White House adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner came under heavy criticism after he said Monday that Black Americans have to want to help themselves in order for the president’s policies to help them.
Kushner said on “Fox & Friends” that the president can help people in the Black community “break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”
He also said that many people in the anti-police brutality and discrimination protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis were “just virtue signaling” – a term for empty gestures of outrage or anguish on social media.
“They go on Instagram and cry, or they would, you know, put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court,” Kushner said, dismissing the expressions of outrage and solidarity that many made after video surfaced of Floyd being pinned with a police officer’s knee on his neck. “Quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward. You solve problems with solutions.”
Kushner’s implication that Black Americans lack a drive to succeed and to address the problems facing their community drew criticism that he is blind to his own privilege and that his own success is attributable more to his family’s wealth than his own efforts.
“Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple. Few in US history have been given as much wealth or power without having to earn a thing as Jared Kushner,” tweeted Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. “His father-in-law gave him the position he is failing at miserably, with deadly consequences. We will remember his casual racism.”
“Jared Kushner is the face of white privilege and nepotism. He doesn’t want to change our racist, broken system because he benefits from it. He’s the last person that should be lecturing the Black community on the value of ‘hard work,'” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
“Jared Kushner speaks as if Black people are lazy complainers who don’t want to be successful,” said civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who represented Floyd’s family. “This blatant DISRESPECT shows he has NO understanding of the Black community and its challenges that have spanned centuries. You can’t ‘fix’ these problems from this level of ego.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded to the criticism, saying in a statement that it was “disgusting to see internet trolls taking Senior Advisor Jared Kushner out of context as they try to distract from President Trump’s undeniable record of accomplishment for the Black community.”
“From criminal justice reform and record HBCU funding to record low Black unemployment and record high income increases, there is simply no disputing that President Trump accomplished what Democrats merely talked about,” she said.
Kushner said in Monday’s Fox interview that he admired Ice Cube because the rapper and actor was also seeking concrete solutions. Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, recently met with Kushner and Trump to discuss ideas to help the Black community. Kushner said Ice Cube’s proposals influenced the president’s “Platinum Plan” to assist Black Americans.
“It was a really in-depth and respectful policy discussion. There were some things we didn’t agree on, but there were a lot of things we did agree on. I think he helped make our plan better, and we appreciated it,” Kushner said.
Ice Cube’s willingness to work with the Trump White House drew criticism from many on social media. He defended the move in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace earlier this month.
“I’m not playing no more of these political games,” he told Wallace. “I’m going to whoever’s in power and I’m going to speak to them about our problems.”
Though Kushner claimed there is a “groundswell of support in the Black community” for Trump, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found only 5% of Black likely voters plan to vote to reelect the president and that 83% have an unfavorable opinion of the president.
Voters approach a polling location in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 13 — the first day of voting in the state. More than 7 million votes have been cast in Texas already.
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Voters approach a polling location in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 13 — the first day of voting in the state. More than 7 million votes have been cast in Texas already.
Sergio Flores/Getty Images
With about a week still remaining until Election Day, Americans have already cast a record-breaking 62 million early ballots, putting the 2020 election on track for historic levels of voter turnout.
That’s some 15 million more pre-election votes than were cast in the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Elections Project, a turnout-tracking database run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.
McDonald calculates that nationally, voters have cast more than 45% of the total votes counted in the 2016 election.
“We continue to pile on votes at a record pace. We’ve already passed any raw number of early votes in any prior election in U.S. history,” McDonald told NPR Monday.
“It’s good news, because we were very much concerned about how it would be possible to conduct an election during a pandemic,” he said, citing concerns that mail-in ballots would be returned by voters en masse at the conclusion of the early voting period, overwhelming election officials. “Instead, what appears to be happening is people are voting earlier and spreading out the workload for election officials.”
In 2019, McDonald predicted that 150 million people would vote in 2020’s general election, which would be a turnout rate of about 65% — the highest since 1908.
But he’s going back to the drawing board.
“I have increasingly been confident that 150 [million] is probably a low-ball estimate,” he said Monday. “I think by the end of the week I’ll be upping that forecast.”
In Texas, for example, nearly 7.4 million early votes had been cast as of Sunday, marking 82% of the state’s total votes in 2016.
Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have also reached 65% or more of their 2016 vote totals.
McDonald cites Washington state as an illustrative example of the change in voter behavior this year, since the state ran mostly all mail-in elections in both 2016 and 2020 under the same rules. Thus far, the state reports over 2 million mail-in ballots have been returned, nearly three times the return rate in 2016.
Ballot drop box signs are seen at Westchester Regional Library in Miami on Oct. 19.
Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP via Getty Images
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Ballot drop box signs are seen at Westchester Regional Library in Miami on Oct. 19.
Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP via Getty Images
Roberto Rodriguez, assistant deputy supervisor of elections in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, says 42% of voters there have already cast their ballots.
“Normally in a presidential election, we have anywhere from 68% to 73% turnout,” he told NPR. “We’re expecting 80% turnout this year based on the voting numbers that have come in.”
He said more than 266,000 people had voted at an early voting site in person and more than 390,000 had voted by mail, as of Sunday night. Miami-Dade County has over 1.5 million active registered voters.
Caution in interpreting partisan splits
Among states that are reporting data, voters have requested 87 million mail ballots, according to McDonald, and roughly 41 million ballots have been returned by mail.
Democrats currently hold a roughly 2-to-1 advantage in returned mail-in ballots in states with party registration.
But McDonald is quick to caution that early numbers don’t paint the full picture.
“Usually the story for a typical election in recent years has been that the early vote is Democratic and the Election Day vote is Republican,” he said. “And it looks as though we’re going to have the same story this year, and we’re going to have to wait to see what happens with that Election Day vote before we can really say what’s going to happen.”
But 2020 has brought a shift in the way in which people are voting early.
“Typically, when we talk about early voting, we’re talking about Democrats voting in person early and Republicans voting by mail,” McDonald said. “This election, those roles are reversed. But when you look at the overall electorate, there are many more people voting by mail than in person early in most states.”
The shift could be at least in part due to President Trump’s consistent false claims that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud, whereas Joe Biden’s campaign has been aggressive in urging supporters to vote early, whether in person or by mail.
Strategically, it’s helpful for campaigns to have voters cast their ballots early in order to more efficiently use campaign resources to then target less motivated voters.
A surge in youth voters
People ages 18 to 29 are turning out to vote early in a big way.
According to data from CIRCLE, a research center at Tufts University, the numbers of young people voting early have skyrocketed, particularly in states that will be critical for Biden and Trump to win, like Michigan, Florida and North Carolina.
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As of Oct. 21, 257,720 young voters in Florida had voted, according to CIRCLE. That’s nearly 214,000 more than had voted at that time in 2016.
In Texas, almost 500,000 18- to 29-year-olds had cast their ballots by Oct. 21. However there isn’t data from 2016 data to compare youth turnout.
Young people could wield significant political power: Millennials and some members of Gen Z comprise 37% of eligible voters, roughly the same share of the electorate that baby boomers and older voters (“pre-boomers”) make up, according to census data analyzed by the Brookings Institution.
For decades, youth voters have showed up to the polls at relatively low rates, a statistic voter education groups have been working to change this year.
Long lines remain
As early voting began, the pent-up voting interest showed as long lines formed in states like Georgia and Texas, with some voters waiting in line for hours.
Election officials had warned that some in-person voting locations would face longer lines, as some jurisdictions have had to consolidate polling places and adjust logistics to accommodate social distancing during the pandemic.
New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the long lines she experienced while voting in the Bronx on Sunday.
“There is no place in the United States of America where two-, three-, four-hour waits to vote is acceptable and just because it’s happening in a blue state doesn’t mean it’s not voter suppression,” she said.
“If this was happening in a swing state, there would be national coverage.”
Zeta has officially strengthened into a hurricane, and is predicted to make landfall late Monday on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula before setting its sights on the U.S.
Louisiana is directly in the path of Hurricane Zeta, which is expected to make landfall there on Wednesday night. If it does so, it would be the fifth named storm to make landfall in the state during a single year — the highest number since the state started keeping records in 1851, state climatologist Barry Keim toldThe Times-Picayune. (A few other storms have crossed into Louisiana after making landfall in other states.)
Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency in advance of the hurricane. The storm is currently expected to bring 2-4 inches of rain across southeast Louisiana, but the greatest threat will come from high winds, Edwards said Monday.
“The good thing, and the bad thing at the same time, is we’ve had a lot of practice this year” dealing with storms, Edwards said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Guard have people on the ground ready to help once the storm hits, he said.
Louisianans are suffering from hurricane fatigue. The state still hasn’t fully recovered from Hurricanes Laura and Delta. More than 3,500 people are still in shelters after the devastation wrought by Laura and Delta, Edwards said.
According to meteorologist Sam Lillo, Louisiana has spent a cumulative three weeks in the 5-day National Hurricane Center forecast cones in 2020.
Here’s a map of the amount of time spent in the 5-day NHC forecast cones so far in 2020.
Louisiana has had a cumulative of THREE WEEKS in the cone this year!
Hurricane Zeta is the 11th hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season, and was about 90 miles from Mexico on Monday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. It’s slowly moving northwest at about 10 mph, but its speed is set to increase over the next day or so, at which point it is forecast to turn north on Tuesday night.
The hurricane could strengthen before the center crosses the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday night, NHC forecasters Richard Pasch said. Zeta should weaken while it’s over land, but is likely to strengthen once it’s back over the Gulf of Mexico.
Once it makes landfall in the U.S., heavy rainfall is expected all the way into the southern Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic states, leading to rainfall of 2-4 inches generally, with some areas seeing 6 inches of rain, which could lead to flooding.
While this storm is named Zeta, it is not the last in the Greek alphabet. Next up for names in this year of many tropical cyclones: Eta, Theta and Iota.
After Pelosi’s call with Mnuchin, her spokesman Drew Hammill tweeted that “we continue to eagerly await the Administration’s acceptance of our health language.” He added that it is “clear that our progress depends on [Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell agreeing to bipartisan, comprehensive legislation.”
“The Speaker remains optimistic that an agreement can be reached before the election,” he continued.
Spokesmen for the White House and McConnell did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on Pelosi’s letter.
The sides have failed to approve new aid money for months despite a climbing infection count and signs of a slowing economic recovery. Democrats have accused the White House of failing to grasp the gravity of the crisis, while Republicans have argued that Pelosi refuses to compromise.
Democrats and the White House have most recently proposed $2.2 trillion and $1.9 trillion relief packages, respectively. Despite the similar target price tags for legislation, the sides still have not resolved disputes over testing, extra unemployment insurance, state and local government relief and liability protections for businesses, among other issues.
The GOP-held Senate, meanwhile, is expected to adjourn until after the election following Monday’s vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. In an attempt to show they could balance both issues, Republicans tried to advance their roughly $500 billion aid proposal last week. Democrats blocked it, calling the plan inadequate.
Congressional committee chairs have recently worked to start writing potential legislation. But lawmakers have not been particularly optimistic about the prospects of an agreement soon.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has told reporters in recent days that chances of a relief deal before the election are slim.
Crafting legislation that can pass both the Democratic-held House and GOP-controlled Senate in the lame-duck session before winners take office in January could prove challenging. Republicans have opposed spending trillions more on the virus response, while Democrats want a sweeping package to root out the pandemic and the accompanying economic damage.
The results of the latest Times/Siena poll also track with the RealClearPolitics average of recent Texas surveys, which now has Trump 3.2 percentage points ahead of Biden.
Trump won Texas’ 38 electoral votes by 9.2 percentage points in 2016. The state has not been carried by a Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
The Times/Siena poll also shows that incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn has expanded his lead over Democrat M.J. Hegar to 10 percentage points, 48-38 percent, up from 6 points last month.
The RealClearPolitics average of Texas Senate surveys now puts Cornyn out in front of Hegar by 8.3 percentage points.
The Times/Siena poll was conducted Oct. 20-25, surveying 802 Texas likely voters with a margin of sampling error of plus-or-minus 3.8 percentage points.
A divided Senate on Monday is expected to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime term on the Supreme Court, capping a bitter fight over the partisan makeup of the judicial body, which has taken place in the middle of an unusually explosive presidential election.
The 48-year-old judge’s elevation will come just eight days before the final votes are cast in the contest between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. It will provide conservatives with a 6-3 majority on the high court, including three Trump picks.
The vote is expected around 7:25 p.m. ET.
Barrett’s confirmation, which is virtually assured given the GOP hold on the Senate, is expected to shift the ideological balance of the court to the right on issues such as gun rights, abortion, business and the environment.
In the coming months, the justices will also decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, through which tens of millions of Americans have access to health insurance. The case over the law will be argued on Nov. 10, one week after the election.
Raising the stakes, both Democrats and Republicans have suggested the court may be called to decide the election itself, as it did in the 2000 race between President George Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
The possibility of a contested election has overshadowed Barrett’s confirmation process.
Trump repeatedly pressed for Barrett to be confirmed in time to vote on any such cases, prompting Democrats to demand her recusal.
During two days of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Barrett agreed to carefully weigh whether her participation in an election case would be inappropriate, but declined to commit to abstaining.
The battle over Barrett’s nomination was sparked last month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who served on the Supreme Court for 27 years.
Replacing Ginsburg with Barrett represents the most stark ideological shift on the court since the liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall was replaced by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.
Trump and his allies in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., immediately moved to replace Ginsburg before Election Day. Biden and Democrats in Congress argued the process was a sham, and pressed for Ginsburg’s replacement to be named by the winner of next week’s election.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others pointed to McConnell’s 2016 refusal to even hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland during an election year.
Barrett’s confirmation is the first to come so close to a presidential election. The vote is scheduled to take place after a historic number of early votes have already been cast. More than 58 million Americans have already voted, as people around the country flock to early voting as a result of coronavirus.
Ginsburg herself weighed in from the grave. In an unusual dying statement, the 87-year-old said her “most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
Republicans praised Ginsburg’s career but pressed on with Barrett’s confirmation process.
“A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” the Kentucky Republican said on Sunday night from the Senate floor. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
Barrett has served as a professor at Notre Dame Law School since 2002 and sat on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for three years. She clerked early in her career for Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative hero, and has said that she shares his judicial philosophy.
Democrats used the hearings to focus the attention of voters on health care, arguing that Barrett’s confirmation will doom the Affordable Care Act. Republicans, on the other hand, touted Barrett’s legal credentials and her personal background as a Catholic mother of seven.
“This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Progressives criticized Democrats on the committee for their handling of the hearings, with some calling for Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking member, to leave her post.
Two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, sided with Democrats on Sunday.
Murkowski and Collins have both said they oppose the seating of a new justice before Election Day.
On Monday, however, Murkowski is expected to vote to confirm Barrett, after her largely symbolic vote the day before.
“I believe that the only way to put us back on the path of appropriate consideration of judicial nominees is to evaluate Judge Barrett as we would want to be judged. On the merits of her qualifications,” Murkowski said on Saturday.
“And we do that when that final question comes before us. And when it does, I will be a yes,” she said.
Collins, who is facing a tough reelection battle that remains focused on her 2018 support of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, is expected to vote against Barrett’s confirmation.
Vice President Mike Pence, who was slated to preside over Monday’s Senate hearings, backed out earlier in the day after a Covid-19 outbreak among a number of his key advisors.
Ben Shapiro, host of ‘The Ben Shapiro Show,’ reacts to Sen. Kamala Harris being pressed on ‘socialist perspective.’
Podcast host and author Ben Shapiro on Monday ripped Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., for laughing at an interviewer who asked if she had socialist views.
“Kamala Harris — I would love to play poker with Kamala Harris because she has the most obvious tell in the history of politics which is if she is asked a question that she does not want to answer, she breaks into that insane Joker laugh and it is pretty wild,” the host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” told “Fox & Friends.”
Shapiro said that “there is nothing funny about that question” and the follow-up question about her being a “liberal senator.”
“She broke into that laugh, again. That is the most obvious tell that I have ever seen in American politics and it is pretty amazing,” Shapiro said.
Sen. Kamala Harris D-Calif., laughed when asked during an interview Sunday if she would advocate for a “socialist or progressive perspective” if elected.
CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Harris the question during a “60 Minutes” interview with her and the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Citing a 2019 ranking from the nonpartisan organization GovTrack, O’Donnell told the vice-presidential hopeful that she is “considered the most liberal United States senator.” She said that Harris has supported the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all and legalizing marijuana, all policies that Biden has yet to back.
O’Donnell then asked if Harris would bring all of those progressive policies into a Biden administration.
“What I will do, and I promise you this, and this is what Joe wants me to do, this was part of our deal, I will always share with him my lived experience as it relates to any issue that we confront,” Harris said.
Harris was then asked if that was a socialist or progressive perspective, leading her to pause for a moment before cracking up.
“No. No,” she said while laughing. “It is the perspective of, of a woman who grew up a Black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India. Who also, you know, l — likes hip hop.”
Shapiro said that the media has “treated” the Harris-Biden campaign “very easily.”
“Yes, Kamala Harris is, in fact, the most liberal senator in the United States senate by non-partisan sources and the fact that she wasn’t even prepped for that question demonstrates how easily the media have treated the Harris-Biden campaign thus far because that is the most obvious question to ask Kamala Harris,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro went on to say, “You’re a wild leftist, you have been a wild leftist your entire career in the United States Senate, so, how do you think people are going to think that you’re going to govern if you’re elevated to the presidency since Joe Biden seems to be on his last legs? There is very little doubt that he is going to serve a full eight years at the very least and she didn’t have an answer for that which, again, when you believe that you are guarded by the Praetorian Guard of the media and never have to answer a serious question, you can just go into the crazy laugh and hope that nobody asks you a follow-up.”
The fast-moving, wind-driven Silverado fire was burning in the hills north of Irvine on Monday, closing major roads and threatening homes.
Here’s what we know:
Road closures
Portola Parkway from Highway 241 to Jamboree Road
Highway 241 from Highway 133 to Santiago
Santiago Canyon Road from Cooks to Highway 241
Evacuations
A mandatory evacuation order was issued for about 60,000 residents in Irvine, including all homes north of Irvine Boulevard between Bake Parkway and Jamboree Road, officials said.
Evacuation centers
University Community Center 1 Beech Tree Lane Irvine, CA 92612
Quail Hill Community Center 39 Shady Canyon Drive Irvine, CA 92603
Los Olivos Community Center 101 Alfonso Drive, 91618
Harvard Community Center 14701 Harvard Ave., 92606
Rancho Senior Center 3 Ethel Coplen Way, 92612
Schools
Mandatory evacuations were issued for the following schools:
Northwood High School
Elementary:
Portola Springs
Eastwood
Stonegate
Loma Ridge
Canyon View
Santiago Hills
Montessori:
Le Port
Northwood
Little Explorers
Tustin Unified schools will be evacuated to Beckman High School:
Hicks Canyon
Orchard Hills
UC Irvine has suspended all campus operations
Sources: City of Irvine; Orange County Fire Authority
“60 Minutes” was blasted by Trump supporters on Sunday evening following the CBS News program’s sit-down interviews with the president and Democratic nominee Joe Biden but viewers on the left saw things much differently.
“This 60 Minutes atrocity is precisely why Americans have written off ‘journalists.’ They assaulted Trump with absolute nonsense and covered for the Biden crime family. All while handing Biden a free campaign commercial full of softballs. What a joke,” Dan Bongino wrote.
Before the interview aired, Trump had made good on his promise to post an unedited version so his 87 million followers could see what he described as Lesley Stahl’s “constant interruptions and anger” with his “full, flowing and ‘magnificently brilliant’ answers.”
“60 Minutes” aired the interview on Sunday night. Stahl warned viewers that the interview started politely but “ended, regrettably, contentiously.”
Her first question to the president was, “Are you ready for some tough questions?”
“You’re going to be fair,” Trump responded.
Trump continued, “Just be fair,” before saying that she doesn’t ask Biden tough questions.
Stahl focused on the coronavirus during the first part of the interview and seemed to increase the tension between the two when she brought up comments Trump made at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., earlier this month when he said, “Suburban women, will you please like me? Please. Please.”
Trump supporters say he was clearly playing a part and joking, but news outlets like The New York Times treated it as a sign of desperation. The paper ran a headline, ‘Please Like Me,’ Trump Begged. For Many Women, It’s Way Too Late.” Polls indicate that the president has lost some support from suburban women.
The uneasy interview continued and Trump seemed to take issue again when Stahl said that it seems his rallies pale in comparison to 2016.
“You’re so negative,” Trump said. “These are the biggest rallies we’ve ever had. You just come in here with that negative attitude. These are the biggest rallies we’ve ever had.”
Bongino tweeted, “Leslie Stahl is an embarrassing mess, even by the low standards Americans have for journalists.’ What a joke.”
Others took to Twitter with similar thoughts:
Meanwhile, others had different thoughts on the situation:
AURORA, Colo. — Tabitha Converse is quietly preparing for Election Day and the weeks beyond by stocking her basement pantry with canned goods, toilet paper and other basic supplies. She even persuaded her husband to buy a hunting rifle, just in case.
Like millions of Americans, Converse, 43, fears the potential for violence that experts say may accompany this year’s presidential election. A mother of two who works as a dental hygienist, Converse is trying not to worry too much, but with a pandemic, civil rights protests and raging wildfires piled atop the election’s boiling-hot rhetoric, well, who knows what might happen?
Most experts predict scattered violence is the worst the United States could experience this Election Day, given isolated incidents that have already taken place this year. But across the country, Americans like Converse are stocking up and preparing to hunker down to ride out a possible wave of sustained election-relatedchaos. They are buying guns and ammunition in record numbers and getting ready to peel off political bumper stickers and yank out yard signs to make themselves less of a target in case the other guy wins. Someare fleeing for remote areas or custom-built bunkers.
“It just seemed, well, stupid isn’t the right word, but it doesn’t make sense to be that ill-prepared,” says Converse, a lifelong Republican who voted Democrat in the presidential race for the first time this year. “A civil war? That could last for years. We don’t have years’ worth of supplies and if it went on for years, well, you could always go out and shoot a deer.”
The angst follows months of widespread Black Lives Matter social justice protests, more than 90% of which were peaceful. But some conservative news outlets and GOP leaders, including President Donald Trump, have pointed to looting and destruction to argue that more federal law enforcement is needed to guard against violence, aiming their message squarely at suburban women.
On the other side, there’s fear that right-wing anti-government extremists responding to the largest civil rights movement in 50 years have now aligned themselves with Trump. After years of growing hate crimes and violence, experts said there is a concern that armed right-wing terrorists might take to the streets if there are delays in election results or an unfavorable outcome, such as Democrat Joe Biden taking the White House.
“Everyone I know is concerned both about voter intimidation at the polls and potential violence as we get results from the election, and sort of what that might look like, not just around the election, but between the election and the inauguration,” says Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., and an expert on extremist violence in the United States.
While the U.S. has a long history of violent protest, from the firebombing and shootings at abortion clinics by anti-abortion extremists to the 25 bombings committed by left-wing Weather Underground terror group opposing the Vietnam War and racism, experts say widespread predictions of election-related violence are unprecedented.
Further fueling potential violence: The staggering number of guns bought this year. According to FBI statistics, gun dealers in June ran more than 3.9 million background checks on purchasers through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System — the highest number ever recorded in a single month.
While background checks are not an exact measure of gun sales, they’re a widely used proxy. Gun sellers in the first nine months of 2020 have conducted more checks than they did in all 2019, which held the previous record for a year at 28.3 million.
“The violence will occur either way,” says Gallaher. “If Biden wins, it will be an excuse to try to delegitimize the results and to go after perceived enemies on the left, and of course, that means labeling pretty much anyone that you disagree with Antifa. But I worry, too, if Trump wins, this will be a signal to these far-right groups that have supported him, extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, other groups like this, that they will see this is like open season to go after people that have been opponents of Trump. So even if he wins that, you know, I think the violence is going to happen. It’s going to be sort of opening the door.”
This summer, human-rights group Amnesty International documented about 200 violent conflicts between protest groups out of approximately 12,000 protests nationally. Of those, most violence occurred when armed right-wing groups showed up to confront otherwise peaceful protests, Amnesty said.
On Friday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Texas man, Ivan Hunter, who officials said fired 13 shots from an AK-47 type rifle into a Minneapolis police station overrun and set on fire by Black Lives Matter protesters on the night of May 28. The protests erupted following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Federal officials say Hunter, 26, is a member of the “Boogaloo Bois,” a loosely organized anti-government group that includes members who want to start a race war.
As BLM protests spread, Trump at one pointcalled in black-clad federal troops over the wishes of Democratic leaders in Portland, sparking fears among liberals and conservatives over excessive use of force.
Many liberal groups also saw Trump’s decision to tear-gas protesters and then stage a photo-op with a Bible at a Washington, D.C., church this summer as further evidence that he’d be quick to deploy government troops post-election.
Trump has repeatedly said several cities with Democratic mayors are going “to hell” and he’s warned that more cities will descend into chaos if Biden wins the presidency. The president has also delegitimized the election process by claiming without evidence that voting is rigged and suggesting he won’t accept the result if he loses, alarming analysts and experts.
“We’re looking at one of the most profound civil rights movements this country has seen in 50 years and the president of the United States is conflating the Black Lives Movement with politically motivated violence,” says Brian Griffey, an Amnesty International regional researcher and advisor who has worked in Ukraine, Nepal and Kosovo. “Trump himself called Portland worse than Afghanistan. The level of which they’ve been trying to throw fuel on the fire and exacerbate conflicts is incredibly concerning.”
On the ground, voting-rights advocates have stepped up their efforts to make sure voters can safely cast their ballots. The NAACP has trained thousands of volunteers in de-escalation tactics, hoping to reduce violence before it even starts. That’s the approach also being taken by the Rev. Carl Day, a Philadelphia pastor who has encouraged groups of young Black men to stand at the polls to deter violence, whether that’s local gang members looking for trouble or whitedomesticterrorists focused on this important swing state. Day says his particular focus is uniting the Black community against outside agitators regardless of personal politics.
“When the president of the United States seems like he’s inciting a demographic of people to be on standby and he’s saying he might not leave office, it brings legitimate fears to people,” Day says. “It’s in a lot of conversations in a lot of rooms I’m in.”
Black voters have long faced election violence even before they cast a ballot. To stave off potential attacks this year, the NAACP is working with local law enforcement to improve relationships.
Stephanie Owens, the NAACP’s national grassroots election protection project manager, says the challenges of COVID-19 and the racial protests following Floyd’s death have heightened the organization’s normal concerns about violence. In some cases, the NAACP has been talking to voters about removing their yard signs and bumper stickers to avoid post-election violence.
“The symbolism of who you’re supporting is a very large component of our election tradition. But there is almost nothing traditional about this election,” says Owens. “People are already being targeted based on the candidates they are supporting.”
Things have long moved past political rivalries and now many Americans see this election as a battle for the heart and soul of the country, says Jose De Bastos, a security analyst with WorldAware,a risk management company. De Bastos predicts any violence that materializes will likely be centered around government institutions, like city halls and courthouses, because people often attack symbols of power. He says early reports of violence or averted violence, like the Michigan governor’s apparent near-abduction by right-wing terrorists, are rightfully scaring people.
All summer, Americans have been bombarded with images of armored, anonymous riot police clashing with protesters, piling out of armored vehicles with batons and tear gar launchers, and dragging detainees into custody.
“There’s an increasing feeling that the other side is my enemy, not my rival,” De Bastos said. “People see those images and worry that will happen in their neighborhood.”
While many people are making plans to hunker down in their homes, others are fleeing. Many super-wealthy people from New York, Chicago and Miami have snapped up property in remote areas like Montana, Wyoming or Aspen, Colorado, long known as a private haven for the rich. While many of those moves by the wealthy who can work remotely were planned before the election, the potential for violence has sharpened concerns.
“This is an escapist place, for sure. It’s a place where, if you can afford to be here, it gives you an ability to check out of the world,” says Aspen-based real estate agent Josh Landis.
Sales in the Aspen area have already topped $2 billion for the year. Landis says New York City has lost a lot of its luster for the wealthy, who no longer can eat out or go to Broadway shows, and, with the population density, some are deciding it would be both better and safer to put it all behind them, at least temporarily.
Other escapists have a more grim view of the potential problems following the election, which could include massive coronavirus outbreaks as fall deepens. While few predict a widespread breakdown of society, a small numberof survivalists have joined a collective of “hardened” lodges scattered around the country known as Fortitude Ranch.
Members are allowed to come in advance, says CEO Drew Miller, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, who predicts as many as 25% of his approximately 400 members will be staying at the three sites on Election Day. Miller expects scattered violence around the country — “emotional, irrational violence and opportunistic looting by bad people” — rather than any sort of organized violence.
“Hopefully, it will be limited and controlled, but it could, unfortunately, devolve into long term, widespread clashes, some even fear civil war,” he says.
Converse, the mother who lives in suburban Denver, says the fear of election violence adds to her overall concern about the state of the country. She says she’s seen little hope for optimism given the political divides, and vividly remembers the panic that set in at the beginning of the pandemic as Americans discovered they couldn’t buy toilet paper.
“I do want to remind people: ‘Hey, in March, we didn’t know we’d be out of toilet paper,'” she says. “There’s a general fear that there’s something happening or could be happening that we might not be prepared for. And I want to be prepared.”
President Donald Trump will make three campaign stops in Pennsylvania on Monday as his campaign tries to chip away at former Vice President Joe Biden’s polling lead in the Keystone State.
Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania in 2016, but USA TODAY’s polling average has Biden leading Trump by 5.4 points there just over a week before Election Day.
Both campaigns have their eyes on Pennsylvania. Trump gave a rally there last week, former President Barack Obama was in Philadelphia on Wednesday and Biden and wife Jill were there on Saturday.
‘Settle for Biden’: Not all Biden voters are enthusiastic about their candidate. The Settle for Biden organization is geared to get young progressives to vote for the Democrat who has run as a centrist.
Who performed better in debate?: A majority of registered voters said Biden performed better than Trump in the final debate last week, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll.
📊 What the polls are saying:Biden is leading Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday.
📆 Eight days until Election Day, 86 days until Inauguration Day, 67 days left in 2020.
We will update this article throughout the day. You can follow all of USA TODAY’s politics reporters on Twitter or subscribe to our daily On Politics newsletter.
Pompeo under scrutiny for controversial convention speech
A government ethics office is investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for possible violations of a federal law that bars Executive Branch employees from engaging in partisan political activities, according to two House Democrats.
“Our offices have confirmed that the Office of Special Counsel has launched a probe into potential Hatch Act violations tied to Secretary Pompeo’s speech to the Republican National Convention,” Reps. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a joint statement Monday.
The Hatch Act is intended to prevent public officials from using their taxpayer-funded office to conduct partisan politics.
“I can confirm that OSC has opened a case file, but am unable to comment beyond that,” said Zachary Kurz, a spokesman for the OSC.
The State Department’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The State Department previously dismissed questions about the ethics of Pompeo’s remarks by saying he was addressing the RNC in his “personal capacity.” The agency said no official federal resources were used for the event.
But Pompeo made his speech in the middle of an official State Department trip to the Middle East. His speech was recorded and piped in from Israel.
– Deirdre Shesgreen
Trump administration planning White House swearing-in of Amy Coney Barrett
President Donald Trump hopes to capitalize on Amy Coney Barrett’s expected confirmation to the Supreme Court by holding a public swearing-in ceremony as early as Monday night, just hours after the Senate vote, officials said.
Trump, who campaigns throughout Pennsylvania on Monday, is scheduled to return to the White House around 7:40 p.m. EDT, around the time of the Senate confirmation vote on Barrett.
The White House is planning a Monday night ceremony for Barrett, though the event could slip to Tuesday if the Senate vote is somehow delayed, said an official familiar with the planning, speaking on condition of anonymity because the Senate has not yet confirmed Barrett.
Trump has made Barrett’s nomination a major issue on the campaign trail, and will more than likely speak at the swearing-in ceremony that would take place eight days before Election Night. Trump also had a public ceremony on Sept. 26 to announce Barrett’s nomination, and in the days afterward more than a dozen attendees tested positive for the coronavirus.
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows declined to provide details of the event, but said that COVID restrictions would be in place given the recent outbreak in the vice president’s office.
“We’ll be doing the best we can to encourage as much social distancing as possible,” Meadows said.
A ceremony is not required for Barrett to become a member of the high-court.
– David Jackson
Pence’s plans to preside over Amy Coney Barrett vote ‘in flux’
Vice President Mike Pence’s plans to preside over the Senate’s confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett were up in the air Monday morning, following the recent outbreak of coronavirus among his inner circle.
“I think that is in flux,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters.
Pence’s vote, as president of the Senate, isn’t expected to be needed to break a tie. But Pence has been heavily involved in President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court nominations and he presided over the confirmation votes of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
“I’m gonna be in the chair because I wouldn’t miss that vote for the world,” Pence said of the final vote for Barrett during a campaign rally in Florida Saturday.
But that was before his office revealed that Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, had tested positive for COVID-19. Other close aides have also contracted the virus.
Pence has not curtailed his public schedule – which includes a campaign trip to Minnesota Monday – because the White House says he is an “essential worker.”
Pence and second lady Karen Pence again tested negative for COVID-19, the vice president’s office said Monday morning.
Senate Democrats, however, scoffed at the notion and said his presence in the Senate would be a clear violation of guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It would also be a violation of common decency and courtesy,” Democratic leaders wrote in a letter to Pence. “Nothing about your presence in the Senate tomorrow can be considered essential.”
– Maureen Groppe
Nancy Pelosi says she will seek another speaker term if Democrats keep House
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she will run for another term as speaker should Democrats keep control of the lower chamber.
When asked whether she would seek reelection in 2021, Pelosi told CNN “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper, “Yes, I am. But let me also say, we have to win the Senate.”
The statement is in line with an agreement Pelosi made when she was elected to the office, which limits her speakership to four years.
– Matthew Brown
Sen. Susan Collins says she’ll vote against Barrett confirmation
Sen. Susan Collins said Sunday that she would vote against Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court making the Maine Republican the only member of the GOP expected to oppose the federal appeals judge’s appointment to the high court.
Collins, who is facing a tough reelection battle, had said for weeks that she opposed the Senate taking up Barrett’s nomination before voters have their say on Election Day. She reiterated her stance on Sunday.
“Because this vote is occurring prior to the election, I will vote against the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” Collins said in a statement.
She added that her “vote does not reflect any conclusion that I have reached about Judge Barrett’s qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court” but rather, was about fairness after the Republican majority refused to take up Merrick Garland’s nomination by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court months ahead of the 2016 election.
Watch the moment President Trump cut short an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
The interview has repeatedly made headlines this week, with Trump referring to it during rallies and taking the unusual step of posting the entire exchange on social media before CBS had aired it.
The president left the interview after chiding CBS reporter Lesley Stahl for asking him “tough” questions.
CBS has broadcast the moments surrounding Donald Trump’s decision to cut short an interview with reporter Lesley Stahl, having become irritated by what she had promised would be “tough” questions.
The tense interview, broadcast Sunday, had been the subject of much discussion since it was recorded Tuesday, and especially after the president took the unusual step of uploading the entire interview to his Facebook page before CBS had aired it. The president said on Twitter that the full exchange showed the “bias, hatred, and rudeness on behalf of 60 Minutes and CBS.”
The interview was part of what CBS says has become an election-year tradition for “60 Minutes” of conversations with the Democratic and Republican candidates for president and vice-president.
In the CBS broadcast version of the clip, Stahl told viewers Sunday: “We had prepared to talk about the many issues facing the President. But in what has become an all-too public dust-up, the conversation was cut short. It began politely, but ended — regrettably — contentiously.”
The interview began with Stahl asking if Trump was comfortable with tough questions, and Trump replying that he wasn’t, telling Stahl instead that he wanted her to be “fair.”
The increasingly tense interview saw Stahl challenge the president on issues including the coronavirus, his rhetoric at campaign rallies, and his unproven accusations of corruption against Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump then complained that Stahl “had brought up a lot of subjects that were inappropriately brought up, right from the beginning,” then once more objected to Stahl ‘s promise to ask him “tough” questions.
“Your first statement was, ‘Are you ready for tough questions?'” he said, adding: “That’s no way to talk.”
A “60 Minutes” producer then said that only five minutes remained in the interview before Trump turned to his advisor Hope Hicks and said: “I think we have enough of an interview here, Hope. OK? That’s enough. Let’s go. Let’s go meet for two seconds, OK?”
He left the room, after which Stahl said that she had “a lot of questions I didn’t ask” and waited to see if the president would return, which he did not.
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House Press Secretary, subsequently entered the room and presented Stahl with a large book which she said was his “healthcare plan.” According to CBS, the book was filled with existing legislation introduced under Trump as well as executive orders and the pages of a document called “America First Healthcare Plan.”
The concession from President Donald Trump’s top aide — which came shortly after news of another White House coronavirus outbreak among the staff of Vice President Mike Pence — was quickly criticized by congressional Democrats and some Republicans, as well as Biden’s campaign.
“This wasn’t a slip by Meadows,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday. “It was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”
Meadows insisted on Monday that the “full context” of his remarks referred to the “need to make sure that we have therapeutics and vaccines” to treat Covid-19. He also said that administration officials were “very hopeful, based on a number of conversations, that vaccines are just a few weeks away, and we’re in preparation for that.”
But public health experts have warned that a coronavirus vaccine likely will not be widely accessible until the second half of 2021. And even if a vaccine is authorized on a narrow basis for a subset of health care workers and vulnerable Americans, several leading candidates require two doses that would be administered weeks apart.
The late-stage phase three clinical trials for potential coronavirus vaccines enroll tens of thousands of participants and take months to complete. The first few candidates are not expected to file for emergency use until late November at the earliest.
“At the same time,” Meadows added on Monday, “a national lockdown strategy or a national quarantine strategy that is proposed by the left is not effective [and] is not what ultimately [will] contain or control this virus. So any suggestion that we’re waving … the white flag is certainly not in keeping with this president.”
Although Biden said in an August interview with ABC News that he would reinstate widespread lockdown orders if scientists recommended he do so as president, he clarified at a news conference last month that he meant he would simply “follow the science.” He also said there is “going to be no need, in my view, to … shut down the whole economy.”
Other high-ranking White House aides mobilized on Monday morning in an effort to explain the chief of staff’s remarks, with senior adviser Jared Kushner arguing the pandemic could not be thwarted by even the most restrictive public health measures.
“You have places where they’ve been locked down and it’s spread. You have places where it’s been open and it’s spread. And I think that, ultimately, we have to have a balanced approach,” Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, told Fox News.
Kushner echoed Meadows’ optimistic rhetoric about the timeline for a potential coronavirus vaccine, saying the U.S. has many candidates “that are very, very close to getting to the end of their trials … that we believe will help us bring an end to the pandemic.”
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also emphasized in a Fox News interview that the U.S. is “getting closer and closer to a vaccine,” while contending that Meadows was actually alluding to the importance of mitigation strategies in his remarks over the weekend.
“I think that’s where the chief was going,” he said.
David Lim and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report.
Hall, Walt and Baca Wines owner Kathryn Hall on launching a fundraiser for wildfire relief aid.
Hundreds of thousands of customers are without power in northern and central California Monday after the nation’s largest utility conducted its largest shutoff of the year to prevent wildfires.
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Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (PG&E) said it began the process of shutting off power to 225,000 customers in Northern California on Monday, followed by another 136,000 customers in the central part of the state.
“This event is by far the largest we’ve experienced this year, the most extreme weather,” said Aaron Johnson, the utility’s vice president of wildfire safety and public engagement. “We’re trying to find ways to make the events less difficult.”
This latest “public safety power shutoff,” or PSPS, is the fifth wildfire safety outage this year by the company and the largest.
A PG&E lineman works on repairing electrical wires that were touching due to high winds on Manzanita Court in Concord, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
PG&E said this shutoff impacts targeted portions of 36 counties, including Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, Yolo and Yuba.
Debris flies through the air as a PG&E lineman works on repairing electrical wires that were touching due to high winds on Manzanita Court in Concord, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
Customers in 17 tribal communities are also impacted by power cuts.
The shutoffs come as the state faces what could be the strongest wind event of the year. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued red flag warnings for much of the state, with winds gusting up to 35 mph in lower elevations and worse farther up.
PG&E said while the worst of the weather may subside by Monday morning, the winds will stick around through Tuesday for some of its customers.
Once conditions improve, PG&E crews will patrol de-energized lines to ensure they did not sustain damage from the wind. Once it’s safe to do so, the utility said it will safety restore power in stages with a goal to restore power to nearly all customers within 12 daylight hours after the severe weather passed.
A roadside sign warns motorists of extreme fire danger on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, in Oakland, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
PG&E officials said the planned outages are a safety measure and understood they burden residents, especially with many working from home and their children taking classes online because of the coronavirus pandemic.
A PG&E lineman works on repairing electrical wires that were touching due to high winds on Manzanita Court in Concord, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
Sheriff Kory Honea of Butte County told the Associated Press he’s concerned about residents in foothill communities during the blackouts because cellular service can be spotty and it’s the only way many can stay informed when the power is out.
A PG&E lineman works on repairing electrical wires that were touching due to high winds on Manzanita Court in Concord, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
“It is quite a strain on them to have to go through these over and over and over again,” he said.
Residents in some vulnerable neighborhoods like the hills over Berkeley said they were packing their cars in case they had to evacuate the area if any fires break out. City officials had given a pre-evacuation order in advance of the dangerous fire conditions.
A vehicle drives up Mountain Boulevard in the Montclair neighborhood after the power has been shut off due to high winds in Oakland, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)/Bay Area News Group via AP)
”I’m going to pack my car, my wife’s going to pack her car. So if we have to leave we are gone,” Frank Tapia told KTVU. “If a fire were to happen it would be pretty scary around here.”
Weather conditions in Southern California may also lead to outages in that part of the state. Utility Southern California Edison said it was considering safety outages for 71,000 customers in six counties starting Monday, with San Bernardino County potentially the most affected.
Traditionally October and November are the worst months for fires in California, but already this year the state has seen more than 8,600 wildfires that have scorched a record 6,400 square miles and destroyed about 9,200 homes, businesses and other structures. So far, there have been 31 deaths statewide.
Another round of voting is almost certain in the special election for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat, where the 21-candidate race makes it extremely difficult for anyone to win the majority-vote necessary to avoid the runoff.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Democrat Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, has opened a large lead compared with the last AJC survey, which was conducted in September. He’s climbed to 34% — up from 22% a month ago — while the other Democrats on the ballot have dropped to single digits.
Loeffler and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, two Republican rivals who have pummeled each other while appealing to the party’s right flank, are deadlocked in the race to win the second spot in the expected January runoff.
The poll pegged Collins at 21% and Loeffler at 20%, mirroring other recent surveys that showed a tight race between the two. About 3% of voters back Libertarian Brian Slowinski, and 14% are undecided.
There’s room for the leading Republicans to grow in the final stretch of the race, particularly considering more GOP voters are likely to cast their ballots on Election Day. The poll showed roughly 15% of Republicans are undecided, along with 14% of independents.
More than 2.7 million Georgians have already cast their ballots early — including nearly one-third of the poll’s respondents — and turnout is expected to shatter records by surpassing 5 million. More than 1 million new voters have joined the rolls since the 2016 election, making the electorate younger and more racially diverse.
One of the main factors for Trump’s struggles in Georgia is Biden’s gains among white voters, the backbone of the GOP coalition in Georgia. The poll shows Biden with support from 28% of white voters — far above the 21% of white Georgians that exit polls showed Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
“It’s a real barnburner,” said Trey Hood, a UGA political scientist who oversaw the poll. “If Democrats can get up to 30% of the white vote, and if Black voters comprise at least 30% of overall turnout, there’s a real chance of statewide Democratic wins.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@
Biden also leads 69% to 18% among moderate voters and 69% to 10% among independents, a voting bloc once reliably Republican in Georgia. Trump has maintained a wide advantage with male voters, topping Biden 50% to 39%, while Biden leads among women, 52% to 43%.
“To be completely honest, Biden wouldn’t have been my first pick. But he’s our nominee. And Trump is a disgusting human being. He’s a complete liar, and he’s not right for this country,” said Jessie Eubanks, a 43-year-old from Hall County. “By default, Biden is our choice, and he’s going to provide a much clearer path for this country.”
Barry Knox, a 39-year-old in Norman Park, said the crises rocking the nation helped cement his decision to back Trump — even though he’s voting for Democrats in down-ticket races.
“I just feel like he is more able and more capable of doing the job than Joe Biden would be at this point,” said Knox, a property manager who said he’s worried about Biden’s mental aptitude. “His current mental state — I just don’t have a lot of confidence in him.”
The poll also pointed to some potential concerns after the Nov. 3 election, stoked in part by Trump’s repeated suggestions that he may not go along with the outcome of the election.
About 11% of Georgia voters said they weren’t prepared to accept the outcome of the presidential race as legitimate no matter who won, and an additional 9% said it would depend on the victor.
Those who said they weren’t prepared were divided roughly evenly along the political spectrum, including one-fifth of “very liberal” voters and 16% of those who say they’re “very conservative.”
Georgians are evenly split over Trump’s job performance, with 49% approving the way he’s handled the presidency and 50% disapproving. More than three-quarters of independents either somewhat or strongly disapprove.
Credit: Rebecca Wright
Credit: Rebecca Wright
But Trump got higher marks when voters were asked which of the candidates would do a better job managing the economy, leading Biden 53% to 43%. That includes about 8% of Democrats and one-third of independents.
By contrast, Georgians gave Biden the edge — 51% to 45% — when asked who would do a better job handling the still-raging coronavirus pandemic. Biden also led 50% to 42% with voters about addressing racial equality.
Voters split on the main issues driving their decisions. About 29% said it was the economy, 21% said it was the pandemic, 13% said it was race relations and 12% said it was health care. About 6% of voters said “violent crime” was the top issue that shaped their vote.
An additional 9% cited the U.S. Supreme Court, which has galvanized voters from both sides of the aisle after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg led Trump to name Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat. The U.S. Senate is expected to confirm her nomination on Monday in a near party-line vote.
“The way that Trump and his cronies are destroying our democracy, I couldn’t not vote for Democrats,” said Doug Curlin, a 63-year-old former accountant who lives in Winder. “And the way the Senate is now, with the way they’re controlling the Supreme Court (appointment) — I just can’t vote for any of them.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Overall, a slim majority of Georgians (52%) disapprove of the way Trump is handling the pandemic, compared with 47% who approved. Voters were more evenly divided over Gov. Brian Kemp’s approach to the outbreak, with 47% disapproving and 49% approving.
There was a similar split over the status of the pandemic, which Trump has portrayed as fast subsiding even though infection rates are on the rise in parts of the U.S.
About one-third of voters said they believe the coronavirus pandemic is “not at all” under control, and another one-third say it’s somewhat contained. One-fifth of Georgians say it’s “mostly” under control, and 6% say it’s “completely” contained.
Those responses broke down along ideological lines, with 50% of Republicans saying the pandemic was mostly or completely under control, while nearly two-thirds of Democrats said it was “not at all” wrapped up.
Among those was Will Mullis, a software consultant and military veteran who blamed the Trump administration for the rapid spread of a disease that has killed more than 220,000 Americans.
“The virus is hitting the rural areas as hard as it is anywhere, but people are taking their cues from Trump,” said Mullis, who lives in Jasper County. “He just wants to pretend like everything is great, and it’s not.”
Some experts say Latinos will be the second largest voting group in this year’s election. But the group’s ethnical and cultural diversity makes it a particularly difficult one for the political world to understand, and an extremely difficult one for both parties to appeal to.
After polls last week showed the race tightening in some battleground states, Pence was left with no illusion about his delicate role — of shifting the focus away from Trump’s personality without irritating his boss or MAGA devotees — in the remaining days before the final voters cast their ballots.
“He did this in 2016, where he successfully signaled to conservatives it was OK to be for Trump. Now the target audience is suburban Republicans who aren’t comfortable with [the president’s] style, but care about the policy issues,” said Club for Growth president David McIntosh. “While Trump talks about law and order like ‘the gangs are coming, be careful,’ Pence is more nuanced and talks about how we need police to guard our schools in case there’s a shooting, or we need people to answer 911 calls.”
For the vice president today, the 2020 election is more important to his political future than the race he ran four years ago — a contest that could facilitate a future White House bid or complicate his path to higher office depending on the outcome. If Trump wins reelection, it’s plausible his ultra-loyal vice president inherits at least part of the MAGA base heading into the 2024 GOP primary — buoyed by a bond to Trump for four more years. But if voters emphatically reject the president on Nov. 3, the unavoidable traces of Trumpism in a Pence presidential campaign could be politically toxic, possibly even fatal.
“There’s a lot riding on the outcome for him,” said McIntosh, a longtime friend of Pence’s who has been in touch with the vice president in recent weeks. “He’ll either continue on as the sitting vice president or be a former vice president. Both of those are really important posts in American political life, but I know he has a preferred outcome.”
Hoping to dodge the ex-VP scenario, Pence has spent the final weeks of the 2020 race operating at full speed — a pace he plans to maintain this week without his top lieutenants. Late Saturday, Pence’s office confirmed that Short, his chief of staff, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and would spend much of the final countdown to Election Day quarantining at his home. Longtime Pence political adviser Marty Obst, who has frequently accompanied him on campaign trips, also tested positive, along with at least two other staffers inside the vice president’s office, according to a senior administration official. The sudden outbreak set off alarm bells inside the Trump campaign late Saturday night, as aides wondered whether they should scrap the vice president’s schedule — an idea White House officials and Pence himself flatly rejected.
In the industrial Midwest, Pence has worked to court swing voters who have turned on Trump four years after he won them over with messaging on the economy, trade and the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he leads as head of the federal government’s Covid-19 task force. In Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, and other states with large swaths of Catholic and evangelical voters, he has held rallies and attended faith-based conferences to animate religious conservatives, whose turnout could be the deciding factor in Trump’s quest for reelection. In Arizona, a state long considered a GOP stronghold, Pence and his wife Karen have chased Latino voters and military veterans as part of a push to prevent the state from turning blue.
And in ways only the vice president can manage, he has ably defended Trump — for holding massive rallies that flout public health guidelines, delivering a pugnacious performance in the first presidential debate and nominating a Supreme Court justice one month before Election Day — with little evidence of damage to himself or their campaign’s overall efforts so far.
That could change this week as Pence faces fresh scrutiny over his and the president’s handling of Covid-19 in battleground states like North Carolina, where the state’s department of health and human services recently reported its highest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases since the disease first arrived in the United States.
Pence will spend the next week splitting his time between areas where “he can help with a lot of the faith community” and areas where voters care deeply about economic conditions and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to Short, who spoke with POLITICO before his positive diagnosis.
As Trump prepared for the final presidential debate Thursday in Nashville, Pence hosted a rally in Oakland County, Mich., focused on trade, fracking and how the president’s economic agenda differs from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s. On Friday, Pence visited Ohio, where the latest polling has shown Trump with a slight edge over Biden, and Pennsylvania, where Roman Catholics have long played a pivotal role in the swing vote.
“There’s a level of excitement you want and in a year where you have a pandemic, turnout is going to be important,” Short said, adding that Pence wants to ensure religious conservatives are “excited to come out and vote” for the Republican ticket.
The final stretch of the 2020 race has had no shortage of obstacles for Pence, who had already become the top surrogate for the Trump campaign when the president, his campaign manager Bill Stepien and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tested positive for Covid-19 at the beginning of the October. Following Trump’s performance in the first debate, where his incessant interruptions of Biden and moderator Chris Wallace led to bipartisan criticism, the vice president was forced to oversee a course-correction in his own debate against Kamala Harris.
“The first debate with the presidential candidates became a personality clash and nobody felt good about it once it was over,” said McIntosh, who was pleased with how the vice presidential debate subsequently unfolded. “Pence kind of refocused the election to be about policy differences and he did that in a sharp, but polite way.”
Then there was the president’s Oct. 9 appearance on The Rush Limbaugh Show, where he warned Iran not to “f— around” with the United States. One person familiar with the situation said the vice president’s team was annoyed by Trump’s profanity, which drew private criticism from evangelical leaders and prominent conservative Christians. Despite being chided for irreverent and coarse language at his rallies last year, Trump has continued to swear in front of audiences at some of his recent campaign stops. On a conference call with campaign staff last week, the president told his team to get off their “asses” and work as hard as possible in the final sprint to Election Day.
“The culture is coarse enough, especially for parents bringing up kids, without the POTUS further coarsening it,” tweeted Robert George, a prominent Catholic conservative and Princeton University professor, following Trump’s appearance on Limbaugh’s program.
Now, Pence is left with a barebones staff at the height of the 2020 race and renewed interest in the Covid-19 pandemic — one of the leading causes of the exodus of senior voters and suburban Americans from the Republican party.
Other moments on the campaign trail have underscored the disconnect between Pence’s careful handling of controversial topics and Trump’s tendency to stir further controversy. At a recent town hall in Miami, the president repeatedly insisted he didn’t know enough about the QAnon conspiracy theory movement to denounce it. Though Pence similarly said he didn’t “know anything about that” during a CNN appearance in August, he went a step further than his boss to say, “We dismiss conspiracy theories around here out of hand,” and canceled a Montana fundraiser in September after learning that the couple hosting it were unabashed QAnon supporters.
Pence has also defended Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, despite the president’s recent efforts to play down its severity by claiming infection rates are “rounding the turn” even as daily case counts hit fresh records, and expressed empathy in a manner that has escaped his boss for Americans grappling with the virus’ toll.
“Our nation’s gone through a very challenging time this year,” Pence said at the Oct. 7 vice presidential debate.
As much as Pence’s messaging and congested campaign schedule in the countdown to the November election are born out of a desire to secure victory, people close to the vice president acknowledge that there are also long-term advantages at play.
Through his face time with seniors, women, and suburban Americans — voting blocs that are trending away from the GOP — they say Pence is forging relationships that could prove valuable four years from now. And with his visible role on the campaign trail, where most of the president’s other top surrogates are members of the first family, Pence is reinforcing his image as the ultimate Trump loyalist for base voters who might prioritize loyalty to the president when the 2024 primary kicks into full gear.
“He’ll have a soapbox to stand on while so many others are scrambling to figure out what the Republican party should look like after Trump,” said Jon Thompson, a former Trump campaign aide. “Pence can really excel at walking both lines because the Trump base could support him, but so could the old guard and establishment Republicans who were very turned off by Trump.”
Should Trump fail to defeat his Democratic opponent on Nov. 3, Pence aides said they expect the vice president to spend 2021 quietly watching how the public responds to a Biden administration before reentering the political scene in 2022 to lend a fundraising hand to GOP governors and congressional hopefuls in their races and lay the groundwork for a potential White House bid two years later.
“In a very personal way he and Karen believe that come what may, things are going to be fine,” said McIntosh. “They have done what they were called to do and done it well, but they will be ready to pick up and move onto the next part of life.”
“Mr. President, you’re running against Joe Biden. Joe Biden has a deep, steep and successful record over a long, long time,” he said.
In answer to a question about whether Mr. Trump could still win the election, Mr. Biden said he could.
“It’s not over till the bell rings,” he said, saying Mr. Trump could win because of “how he plays.” Mr. Trump, he added, is “trying to sort of delegitimize the election” in a way that is “designed to make people wonder whether or not they should — whether it’s worth going to vote.”
Mr. Biden’s newsiest answer was about the Supreme Court. Asked whether he would expand the number of justices on the nation’s highest court if he were elected — a question that he has repeatedly faced since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month — Mr. Biden gave his clearest answer in weeks, saying he would establish a bipartisan commission of scholars to study a possible overhaul of the court system.
“I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack,” Mr. Biden said.
For “60 Minutes,” the episode continued its tradition of interviewing the major candidates for president of the United States before the presidential election. It also featured interviews with Vice President Mike Pence, who is Mr. Trump’s running mate, and Senator Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden’s running mate.
The interviews were aired on a day when the candidates had very different schedules, reflecting their differing approaches to campaigning during the pandemic.
The New York Post reports Rep. Ocasio-Cortez nominates Bernie Sanders and snubs Joe Biden in DNC address; Former Obama campaign spokesperson Zach Friend reacts on ‘America’s Newsroom.’
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared to violate her truce with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday, sparking what could become renewed infighting between the progressive wing and moderate congressional Democrats if the party retains control of the House in 2020.
Ocasio-Cortez told CNN host Jake Tapper Sunday morning that she plans to support the “most progressive” candidate for House speaker, and that she would consider other Democratic candidates to replace Pelosi’s position if the California Democrat doesn’t measure up.
“If Speaker Pelosi runs again, as she just indicated she will, if the Democrats keep the House, will you support her?” Tapper asked.
“I want to make sure that we win the House,” the freshman congresswoman responded. “I do believe that we will, but it’s critically important that we are supporting Democrats in tight swing races, making sure that not only all of them come back but that we grow our majority.”
But, she added, “I believe that we have to see those races as they come, see what candidates are there. I am committed to making sure that we have the most progressive candidate there. But, if Speaker Pelosi is that most progressive candidate, then I will be supporting her.”
Pelosi, 79, who has served in the House for more than 30 years, clashed with Ocasio-Cortez and allied freshmen lawmakers last year over their policy differences — which span everything from their approach to immigration to their early calls for impeachment against President Trump.
The lawmakers claimed to have reached an understanding after meeting privately in July 2019, and have publicly reamined in each other’s good graces since.
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