Summary
Here’s a rundown of Sunday’s events. We’ll be back tomorrow for all Monday’s news.
- Supreme court: Biden accuses Trump and Republicans of abuse of power. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, made an urgent plea on Sunday to the conscience of Senate Republicans, asking them to defy Donald Trump and refuse to ram through his nominee to the supreme court before the November election.
- Trump health official says ‘biology independent of politics’ as US nears 200,000 Covid deaths. As the US closed in on 200,000 deaths from Covid-19, Trump’s health secretary and a key member of the White House coronavirus taskforce defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic and insisted the president and a senior public health aide were both correct when they made contradictory statements about the imminency of an effective vaccine.
- Tom Cotton: Democrats ‘rioting in the streets’ as supreme court battle heats up. Two Republican senators tapped by Trump as possible supreme court nominees offered varying justifications for their party’s speedy attempts to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor on Sunday, with one claiming Democrats “are already rioting in the streets”.
- Judge blocks Trump bid to remove WeChat from stores over China fears. A US judge has blocked the Trump administration from requiring Apple and Google to remove Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat for downloads by late on Sunday.
- Tropical storm Beta threatens flooding as it drifts to Texas and Louisiana shores. Tropical Storm Beta was making a slow crawl to the shores of Texas and Louisiana on Sunday, casting worries about heavy rain, flooding and storm surge across the Gulf coast.
- Walmart and Amazon among donors to lawmaker who promoted QAnon. Walmart, Amazon and other corporate giants donated money to the re-election campaign of a Tennessee state lawmaker who used social media to amplify and promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a review of campaign finance records and the candidate’s posts.
- Arizona race could give Democrats extra Senate seat for supreme court fight. If he wins a US Senate seat in Arizona, the former astronaut Mark Kelly could take office as early as 30 November, an outcome which might jeopardize the launch of Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee.
- Leak reveals $2tn of possibly corrupt US financial activity. Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.
The overall total of coronavirus deaths in California surpassed 15,000 on Sunday even as the state has shown improvements across a number of key indicators.
The Associated Press reports:
A tally by Johns Hopkins University put California’s death toll at 15,027 on Sunday, the fourth-highest in the country. New York has suffered by far the most deaths - 33,087 - followed by New Jersey, which has about half as many. Texas is third.
California has had the most confirmed virus cases in the country with about 775,000, but key indicators have fallen dramatically since a spike that started after Memorial Day weekend prompted statewide shutdowns of businesses.
The state’s infection rate has fallen to 3% in the last week, the lowest level since the first days of the pandemic. Hospitalizations have dropped below 2,700, the lowest since early April, and the number of patients in the intensive care unit has dropped below 850.
With figures falling, California last month instituted a new four-tier system for counties to reopen more businesses and activities. Most counties remain in the most restrictive level but some could move to a lower level when the state updates the ratings on Tuesday.
Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system, including activity linked to former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.
The leak focuses on more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Banks and other financial institutions file SARs when they believe a client is using their services for potential criminal activity.
However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question.
The documents were provided to BuzzFeed News, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The documents are said to suggest major banks provided financial services to high-risk individuals from around the world, in some cases even after they had been placed under sanctions by the US government.
According to the ICIJ the documents relate to more than $2tn of transactions dating from between 1999 and 2017.
Donald Trump’s motorcade departed Trump National in northern Virginia shortly after 4pm, passing gatherings of supporters and protestors on its way back to the White House.
According to CNN senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju, this marks the 297th day he’s spent at one of his golf clubs in the 1,340 days since he took office.
According to White House pool report:
There’s a large group of demonstrators outside on both sides of the street, with supporters and opponents of President Trump.
There are Biden flags and Trump flags. One of the more vocal people with a Keep America Great hat was shouting “the virus is a hoax” and there were other insults directed toward the press pool.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday reported 6,748,935 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 42,561 cases from its previous count, and said the number of US deaths had risen by 655 to 198,754.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
A majority of Americans want the winner of November’s presidential election to name the successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.
The national poll, conducted after Ginsburg’s death was announced, suggests that many Americans object to Donald Trump’s plan to “very quickly” confirm another lifetime appointee and cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.
More from Reuters:
The poll found that 62% of American adults agreed the vacancy should be filled by the winner of the Nov. 3 matchup between Trump and Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden, while 23% disagreed and the rest said they were not sure.
Eight out of 10 Democrats - and five in 10 Republicans - agreed that the appointment should wait until after the election.
Trump needs the support of the Senate, which currently has a 53-47 Republican majority to confirm a nominee. So far two Republican senators - Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski - have said publicly since Ginsburg’s death Friday that they think the winner of the election should make the nomination.
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed a vote with weeks to go in Trump’s term.
Democrats are still seething over his refusal to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died 10 months before that election. McConnell said then that the Senate should not act on a court nominee during an election year, a stance he has since reversed.
The looming fight over the Supreme Court vacancy so far does not appear to have given either of the two major political parties much of an advantage in an incendiary campaign season that already was expected to break participation records.
The poll found that 30% of American adults said that Ginsburg’s death will make them more likely to vote for Biden while 25% said they were now more likely to support Trump. Another 38% said that it had no impact on their interest in voting, and the rest said they were not sure.
Biden: power rests with voters
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has described Donald Trump’s stated intent to quickly confirm a supreme court justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “an exercise in raw political power” that he doesn’t believe the American citizenry will stand for.
“President Trump has already made clear this is about power: pure and simple power,” Biden said Sunday afternoon in remarks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. “The voters should make clear on this issue that the power in this nation resides with them, the American people. The voters.”
He added: “To jam this nomination through the Senate is just an exercise in raw political power and I don’t believe the people of this nation will stand for it.”
It would represent an “abuse of power”, he said. “This is constitutional abuse.”
The former vice-president also expressed his belief that Trump’s nominee should be withdrawn if Biden takes the White House on 3 November.
“If I win this election, President Trump’s nominee should be withdrawn and, as the new president, I should be the one to nominate Justice Ginsburg’s successor,” he said. “We can’t keep rewriting history, scrambling norms, and ignoring our cherished system of checks and balances.”
Updated
The Guardian’s video team has cut this explainer breaking down what’s next with the supreme court vacancy.
Barasso tries out 'Biden rule'
The Wyoming senator John Barrasso had an uncomfortable time on NBC’s Meet the Press, as host Chuck Todd reeled off a lengthy list of comments the Republican made in 2016 when he was arguing for voters to decide the direction of supreme court picks.
Todd quoted the chair of the Senate Republican conference insisting four years ago as saying “People should be allowed to consider possible supreme court nominees as one factor in deciding who they’ll support for president” and “We have called on the president to spare the country this fight. The best way to avoid the fight is to agree to let the people decide.”
Barrasso’s arguments then, as Todd pointed out, came as Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s election-year supreme court pick, Merrick Garland. They were based on the principle of voters being allowed to choose a president who in turn would choose a supreme court nominee.
Pressing, Todd said: “Not once did you say, ‘Oh, it depends on what party the Senate holds versus the party of the president.’ This just sounds like a power grab, pure and simple.”
Without explanation or context, Barasso attempted to blame the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
“Well, it’s the Biden rule,” Barrasso said.
“There is no Biden rule,” Todd said.
Barrasso offered the explanation that, historically, the Senate had rarely confirmed a nominee in an election year if they were from the opposite political party to the president.
“You haven’t had, since 1888 when a party of the Senate and the White House were of different parties, that anyone was confirmed,” Barrasso said, the same talking point wheeled out by the Texas senator Ted Cruz on ABC’s This Week, and referenced in Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s statement promising Trump’s pick a vote.
Todd was unimpressed. “You have no regrets that Senate Republicans are going to look like hypocrites 44 days before the election for just a complete flip-flop to the average American?” he asked. “I mean, I know you’re trying to come up with these caveats. Nothing about it makes any sort of sense to the average person.”
Bryan Armen Graham is about to take the reins of the blog, but before he does, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri has given me a chance to get back on my favourite hobby horse for minute, telling CBS’s Face the Nation “the constitution prevails here in terms of how we do” supreme court nominations, and telling host Margaret Brennan that “there is a Senate majority put there by voters for reasons like this”.
In short, yes, the constitution says the Senate considers and confirms or rejects supreme court nominees chosen by the president. In shorter, it’s, uh, woolly on whether election years make any difference. In very short, about the Senate majority being “put there by voters”? Uh-huh.
Yes, the Republicans hold the chamber 53-47 by fair electoral means as the rules of the Senate stand. But given each state gets two senators regardless of population, whether that state is a Wyoming or a Montana or a Dakota – Why are there two? Why? – or a California, a New York or a Texas, many say the rules as they stand are not particularly fair. And in 2018, Democrats got nearly 18m more votes than Republicans in Senate elections.
And in 2016 Trump got nearly 3m fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. This we know to be true.
We also know that rules is rules. So it goes.
Democratic US representative tests positive
Jahana Hayes, a Democratic US representative from Connecticut, has tested positive for coronavirus and will quarantine for 14 days, she announced Sunday on Twitter.
“After going to 2 urgent care centers yesterday, I finally got an appointment at a 3rd site and was tested this morning,” the freshman lawmaker said, adding that she has no symptoms “except for breathing issues which are being monitored”.
Hayes sought testing after one of her staff members tested positive on Saturday. The 47-year-old said she contracted the virus despite taking “every possible precaution”, and said her experience underscores the need for a national testing strategy “with a coherent way to receive speedy, accurate results”.
“This level of anxiety and uncertainty is untenable,” she said.
Hayes’s test was one of a one-day record total, according to Reuters, which reports that more than 1 million were performed.
Reuters also points out that the US needs 6 million to 10 million tests a day to bring outbreaks under control, according to various experts. The US tested on average 650,000 people a day in the week ended 13 September, down from a peak in late July of more than 800,000 a day.
Since the start of the pandemic, testing shortages have hampered efforts to curb the spread of the virus.
According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, early on Sunday afternoon the US stood on the brink of recording 200,000 deaths from Covid-19:
ActBlue reports $91.4m in donations since Ginsburg's death
Reuters reports on a huge boost for Democratic causes, as donors flock to put their money where their mouths are over the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the looming fight to fill her supreme court seat:
Democratic donors smashed fundraising records, funneling more than $90m to candidates and progressive groups in just over 24 hours.
As Democrats and Republicans braced for a nomination fight that has upended the November presidential election, the online fundraising organization ActBlue said grassroots donors gave $91.4m to Democratic candidates and causes in the 28 hours after 8pm on Friday, around the time news of Ginsburg’s death broke.
That figure, coming from 1.5 million donations, broke the all-time ActBlue records for dollars raised in one day and dollars raised in one hour, said Erin Hill, the non-profit’s executive director.
Donors gave $70.6m on Saturday alone, and $6.3m in one hour on Friday night, Hill said, beating the group’s previous records of $41.6m in one day and $4.3m in one hour.
The death of Ginsburg so close to the election has energized both the Democratic base and Republican President Donald Trump’s core supporters. If Trump is able to install a conservative, he would cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.
Much of the Democratic money will be poured into key Senate races, as the party seeks to retake control of the chamber in November, and also to pressure vulnerable Republican incumbents into opposing a move by Trump to install a new justice before the election.
Here’s the Associated Press on one of those key races, in which Democrat Mark Kelly is doing well in Arizona. And below is Lauren Gambino’s report on what Democrats and activists might do with all that money:
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, told reporters she had never seen liberals so energized over an issue that typically animates conservatives.
“I think people understand like never before just how huge the stakes are, not just for the court but for healthcare, civil rights, abortion,” she said.
“Three and a half years of Trump judges has certainly educated progressives, [and] I think the country, just how critically important the judiciary is and how long after Donald Trump leaves office these judges will be there, signing our rights and freedoms.”
Booker appeals to better angels of Republicans' nature
The New Jersey senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Cory Booker thinks appeals to Republicans’ sense of morality might yet stop them pushing through a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election on 3 November, or even after it in the lame duck session.
“We’ve seen moments like this before, where healthcare was in the balance,” Booker told CBS’s Face the Nation. “And the American public, speaking out, got people like John McCain and a couple of my other colleagues to change their vote and do the right thing. So we’ll see how this plays out.”
That was a reference to McCain’s dramatic return to the chamber and thumb-down gesture which killed an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in July 2017.
But McCain died in August 2018 and Obamacare is just one progressive priority at risk should the court switch to a 6-3 conservative majority. Asked what tactics Democrats might use if appeals to the better angels of Republican natures somehow did not come off, and whether an impending government funding deadline might be leveraged, working on fears of a shutdown, Booker … dodged the question.
“For them to go against their word is pretty significant in the public space in terms of their own honor and legitimacy,” he said. “So we’ll see how that plays out. And in addition to that, the election has already begun. If there’s any more convincing that the public needs about what’s at stake, we see some of the most fundamental ideals of our nation that have been settled in many ways – the right for a woman to control her body, the basic understanding of civil rights law – all of that now is in the balance. And I think that this should motivate people significantly to speak up, let their voices be heard and be involved in this process.”
Booker also skipped a question about whether he supported packing the court should the Democrats take the Senate, meaning increasing the number of justices beyond nine, a step which is theoretically possible and which many progressives support.
He wished, he said, “we would step back and take a beat and understand what we’re doing and the consequences and how they could radiate throughout time”.
Republican senator Lisa Murkowski will not support filling supreme court vacancy before election
Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski says she will not support appointing a nominee to fill the supreme court vacancy following Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
Here’s the full Sen. @lisamurkowski statement: pic.twitter.com/jlzOsTqSNp
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) September 20, 2020
“For weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up a potential Supreme Court vacancy this close to the election. Sadly, what was then a hypothetical is now our reality, but my position has not changed. I did not support taking up a nomination eight months before the 2016 election to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Justice Scalia. We are now even closer to the 2020 election – less than two months out – and I believe the same standard must apply,” Murkowski said in a statement.
The news is a blow for the Republicans’ drive to fill the vacancy before November’s election. However, even without Murkowski’s support they would still have the numbers in the Republican-held Senate to fill the vacancy, if the Alaska senator remains the only dissenting voice among them. Susan Collins is the other Republican senator to echo Murkowski’s views: two more would be needed to foil GOP plans.
Updated
Two artists, Shawn Perkins and David Zambrano, have paid tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a mural depicting the supreme court justice near Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC.
“Over the past few months, we have been painting murals throughout DC, mainly on the wooden boards used to prevent vandalism on buildings and business near the a White House. The purpose is to uplift our community during these unpredictable times, through affirmations of hope and unity, along with honoring those who paved the way for those without a voice,” Perkins told CNN.
“Our latest installation was complete over the course of a day at Blackfinn DC, a well known restaurant pub blocks from the White House. With the recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there was no question who we would commemorate with this latest piece. It’s up indefinitely for now, the owner of the restaurant will likely keep it up throughout the rest of the year at least.”
People in public life tend to fall into one of two broad categories – those motivated by principle, and those motivated by power.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Friday night at the age of 87, exemplified the first.
When he nominated her in 1993, Bill Clinton called her “the Thurgood Marshall of gender-equality law”, comparing her advocacy and lower-court rulings in pursuit of equal rights for women to the work of the great jurist who advanced the cause of equal rights for Black people. Ginsburg persuaded the supreme court that the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection applied not only to racial discrimination but to sex discrimination as well.
For Ginsburg, principle was everything – not only equal rights, but also the integrity of democracy. Always concerned about the consequences of her actions for the system as a whole, she advised young people “to fight for the things you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you”.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, exemplifies the second category. He couldn’t care less about principle. He is motivated entirely by the pursuit of power.
You can read Robert Reich’s full column below:
Democrat senator Amy Klobuchar was on CNN’s State of the Union earlier, and was asked about how her party could stop Republican plans to fill the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death before November’s election.
She said “a number of” Republicans have said they do not believe a vote on the supreme court nominee should be made before the next president is confirmed by voters. Klobuchar is presumably referring to Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have both said they a nominee should not be confirmed before the election. However, if those two senators voted against a nominee, Republicans would still be able to usher in their choice for the supreme court as they hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
“Right now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg just died recently. While Mitch McConnell has said what he has said, these [senators] aren’t beholden to him,” said Klobuchar.
Ted Cruz delved deep into the history books, and threw in a plug for his own forthcoming book on the supreme court for good measure, as he attempted to justify Republican efforts to move quickly to vote on Donald Trump’s choice for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor, reports Richard Luscombe.
“If you look at history, if you actually look at what the precedent is, this has happened 29 times,” the Texas senator said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, referring to election-year vacancies on the supreme court.
“There’s a big difference with whether the Senate is of the same party of the president or a different party. When the Senate has been of the same party of the president, of the 29 times, those are 19 of them.
“Of those 19, the Senate has confirmed those nominees 17 times. So if the parties are the same, the Senate confirms the nominee.
“When the parties are different, that’s happened 10 times. Merrick Garland was one of them. Of those 10, the Senate has confirmed the nominees only twice.”
Cruz’s “precedent” argument sits uneasy with Democratic critics, who point out that Republicans successfully stalled Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee after the death of Antonin Scalia in 2016, for 10 months, denying him even a hearing. Yet the same Republican Senate majority is promising a vote to confirm Ginsburg’s successor by the end of the year.
But Cruz - who made sure to reference, twice, next month’s publication of his book One Vote Away: How A Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History - insisted there was nothing partisan about it.
“It’s not just simply your party, my party,” he said. “It’s a question of checks and balances. In order for a supreme court nomination to go forward, you have to have the president and the Senate. In this instance, the American people voted. They elected Donald Trump.”
Cruz also made the case that a ninth judge needed to be seated in case the November election resulted in a contentious legal battle, similar to Bush v Gore in 2000 that ended with the supreme court installing the Republican.
“We need a full court on election day, given the very high likelihood that we’re going to see litigation that goes to the court,” said Cruz, who was part of the Republican legal team in 2000 and is one of Trump’s possible nominees.
“We need a supreme court that can give a definitive answer for the country.”
Hillary Clinton: we are at a very dangerous point in US history
Hillary Clinton is on NBC’s Meet the Press. She is asked about her time as a senator compared to now - and the Senate judicial confirmation process. Chuck Todd asks Clinton “how broken” she believes the confirmation process to be.
“It’s absolutely broken,” she says, “and it has been broken for a while.” She adds that Republicans “made a precedent” in 2016 when they blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to the supreme court in an election year “and they should now honour” that precedent by delaying a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg until after this November’s election.
She says the Republicans’ machinations over a replacement for Ginsburg are “a new blow” to US institutions. She adds US institutions such as the supreme court are being “undermined by a lust for power”. She believes the cost is that we risk “ensuring institutions withstand whatever the political winds may be”.
Clinton says we are at a “very dangerous point in US history.” There is a “concerted effort” by Republicans to turn the clock back on progress for minorities and women. She says that it is not just the supreme court where this is happening, but by the appointment of conservative judges at federal and district level who may not even believe in Roe v Wade.
Updated
Richard Luscombe has news of Democrats hoping to reach out across the aisle following Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
Delaware’s Democratic senator Chris Coons says he hopes to persuade several Republican “friends” in the upper chamber to resist the rushing through of Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee, claiming a swift confirmation would “dishonor Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”
“Her dying wish was that the voters should choose the next president, the next president should choose her successor, that’s because she understood deeply our constitution and the significance of the supreme court and its legitimacy,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
“I’m going to be working this week to reach across the aisle to see if I can’t persuade some friends to respect tradition, to respect the precedent they set in 2016 and let the voters decide.”
Challenged by host Chris Wallace why Democrats demanded a vote on Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in that election year, yet now wanted to delay Trump’s choice, Coons insisted the situation was different.
“In 25 states across our country Americans are already voting,” he said, pointing out that Garland’s nomination was nine months before election day.
“For the Republican majority, just 44 days before the next presidential election, to rush through a new justice in a partisan confirmation process will further divide our country. [They] set this new precedent, they fought hard for it, so if they were going to set a precedent that in an election year there shouldn’t be a hearing, meetings, votes, they should live by it. Fair is fair.”
In 2016, Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to the supreme court in the run-up to the presidential election. This year, they are preparing to rush through Donald Trump’s nominee before the presidential election. How voters react to this seeming hypocrisy remains to be seen. In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, is asked if these tactics could hurt Republican senators in close races in November.
“As far as the politics of it, I think the American people wanted Donald Trump to make nominations,” Short says.
More from House speaker Nancy Pelosi on ABC’s This Week. Host George Stephanopoulos asks her about scenarios in which Democrats would seek to block a Republican nomination to fill the vacancy left on the supreme court by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Some have mentioned the possibility if [Republicans] try to push through a nominee in a lame duck session that you and the House can move to impeach President Trump or Attorney General Barr as a way of stalling and preventing the Senate from acting on this nomination,” says Stephanopoulos.
Pelosi does not rule out that possibility. “Well, we have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now, but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country. This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election with statements that he and his henchmen have made,” she says.
Stephanopoulos presses Pelosi again, asking if she “not ruling anything out”.
“Yeah,” she says. “We have a responsibility. We’ve taken an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people.
“That is when we weigh the equities of protecting our democracy requires us to use every arrow in our quiver.”
Republican senator Tom Cotton, who is on Donald Trump’s shortlist to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court, offered an extraordinary observation of the reaction to her death on Fox News Sunday, reports Richard Luscombe.
“The Democrats are saying radical things right now, Democrats are threatening to riot in the streets, Democrats are already rioting in the streets though,” Cotton told host Chris Wallace.
“They’re threatening to pack the court, they were already threatening to pack the court,” he added, referring to suggestions any Democratic-led Senate might add seats to the supreme court next year.
Cotton’s assessment contrasts sharply with scenes in Washington DC on Saturday night, when thousands attended a peaceful candlelight vigil to celebrate the life of the 87-year-old justice, who died on Friday.
The protests that swept the nation in the wake of the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis were over race and police brutality, but Cotton appeared to want to link the reaction to that episode to the upcoming fight for the supreme court seat.
Cotton, a right-wing Arkansas senator, had acknowledged his interest in the vacancy. But that hope was effectively ended by Trump’s pronouncement that he would pick a woman.
Cotton dismissed allegations of hypocrisy directed at Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has promised a vote this year on Trump’s choice after successfully blocking the confirmation of then-president Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 because it was an election year.
“In 2014, the American people elected a Republican majority to the Senate to put the brakes on President Obama’s judicial nominations,” Cotton said.
“In 2018 we had a referendum just a month before the midterms, [the] vote on Justice Kavanaugh. Democratic senators can look at what happened, four of their colleagues lost their re-election a month after voting against Justice Kavanaugh.
“We’re not going to rush, cut corners or skip steps. The Senate will exercise our constitutional duty. We’ll process that nomination, we’ll conduct hearings, we’ll be thorough and deliberate and careful just as we were with the nominations of Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh.”
Pelosi: Democrats won't shut down government over supreme court nominee
House speaker Nancy Pelosi is on ABC’s This Week. She is asked about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“I’m so glad that the country is providing such an outpouring of love and support to honor [Ginsburg] – petite, tiny in size, huge in impact, and a powerful, brilliant brain on the court,” says Pelosi.
If Republicans manage to usher in a conservative replacement for Ginsburg on the supreme court before the election (or, indeed, after it if they do well in November) Obamacare could be in danger. Pelosi refers to that scenario.
“In terms of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, any one of us who knew her, who loved her, who respected her, and that includes almost anybody who had an appreciation for greatness, mourn her loss, but would want us to move forward to protect the people who are sick, those with coronavirus who now have ... millions of them now have a preexisting condition. That’s what the president wants to crush when he says he wants to replace [Ginsburg] in this short period of time,” says Pelosi.
As speaker for the House, Pelosi is leading negotiations with Republicans over a new government funding bill during Covid-19. She is asked if she can “use leverage in those negotiations to slow the nomination [to replace Ginsburg] down?”
“None of us has any interest in shutting down government. That has such a harmful and painful impact on so many people in our country,” she says. “So I would hope that we can just proceed with that. There is some enthusiasm among some exuberance on the left to say let’s use that, but we’re not going to be shutting down government.”
Updated
The Associated Press has news of a crucial Senate race in Arizona:
If he wins a Senate seat in Arizona, the former astronaut Mark Kelly could take office as early as 30 November, an outcome which might jeopardize the launch of Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee.
The Democrat has maintained a polling lead over the Republican Martha McSally, who was appointed to the seat held by John McCain, who died in 2018. Because the contest is a special election to finish McCain’s term, the winner could be sworn in as soon as the results are certified. Other winners in November’s contest, in which Democrats hope to retake the Senate, will not take office until January.
Trump has pledged to nominate a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Friday, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed that the nominee “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate”.
If Kelly wins, when he takes office could be crucial in deciding the ensuing nomination fight. Republicans currently hold the chamber by 53 seats to 47. The prospect of falling to 52 could prompt McConnell to speed up the nomination process.
With McSally in the Senate, four defections would defeat a nomination. A tie vote could be broken by Vice-President Mike Pence. Within hours of the announcement of Ginsberg’s death, McSally declared that “this US Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the US supreme court”.
She has not elaborated on whether the vote should come before or after the election. But she highlighted the renewed stakes of her race in a fundraising pitch on Saturday.
“If Mark Kelly comes out on top, HE could block President Trump’s supreme court Nominee from being confirmed,” McSally wrote.
In the 2018 midterms, Democrats found success in Arizona, long dominated by the GOP, by appealing to Republicans and independents disaffected with Trump. The supreme court vacancy could boost McSally by keeping those voters in her camp.
Kelly said late on Saturday: “The people elected to the presidency and Senate in November should fill this vacancy. When it comes to making a lifetime appointment to the supreme court, Washington shouldn’t rush that process for political purposes.”
Arizona law requires election results to be certified on the fourth Monday after the election, which falls this year on 30 November. The certification could be delayed up to three days if the state has not received election results from any of its 15 counties.
Bill Clinton has been busy this morning. Shortly after his appearance on CNN, he pops up on CBS’s Face The Nation.
He is asked by host Margaret Brennan why he nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the supreme court during his presidency.
“I wanted somebody who was open minded, passionately committed to equality and capable of working in the setting of the supreme court – that is getting to know the other judges, getting to know how they felt and working with them to try to forge consensus when possible,” he says.
Republicans are preparing to rush through a conservative successor to Ginsburg before November’s election, and Democrats are hoping to delay the process until afterwards. Clinton is asked who he thinks will be galvanized more by current events – Republicans or Democrats.
“I think that the voters at least have to know that if you put one more conservative, particularly an ideologically conservative Republican on the court, they’re giving up the healthcare bill for, you know, 20 million people’s health insurance, losing all the preexisting conditions for tens and tens of millions of people. No help on the other front. That’s just one example. So there are consequences,” he says.
Joe Biden retains his lead over Donald Trump nationally, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Biden leads the president 51% to 43% in the new poll, with the challenger’s lead narrowing slightly from the last NBC/Wall Street Journal poll when Biden led 50% to 41%.
Biden is up in the so-called battleground states – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – but the margin is smaller, with the Democrat nominee leading 51% to 45%.
Joe Biden has an appearance scheduled in Philadelphia today. He will speak about the supreme court of justice and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to CNN’s Arlette Saenz.
The Biden campaign advises @JoeBiden's Philadelphia remarks will have a focus on SCOTUS https://t.co/t6ovyreemc
— Arlette Saenz (@ArletteSaenz) September 20, 2020
Bill Clinton: McConnell and Trump's core value is power
Bill Clinton is on CNN’s State of the Union. Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the supreme court.
“She was a force for equality for men as well as women, for example. She was consistent and she did it in a way that was level-headed and on the level and respectful of different opinions and the other judges on the court,” says the former president. “She was highly respected because she bent over backwards to work with the other judges when she could. And she stood up and was counted when she couldn’t. And of course along the way she became kind of a cultural icon, which surprised even me I think.”
In reference to America’s current divisive political climate, he compliments Ginsburg’s ability to reach out to people who she disagreed with, while still being unwavering in her beliefs. She was “respectful of others’ opinions,” says Clinton.
Ginsburg was confirmed by the Senate 96-3 and was friends with conservative supreme court justice Antonin Scalia. Clinton is friends with George W Bush. Host Jake Tapper asks Clinton if that era is gone. “I hope not,” he says. “I really value [Bush’s] friendship.” He adds that life can be boring if all your friends “think the way you do”
He is then asked by the Republicans’ push to get a successor to Ginsburg confirmed before the election. “It’s superficially hypocritical,” says Clinton, pointing to Republicans blocking an Obama nominee in the final year of his term, but now wanting to rush through a nominee before the election.
Clinton says Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Trump’s first values are “power”. He adds that pushing through a successor to Ginsburg will “further spread cynicism” in America. “What happened to make McConnell stop trusting the American people,” he says.
Updated
Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said on Friday, before the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been announced, that if there was a vacancy on the supreme court she would not vote to confirm a nominee before November’s election. That, of course, would go against Donald Trump’s – and most Republicans’ – wish to get a (conservative) successor to Ginsburg in before the election.
No thanks! https://t.co/wNtwLKYDmY
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2020
On Sunday morning Trump appeared to react to Murkowski’s comments. “No thanks!” he tweeted in reply to a promotion for a public appearance by the senator.
Mourners at vigil vow to fight Trump and McConnell
Our Washington bureau chief went out to the steps of the supreme court last night, where tributes were paid to Ruth Bader Ginsburg – and determination to fight the Republican push to replace her was everywhere to be found…
On a pavement across the street from the supreme court, school teacher Amanda Stafford chalked the words carefully: “That’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”
It was a quotation from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a justice more renowned for her dissents than her majority opinions, including on the Bush v Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election. Ginsburg died from pancreatic cancer on Friday aged 87, the newest jolt to an angry, divided and fragile nation.
On Saturday night, as summer succumbed to the chill of autumn, thousands came to mourn her at a vigil outside the court in Washington. Some made speeches. Others sang songs. More joined hands or laid flowers and candles. Stafford paid tribute in chalk.
“I wanted to show words that are empowering at a time when a lot of people are feeling worn out,” the 31-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia, explained. “As a woman in a country getting ever more divided, it’s important to come out and make a stand for someone who made this her life’s work.”
David’s full report is here:
Poll: voters don't trust Trump on Covid vaccine
Donald Trump is tweeting this morning, notably about “VIRGINIA” Not the name of his promised female nominee for the court – sorry, feeble, but yesterday was a long one and I still need coffee – but a state where he wants to win, despite or perhaps because of recent reports that his campaign has given up on the commonwealth, which was once red and then purple but is more and more turning a rather deep blue.
“VIRGINIA,” the president wrote, “and everywhere else for that matter, I am the only thing standing between you and your 2nd Amendment. If I am re-elected, it is 100% SAFE. If not, it is GONE!”
In terms of what Trump would like or not like to be talking about on the trail right now, gun rights, and indeed supreme court picks, are decidedly not the coronavirus pandemic. And as it happens, there’s a poll out this morning, from ABC News and Ipsos, which says 69% of Americans have no confidence in Trump’s promises of a safe and widely available Covid-19 vaccine within weeks.
For what it’s worth, speaking of polls, the fivethirtyeight.com average puts Joe Biden 11 points up in Virginia.
The internet duly lit up on Saturday after Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on leaving the White House for a rally in North Carolina, illustrated his promise to pick a woman for the supreme court with hand gestures which appeared to outline the shape of a woman’s body.
Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa are reported to be top of the president’s list of possible replacements for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“A woman would be in first place, yes,” the president said on Saturday, making the gesture. “The choice of a woman I would say would certainly be appropriate.”
"A woman would be in first place, yes. The choice of a woman I would say would certainly be appropriate" -- Trump on RBG's replacement pic.twitter.com/WDm9eiZLrm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020
Trump has made inappropriate gestures when speaking about women before. At an October 2016 rally in Greensboro, North Carolina – then as now a swing state – Trump made groping gestures while discussing allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
This week, Emily Dorris, by some counts Trump’s 26th accuser of sexual misconduct detailed her allegations to the Guardian. As with all the other accusations, Trump denied them.
Good morning…
…and welcome to another day’s coverage of politics in the US, dominated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the looming fight over who will replace her on the supreme court.
The liberal heroine died on Friday, from complications arising from pancreatic cancer and at the age of 87. Tributes poured in.
And then the plotting started.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he would put a nominee to the vote, even though there were less than 50 days to go to the presidential election and, infamously, in 2016 he denied Obama nominee Merrick Garland a hearing for eight months, saying no such nomination should be made in an election year.
Donald Trump said he would move swiftly to nominate a replacement for Ginsburg, and later confirmed it would be a woman. Most observers expect it to be Amy Coney Barrett, a strict Catholic viewed with apprehension by pro-choice campaigners.
Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee who will steer the nomination, was on record in the Garland fight saying no justice should be confirmed so close to an election. No matter – by day’s end, citing as motivation Democratic moves in the bitter partisan warfare of the last decade, he said he was game. He would seek to advance Trump’s nominee.
And so to the trenches, where all is not so simple. The Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate. That means that in a process which could even extend into the lame duck period after the election on 3 November, even should Trump lose to Joe Biden, they can lose three votes and still pass a nominee with Vice-President Mike Pence the tiebreaker. Two Republican moderates, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are on record saying they think the winner of the presidential election should pick the new justice. And in Arizona, a special election to replace John McCain could seat a new Democrat, Mark Kelly, by early November.
All eyes are on Mitt Romney of Utah – not up for election, a proven enemy of Trump – and others in tight re-election fights, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado among them. Would McConnell prefer to keep hold of the Senate or tilt the court right for a generation? That is the question – or one of them.
For further reading, here’s our columnist Robert Reich on how for McConnell, one of the most ruthless, and opponents say damaging, Washington operators of all time, power always trumps principle:
