Pope Francis attends a interreligious ceremony for peace Tuesday in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome.

Gregorio Borgia/AP


hide caption

toggle caption

Gregorio Borgia/AP

Pope Francis attends a interreligious ceremony for peace Tuesday in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

Updated at 2:42 p.m. ET

Pope Francis has called for legislation to protect same-sex couples, according to comments he made in a new documentary that mark a break from Catholic doctrine.

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They are children of God and have a right to a family,” the pope said in an interview in the documentary Francesco, which premiered Wednesday at the Rome Film Festival. “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”

Francis noted he has stood up for civil unions before, but his remarks in the documentary go beyond what he has said previously and sharply diverge from the view of his predecessors. LGBTQ rights groups hailed the comments as a major step, but, along with conservative religious groups, they raised questions about the context of the quotes delivered in a movie and how much weight the comments held.

Before he became the pontiff, then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio opposed same-sex marriage legislation but supported some level of legal protection for same-sex couples.

Shortly after becoming pope in 2013, he made big headlines when asked about reports of gays in the clergy, Francis answered, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

It was a shift in tone from traditional Catholic teaching.

In 2003, the Vatican’s office on doctrine — under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI — taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.” Placing them on the same level as marriage, it added, would mean approval of “deviant behavior.”

Advocacy groups representing LGBTQ people welcomed Francis’ new remarks.

DignityUSA, an organization representing LGBTQ Catholics, said it is “cautiously optimistic” but that the group wants to see the remarks in context and hear the Vatican’s response.

“If this statement is allowed to stand, this could be a global game changer for gay and lesbian people, for same sex couples, for LGBTQ people broadly. I think we’re just going to have to see where it lands,” Marianne Duddy-Burke, DignityUSA’s executive director, told NPR.

“I’m very conscious of the tremendous impact that this could have, particularly for queer people in countries where there are no legal protections at this point, where they are very much subject to violence and to social marginalization,” Duddy-Burke said.

in a tweet following the news, Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said, “This is a significant step forward for inclusion and acceptance in the Catholic Church, letting LGBTQ Catholics know that being a person of faith and being LGBTQ are not mutually exclusive.”

But the pope’s latest comments drew some criticism.

The remarks are a form of “pastoral outreach,” said Bill Donohue, president of the U.S.-based Catholic League, a conservative group. “It’s not going to change doctrine. He doesn’t have the authority to do that anyhow.”

He continued, “I think it’s going to be greeted with a great deal of mass confusion on the part of the laity. … I think the lack of clarity is the most disturbing thing about this.”

The documentary, by filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky, tackles many of the issues championed by Pope Francis such as climate change, income inequality, interfaith relations and migrant rights.

In another remark in the film that could stir controversy among U.S. conservatives, Francis condemns the Trump administration’s policy on family separation at the southern border.

“It’s cruelty, and separating kids from parents goes against natural rights,” the pope said, adding that “it’s something a Christian cannot do.”

That’s an echo of the pope’s past criticism, in 2016, of then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/10/21/926219084/pope-francis-calls-for-same-sex-civil-union-law-in-new-documentary

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma has reached an $8 billion settlement with the federal government in which it pleads guilty in a criminal investigation over its role in the opioid epidemic, the US Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

As part of the settlement, Purdue will plead guilty to three counts related to its misleading marketing of opioid painkillers and faces a $3.5 billion criminal fine, $2 billion in criminal forfeitures, and a $2.8 billion civil settlement.

Purdue admits it illegally and misleadingly marketed its opioids, including “to more than 100 health care providers whom the company had good reason to believe were diverting opioids” for misuse; illegally paid doctors to prescribe more opioids; and took part in other fraudulent and illegal practices. Purdue says it did all of this between 2007 and at least 2017 — after a separate guilty plea in 2007 forced the company to pay more than $600 million in fines.

But no one — neither the company’s executives nor members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue — will go to jail or prison as a result of the settlement.

Despite the settlement, it’s unclear how much Purdue will actually pay. The company is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, with claims from other people to whom it effectively owes money. The federal government is only one of many entities that Purdue’s holdings will likely be divvied up among.

The Justice Department also threw its support behind a deal that would turn Purdue into a public benefit company overseen by new leadership, with proceeds from OxyContin and other drugs purportedly going to help victims of the opioid crisis. Purdue previously proposed the deal to settle thousands of lawsuits against it, including from local and state governments, over its role in the opioid crisis.

Dozens of states have rejected that deal. They argue that it lets the Sacklers off the hook, since they’d remain very wealthy and out of prison, and that using revenue from OxyContin sales to fund efforts to stop the opioid crisis presents a conflict of interest.

Some critics also claim that the Justice Department’s settlement is a political ploy before Election Day — to shore up President Donald Trump’s weak record on the opioid epidemic.

“DOJ failed,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said. “Justice in this case requires exposing the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable, not rushing a settlement to beat an election. I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long.”

The Justice Department said the settlement with Purdue doesn’t release anyone, including the Sackler family, from criminal liability — meaning they could be prosecuted and incarcerated in the future. A criminal investigation into the Sacklers is ongoing, according to the Associated Press.

It does, however, free Purdue and the Sacklers from the federal government’s civil claims. But states and others can continue pursuing civil litigation.

Besides Purdue, other opioid makers and distributors currently face criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. Earlier this year, the founder and former CEO of opioid maker Insys, John Kapoor, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Other opioid businesses, including Rochester Drug Cooperative, also face criminal charges.

Opioid companies have fueled the drug overdose crisis

Since 1999, nearly 500,000 people have died from opioid overdoses — either on painkillers themselves, or in many cases heroin or illicit fentanyl through a drug addiction that began with painkillers. Pharmaceutical companies were at the forefront of causing the crisis with aggressive marketing that pushed doctors to prescribe more painkillers. That put the drugs in the hands of not just patients but also friends and family of patients, teens who took the drugs from their parents’ medicine cabinets, and people who bought excess pills from the black market.

Studies have linked marketing for opioids to more prescriptions and overdose deaths.

With OxyContin, Purdue — and the Sacklers — led the charge on this kind of marketing. They claimed that their opioid painkiller, which first hit the market in 1996, was safe and effective, both claims which are now contradicted by the real-world and scientific evidence.

Among Purdue’s alleged crimes, according to the Justice Department:

  • “Purdue learned that one doctor was known by patients as ‘the Candyman’ and was prescribing ‘crazy dosing of OxyContin,’ yet Purdue had sales representatives meet with the doctor more than 300 times.”
  • “The Named Sacklers then approved a new marketing program beginning in 2013 called ‘Evolve to Excellence,’ through which Purdue sales representatives intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers who were already writing ‘25 times as many OxyContin scripts’ as their peers, causing health care providers to prescribe opioids for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion.”
  • “Between June 2009 and March 2017, Purdue made payments to two doctors through Purdue’s doctor speaker program to induce those doctors to write more prescriptions of Purdue’s opioid products. Similarly, from approximately April 2016 through December 2016, Purdue made payments to Practice Fusion Inc., an electronic health records company, in exchange for referring, recommending, and arranging for the ordering of Purdue’s extended release opioid products — OxyContin, Butrans, and Hysingla.”

The Sacklers, for their part, continue to deny culpability for the opioid epidemic. The family claimed in a statement, “Members of the Sackler family who served on Purdue’s board of directors acted ethically and lawfully, and the upcoming release of company documents will prove that fact in detail. This history of Purdue will also demonstrate that all financial distributions were proper.”

Of course, many people simply don’t believe this. They point to the evidence — not just in the federal government’s case but in the lawsuits filed by dozens of states — that indicates the Sacklers were heavily involved in Purdue’s marketing for OxyContin.

Now some critics are calling not just for Purdue to face criminal culpability, but for the company’s executives and the Sacklers to as well. They argue that prison time is necessary, because fines that add up to a fraction of a company or family’s wealth aren’t enough to send a message.

“If [the Sacklers] have the perception — and it’s the correct perception — that ‘people like us just don’t go to jail, we just don’t, so the worst that’s going to happen is you take some reputational stings and you’ll have to write a check,’ that seems like a recipe for nurturing criminality,” Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys previously told me.

For now, though, the Sacklers and other Purdue executives continue to escape that level of punishment.

For more on the case for prosecuting opioid executives, read Vox’s full story.


Help keep Vox free for all

Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what’s happening in the news, from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world: Contribute today from as little as $3.

Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2020/10/21/21526868/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-opioid-epidemic-department-of-justice

Today, writer E. Jean Carroll goes to court in a unique case: she accused the sitting president of defamation. But when she came forward in 2019 to say Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, her story started with a familiar detail.

“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips,” she wrote in June 2019. 

Former model Amy Dorris, the latest to come forward just last month to allege that Trump had sexually assaulted her in 1997 at the US Open tennis tournament, said it began in a similar way. 

“He just grabbed me. And he just shoved his tongue down my throat,” Dorris told the Guardian. “His grip was hard, you know, you couldn’t pull away.” 

Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis said Dorris’ claim was “totally false” and an attempt to attack Trump before the election.

Thirteen of the 19 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or non-consensual physical contact said he kissed them without consent, often out of the blue, sometimes holding them firmly in place.

Another reason the scene is familiar: It’s how Trump himself described his approach to women in a 2005 recording of what he thought was a private conversation, released in 2016.

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them,” he said in the now-infamous Access Hollywood recording. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

Carroll brought a defamation case against Trump after he allegedly slandered her in denying her claims. Last month,  the U.S. Department of Justice attempted to intervene in the case by putting the federal government, rather than Trump himself, in the position of defendant.

Today, oral arguments begin between Carroll’s attorneys and the Justice Department to consider whether the DOJ can move forward. 

In their own words, here is how Carroll and other women describe their encounters with Trump:

A USA TODAY review of 19 women’s allegations — the number who allege non-consensual physical contact — as well as more than 4,000 words that Trump has spoken, tweeted or released in written statements since 2016 addressing their allegations, show patterns in both the allegations and Trump’s reactions to them.

Patterns in the behavior of alleged sexual abusers may be used by prosecutors to try to lay out a modus operandi, or “something about the way a defendant operates that is akin to a signature,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in New York, speaking generally.

“How do you show that a person has, let’s just say, a sense of entitlement that leads him to just take what he thinks he deserves? Is that something that can be reflected in multiple instances of misconduct?” she said. “Some sexual predators who engage in patterned behavior have certain things that they say repeatedly or often. Sometimes they do the same kinds of things, so there’s a particular interest in a body part or a preoccupation with doing something in a certain way.”

Election 2020: Accusations against both Trump and Biden leave survivors disappointed

In the case of Trump, the Access Hollywood tape is unique in that it is “a shining example of the kind of words that could be used to help explain what’s going on in someone’s head,” Tuerkheimer said.

“It is really uncommon … to have the man accused provide a window into his thinking, where you actually get a statement that reflects a particular view of, be it women or be it an entitlement to women’s bodies,” she said.

However, Trump is not on trial for sexual assault, as Carroll’s case is for defamation.

Carroll is the only one of the 19 women to accuse Trump of rape, although his first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of marital rape in a 1990 deposition. Trump denied it and she later said she did not mean it in a criminal sense. Jill Harth, a makeup artist who, along with a male associate, had a business relationship with Trump, accused Trump of attempted rape in a 1997 lawsuit which she withdrew from court, though she said in 2016 she stood by her claims.

From 2005 to early 2007, there were seven incidents when women alleged Trump sexually attacked or forcibly touched them. That’s at the very start of his marriage to model Melania Trump, and it’s in the early – and peak ratings years – of Trump’s hit television show, “The Apprentice.”

It’s also in the immediate wake of when the Access Hollywood tape was recorded.

Two of the allegations took place in July 2006 — the same month Trump had his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, who received a $130,000 payment just before the 2016 election by the president’s former lawyer and signed a nondisclosure agreement about the affair. It is now part of a larger investigation into Trump’s finances.

That same weekend, Jessica Drake said, Trump kissed her without permission and offered to pay her for sex. Ninni Laaksonen, the former Miss Finland, said that he grabbed her butt that same month before an appearance on the David Letterman show. 

Though our analysis focused on 19 women who alleged physical contact, more women have alleged other inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature from Trump, including a number of participants in pageants he owned like former Miss North Carolina Samantha Holvey, who said he made her feel “like a piece of meat.” And former Miss Teen Vermont Mariah Billado and former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon who both say Trump entered dressing rooms unannounced while young women were topless or naked.

Trump’s own comments about “inspecting” Miss USA contestants and claims he would touch them, Tuerkheimer said, are an example of entitlement that “can lead to an inference that a person is more willing to just touch, just grab, just grope, just kiss.”

More than half of the cases are alleged to have happened at Trump’s properties in New York and Florida, places where he had access to private spaces or more control over the environment.

Like Dorris, Karen Johnson said Trump caught her outside the restroom. However, Johnson was at a Mar-a-Lago party when Trump allegedly groped her, pulled her behind a tapestry and kissed her, she told journalists Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy in their book “All the President’s Women.” 

Cathy Heller said Trump grabbed and kissed her when she attended a Mother’s Day Brunch at Mar-a-Lago in 1997.

In Harth’s lawsuit she alleged one of the incidents of groping took place in Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.

Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for People magazine, published a story in the magazine alleging that Trump pushed her against the wall and forced his tongue into her mouth while giving her a tour of Mar-a-Lago in December 2005. She was visiting to interview Trump for an article.

In a 2016 Palm Beach Post article, Mindy McGillivray said she was groped by Trump during an event at Mar-a-Lago in 2003. 

Ten of the 19 women were in their twenties when they say the incidents occurred. In many cases, they were decades younger than Trump. 

Dorris was 24 and Trump 51 at the time the alleged assault took place. 

Kristin Anderson, an aspiring model who said Trump groped her in the early 1990s, was in her early 20s at the time; Trump would have been in his mid- to late-40s. Then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied the incident with Anderson occurred and called it a “political attack designed to tear down Mr. Trump” in 2016.

Ten women say Trump kissed or groped them while they were meeting for a job interview or as part of a business deal.

Former “Apprentice” contestant Jennifer Murphy, who said she plans to vote for Trump, told Grazia magazine he unexpectedly kissed her on the lips while she was leaving a job interview in 2005.

Summer Zervos, another former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said her incident with Trump also happened as part of a job interview, which Trump had scheduled in his private hotel room. 

Rachel Crooks was a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a Trump Tower client, in 2005 when she introduced herself to Trump outside an elevator where, she alleges, he kissed her on the mouth. Trump called it “Another False Accusation” in a 2018 tweet.

Juliet Huddy, a former Fox News host, said Trump kissed her after a lunch. 

On at least four occasions, Trump has falsely stated he’d never met women who accused him of sexual assault, despite video or photo evidence to the contrary. There is photographic or video evidence of him interacting with at least 11 of the accusers. 

“I have no idea who these women are, have no idea,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Oct. 14, 2016. “Never met this person, these people, I don’t know who they are,” he added later in the rally. We found that Trump had been photographed or appeared on national television interacting with Dorris, Murphy, Stoynoff, Zervos, Searles, McDowell, Laaksonen, Drake and Harth.

“I’ve never met this person in my life,” Trump said in a written statement responding to Carroll’s rape allegation, even though New York magazine had already published a photograph of Carroll and Trump together at a social event in 1987. 

At least seven times, Trump has claimed, without evidence, that allegations against him have been discredited.

On Oct. 14, 2016 Trump said “eyewitnesses already debunked to a People Magazine story.” But there is no evidence eyewitnesses to the alleged assault debunked Stoynoff’s story. Stoynoff said Trump’s butler walked in, but he has never spoken publicly and would have been the sole eyewitness.

Two days later, Trump said “those stories have been largely debunked” and on Oct. 17 he tweeted twice, saying “these totally phoney stories, 100% made up by women (many already proven false)” and “media has deceived the public by putting women front and center with made-up stories and lies, and got caught.” There is no evidence any allegation of sexual assault against Trump at this point had been “largely debunked” or “proven false.” 

On Sept. 27, 2018, Trump said: “I was accused by four or five women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me. We caught them, and the mainstream media refused to put it on television.”

But there is no evidence any women were paid “to make up stories” or were “caught” making up allegations.

Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden has also faced allegations of improper conduct with women. The majority of claims against him include unwanted touching or inappropriate displays of physical affection. 

Eight women spoke up in 2019 to say they were on the receiving end of uncomfortable touching, such as Lucy Flores’ claim that Biden smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head. The claims forced Biden to publicly acknowledge that times have changed and say he would be “more mindful” going forward.

However, one of the women, Tara Reade, claims that Biden also sexually assaulted her. She says it took place in 1993 while she worked for his Senate office, a claim the former vice president denies.

Asked about Reade’s claim against Biden shortly after she came forward with it this year, voters were split on whether they believed her. Half of Republicans and only 20%  of Democrats said it was probably true.

Just as numerous similar stories suggest the public should pay attention, the absence of a group of survivors sharing like accounts about a person in power does not mean that an individual is not credible, said Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.

“It is important not to react to the Harvey Weinsteins and Charlie Roses, where so many women came forward, with the conclusion that if someone is making an allegation on her own… that that is false,” Martin said. “That simply isn’t the case in law or real life.”

Though Martin did not comment on the particular allegations against Trump or Biden, she said that it’s important to take any allegation seriously while still asking questions to get to the truth. 

As the Me Too movement has gained traction since 2017, “it’s made a tremendous amount of difference for public perception when multiple women come forward telling similar stories,” Martin said.

Martin said when looking at incidents of alleged sexual harassment or abuse, when there are similarities in the accounts coming from multiple alleged victims about the same perpetrator, “it’s certainly hard to dismiss.”

In the case of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, for example, Martin noted the many common threads in survivors’ accounts spanning decades, even when the women came forward many years after they were abused.

“Coming forward has a lot of cost, and so the willingness of multiple women to go on the record to share their story and to expose themselves both to the embarrassment of having to share these traumatic incidents and to the backlash and the attacks that you see when survivors of sexual violence come forward with allegations against powerful people… it seems more and more unlikely that anyone would do that for any other reason than telling the truth,” Martin said, though she was not referring to Trump’s accusers specifically.

However, 13 of the 19 women accusing Trump went public with their stories prior to the 2016 election and Trump still won the votes of about 42% of women.

Currently, women favor Biden by a 53%-40% margin, according to Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll out Monday.

As the 2020 presidential election draws near, the question remains: Do voters believe these allegations — and do they care?

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org/online and receive confidential support 24/7.

Contributing: Steve Reilly reported for this story for USA TODAY in 2019.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/10/21/trump-sexual-assault-allegations-share-similar-patterns-19-women/5279155002/

Screenwriter Michael H. Weber took to Twitter to describe an unpleasant experience he endured at the hands of 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl, but added that “[I]f she caused Trump to have a meltdown then all is forgiven.”

Weber’s tweet began with describing how the interaction, which took place on an airplane, occurred: “Years ago Lesley Stahl *berated* me on a plane b/c she thought I took her overhead compartment. (I did not.) Then she demanded a flight attendant recheck my ticket, adamant that I didn’t belong in her section. (I did.)”

He then concluded the tweet with the forgiveness remark.

Weber is of course referring to the recent kerfuffle Donald Trump had with Stahl following the recording of a CBS News’ 60 Minutes interview. The president disagreed with the line of questioning from the veteran television journalist and allegedly cut the interview short and walked out of the room.

On Tuesday, Trump characterized the interview as “biased” and threatened to release the interview himself before its scheduled air date this Sunday.

The president tweeted yesterday about the incident: “I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about..Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!”

Trump was also supposed to return that day with Mike Pence to record more for the 60 Minutes segment but failed to do so. According to The Washington Post, he was upset with Stahl’s questions about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and his campaign’s claims about Hunter Biden, among other things.

Trump later continued his attack on Stahl by tweeting she was not wearing a mask at the White House, though CBS News said Stahl wore a mask when she arrived and greeted the president, only removing it once they were socially distanced. CBS News also claimed a clip Trump shared that shows Stahl without a mask occurred after the interview when she was speaking with her producers, all of whom had tested negative for COVID-19 on Tuesday.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, both disputed reports that the interview was cut short by the president.

Whatever the case, Weber seemed content on Twitter that Stahl was able to at least ruin Trump’s afternoon.

Along with his writing partner Scott Neustadter, Weber has written the screenplays for the films (500) Days of Summer (2009), and The Pink Panther 2 (2009), and The Fault in Our Stars (2014). For writing The Disaster Artist (2017), the duo was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

p:last-of-type::after, .node-type-slideshow .article-body > p:last-of-type::after {
content: none
}]]>

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/screenwriter-forgives-stahl-1541005

Trump won Iowa’s six electoral votes by 9.6 percentage points in 2016. Voters there have toggled between Republican and Democratic presidential nominees in previous election cycles, with Barack Obama carrying the state in 2012 and 2008.

According to a RealClearPolitics average of Iowa surveys conducted between Oct. 1-19, Biden leads Trump by 2 percentage points in general election polling.

The latest Monmouth poll also shows a competitive race for Senate in Iowa. Both incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst and Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield are supported by 47 percent of the state’s registered voters.

Greenfield leads Ernst, however, under the high likely turnout model, 49-47 percent, as well as under the low likely turnout model, 51-45 percent. The RealClearPolitics average of Iowa Senate polling also has Greenfield out in front of Ernst by 5 percentage points.

The Monmouth poll was conducted Oct. 15-19, surveying 501 Iowa registered voters with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/21/biden-trump-tight-race-iowa-430766

Officially, the church teaches that homosexual sex acts are “disordered,” and Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, called homosexuality an “intrinsic moral evil.” Francis has not altered church doctrine, but he has pushed the church away from that stance, to the anger of conservatives, who accuse him of adjusting teaching for modern times.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-francis-civil-unions/2020/10/21/805a601c-139e-11eb-a258-614acf2b906d_story.html

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/21/covid-19-senate-take-up-500-billion-coronavirus-stimulus-bill/3713066001/

Today, writer E. Jean Carroll goes to court in a unique case: she accused the sitting president of defamation. But when she came forward in 2019 to say Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, her story started with a familiar detail.

“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips,” she wrote in June 2019. 

Former model Amy Dorris, the latest to come forward just last month to allege that Trump had sexually assaulted her in 1997 at the US Open tennis tournament, said it began in a similar way. 

“He just grabbed me. And he just shoved his tongue down my throat,” Dorris told the Guardian. “His grip was hard, you know, you couldn’t pull away.” 

Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis said Dorris’ claim was “totally false” and an attempt to attack Trump before the election.

Thirteen of the 19 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or non-consensual physical contact said he kissed them without consent, often out of the blue, sometimes holding them firmly in place.

Another reason the scene is familiar: It’s how Trump himself described his approach to women in a 2005 recording of what he thought was a private conversation, released in 2016.

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them,” he said in the now-infamous Access Hollywood recording. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

Carroll brought a defamation case against Trump after he allegedly slandered her in denying her claims. Last month,  the U.S. Department of Justice attempted to intervene in the case by putting the federal government, rather than Trump himself, in the position of defendant.

Today, oral arguments begin between Carroll’s attorneys and the Justice Department to consider whether the DOJ can move forward. 

In their own words, here is how Carroll and other women describe their encounters with Trump:

A USA TODAY review of 19 women’s allegations — the number who allege non-consensual physical contact — as well as more than 4,000 words that Trump has spoken, tweeted or released in written statements since 2016 addressing their allegations, show patterns in both the allegations and Trump’s reactions to them.

Patterns in the behavior of alleged sexual abusers may be used by prosecutors to try to lay out a modus operandi, or “something about the way a defendant operates that is akin to a signature,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in New York, speaking generally.

“How do you show that a person has, let’s just say, a sense of entitlement that leads him to just take what he thinks he deserves? Is that something that can be reflected in multiple instances of misconduct?” she said. “Some sexual predators who engage in patterned behavior have certain things that they say repeatedly or often. Sometimes they do the same kinds of things, so there’s a particular interest in a body part or a preoccupation with doing something in a certain way.”

Election 2020: Accusations against both Trump and Biden leave survivors disappointed

In the case of Trump, the Access Hollywood tape is unique in that it is “a shining example of the kind of words that could be used to help explain what’s going on in someone’s head,” Tuerkheimer said.

“It is really uncommon … to have the man accused provide a window into his thinking, where you actually get a statement that reflects a particular view of, be it women or be it an entitlement to women’s bodies,” she said.

However, Trump is not on trial for sexual assault, as Carroll’s case is for defamation.

Carroll is the only one of the 19 women to accuse Trump of rape, although his first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of marital rape in a 1990 deposition. Trump denied it and she later said she did not mean it in a criminal sense. Jill Harth, a makeup artist who, along with a male associate, had a business relationship with Trump, accused Trump of attempted rape in a 1997 lawsuit which she withdrew from court, though she said in 2016 she stood by her claims.

From 2005 to early 2007, there were seven incidents when women alleged Trump sexually attacked or forcibly touched them. That’s at the very start of his marriage to model Melania Trump, and it’s in the early – and peak ratings years – of Trump’s hit television show, “The Apprentice.”

It’s also in the immediate wake of when the Access Hollywood tape was recorded.

Two of the allegations took place in July 2006 — the same month Trump had his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, who received a $130,000 payment just before the 2016 election by the president’s former lawyer and signed a nondisclosure agreement about the affair. It is now part of a larger investigation into Trump’s finances.

That same weekend, Jessica Drake said, Trump kissed her without permission and offered to pay her for sex. Ninni Laaksonen, the former Miss Finland, said that he grabbed her butt that same month before an appearance on the David Letterman show. 

Though our analysis focused on 19 women who alleged physical contact, more women have alleged other inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature from Trump, including a number of participants in pageants he owned like former Miss North Carolina Samantha Holvey, who said he made her feel “like a piece of meat.” And former Miss Teen Vermont Mariah Billado and former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon who both say Trump entered dressing rooms unannounced while young women were topless or naked.

Trump’s own comments about “inspecting” Miss USA contestants and claims he would touch them, Tuerkheimer said, are an example of entitlement that “can lead to an inference that a person is more willing to just touch, just grab, just grope, just kiss.”

More than half of the cases are alleged to have happened at Trump’s properties in New York and Florida, places where he had access to private spaces or more control over the environment.

Like Dorris, Karen Johnson said Trump caught her outside the restroom. However, Johnson was at a Mar-a-Lago party when Trump allegedly groped her, pulled her behind a tapestry and kissed her, she told journalists Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy in their book “All the President’s Women.” 

Cathy Heller said Trump grabbed and kissed her when she attended a Mother’s Day Brunch at Mar-a-Lago in 1997.

In Harth’s lawsuit she alleged one of the incidents of groping took place in Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.

Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for People magazine, published a story in the magazine alleging that Trump pushed her against the wall and forced his tongue into her mouth while giving her a tour of Mar-a-Lago in December 2005. She was visiting to interview Trump for an article.

In a 2016 Palm Beach Post article, Mindy McGillivray said she was groped by Trump during an event at Mar-a-Lago in 2003. 

Ten of the 19 women were in their twenties when they say the incidents occurred. In many cases, they were decades younger than Trump. 

Dorris was 24 and Trump 51 at the time the alleged assault took place. 

Kristin Anderson, an aspiring model who said Trump groped her in the early 1990s, was in her early 20s at the time; Trump would have been in his mid- to late-40s. Then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied the incident with Anderson occurred and called it a “political attack designed to tear down Mr. Trump” in 2016.

Ten women say Trump kissed or groped them while they were meeting for a job interview or as part of a business deal.

Former “Apprentice” contestant Jennifer Murphy, who said she plans to vote for Trump, told Grazia magazine he unexpectedly kissed her on the lips while she was leaving a job interview in 2005.

Summer Zervos, another former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said her incident with Trump also happened as part of a job interview, which Trump had scheduled in his private hotel room. 

Rachel Crooks was a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a Trump Tower client, in 2005 when she introduced herself to Trump outside an elevator where, she alleges, he kissed her on the mouth. Trump called it “Another False Accusation” in a 2018 tweet.

Juliet Huddy, a former Fox News host, said Trump kissed her after a lunch. 

On at least four occasions, Trump has falsely stated he’d never met women who accused him of sexual assault, despite video or photo evidence to the contrary. There is photographic or video evidence of him interacting with at least 11 of the accusers. 

“I have no idea who these women are, have no idea,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Oct. 14, 2016. “Never met this person, these people, I don’t know who they are,” he added later in the rally. We found that Trump had been photographed or appeared on national television interacting with Dorris, Murphy, Stoynoff, Zervos, Searles, McDowell, Laaksonen, Drake and Harth.

“I’ve never met this person in my life,” Trump said in a written statement responding to Carroll’s rape allegation, even though New York magazine had already published a photograph of Carroll and Trump together at a social event in 1987. 

At least seven times, Trump has claimed, without evidence, that allegations against him have been discredited.

On Oct. 14, 2016 Trump said “eyewitnesses already debunked to a People Magazine story.” But there is no evidence eyewitnesses to the alleged assault debunked Stoynoff’s story. Stoynoff said Trump’s butler walked in, but he has never spoken publicly and would have been the sole eyewitness.

Two days later, Trump said “those stories have been largely debunked” and on Oct. 17 he tweeted twice, saying “these totally phoney stories, 100% made up by women (many already proven false)” and “media has deceived the public by putting women front and center with made-up stories and lies, and got caught.” There is no evidence any allegation of sexual assault against Trump at this point had been “largely debunked” or “proven false.” 

On Sept. 27, 2018, Trump said: “I was accused by four or five women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me. We caught them, and the mainstream media refused to put it on television.”

But there is no evidence any women were paid “to make up stories” or were “caught” making up allegations.

Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden has also faced allegations of improper conduct with women. The majority of claims against him include unwanted touching or inappropriate displays of physical affection. 

Eight women spoke up in 2019 to say they were on the receiving end of uncomfortable touching, such as Lucy Flores’ claim that Biden smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head. The claims forced Biden to publicly acknowledge that times have changed and say he would be “more mindful” going forward.

However, one of the women, Tara Reade, claims that Biden also sexually assaulted her. She says it took place in 1993 while she worked for his Senate office, a claim the former vice president denies.

Asked about Reade’s claim against Biden shortly after she came forward with it this year, voters were split on whether they believed her. Half of Republicans and only 20%  of Democrats said it was probably true.

Just as numerous similar stories suggest the public should pay attention, the absence of a group of survivors sharing like accounts about a person in power does not mean that an individual is not credible, said Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.

“It is important not to react to the Harvey Weinsteins and Charlie Roses, where so many women came forward, with the conclusion that if someone is making an allegation on her own… that that is false,” Martin said. “That simply isn’t the case in law or real life.”

Though Martin did not comment on the particular allegations against Trump or Biden, she said that it’s important to take any allegation seriously while still asking questions to get to the truth. 

As the Me Too movement has gained traction since 2017, “it’s made a tremendous amount of difference for public perception when multiple women come forward telling similar stories,” Martin said.

Martin said when looking at incidents of alleged sexual harassment or abuse, when there are similarities in the accounts coming from multiple alleged victims about the same perpetrator, “it’s certainly hard to dismiss.”

In the case of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, for example, Martin noted the many common threads in survivors’ accounts spanning decades, even when the women came forward many years after they were abused.

“Coming forward has a lot of cost, and so the willingness of multiple women to go on the record to share their story and to expose themselves both to the embarrassment of having to share these traumatic incidents and to the backlash and the attacks that you see when survivors of sexual violence come forward with allegations against powerful people… it seems more and more unlikely that anyone would do that for any other reason than telling the truth,” Martin said, though she was not referring to Trump’s accusers specifically.

However, 13 of the 19 women accusing Trump went public with their stories prior to the 2016 election and Trump still won the votes of about 42% of women.

Currently, women favor Biden by a 53%-40% margin, according to Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll out Monday.

As the 2020 presidential election draws near, the question remains: Do voters believe these allegations — and do they care?

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org/online and receive confidential support 24/7.

Contributing: Steve Reilly reported for this story for USA TODAY in 2019.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/10/21/trump-sexual-assault-allegations-share-similar-patterns-19-women/5279155002/

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned to the wildly popular gaming platform Twitch to encourage young people to vote, and became one of the platform’s most-viewed streams of all time on Tuesday evening.

This cemented her in the top five on the record board for Twitch’s most concurrent viewers on a stream, according to gaming site GinX.

Twitch confirmed AOC’s stream as one of the “biggest” in a comment to ABC News, but said gaming icon Ninja, who live-streamed a Fornite session with rapper Drake in 2018 was still in the No. 1 spot.

Fellow progressive Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, also joined in on the gaming session on Tuesday, along with some of Twitch’s most-popular gamers, including Myth.

Since the live version ended and the video was posted on Twitch, Ocasio-Cortez’s stream went on to garner some 4.7 million views total.

“Thank you all so much for joining my first ever Twitch stream, I guess I hope it’s not the last, I’m still kind of getting my bearings out here so we’ll see,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitch.

“First things first, if you are able to vote, we are here — IWillVote.com. Make sure that you make your voting plan. If you can’t vote, if you’re under the age of 18, if you’re this that or the other … make sure you talk to someone who can vote and direct them to IWillVote.com and make sure they get their voting plan in place,” she added.

She encouraged those who made a voting plan or convinced someone they knew to make a voting plan to “drop a little something in the chat,” as she played the video game.

Moreover, Ocasio-Cortez learned about the U.K.’s national healthcare system from a fellow player abroad, asking, “So you go to the doctor and then what happens, do you just walk up and say I need help? How does that work? I can’t even imagine that interaction without a credit card or some sort of cash payment.”

This is not the first time politicians have dappled in the gaming world. Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign made headlines last week for his unexpectedly ornate island in the game Animal Crossing.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-twitch-stream-encouraging-people-vote/story?id=73734695

David Xol of Guatemala hugs his son Byron as they were reunited at Los Angeles International Airport in January. The father and son were separated 18 months earlier under the Trump administration’s “no tolerance” migration policy.

Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP


hide caption

toggle caption

Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

David Xol of Guatemala hugs his son Byron as they were reunited at Los Angeles International Airport in January. The father and son were separated 18 months earlier under the Trump administration’s “no tolerance” migration policy.

Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

Despite a federal judge’s order that the government reunite families who had been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s “no tolerance” migration policy, the parents of 545 children still can’t be found, according to a court document filed Tuesday by the U.S. Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Thousands of families were separated under the policy before the Trump administration ended the practice in 2018. The ACLU successfully sued the government, winning a court order to reunite families. Thousands of parents and children were reunited within weeks.

But about 1,000 families who had been separated in a pilot program in 2017 were not covered by the initial court order — reunification of this group was ordered only last year. The passage of time has made finding both parents and children more difficult.

“What has happened is horrific,” says Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, who has been leading the litigation. “Some of these children were just babies when they were separated. Some of these children may now have been separated for more than half their lives. Almost their whole life, they have not been with their parents.”

The update on reunification efforts was filed ahead of a status conference scheduled for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.

The filing estimates that two-thirds of the separated parents are believed to have returned to their home countries. Nongovernmental groups appointed by the court have “engaged in time consuming and arduous on-the-ground searches for parents in their respective countries of origin,” according to the filing, but those efforts were halted by the coronavirus pandemic and are only now resuming in limited fashion.

NPR’s Joel Rose reports that the children initially went into a shelter system before being placed with sponsors across the country and that many will likely try to remain in the United States. The ACLU’s Gelernt says about 360 of the children still have not been located.

The case is Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al., in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, 3:18-cv-428.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/10/21/926031426/parents-of-545-children-separated-at-u-s-mexico-border-still-cant-be-found

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/21/pennsylvania-poll-joe-biden-leads-donald-trump-usa-today-suffolk-poll/5990219002/

Good morning,

The New York Times recently revealed that Donald Trump paid no personal income tax to the IRS in 10 of the 15 years before he won the presidency. But the newspaper has now revealed that from 2013 to 2015 he paid almost $200,000 in taxes to China, where he still maintains a bank account and spent years pursuing business deals – a potentially major conflict of interest for a president who has fought both of his election campaigns on a promise to stand up to Beijing.

  • A Trump Organization lawyer told the New York Times that the Chinese bank account was opened “in order to pay the local taxes”, adding: “No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive.”

Trump demanded Barr investigate the Bidens, and ‘fast’



Joe and Hunter Biden in 2010. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

In a Tuesday phone interview with his favourite morning show, Fox & Friends, Trump demanded his attorney general, Bill Barr, launch a brazenly political investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden “before the election” in less than two weeks’ time. The president insisted that a New York Post story of dubious provenance regarding Hunter’s links to a Ukrainian energy firm was evidence of “major corruption”, saying: “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast.”

Meanwhile, a Russian analyst who was unmasked by congressional Republicans as the main source for the Steele dossier on Trump’s links to Russia – and was then publicly accused by the president of being a “Russian spy” – tells Luke Harding he is in hiding and “afraid for his life” as a result of the president’s smears.

  • Trump reportedly cut short a pre-election interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes on Tuesday, and then tweeted a threat to post footage of the “FAKE and BIASED” exchange to Twitter before it is broadcast on CBS.

  • How did Don Jr become his father’s political heir apparent? By retweeting conspiracy theories, delivering fiery populist speeches and “owning the libs”, writes David Smith:


Don Jr, whose father worried about naming his son after himself in case he turned out to be a “loser”, is adept at throwing red meat to the base, sometimes with greater discipline and precision than his father.

Could a President Biden still save the Iran nuclear deal?



John Kerry, then secretary of state, meets Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, in Vienna in 2016. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/AFP/Getty Images

Joe Biden was part of the Obama administration that forged the Iran nuclear deal, and he has promised to rejoin it if he wins the White House in November. But, as Patrick Wintour reports, the Iranian government is facing its own electoral challenge from hardliners who oppose any engagement with the west, which may leave a Biden administration with only a narrow window in which to revive diplomatic relations with Tehran.

  • The Trump administration’s annual human rights assessment has omitted or altered vital information about issues including torture, reproductive rights and persecution based on sexuality in countries around the world, diminishing the value of what was previously considered a “gold standard” of objective information.

The justice department made a big threat to big tech



Google’s offices in New York. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In a case reportedly rushed through by Barr during what may be the dying days of the Trump administration, the US justice department has sued Google, accusing it of abusing its position to maintain an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising.

As Kari Paul explains, the federal antitrust lawsuit poses the biggest legal threat yet to a titan of big tech, and follows other investigations of Silicon Valley’s monopolistic behaviour by state attorneys general, the FTC and the house judiciary committee. However, at least one legal expert says the DoJ’s decision to file suit so soon before a potential change of presidential administration “could be detrimental” to the case.

In other election news …



Melania Trump is canceling a rare joint campaign appearance with her husband due to a ‘lingering cough’. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Stat of the day

Trump claimed on Tuesday that the US was “crushing the coronavirus”, despite the latest nationwide surge in cases. In fact, the CDC has found that 300,000 excess deaths were recorded in the US this year, only a third of which are accounted for by the official Covid-19 death toll.

The extra 100,000 deaths may be a mixture of unrecorded coronavirus cases and fatalities indirectly related to the pandemic, such as people who could not access treatment for other serious conditions because hospitals were overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients.

View from the right

Twitter’s decision to block the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story shows that censorship in America has not disappeared, argues Matthew Schmitz – instead, it has been outsourced to big tech.


The Post Office no longer screens our mail for obscene material, and the local librarian is unlikely to ban books. But a system of private corporations controls what Americans can read and see. This system is less obedient to small-town values and religiosity than it is to the Chinese Communist party and the woke ascendancy.

Don’t miss this

An anonymous grand juror in the Breonna Taylor case has claimed – after a judge ruled they could speak publicly – that jurors were never offered homicide charges to consider against the police officers who shot dead Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, in her Louisville apartment during a botched narcotics raid. The juror’s account of the proceedings runs contrary to that given by the Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron.

Last Thing: AOC knows how to play the game



AOC’s Among Us stream attracted the third-highest viewership in Twitch history. Photograph: Brian Snyder/AFP/Getty Images

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been playing the popular game Among Us and broadcasting it live on Twitch for as many as 400,000 viewers, one of the most-watched Twitch streams ever. Patrick Lum explains why a politician would be busy playing video games two weeks before the election.

Sign up

Sign up for the US morning briefing

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/first-thing-election-special-trump-did-pay-taxes-in-china

In the past couple of weeks, key battleground states like Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have received a lot of attention because Republicans have seen a spike in voter registration numbers. This is often cited as a counterpoint to Joe Biden’s sizable lead over President Trump in the polls, as all these Republican registrations must be a sign of support for Trump that the polls are missing, right?

Well, it’s hard to say what’s happening exactly. Dave Wasserman, the House editor for The Cook Political Report and an NBC News contributor, found in early October that Republicans had made much larger gains in voter registration than Democrats in key states since the presidential primaries earlier this year, perhaps in part due to Republicans’ efforts to knock on doors and Democrats’ reluctance to do the same.

But the problem is party registration numbers can be a hard way to get a read on what’s happening in the election. Like early voting numbers, there are all kinds of pitfalls in how you should think about this data. Here are three of the biggest problems:

Party registration is often a lagging indicator

A voter’s party registration is a strong indicator of who they’ll support, but it’s not a guarantee. In fact, many voters registered with one party have actually been voting for the other party in recent elections but haven’t necessarily switched their registration to reflect the party they actually support.

Take Pennsylvania, for example. The once-Democratic southwestern part has shifted sharply toward the GOP over the past couple of decades. However, party registration figures haven’t necessarily reflected that movement as much as you might expect. For instance, Greene County along the West Virginia border voted for Trump by 40 percentage points in 2016, yet preelection registration figures1 show that party identification is split almost evenly, with registered Republicans and Democrats each making up 45 percent of the county’s voters.

Part of what’s going on is that many older voters in that region are still registered as Democrats, even if they back Republicans for most federal offices. Conversely, the suburban counties around Philadelphia in the eastern part of the state used to form the base of the state Republican Party, but even though that area has moved toward the Democrats in recent elections, some Democratic-leaning voters haven’t changed their party registration. In other words, big shifts in party registration sometimes tell us something we already know, and aren’t a signal of a new shift in attitudes.

Registration surges follow the campaign calendar

The election calendar also influences party registration trends, as key dates and campaign events drive interest in participation. For instance, a presidential primary or the registration deadline ahead of the general election can spark a flood of registrations. But sometimes this can create a disproportionate number of registrations from one party.

Consider the 2020 presidential primary. Democrats had a competitive race, which drove interest in voting in 2019 and early in 2020 among Democrats and voters who wanted to have a say in the party’s nomination contest. Meanwhile, Trump was practically unopposed in the GOP nomination contest, so there wasn’t the same motivation among Republican-leaning voters to register ahead of the primaries in the spring until we got closer to the general election.

Florida provides a clear example of this. Much has been made of the GOP registering about 147,000 more voters than the Democrats in the roughly eight months since the February registration deadline for the state’s March 17 presidential primary. Yet in the eight months before the primary deadline (so, going back to the end of June 2019), Democrats registered about 42,000 more voters than the GOP due to the high interest in the Democratic presidential race. Now, that might still be a net win for the GOP — because if we subtract the two, Republicans registered 105,000 more voters — but it’s not as simple as that. Not only is party registration sometimes a lagging indicator as we mentioned above, but there are also a lot more people registering as independent now, and more of those voters may lean Democratic.

Independent voters complicate things

In recent years, a growing number of voters don’t want to be associated with either of the two major parties, and instead register as independent. After hovering in the low- to high-30s from the late 1980s to the late 2000s, the share of Americans who identify as politically independent has now reached or even topped 40 percent in recent years, according to Gallup. And in the states where there is party registration data available, the share of registered independents has grown to more than a quarter of the electorate while the percentage of registered Democrats and Republicans has decreased.

That, in turn, makes it harder to know which party has an advantage in a given state because there’s this big block of voters who won’t tell us which party they prefer. The reality, of course, is that most independents lean toward one party, but their preferences are still masked at the voter registration level. This is especially tricky in battleground states such as Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania that have seen major upticks in the share of voters who have registered with no party affiliation.

But we’re not completely in the dark when it comes to who registers as an independent voter. For instance, younger voters are more likely to identify as independent than older voters. And importantly, younger voters of color are also more likely to register as independents, as Florida’s registration figures have shown. Both of these groups tend to lean Democratic which means that even if many of these voters don’t openly identify as Democrats, they’re more likely to vote for Democrats than not. More broadly, polls show Biden ahead of Trump among voters who identify as independent. That means even if Republicans are winning the registration battle in some key states, it might not be enough to offset the number of registered Democrats and independents who may back Biden in the end.

In other words, despite the surge in GOP registrations in a few swing states, it’s hard to read that as a clear sign of success for the GOP in November. It could be a good sign, but it could also be a lot of noise, and you’re better off looking at the polls instead.

Source Article from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-a-surge-in-republican-voter-registration-might-not-mean-a-surge-in-trump-support/

Show More

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-60-minutes-leslie-stahl/2020/10/20/d7ef0554-132a-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html

Trump is hoping for an agreement before the election, eager to announce another round of $1,200 direct payments going out under his name, but it’s increasingly clear that time has pretty much run out. If he wins, Trump is promising relief, but if he loses — as polls are indicating — it’s unclear that his enthusiasm for delivering COVID aid will be as strong. Recent history suggests that any post-election lame-duck session in the event of a Trump loss wouldn’t produce much.

Source Article from https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-second-coronavirus-stimulus-check-updates-20201020-df5yeoxfqfhctg4o4vymhqzkmi-story.html

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar attracted an audience of nearly half a million people Tuesday night by playing the viral video game Among Us on Twitch — one of the biggest events in the history of the popular online streaming platform.

The freshmen Democrats organized the event as an impromptu get-out-the-vote effort aimed at young Americans, the latest in a series of video game events held by high-profile Democrats. Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign also debuted an “island” on the popular game Animal Crossing.

AOC, HOUSE PROGRESSIVES CALL FOR BAN ON CORPORATE EXECUTIVESIN A BIDEN CABINET

Within an hour of AOC beginning the stream — her first on Twitch — close to 440,000 people were watching at the same time.

It was the third-largest audience ever for a live Twitch stream, according to Axios.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

As of Tuesday night, the “Squad” member’s profile on the platform already has nearly 500,000 subscribers, making her almost immediately one of the site’s most popular personalities after first creating the account earlier in the day.

Earlier this year, AOC made Twitch the centerpiece of her proposal to ban the US military from recruiting using online gaming platforms — namely, disbanding the Army’s profile and recruitment presence on the site.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-debut-twitch-stream-quickly-becomes-one-of-platforms-most-viewed

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenNearly 300 former national security officials sign Biden endorsement letter Trump narrows Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania: poll Florida breaks first-day early voting record with 350K ballots cast MORE has a massive cash-on-hand advantage over President TrumpDonald John TrumpNearly 300 former national security officials sign Biden endorsement letter DC correspondent on the death of Michael Reinoehl: ‘The folks I know in law enforcement are extremely angry about it’ Late night hosts targeted Trump over Biden 97 percent of the time in September: study MORE heading into the final sprint to Election Day.

According to new filings with the Federal Election Commission, Biden entered October with over $177 million in the bank, compared with $63.1 million for the president, marking a sharp reversal from earlier in the cycle when Trump’s cash advantage seemed insurmountable. 

The cash-on-hand totals, which do not incorporate funds from joint fundraising committees, come after a September in which both campaigns raised impressive hauls, though Biden still significantly outraised Trump last month. The former vice president broke his own record when he raked in $383 million, while Trump raised $247.8 million. The month before, Biden raised a then-record of $364.5 million, compared with $210 million for the president.

Biden’s strong financial position in the final weeks before Nov. 3 was not taken for granted at the start of the primary season, with his fundraising lagging behind that of several of his Democratic opponents. But as the party’s base ultimately rallied around his campaign after his blowout in the South Carolina primary, so eventually did its donors.

Biden has used his gargantuan bank account to blitz the airwaves with ads, including new buys set to air during the World Series, and in recent weeks has seen his national polling lead over Trump hover in the low double digits. His single-digit leads in many swing state have also remained steady.

Trump, meanwhile, has faced a highly-reported cash shortage after a summer of hefty spending followed by consecutive months in which he suddenly trailed Biden in fundraising. While Biden’s campaign was able to ramp up its fundraising, the president’s camp was forced to temporarily take down ads in key swing states as it rejiggered its budget.

Reflecting the spending disparity, Biden’s campaign spent nearly $285 million in September, compared with just over $139 million for Trump. 

Still, Trump’s campaign has looked to express confidence in the president’s chances at defeating Biden, with spokesperson Tim Murtaugh saying earlier this month the president goes into the “final stretch with strength, resources, record & huge ground game needed to spread message and secure re-election.”

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521998-biden-has-massive-cash-advantage-heading-into-election-day

Yields ascended to four-month highs on Tuesday night after White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had made “good progress” toward a deal on a new coronavirus aid bill, although Meadows warned the two sides “still have a ways to go.”

Following Pelosi and Mnuchin’s meeting on Tuesday, Meadows told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” that the two will talk again on Wednesday, and that he hopes to see “some kind of agreement before the weekend.”

President Donald Trump has said he is willing to accept a large relief package despite opposition from within his own Republican party, while Pelosi told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday that she is “optimistic” about a potential accord.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/21/treasury-yields-climb-on-renewed-stimulus-optimism.html