will be actively burning and producing smoke throughout the day.”
A total of 1,663 personnel are currently assigned to the fire.
It exploded in size Friday, growing by more than 17,000 acres and making a “hard push to the west and north” as wind gusts reached 44 mph, the Forest Service said.
“Mt. Wilson is still safe and we will continue to focus on the north end of the fire,” officials said after daybreak Friday. Fire retardant was placed around Mount Wilson.
Crews have been working for days to protect the Mount Wilson Observatory and nearby broadcast towers, valued at more than $1 billion, from approaching flames.
Observatory personnel were evacuated. Mount Wilson is not only one of the crown jewels of astronomy but also home to infrastructure that transmits cellphone signals and television and radio broadcasts for the greater Los Angeles Area.
A closure order has been issued for all National Forests in Southern California.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District extended its smoke advisory through Sunday, with officials warning that “smoke may impact different parts of the region at different times.”
Residents were advised to limit their outdoor exposure as much as possible, and keep doors and windows closed.
The Bobcat Fire erupted on Sept. 6 near the Cogswell Dam and West Fork Day Use area northeast of Mount Wilson and within the Angeles National Forest. The cause remains under investigation.
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As of 5 p.m. Sunday, TS Beta was located about 120 miles south-southeast Galveston, Texas, and about 155 miles east-southeast of Port O’Connor, Texas, with sustained winds of 60 mph. It’s moving west-northwest at 6 mph, a gradual increase from the previous 5 mph forecast on Sunday afternoon.
First the pandemic, which divided us, economically devastated us, and has killed nearly 200,000 of us. Then the racial unrest, erupting at the deaths of more Black Americans at the hands of police: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude.
Now the extreme weather. For only the second time in history, the National Hurricane Center has moved into the Greek alphabet for storm names. This season’s wildfires are bigger, deadlier and more frequent than in years past. In the West, people can’t breathe.
And the polarization, worse than ever. We don’t agree on masks, on reopening schools, on what to do when a vaccine becomes available.
Many of us are vacillating between horror and disbelief at what can only be described as an American nightmare. Devastation doesn’t cover it. It’s impossible to know if the worst is behind us or still lies ahead.
Apart from our own suffering, constant exposure to suffering of others exacts a toll. Experts say what many of us are experiencing is “disaster fatigue.”
“It’s a sense, essentially, of psychological overwhelm,” said Patrick Hardy, a certified emergency manager and risk manager. “You’re being constantly bombarded with negative information. … It creates this sense of doom.”
When disasters occur sequentially, it can make it seem as though our problems are insurmountable. It’s getting worse and worse, we think. It’s never going to get better.
A strict interpretation of “disaster fatigue,” Hardy said, puts disasters into three major categories: Natural disasters (such as COVID and hurricanes), technological emergencies (chemical spills and power outages) and security emergencies (acts of terrorism and active shooters).
But Hardy said what qualifies as a “disaster” can also be subjective.
“What may be a disaster to someone else, isn’t a disaster to you and me,” he said.
While all of us are tapped into the disasters that become national news, community events can add to the mental load. A plant closing in your town that puts hundreds of people out of work is a disaster, too.
Many are personally suffering and bearing witness to even more suffering, which can lead to another condition called “compassion fatigue.”
“It’s really referring to the stress or the emotional strain of having that high level of empathy, and exposing yourself to this level of suffering, and when that happens over long periods of time, it can manifest in a variety of different psychological ways,” said Vaile Wright, director of clinical research and quality at the American Psychological Association.
Old mental health issues, new challenges
Lisa Phillips, 57, who lives with depression, says she’s “sick” over what’s happening to the country.
Her husband’s dental practice was on mandatory closure for two months, and since she works there, too, both incomes stopped. They’ve since re-opened, but many of the staff have been struggling with health issues and lack of childcare, which has ripple effects for Phillips and her husband.
Her daughter’s university moved exclusively online. Wildfires in Oregon forced her brother and sister-in-law to evacuate their home. The day after their evacuation, her father died in California. The family didn’t gather for a funeral.
To cope, Phillips went back to counseling and increased her medication.
“It kind of feels like when something else can’t possibly happen, it does,” she said. “I put one foot in front of the other but it takes quite a bit of effort.”
Political differences have also divided her family, compounding tangible losses. Stress and conflict are the new normal.
“I don’t feel apathetic, I feel overwhelmed and I’m very discouraged about the polarization in our country,” she said. “I’m fearful we won’t get back to who we were.”
Plans derailed
Matt Wunderli, 36, was in the middle of building a technology startup when he went into lockdown with his wife and kids in Salt Lake City. Now, he’s surrounded by wildfires.
“In the beginning, I think we were all kind of sheepishly laughing about this, like ‘what is going on’?,” he said. “From the pandemic to the civil unrest to the political divides. As a country we’re sort of being slowly unwoven.”
Wunderli says he’s often overwhelmed by the negativity on Twitter, and can find it hard to stay optimistic. Living in a very religious state, he said, people around him often talk about this as the end of times.
“It’s a very stressful time for me as a founder, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, a neighbor thinking about all the calamity around me and what’s next,” he said.
A country unrecognizable
Christina Cuevas, 35, lives with her husband and two sons in Gardena, California, and recently recovered from postpartum depression. Then the pandemic hit.
Her anxiety spiked. Cuevas, who has asthma, is having panic attacks. She’s stressed about her family’s businesses – she and her husband are in real estate development –and she’s worried for her children and their futures.
“Every day you’re bombarded with something new,” she said. “I’m of Mexican descent, and I was born in America. Yesterday was Mexican Independence Day. I had tequila with my husband. We were celebrating the culture and then I read that news article about hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women. I was sick. It’s repulsive that this can happen in America.”
Right now, she says “there is no hope.” There is only the election.
Abbey Barton, 26, lives in New Orleans, which is often hard-hit during the hurricane season. New Orleans has had a couple of close calls in 2020, on top of the pandemic.
“We’re in the peak of hurricane season, and there’s no outlet for stress fatigue,” she said. “Can 2020 just be over?”
She knows people so overwhelmed they’re not preparing for storms as they typically would. Defeat, she says, seems all around.
“I’ve had people say to me ‘I was exhausted by everything before the hurricane season. If it gets me, it gets me,'” she said.
Barton worries about what her city, in some ways already unrecognizable, may look like when the pandemic is finally over.
“Walking downtown, you don’t hear the music anymore,” she said.
Worried for the kids
Austin Sargent, 29, is an English teacher and high school football coach in South Carolina. There are times he’s felt overwhelmed, but mostly he’s focused on his students, who often seem paralyzed by their circumstances.
School was a release for a lot of kids. And while in-person instruction has resumed where he teaches, they are now dealing with new and different stressors. Friends who’ve been apart for months are adjusting to new protocols and social norms.
The kids, he said, are struggling just as much as adults.
“I’m an English teacher. We read, and then we ask ourselves, ‘What is the author really trying to say?’ In the first couple of weeks of school, we’re going over literary terms, talking about the mood of the text, how it makes the reader feel. And one of my students raised their hand and said ‘I don’t watch the news, because it makes my mood so terrible.'”
‘Not in this together’
Denys Williams, 48, moved from San Leandro, California, to Reno, Nevada, about a year ago, when it all felt different. Now, she’s living in a new city much less diverse than her previous one, which can be isolating.
“It’s not only that 2020 is a dumpster fire, it’s that there’s no one around me who I can really relate to or talk to about it,” she said. “We couldn’t breathe in Reno for a good week and a half, add to that the political unrest, the racial injustice, not feeling like anyone is in my corner — it’s been so difficult.”
This summer, she said the KKK showed up in a town about 20 minutes from where she lives. She’s dealing with stressors some of her non-minority friends and co-workers can’t fathom.
“My co-workers will say, ‘How are you?’ and I’ll say, ‘It’s tough.’ They’re like, ‘Hang in there, we’re all in this together.’ But we’re not. I want to say, ‘You have no idea.'”
Resisting defeat
Hardy says when feeling overwhelmed, look for positive stories. They’re out there, even when they’re difficult to find.
“There are stories of people surviving disasters, people doing the right things, people enduring,” he said.
So much of what feels surreal and absurd about this moment is how much is out of our control. Making a plan, for what to do in a disaster or even what to do to feel productive amid the chaos, can help people wrest back some control.
The greatest danger, experts say, is a descent into apathy. That people will start to believe that the things they do don’t matter.
Phillips, Wunderli, Cuevas, Barton, Sargent and Williams all said they plan to vote in November. Wunderli started a podcast addressing mental health issues for founders and entrepreneurs. Phillips said she joined the board of a local non-profit and has continued to support local charities. And even though she always wears a mask when she’s out, she says she still tries to smile, with her eyes, at everyone she sees.
“What if everybody just gave up?” Wright said. “Then the world would really be in trouble. Individual actions do count because they accumulate. The worst thing that we could do is throw up our hands and say, ‘Nothing matters, so why even bother?’ Because if every single person did that, what would this world look like?”
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