theguardian--2020-10-24--He fought for voting rights in Georgia – then found himself in trouble with the law

Tariq Baiyina has lobbied politicians , shaken hands with governors , set up a college program , and delivered dozens of sermons .
Despite all this , the 42-year-old has never voted .
And the reason is simple : since 2002 , when he was convicted of a felony , he hasn ’ t been allowed .
Felony disenfranchisement is commonplace in the US , where 5.2 million people can ’ t vote , according to a new estimate from the Sentencing Project .
While dozens of countries allow all people held in prison to vote , only two states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Washington DC , do so in the US .
And in some states people lose their voting rights even after they have been released .
In Georgia , where Baiyina was convicted , for example , the ban lasts through probation and parole , which can extend decades after serving time .
Black Americans , like Baiyina , are about 3.7 times more likely to lose their voting eligibility than other adults .
But as the country begins to confront head-on issues of racism and inequality , more states are scaling back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa became the final state to lift what had been a lifetime ban .
In Florida , voters in 2018 approved a referendum restoring eligibility to people who are off probation or parole , though it was quickly dismantled by Republicans .
When Baiyina was convicted nearly two decades ago of armed robbery and carjacking , he wasn ’ t thinking about how people elected to run the government might affect his life .
But soon he would become part of that movement , fighting to win power for himself and others punished @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few years , he would grow into a leading voice against felony disenfranchisement in Georgia .
And for Baiyina , the cause is about more than just winning influence over who writes laws , it ’ s a personal quest to escape lingering punishment , and find citizenship .
A quest that his own mistakes could quickly , and dramatically , interrupt .
Baiyina first became entangled in Georgia ’ s legal system in 2000 .
He lost his job , and needing money to pay for a plane ticket to visit his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ held up a cabbie , driving off with the car and about $ 100 .
He and an accomplice were arrested the same night .
This was the era when “ significantly increased sentence lengths ” accounted for an “ unprecedented rise ” in incarceration rates , according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences .
Baiyina was convicted in 2002 , and sentenced to 20 years in prison , and 15 years of probation .
“ It was really foolish , ” he said .
“ I paid a hefty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” In prison , while reading in the law library , Baiyina began to realize the power of elections .
He learned it was a Democratic state representative who had sponsored the bill requiring a mandatory minimum sentence for armed robbery , one of Baiyina ’ s charges .
“ I ’ m actually affected by this law that these people wrote , ” he remembers thinking .
But he didn ’ t wield a vote to influence their decisions .
“ Power is in the law , and guess what , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ access to it , you ’ re powerless.
” In prison Baiyina turned into a leader – channeling his intelligence and charisma .
He leaned on the faith he grew up with , Islam , and became an imam for the other Muslim inmates .
The stocky man with cropped hair would preach during Friday services , and organize the traditional Eid al-Fitr feast marking the end of the Ramadan holiday .
Baiyina attended college courses and helped establish an Islamic studies program .
When he was released in 2017 Baiyina enrolled in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a non-profit called Inner-City Muslim Action Network ( Iman ) Atlanta .
After he completed the program , he was hired to help run it , and later promoted to community organizer .
The infamous 2018 race for governor in Georgia was the first major election Baiyina witnessed after he was released from prison .
Republican Brian Kemp defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes .
But Abrams accused Kemp , the state ’ s top election official at the time , of voter suppression as thousands of people were purged from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an important safeguard against fraud , although it has been found to be exceedingly rare .
In Kemp ’ s victory , Baiyina saw an election that could have ended differently if the hundreds of thousands of people banned from voting because of their criminal records were able to cast ballots .
“ That power can be a reality , ” Baiyina realized .
Living in Georgia , he started learning more about the history of felony disenfranchisement – a practice that has existed since before the founding of the US , expanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , particularly in the south , created new crimes targeting former slaves .
And it only grew : in 1976 about 1 million people couldn ’ t vote because of a conviction .
By 2016 that number had grown sixfold .
At Iman Atlanta , Baiyina convened weekly meetings called “ power hours ” often attended by other people who were recently out of prison .
They talked about being rejected by landlords and employers because of their records , and how that led friends and acquaintances back to crime and prison .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people dealing with these problems themselves could vote out politicians who didn ’ t care .
He launched a campaign with the goal of ending felony disenfranchisement for people out of prison in Georgia with the slogan “ No Taxation Without Representation ” .
While civil rights , and criminal justice reform organizations in Georgia supported loosening the state ’ s felony disenfranchisement policies , none were as focused on the issue as Baiyina .
He was often asked by other activists pushing for criminal justice reform to speak at their events @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Day ” near the Georgia state capitol .
Lobbyists , and politicians of both parties attended .
“ I have never been fully and fairly represented by this government , ” Baiyina preached to the audience , swaying behind the podium .
“ I want my right to vote back .
I need my right to vote back.
” Cheers , applause and calls of “ that ’ s right ” rippled through the crowd .
From the beginning , the No Taxation Without Representation campaign faced long odds in Georgia .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nathan Deal , won bipartisan praise for making the state ’ s criminal justice system less punitive , Kemp let those efforts fizzle , instead cracking down on targeting sex traffickers and gangs .
In Georgia and other southern states , Florida being the exception , citizens don ’ t have the ability to put an amendment on the ballot and let voters decide .
And in late-2019 , a GOP-led committee of state lawmakers tasked with studying felony disenfranchisement recommended the policy be left unchanged .
Jake Evans , chair of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican party , explained felony disenfranchisement as necessary to preserve “ law and order ” .
“ If you just let anyone and everyone vote , even though they haven ’ t abided by the laws , ” he said in an interview , “ you can create a very dangerous cycle.
” Evans argued allowing people serving felony sentences to vote would lead to corruption , and “ tainted ” elections like those conducted in countries such as Russia or Belarus .
But restoring voting eligibility after prison may actually build trust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh .
In an experiment in Virginia , she revealed to dozens of formerly incarcerated people that they were , in fact , eligible to vote .
Shineman found that this information alone caused the subjects to feel more empowered and develop stronger trust in government and democratic institutions .
“ They are more willing to cooperate with law enforcement , if they were in trouble , ” she said , and this increased trust , is likely to reduce the chance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in prison .
With election day approaching , Baiyina hoped No Taxation Without Representation would gain momentum .
He planned to set up formal partnerships with larger progressive groups , like the Southern Poverty Law Center ( SPLC ) and the New Georgia Project , an organization founded by Stacey Abrams .
Then Baiyina would focus on registering people who have completed their sentences .
Formerly incarcerated activists like Norris Henderson in Louisiana , and Desmond Meade in Florida , have led such successful campaigns to expand felon voting eligibility .
John Paul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sees Baiyina as someone who , like Meade and Henderson , could have become the public face of a larger movement this year .
“ I ’ d be out in the streets with this brother , doing positive things , ” he said .
But Baiyina ’ s plans fell apart one weekend night in July .
After running an errand , he stopped by a bar in Atlanta to smoke hookah .
He drank a few Heinekens , and on the way home crashed the red Buick Encore he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a suburban road .
He was booked for driving under the influence , the punishment worsened because he was still on parole from his previous conviction .
Baiyina told me he swerved to avoid a deer , but he acknowledged this wasn ’ t the first time he had had trouble getting home late at night after drinking .
“ I need to be more responsible about the decisions that I make , even in my personal life , ” he said .
To ensure he didn ’ t end up back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He was transferred to a probation detention center in rural Georgia , where during the week he is required to work at a diesel mechanic shop .
Baiyina ’ s push to end felony disenfranchisement is on hold as he grapples with the very legal system he has been trying to change .
Baiyina hopes he will soon be transferred to a transitional center where he could work for Iman Atlanta during the day .
A state senator in Atlanta , Democrat Nan Orrock , sent a letter to the Georgia board of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ His commitment to civic engagement is truly exemplary , ” wrote Orrock .
“ He seeks in every way possible to share his life lessons with others , and help make a better world for all of us here in Georgia.
” Meanwhile , Iman Atlanta continues the No Taxation Without Representation campaign , and its director said he plans to hire back Baiyina when he is released in March of 2021 .
“ He ’ ll be right back in the fight with us , ” said Mansoor Sabree .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ fiance , Kareemah Hanifa , who is out of prison on parole , and unable to vote herself .
Hanifa spoke at a virtual “ power hour ” meeting in August ahead of Georgia ’ s voter registration deadline .
“ What is the harm in me voting ?
” she said .
“ Even as we try to be successful , and we try to move forward , and we try to thrive , there ’ s always that barrier that pops back up.
” Johnny Kauffman is a reporter with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This story was made possible with support from WABE , the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University , and the Abrams Foundation ( unaffiliated with Democrat Stacey Abrams )

Tariq Baiyina has lobbied politicians, shaken hands with governors, set up a college program, and delivered dozens of sermons. Despite all this, the 42-year-old has never voted. And the reason is simple: since 2002, when he was convicted of a felony, he hasn’t been allowed.
Felony disenfranchisement is commonplace in the US, where 5.2 million people can’t vote, according to a new estimate from the Sentencing Project. While dozens of countries allow all people held in prison to vote, only two states, Vermont and Maine, as well as Washington DC, do so in the US. And in some states people lose their voting rights even after they have been released. In Georgia, where Baiyina was convicted, for example, the ban lasts through probation and parole, which can extend decades after serving time.
Black Americans, like Baiyina, are about 3.7 times more likely to lose their voting eligibility than other adults. But as the country begins to confront head-on issues of racism and inequality, more states are scaling back felony disenfranchisement. Earlier this year, Iowa became the final state to lift what had been a lifetime ban. In Florida, voters in 2018 approved a referendum restoring eligibility to people who are off probation or parole, though it was quickly dismantled by Republicans.
When Baiyina was convicted nearly two decades ago of armed robbery and carjacking, he wasn’t thinking about how people elected to run the government might affect his life. But soon he would become part of that movement, fighting to win power for himself and others punished by the legal system. In a few years, he would grow into a leading voice against felony disenfranchisement in Georgia. And for Baiyina, the cause is about more than just winning influence over who writes laws, it’s a personal quest to escape lingering punishment, and find citizenship. A quest that his own mistakes could quickly, and dramatically, interrupt.
*
Baiyina first became entangled in Georgia’s legal system in 2000. He lost his job, and needing money to pay for a plane ticket to visit his son in Rochester, New York, held up a cabbie, driving off with the car and about $100. He and an accomplice were arrested the same night.
This was the era when “significantly increased sentence lengths” accounted for an “unprecedented rise” in incarceration rates, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Baiyina was convicted in 2002, and sentenced to 20 years in prison, and 15 years of probation. “It was really foolish,” he said. “I paid a hefty price for that crime. Still paying it.”
In prison, while reading in the law library, Baiyina began to realize the power of elections. He learned it was a Democratic state representative who had sponsored the bill requiring a mandatory minimum sentence for armed robbery, one of Baiyina’s charges. “I’m actually affected by this law that these people wrote,” he remembers thinking. But he didn’t wield a vote to influence their decisions. “Power is in the law, and guess what, if you don’t have any access to it, you’re powerless.”
In prison Baiyina turned into a leader – channeling his intelligence and charisma. He leaned on the faith he grew up with, Islam, and became an imam for the other Muslim inmates. The stocky man with cropped hair would preach during Friday services, and organize the traditional Eid al-Fitr feast marking the end of the Ramadan holiday. Baiyina attended college courses and helped establish an Islamic studies program.
When he was released in 2017 Baiyina enrolled in a job-training and temporary housing program with a non-profit called Inner-City Muslim Action Network (Iman) Atlanta. After he completed the program, he was hired to help run it, and later promoted to community organizer.
*
The infamous 2018 race for governor in Georgia was the first major election Baiyina witnessed after he was released from prison. Republican Brian Kemp defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes. But Abrams accused Kemp, the state’s top election official at the time, of voter suppression as thousands of people were purged from voter rolls. Kemp called the purges an important safeguard against fraud, although it has been found to be exceedingly rare.
In Kemp’s victory, Baiyina saw an election that could have ended differently if the hundreds of thousands of people banned from voting because of their criminal records were able to cast ballots. “That power can be a reality,” Baiyina realized.
Power is in the law, and guess what, if you don’t have any access to it, you’re powerless Tariq Baiyina
Living in Georgia, he started learning more about the history of felony disenfranchisement – a practice that has existed since before the founding of the US, expanding after the civil war when white politicians, particularly in the south, created new crimes targeting former slaves. And it only grew: in 1976 about 1 million people couldn’t vote because of a conviction. By 2016 that number had grown sixfold.
At Iman Atlanta, Baiyina convened weekly meetings called “power hours” often attended by other people who were recently out of prison. They talked about being rejected by landlords and employers because of their records, and how that led friends and acquaintances back to crime and prison. Baiyina thought of what would happen if the people dealing with these problems themselves could vote out politicians who didn’t care. He launched a campaign with the goal of ending felony disenfranchisement for people out of prison in Georgia with the slogan “No Taxation Without Representation”.
*
While civil rights, and criminal justice reform organizations in Georgia supported loosening the state’s felony disenfranchisement policies, none were as focused on the issue as Baiyina. He was often asked by other activists pushing for criminal justice reform to speak at their events, like one in February called “Justice Day” near the Georgia state capitol. Lobbyists, and politicians of both parties attended.
“I have never been fully and fairly represented by this government,” Baiyina preached to the audience, swaying behind the podium. “I want my right to vote back. I need my right to vote back.” Cheers, applause and calls of “that’s right” rippled through the crowd.
Stacey Abrams with Brian Kemp before the 2018 midterms. In the gubernatorial election, Abrams accused Kemp of voter suppression. Photograph: Reuters
From the beginning, the No Taxation Without Representation campaign faced long odds in Georgia. While Kemp’s predecessor, Republican Nathan Deal, won bipartisan praise for making the state’s criminal justice system less punitive, Kemp let those efforts fizzle, instead cracking down on targeting sex traffickers and gangs. In Georgia and other southern states, Florida being the exception, citizens don’t have the ability to put an amendment on the ballot and let voters decide. And in late-2019, a GOP-led committee of state lawmakers tasked with studying felony disenfranchisement recommended the policy be left unchanged.
Jake Evans, chair of the Election Competence Task Force of the Georgia Republican party, explained felony disenfranchisement as necessary to preserve “law and order”. “If you just let anyone and everyone vote, even though they haven’t abided by the laws,” he said in an interview, “you can create a very dangerous cycle.” Evans argued allowing people serving felony sentences to vote would lead to corruption, and “tainted” elections like those conducted in countries such as Russia or Belarus.
But restoring voting eligibility after prison may actually build trust in institutions, according to Victoria Shineman, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. In an experiment in Virginia, she revealed to dozens of formerly incarcerated people that they were, in fact, eligible to vote. Shineman found that this information alone caused the subjects to feel more empowered and develop stronger trust in government and democratic institutions.
“They are more willing to cooperate with law enforcement, if they were in trouble,” she said, and this increased trust, is likely to reduce the chance they commit crimes and end up back in prison.
*
With election day approaching, Baiyina hoped No Taxation Without Representation would gain momentum. He planned to set up formal partnerships with larger progressive groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the New Georgia Project, an organization founded by Stacey Abrams. Then Baiyina would focus on registering people who have completed their sentences.
Formerly incarcerated activists like Norris Henderson in Louisiana, and Desmond Meade in Florida, have led such successful campaigns to expand felon voting eligibility. John Paul Taylor, an organizer with the SPLC, sees Baiyina as someone who, like Meade and Henderson, could have become the public face of a larger movement this year.
“I’d be out in the streets with this brother, doing positive things,” he said.
But Baiyina’s plans fell apart one weekend night in July. After running an errand, he stopped by a bar in Atlanta to smoke hookah. He drank a few Heinekens, and on the way home crashed the red Buick Encore he was driving, rolling it off the side of a suburban road. He was booked for driving under the influence, the punishment worsened because he was still on parole from his previous conviction.
Baiyina told me he swerved to avoid a deer, but he acknowledged this wasn’t the first time he had had trouble getting home late at night after drinking. “I need to be more responsible about the decisions that I make, even in my personal life, ” he said.
To ensure he didn’t end up back in prison, Baiyina pleaded guilty. He was transferred to a probation detention center in rural Georgia, where during the week he is required to work at a diesel mechanic shop. Baiyina’s push to end felony disenfranchisement is on hold as he grapples with the very legal system he has been trying to change.
Baiyina hopes he will soon be transferred to a transitional center where he could work for Iman Atlanta during the day. A state senator in Atlanta, Democrat Nan Orrock, sent a letter to the Georgia board of pardons and parole in support of Baiyina. “His commitment to civic engagement is truly exemplary,” wrote Orrock. “He seeks in every way possible to share his life lessons with others, and help make a better world for all of us here in Georgia.”
Meanwhile, Iman Atlanta continues the No Taxation Without Representation campaign, and its director said he plans to hire back Baiyina when he is released in March of 2021. “He’ll be right back in the fight with us,” said Mansoor Sabree. The organization recently hired Baiyina’s fiance, Kareemah Hanifa, who is out of prison on parole, and unable to vote herself. Hanifa spoke at a virtual “power hour” meeting in August ahead of Georgia’s voter registration deadline.
“What is the harm in me voting?” she said. “Even as we try to be successful, and we try to move forward, and we try to thrive, there’s always that barrier that pops back up.”
Johnny Kauffman is a reporter with the public radio station in Atlanta, WABE. This story was made possible with support from WABE, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and the Abrams Foundation (unaffiliated with Democrat Stacey Abrams)


theguardian--2020-10-24--Trump and Biden hit battleground states with 10 days to go – live

On 22 October , almost three weeks before one of the most consequential presidential elections in recent history , more than 6 million Californians had already voted .
The number was several times that of the same point in 2016 .
The pandemic , massive wildfires and the ongoing fight against police brutality have galvanized voters in America ’ s most populous state .
“ We knew the Covid-19 pandemic would pose significant challenges , but elections officials have prepared and voters have responded , ” said Alex Padilla , the secretary of state .
California has sent mail-in ballots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the flood of votes that have been returned so far make up about 25 % .
It ’ s still unclear whether voter turnout will be higher than in previous years .
But the early turnout is “ shattering prior election returns ” , said Paul Mitchell of Political Data , a bipartisan voter data firm based in California .
“ We ’ ve been tracking this kind of stuff for over a decade , and there ’ s just nothing that compares to how quickly voters have been returning their ballots this @ @ @ @

24 Oct 2020 23.03 BST Evening summary It’s been a lively day on the election trail. We’re closing this blog now but will be back with all the developments in US political news, as it happens, tomorrow. Here are the main events of the day: Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has hopped off the fence and says she will confirm Amy Coney Barrett for the US supreme court in the vote expected on Monday.
has hopped off the fence and says she will confirm for the US in the vote expected on Monday. Barack Obama , speaking at a drive-in rally to support Joe Biden in the key swing state of Florida, laid into Donald Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
, speaking at a drive-in rally to support in the key swing state of Florida, laid into for his response to the coronavirus pandemic. Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, campainging in Ohio, also decried the Trump administration’s handling of Covid-19 and lamented that the crushed economy has led to a “hunger crisis” in America.
also decried the Trump administration’s handling of and lamented that the crushed economy has led to a “hunger crisis” in America. Campaigning at two rallies in Pennsylvania today, Joe Biden said at each that he would not ban fracking - a very active industry in the swing state.
today, said at each that he would not ban - a very active industry in the swing state. Top infectious disease public health official Anthony Fauci supports the idea of a national face mask mandate if that’s the only way to get people to wear them and curb the spread of coronavirus.
supports the idea of a national if that’s the only way to get people to wear them and curb the spread of coronavirus. Both Donald Trump and his most controversial coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas have been spreading misleading info on Twitter about Covid-19.
24 Oct 2020 22.53 BST Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is calling for an administration that is frank about racist police brutality in America. “There isn’t a Black man I know, be it a relative or friend, who has not had some sort of experience with police that’s been about an unreasonable stop, some sort of profiling or excessive force,” she said. Kamala Harris campaigning in Cleveland, Ohio, earlier today. Photograph: David Dermer/AP She said Donald Trump “says people who are protesting are looters and they are violent, and talking about law and order, not understanding that peaceful protest is part of how this nation was founded.” Harris said peaceful protest is what has allowed her to become only the second Black woman elected to the United States Senate (hat tip to groundbreaker Carol Moseley Braun). “But there is still a lot of work to be done” not just to speak out about police brutality but to do something about it.” She said she had spoken out about Breonna Taylor, shot dead by police in March during a botched raid on her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment, “but there are many Breonnas and Georges”, referring to George Floyd who was killed by police in Minneapolis this spring when an officer kneeled on his neck on the ground for almost nine minutes, reinvigorating the Black Lives Matter movement. “There needs to be ban on chokeholds and carotid holds, across the board. Let’s have a national registry of police officers who break the law.” She added that there needed to be “accountability and consequences” not just for individual police but for “the system”. We can’t just speak the truth about police brutality in our nation—we must act to change our systems of justice and demand accountability. pic.twitter.com/arSdFLi7Wj — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 24, 2020 The latest CNN opinion poll in Ohio has Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Republican candidate Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat, with 46% of those surveyed backing Biden for the White House in November, 47% favoring Trump. No Republican in modern history has lost Ohio but won the White House.
24 Oct 2020 22.21 BST The 2020 race continues. Donald Trump is on his way to begin another rally in Circleville, Ohio, about a 30-minute drive from Columbus, and Joe Biden is speaking now in Dallas, north-eastern Pennsylvania. This Dallas is not far from Scranton, Biden’s birthplace. The Democratic candidate for president just said “maybe it’s the Scranton in me” that gives him “a bit of a chip on my shoulder” about Trump’s flaunting of and focus on his own wealth. Biden at his drive-in rally at Dallas High School in Dallas, Pennsylvania, moments ago. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Biden is at his most fired up on the campaign trail right now, he doesn’t have the oratory skills of Obama, but he is impassioned. After so many months in the basement, campaigning online, it’s truly exciting to see Biden, as well as Harris and Obama out on the trail in person talking to motivated voters - not leaving it all to Trump. Biden just said once again that he won’t ban fracking. And he’s slamming Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s using what has become one of his standard lines, bringing up the revelation from Bob Woodward’s book Rage that the president told him very early on in the outbreak that he knew exactly how dangerous Covid-19 was but downplayed it to the public because he didn’t want to spread panic (instead his stance just spread coronavirus). “The American people don’t panic,” Biden said. “Donald Trump panicked.” He called the president’s approach to controlling the outbreak “weak and chaotic”. Biden said he is determined to shut down the virus if he is president, without shutting down the economy, although it’s not entirely clear yet how he would thread that needle for the nation. Biden said Trump “hasn’t delivered on a damn thing”. Voters honking their car horns and cheering.
Updated at 22.23 BST
24 Oct 2020 22.00 BST Alaska's Murkowski will confirm Barrett for supreme court Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett won crucial backing this afternoon when one of the last Republican holdouts announced her support for Donald Trump’s pick ahead of a confirmation vote expected Monday. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during today’s Senate session that while she opposed her party’s decision to push ahead with the nomination process so close to the November 3 presidential election, she supported the federal judge, who is on track to lock in a conservative court majority for years to come, The Associated Press reports. Lisa Murkowski on Capitol Hill last month. Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images Barrett already appeared to have enough votes for confirmation from Senate Republicans who hold the majority in the chamber and are racing to install her on the high court before Election Day. But Murkowski’s nod gives her a boost of support. Only one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, is now expected to oppose the conservative judge.
“While I oppose the process that has led us to this point, I do not hold it against her,” Murkowski said.
The Senate opened the rare weekend session despite Democratic efforts to stall Trump’s nominee. Democrats mounted more procedural hurdles during the day, but the party has no realistic chance of stopping Barrett’s advance. Barrett, a federal appeals court judge from Indiana, is expected to be confirmed Monday and quickly join the court.
The fast-track confirmation process is like none other in US history so close to a presidential election. Democrats, notably the vice-presidential nominee and California Senator Kamala Harris, who sits on the judiciary committee, call it a “sham” and say the winner of the presidential election should name the nominee to fill the vacancy left by the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Senators planned to stay in session Saturday and Sunday. Read the Guardian’s latest report on the Amy Coney Barrett. Not only is her confirmation process controversial but she is a controversial judge and individual. Amy Coney Barrett faces recusal questions over links to Shell Read more
24 Oct 2020 21.51 BST Richard Luscombe Here’s our last report on Barack Obama’s rally in Florida on behalf of Joe Biden today. Former president Barack Obama campaigning for Joe Biden In Florida this afternoon. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images In his speech, which lasted almost an hour, he worked through several major election issues, such as the economy and the pandemic and touched on others as he continued to lash Trump. “Let me just see a show of hands, how many people here have a secret Chinese bank account?” Obama asked, referring to a story that emerged in the week that Trump had paid more than $200,000 in taxes in China, weeks after it emerged his federal income tax liability in the US was far less. “His first year in the White House he only paid $750 in federal income tax,” Obama said. “You’ve got secretaries, you’ve got construction workers, you got your health care workers, nurses, who pay a lot more in income taxes than that.” There was a staunch defense of Obamacare, his signature Affordable Care Act, which provided millions more Americans with affordable health insurance, that Republicans have tried numerous times to dismantle during the Trump administration. “When they’re asked about it they say, ‘Well look, we’re gonna have a great replacement. It’s coming. It’s gonna be there in two weeks.’ They’ve never had a replacement. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. “They’ve attacked the Affordable Care Act and every time they’ve driven up costs, they’re driving up the uninsured. Now they’re trying to get the Supreme Court to take away your health care as we speak, in the middle of a pandemic,” referring to the high court’s hearing into the constitutionality of the ACA on 10 November. Appealing to Florida’s sizeable Hispanic demographic, Obama had harsh words for Trump’s handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, and efforts by some among Miami’s Cuban and Venezuelan communities to portray Biden as an extreme socialist. “Listening to the Republicans, you’d think Joe was more communist than the Castros. Don’t fall for that garbage,” Obama said. “Folks would know if he was a secret socialist by now. What is true is he’ll promote human rights in Cuba and around the world and he won’t coddle dictators the way our current president does.” The former prescient ended on an upbeat note. “I’m here to report that America is a good and decent place. We just see so much noise and nonsense,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to remember but I’ve been all across this country. There are a lot of good people here. There are a lot of folks who share the values of looking out for one another and doing right by one another.” Voters listening to Obama at the drive-in rally in North Miami today. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
24 Oct 2020 21.40 BST Here we go again with Donald Trump’s antipathy to the wearing of face masks to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. Having just arrived in Columbus, Ohio, for his next campaign trail event, the president had a few words with reporters and is talking utter nonsense. First he said there are so many cases of coronavirus being reported in Wisconsin, where the disease is surging, at the moment because of all the testing. So if no testing, then no coronavirus? This is a highly misleading and wrongheaded argument that the president of the United States has tried numerous times over the months in order to downplay the coronavirus pandemic. And at a question from another reporter, Trump barked: “I can’t hear you with your mask on” and moved to the next reporter without waiting for the person to repeat the question. What kind of face mask best protects against coronavirus? Read more
24 Oct 2020 21.27 BST The Texas state supreme court this afternoon temporarily reinstated the governor’s ban on multiple drop-off sites for mail ballots, in a short-term victory for Donald Trump. People waiting in line last week to cast their ballots for the upcoming presidential election as early voting begins in Houston, Texas. Photograph: Go Nakamura/Reuters The ban will remain in effect while the state supreme court fully reviews a Friday appeals court ruling that overturned the order by Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican like the president, who faces Democrat Joe Biden in a race for the White House on November 3, Reuters writes.
The Texas 3rd court of appeals had unanimously agreed with a lower court that limiting the number of drop boxes would lengthen lines, increase the risk that voters could get infected with Covid-19, and infringe on their right to vote. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in ballots, claiming - without evidence - they would lead to widespread fraud. Abbott issued his order limiting mail-in ballot drop boxes to one per county on October 1, saying it was aimed at preventing fraud. The move, which closed more than a dozen satellite locations in at least two counties, drew condemnation from Democrats and voting rights advocates. Texas, which Trump won by nine percentage points in 2016, has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades. But opinion polls have suggested it might be in reach for Biden, in part because of dissatisfaction over Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The Guardian’s Erum Salam noted in this story from earlier in the month that large, populous counties such as Travis and Harris county will be disproportionately affected by Abbott’s order. These counties includes Texas’s most diverse cities: Austin and Houston, respectively. Nine per cent of Travis county’s population are black and 33% are Hispanic. In Harris county, 20% of the population are black and 43% Hispanic. Harris county is the third most populous county in the country with more than 4.7 million residents. As of 2018, it has nearly 2.4 million registered voters. After Abbott’s new order, the vast county has gone from having 12 ballot drop-off sites to just one, located at the NRG Stadium in central Houston. Full story here.
24 Oct 2020 21.10 BST Richard Luscombe writes that Barack Obama is delivering a sparky speech at a drive-in rally for Joe Biden in North Miami, Florida. His event continues with him highlighting the difference between Trump’s “empty promises” for a second term and Biden’s plans for his first. Michelle Obama once famously said, "When they go low, we go high."
Barack Obama is taking the approach of going for the jugular.pic.twitter.com/3XWw7z2nxa — Ted Corcoran (RedTRaccoon) (@RedTRaccoon) October 24, 2020 “Tweeting… doesn’t fix things. Inventing conspiracies doesn’t make people’s lives better,” he said. “You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to do the work. And along with the experience of getting things done, Joe Biden has concrete plans and policies that are going to turn our vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality.”
Seeking to heap blame on Trump’s lack of response for a coronavirus pandemic that has killed almost 225,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs, Obama pointed out that his own administration had left plans. “We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that showed them how to respond before a virus reached our shores,” Obama said. “It must be lost along with the Republican health care plan. We can’t find it, eight months into this pandemic.” Also squandered, Obama said, was the nation’s strong economy: “Unemployment was steadily going down during the Obama-Biden presidency. And then he gets elected and it keeps on going down and suddenly he says, ‘Look what I did there.’ “He did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history that we got started but just like everything else he inherited he fumbled it. “The economic damage inflicted by [his] pandemic response means that Donald Trump will be the first president since Herbert Hoover that actually loses jobs.” Obama also teased Trump for ending his interview early for 60 Minutes, with journalist Lesley Stahl, early. The interview airs tomorrow night, ditto one with Biden. Barack Obama. “If you’re too scared of Leslie Stahl, and 60 minutes, you’re not that tough” 😂 pic.twitter.com/XBM18HnsnR — Tanya - Black Widow 🕷🕸🖤 864511032020 (@BlackWidow_WF) October 24, 2020
Updated at 21.16 BST
24 Oct 2020 20.55 BST Obama speaks in Florida: slams Trump, says Biden made Obama himself "a better president" Richard Luscombe Barack Obama is wasting no time in mocking Donald Trump during the former Democratic president’s appearance in North Miami, Florida this afternoon. “He’s had a tough week. Everybody has been very unfair to Donald Trump, this week,” the former president said to joyous honks of car horns at a drive-in rally. Referring to the final presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden on Thursday, Obama said: “Trump was asked, ‘What is your plan for the new phase of Covid?’ which is a pretty good question considering that we just saw the highest number of cases spike up yesterday. “So you think he’d be ready for a response. Instead, he just said it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t have one. He said, ‘It’s now gone and a bunch of states.’ Just as states are reaching new record highs nationwide he doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of what’s taking place all across the country.” As he did earlier in the week at a rally in Pennsylvania for Biden, his former vice-president, Obama kept the focus firmly on Trump. “It’s a good idea to have an answer to this question. It’s a good idea if you’re running for reelection to say, ‘Here’s what I want to accomplish.” What did Trump say? He got mad and walked out of the interview,” Obama said, referring to an ill-tempered 60 Minutes due to air on CBS Sunday night but already posted on Trump’s Facebook site. “He thought the questions were too tough. If he can’t answer a tough question like, ‘What would you like to do in your second term?’ then it’s our job to make sure he doesn’t get a second term.” Obama said he didn’t know Biden very well when he picked him to be his Veep. But he said he got to know his character as their administration proceeded, and that Biden “made me a better president”. Supporters of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential ticket await Barack Obama’s rally for the Democrats in Florida this afternoon. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 21.17 BST
24 Oct 2020 20.37 BST More from Edward Helmore… Facebook has demanded that New York University stop collecting data about its political ad targeting practices, arguing the engineering project violates its terms of service. The argument between the social media giant and NYU’s Ad Observatory project, which launched last month with more 6,500 volunteers assigned to collect data about political ads, flared up on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a letter to the engineering department, Facebook said “scraping tools, no matter how well-intentioned, are not a permissible means of collecting information from us”. Facebook went on to say that if the university does not cease harvesting the data and delete it, it “may be subject to additional enforcement action”. Last month, Facebook said it would stop political advertising for a month ahead the 3 November presidential election, seeking to prevent the spread of misinformation. After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Facebook was accused of allowing Russian disinformation and political profiling to flow almost unchecked. NYU has said the Ad Observatory is designed to provide the public, journalists, researchers and policy makers with the ability to search political ads floated to specific audiences and to see how those ads are funded. Facebook’s demand that NYU cease the program met with criticism. “Facebook is making it harder for Americans to get information about online political ads,” Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, a sponsor of a bill called the Honest Ads Act, said in a statement to the Journal. Social media platforms, she added, have pledged to make online advertising more transparent – but Facebook’s threatened action “is further evidence that voluntary standards are insufficient”. After the Journal’s article was published, Facebook partially retracted its threat, signaling the sensitivity of the issue. It said it would not take any action until after the election. Facebook says it rejected 2.2m ads for breaking political campaigning rules Read more


theguardian--2020-10-24--'I'm more enthusiastic now than in 2016': meet the voters standing by Donald Trump

Lisa Matthews voted for Barack Obama .
But just the once .
The daughter of an African American mother and Puerto Rican father , the 47-year-old grew up in one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Camden , New Jersey , a struggling former shipbuilding port on the Delaware river .
“ Camden was predominantly black , poor , a lot of welfare recipients , single parents , and crime .
Big drug trade .
My father was in the military , but he left the family when I was five .
My mom was a single mom at the age @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stamps , ” Matthews says .
“ I had two of my cousins killed there in the city , and my stepbrother was murdered as well .
My uncle was killed by an unknown shooter in 1987 .
It was a tough place to grow up.
” Like her mother , Matthews became a single parent at 23 and worked several jobs to stay afloat .
But her absent father ’ s time in the military had planted a seed .
Her parents were posted around the US and to Britain , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wonder .
Matthews carried that with her .
“ My sister and I were very interested in the world , in other cultures , ” she says .
In her 20s , a friend encouraged her to move to Concord , North Carolina , where she got a job in a bank .
Now she lives in a large house in a plush suburb where we chat over tea and Jammie Dodgers ( she still loves all things British ) .
She ’ s wearing her politics on her T-shirt : “ President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 2008 , Matthews voted for Obama , helping to swing the former slave state to America ’ s first black president .
“ I wasn ’ t a really liberal Democrat back then .
Even Barack Obama wasn ’ t that liberal in 2008 .
I was just excited that he was black , to be honest , ” she says .
But by the time the next election came round , she questioned the point of an African American president .
“ The black community rallied around him , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
He could have said , this is how me and Michelle got out of the South Side of Chicago .
We can help lift people up , ” she says .
“ Instead he was telling people they ’ re oppressed : ‘ Let me give you a handout.
’ ” Matthews came to think that summed up the Democrats .
As she saw it , the party kept the poor dependent on welfare instead of providing paths out of poverty .
She drifted toward the Republicans , although she wasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama in 2012 ; that year , she didn ’ t vote .
Four years later , Donald Trump made his attention-grabbing ride down the golden escalator of his New York tower to announce a run for president .
By then Matthews had become a bank fraud investigator ; she now owns her own home for the first time .
She voted against Trump in the primaries , thinking he didn ’ t stand a chance .
But when he won the Republican nomination , she embraced it .
“ I thought he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yorker businessman .
He was the epitome of what America is like .
Brash , throwing money around , ” she says .
“ But I didn ’ t know what kind of president he would be .
I was never against him , but I wasn ’ t as enthusiastic as I am now .
Now I tell people I love Trump.
” If Trump pulls off the unexpected once again , his victory will be built on the foundation of the four in 10 voters who have consistently said they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most tempestuous presidencies of modern times .
Voters who have excused him , explained him , even despaired of him at times , but never spurned him .
The most visible of those supporters can be found at Trump ’ s rallies , sporting Make America Great Again hats and cheering the president ’ s provocations ; or forming armed vigilante groups , ostensibly to defend order and history .
They push Trump ’ s myriad conspiracy theories , including about Covid-19 , even after the president caught the virus .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the ultras seen on television .
Neither are they easily slotted into the demographics often assigned to Trump supporters – the embittered former factory workers turning their anger on minorities and voting against their own interests .
This autumn I drove for over a month across the US – from the south to Appalachian coal country in one of the poorest states , West Virginia ; and from Detroit , Michigan , once the engine of America ’ s industrialisation , to the upper reaches of rural Minnesota on the border with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and flags are one demonstration of the enthusiasm some of his supporters retain .
The voters were as varied as the landscape .
The coalmine worker who was without a job for years .
The former military officer whose father came to the US illegally .
The estate agent and small city mayor angry about China .
The former police officer despairing at Black Lives Matter .
All told me why they are determinedly sticking with Trump .
Ronald Reagan , on his way to unseating President Jimmy Carter in 1980 , famously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better off than you were four years ago ?
” The division , uncertainty and fear of 2020 makes that seem an inadequate question ahead of this election .
Bo Copley , however , doesn ’ t hesitate to say that he is .
Copley lost his maintenance job on a West Virginia coalmine a year before the last election , and gained fleeting fame in 2016 after confronting Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail over her pledge to “ put a lot of coalminers out of business ” .
Copley , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a round-table event that people in Appalachian “ coal country ” did not see her as a friend .
The Democratic candidate told him she had misspoken , but a few months later made an even bigger blunder in telling an LGBT For Hillary fundraiser in New York that half of Trump ’ s supporters were racist , sexist homophobes who belong in a “ basket of deplorables ” .
“ The deplorables comment , that was huge .
That working-class person that really got behind Trump , they took that to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diner in Williamson , a small city on the border with Kentucky so blighted by the prescription opioid epidemic it is known for miles around as Pilliamson .
Trump , on the other hand , persuaded them he cared .
West Virginia , once solidly Democrat , voted for him by a higher margin than any other state .
Copley was out of work for three “ very hard ” years .
His wife , Lauren , kept them afloat with money she made photographing family portraits .
Then , two years into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a job on another mine – thanks , he believes , to Trump rolling back Obama-era environmental regulations and reviving the industry .
“ When you see the coal trains and the trucks , and people going back to work who had been off for quite some time , you see people ’ s attitudes change .
People have a glimmer of hope that they can do the things they used to do .
Travel .
Shop , ” Copley says .
“ One of the reasons Donald Trump was so popular here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he made people feel like , ‘ I ’ m listening to you.
’ ” Trump ’ s record on reviving mines is patchy , and Copley knows that Williamson isn ’ t going back to the years when coal was king ; when the city ’ s high street bustled with department stores and a Chevrolet dealership .
Now it ’ s dotted with personal injury lawyers , touting for business with slogans such as , “ Been in a wreck and need a check ?
” One of Williamson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug rehab centre .
But Copley ’ s eye was on something bigger than just local revival .
His vote was underpinned by the sense that the president represents a more fundamental shift .
Obama famously promised “ change ” ; Copley says Trump delivered it .
“ A lot of people wanted someone different , and they got that , ” he says .
“ Myself and a lot of people just wanted someone who said , ‘ I ’ m gon na cut through all the garbage and try to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Copley come from very different places geographically , socially and politically .
But what draws them together , along with other Trump supporters I speak to , is an unusual bond with a president they think is on their side .
A man who sees and hears them in ways his predecessors did not .
That bond has been tightened by their sense that a blow against him is a strike against them , in part because they feel judged for having voted for him in the first place .
Detroit , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a world away from rural Appalachia , but a military officer I speak to there shares much of Copley ’ s view of Trump .
The son of what the president calls “ an illegal ” from Mexico , he was drawn to Trump in part by his anger that free trade agreements shipped his father ’ s car industry job out of the country .
Softly spoken , courteous and unwaveringly proud to be a first-generation American , he has long voted Republican .
Initially , he had doubts about Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ escalator to announce his presidency , we thought , good God .
Is this really the best this party can produce ?
This is insane , ” he says .
Talking outside a cafe in a Detroit suburb four years later , the officer , who asks me not to use his name , describes Trump as “ energising and disappointing at the same time ” .
He ’ s disappointed that the president “ doesn ’ t have a filter ” and “ can ’ t , won ’ t , exercise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I can ’ t defend him on .
I can defend him on policy .
I can defend him on truth and honesty and actually making our country better , ” he says .
He acknowledges that voting for Trump requires compromises – in his case they are close to home , given that his father came from Mexico in the 1960s , looking for work and only became a US citizen years later .
Now the fortysomething supports a president vilifying many of those who followed the same path as “ illegals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the word illegal is correct .
It is illegal , ” he says .
“ I was telling my kids , ‘ If my dad was here for 30 years and did nothing to legalise himself , then he ’ s got to go back.
’ ” He sidesteps whether his father should have crossed the border in the first place , although he says he is uncomfortable with Trump ’ s treatment of migrants , especially the separating of families .
For all that , he is going to stick with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including efforts to end America ’ s “ forever war ” in Afghanistan , where he served , as well as confronting China over unfair trade practices .
“ We need to start turning the tables on China and bringing those jobs back .
I think the foot-to-neck pressure he ’ s putting on China is making them aware that their free pass is pretty much over , ” he says .
Having initially spoken on the record , he changes his mind when news breaks of the FBI breaking up a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic governor of Michigan .
He feels the tenor of political conversation has become too fraught and fears for his safety .
Trump ’ s claim to have fought for American jobs , alongside a buoyant stock market , might have been enough to get the president re-elected a few months back .
His approval ratings have never been strong , but he did best with voters on questions about the economy .
All that changed with Covid-19 , even before the president and several White House officials contracted it .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in five of the US workforce is still on some form of benefit .
The president ’ s rollercoaster daily briefings , in which he contradicted his own specialists , shook the confidence even of voters who had been prepared to forgive him other sins .
Support for Trump ’ s handling of the pandemic plummeted as the death toll surged above 200,000 – the highest in the world .
But while coronavirus may cost Trump the election , his supporters deflect blame on to his medical advisers and state governors who ordered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of work .
“ Shutting our country completely down is not going to help .
All you ’ re going to do is destroy our economy , which I think a lot of people want to see happen because that ’ s been one of Trump ’ s shining moments , ” Copley says .
He is not alone in seeing plots against the president all around .
Revelations that Trump failed to act on warnings about the dangers of coronavirus , or his years of paying almost no taxes , may outrage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of his base as part of the establishment conspiracy to wreck his presidency .
Even where Trump ’ s supporters acknowledge he is wrong , he is often excused .
Only the most ardent apologists think his unfiltered takes on Twitter are a good idea .
“ Everybody knows he should stop , ” Matthews says .
“ But he ’ s not going to .
He ’ s the old man saying , ‘ Get off my lawn.
’ But I like the way he cares about America .
That is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ double standard ” of Democrats once happy to be seen in Trump ’ s company when he was making political donations to the party and backing Hillary Clinton for president in 2008 .
Copley is frustrated that Democrats won ’ t give Trump credit for actions they would normally agree with .
Take the president ’ s attempts to negotiate with North Korea ’ s Kim Jong-un .
“ Yes , he did make fun of Kim , calling him Rocket Man , and I thought it was so stupid .
But at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ I ’ m going to meet with him.
’ Look how historic it was , that we had a United States president visit North Korea .
That ’ s huge , ” he says .
Some of Trump ’ s supporters wish he had been as statesmanlike as protests swept the country following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May .
Andrea Zupancich was watching from the small city of Babbitt , 250 miles to the north , where she is an estate agent and part-time mayor .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Trump , helping to give the president a small victory over Clinton among white women voters .
Any question that she would back the president again was settled when her daughter ’ s National Guard unit was deployed to police the Minneapolis protests .
“ When your child is in the military , you get used to the idea that they ’ re going to go save us from foreign entities and go fight for us .
I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she was going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she says in the office of her estate agency , on the couple of run-down blocks that pass for a high street in Babbitt .
As Zupancich worried about her daughter ’ s safety , she was horrified to see the Democrats “ siding with rioters ” and accusing the president of fuelling the protests .
“ Minneapolis is a Democratic-run city and then they ’ re blaming the Republicans ?
” she says .
“ I have very good friends who are Democrats but old Democrats , and I believe exactly what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t go that way any more .
The Democratic party has gone so far radical , like defunding the police.
” Zupancich was first drawn to Trump because he promised to curb China ’ s steel dumping , which battered a local economy built on demand for iron ore. China took from Babbitt in other ways , too .
“ We had a pool table [ manufacturing ] company and they were doing great .
Then somehow China was able to replicate their pool tables and sell them for less than it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so the company went out of business , ” Zupancich says .
“ Trump has definitely helped .
Our economy has boomed over the last couple of years .
I met with Trump at a roundtable .
He actually listens , and wants to hear what ’ s going on.
” In August , Zupancich joined five other northern Minnesota mayors in signing a letter calling Biden “ out of touch ” with working people and praising Trump for standing up to China , cutting taxes and “ fighting for the working class @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police officer who also voted for Obama and then switched to Trump because he thought Clinton had “ ethical issues ” , signed the letter as the mayor of Virginia , Minnesota .
“ You ’ ll see hundreds of signs in the yard saying , ‘ We support police and our first responders ’ because that ’ s the kind of place we are .
Joe Biden supports defunding the police .
I don ’ t appreciate that , ” he says .
The video of a police officer kneeling on Floyd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of him shocked even those Americans who previously excused police behaviour .
Opinion polls showed two-thirds of voters supported Black Lives Matter in the early weeks , but that fell sharply as demonstrations spread across the country and Trump attacked the movement .
“ Trump ’ s right when he says this is a Marxist organisation , ” Matthews says .
“ The leaders have said some outrageous things , like burn down the system.
” At my suggestion that there is a need to address racial injustice , and that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Matthews leaps in .
“ I wouldn ’ t agree .
I don ’ t see an example of it , ” she says .
“ Is anybody here stopping me from doing anything I want to do ?
We ’ re the only black people in this neighbourhood .
Is anybody stopping me from living in this house ?
No .
Is America in general a racist country ?
If they point to the police , every single person that was involved in whatever happened , they were resisting arrest.
” Matthews @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historical legacy of racism , but she does not see structural and systematic discrimination herself .
“ We don ’ t have generational wealth , that ’ s true .
So we started behind .
But that doesn ’ t mean that in 2020 we can ’ t get there .
There ’ s just a curve we have to get past , ” she says .
Trump , Matthews says , has done more to help black voters do that than any Democrat .
“ The Democrats don ’ t even tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believes in helping people get out , get on.
” Vernon Robinson is a former US air force pilot living an hour ’ s drive north of Matthews in Winston-Salem , a traditionally southern city built on the tobacco and textile industries , where about one-third of the population is African American .
We plan to meet outside a cafe , but when it is closed because of coronavirus , resort to keeping our distance in a hotel lobby .
Robinson says Trump is the first Republican president in decades to pay attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinks the party could pick up large numbers of those black voters who are religious , socially conservative and who want better-trained police , not fewer of them , if it only tried .
“ The idea that lunatic leftists are defunding cops – black folks are going to take the biggest hit .
When you remove the police , then the bad guys go crazy .
They are scaring the soccer moms , and it is the soccer moms who are going to decide this election , ” he says .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on black voters in the 1960s , then alienated them by wooing southern white voters opposed to the civil rights movement .
Trump , he says , is different .
Robinson ticks off the ways , including – before coronavirus – reducing black unemployment to the lowest in history ; reform of a criminal justice system that disproportionately jails African American men ; and cutting poverty among black people to a record low .
Much of this was the result of policies or trends already under way when Trump came to office .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the legalisation of terminations as a massacre of “ black babies ” .
It ’ s an issue close to the hearts of many Trump voters : it drives the fight over who sits on the supreme court and is central to how evangelical Christians square their religious beliefs with backing a man who boasts of sexually assaulting women and adultery .
“ Some people question my Christianity because I support Donald Trump , ” Copley says .
“ You ’ ve got to say he ’ s not a Christian man , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s done things for religious freedom , he ’ s done things with conservative supreme court justices .
Regardless of whether his heart is with the Lord or not , those are things we ’ re grateful for.
” Trump ’ s appointment of two , soon to be three , supreme court justices and hundreds of conservative federal judges will shape America for decades .
More immediately , another conservative on the supreme court may be decisive in deciding if he remains in office .
His escalating attempts to discredit any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House is gaining ground .
Matthews gives credence to Trump ’ s persistent allegation that postal voting will be rigged .
“ He ’ s gon na win and I think they ’ re gon na try to steal it , ” she says .
( At the time of writing , the polls say otherwise – even if they were horribly wrong at predicting that the vagaries of the US ’ s electoral college would rob Clinton of her popular vote victory in 2016 . )
Even if Biden wins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – in the region of 60 million people – will back Trump .
They will do so for myriad reasons , but what many share is an even stronger determination than four years ago to support their man .
For every criticism of Trump , there is a counter .
If he implicitly endorses the white nationalist Proud Boys , what about the Democrats ’ support for Black Lives Matter ?
If he calls military men suckers , what about Biden ’ s failure to support the police ?
And where they do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to his inexperience , as a politician who came from outside the system .
Even as Trump ’ s presidency appears to be foundering , only the confidence of the Mexican American military officer in Detroit is shaken among those I spoke to .
At the end of our conversation he wonders if , after all , it ’ s time for a change .
“ The point was he was someone different .
Someone who , in my opinion , started speaking some truths that needed to be spoken , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s done great , but I think we may have had enough.
” But that ’ s a rare flicker of doubt among the true believers .
Matthews refuses even to entertain the idea that a majority of voters does not share her love of Trump .
“ Look at the last four years .
Why would we want anyone else ?
”

Lisa Matthews voted for Barack Obama. But just the once. The daughter of an African American mother and Puerto Rican father, the 47-year-old grew up in one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Camden, New Jersey, a struggling former shipbuilding port on the Delaware river.
“Camden was predominantly black, poor, a lot of welfare recipients, single parents, and crime. Big drug trade. My father was in the military, but he left the family when I was five. My mom was a single mom at the age of 23. We lived on food stamps,” Matthews says. “I had two of my cousins killed there in the city, and my stepbrother was murdered as well. My uncle was killed by an unknown shooter in 1987. It was a tough place to grow up.”
Like her mother, Matthews became a single parent at 23 and worked several jobs to stay afloat. But her absent father’s time in the military had planted a seed. Her parents were posted around the US and to Britain, and her mother talked about other places with wonder. Matthews carried that with her. “My sister and I were very interested in the world, in other cultures,” she says. In her 20s, a friend encouraged her to move to Concord, North Carolina, where she got a job in a bank. Now she lives in a large house in a plush suburb where we chat over tea and Jammie Dodgers (she still loves all things British). She’s wearing her politics on her T-shirt: “President Trump 2020, Keep America Great”.
In 2008, Matthews voted for Obama, helping to swing the former slave state to America’s first black president. “I wasn’t a really liberal Democrat back then. Even Barack Obama wasn’t that liberal in 2008. I was just excited that he was black, to be honest,” she says. But by the time the next election came round, she questioned the point of an African American president.
“The black community rallied around him, but what message did he have for them? He could have said, this is how me and Michelle got out of the South Side of Chicago. We can help lift people up,” she says. “Instead he was telling people they’re oppressed: ‘Let me give you a handout.’”
Matthews came to think that summed up the Democrats. As she saw it, the party kept the poor dependent on welfare instead of providing paths out of poverty. She drifted toward the Republicans, although she wasn’t ready to support Mitt Romney against Obama in 2012; that year, she didn’t vote.
Four years later, Donald Trump made his attention-grabbing ride down the golden escalator of his New York tower to announce a run for president. By then Matthews had become a bank fraud investigator; she now owns her own home for the first time. She voted against Trump in the primaries, thinking he didn’t stand a chance. But when he won the Republican nomination, she embraced it.
“I thought he was just a great American, New Yorker businessman. He was the epitome of what America is like. Brash, throwing money around,” she says. “But I didn’t know what kind of president he would be. I was never against him, but I wasn’t as enthusiastic as I am now. Now I tell people I love Trump.”
If Trump pulls off the unexpected once again, his victory will be built on the foundation of the four in 10 voters who have consistently said they will stick with him, despite one of the most tempestuous presidencies of modern times. Voters who have excused him, explained him, even despaired of him at times, but never spurned him.
The most visible of those supporters can be found at Trump’s rallies, sporting Make America Great Again hats and cheering the president’s provocations; or forming armed vigilante groups, ostensibly to defend order and history. They push Trump’s myriad conspiracy theories, including about Covid-19, even after the president caught the virus. But most of those who remain loyal are not the ultras seen on television. Neither are they easily slotted into the demographics often assigned to Trump supporters – the embittered former factory workers turning their anger on minorities and voting against their own interests.
When you see the coal trains and the trucks, and people going back to work, you see people’s attitudes change
This autumn I drove for over a month across the US – from the south to Appalachian coal country in one of the poorest states, West Virginia; and from Detroit, Michigan, once the engine of America’s industrialisation, to the upper reaches of rural Minnesota on the border with Canada – the miles of Trump signs and flags are one demonstration of the enthusiasm some of his supporters retain. The voters were as varied as the landscape. The coalmine worker who was without a job for years. The former military officer whose father came to the US illegally. The estate agent and small city mayor angry about China. The former police officer despairing at Black Lives Matter. All told me why they are determinedly sticking with Trump.
Ronald Reagan, on his way to unseating President Jimmy Carter in 1980, famously asked American voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The division, uncertainty and fear of 2020 makes that seem an inadequate question ahead of this election. Bo Copley, however, doesn’t hesitate to say that he is. Copley lost his maintenance job on a West Virginia coalmine a year before the last election, and gained fleeting fame in 2016 after confronting Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail over her pledge to “put a lot of coalminers out of business”.
Bo Copley had lost his job in a mine when he tackled Hillary Clinton about her plans for the industry. He’s now back in work, he says, thanks to Trump. Photograph: Johnathon Kelso/The Guardian
Copley, a father of three, politely told Clinton at a round-table event that people in Appalachian “coal country” did not see her as a friend. The Democratic candidate told him she had misspoken, but a few months later made an even bigger blunder in telling an LGBT For Hillary fundraiser in New York that half of Trump’s supporters were racist, sexist homophobes who belong in a “basket of deplorables”.
“The deplorables comment, that was huge. That working-class person that really got behind Trump, they took that to heart,” says Copley at a diner in Williamson, a small city on the border with Kentucky so blighted by the prescription opioid epidemic it is known for miles around as Pilliamson.
Trump, on the other hand, persuaded them he cared. West Virginia, once solidly Democrat, voted for him by a higher margin than any other state. Copley was out of work for three “very hard” years. His wife, Lauren, kept them afloat with money she made photographing family portraits. Then, two years into Trump’s term, Copley found a job on another mine – thanks, he believes, to Trump rolling back Obama-era environmental regulations and reviving the industry.
“When you see the coal trains and the trucks, and people going back to work who had been off for quite some time, you see people’s attitudes change. People have a glimmer of hope that they can do the things they used to do. Travel. Shop,” Copley says. “One of the reasons Donald Trump was so popular here was that he talked to people and he made people feel like, ‘I’m listening to you.’”
Trump’s record on reviving mines is patchy, and Copley knows that Williamson isn’t going back to the years when coal was king; when the city’s high street bustled with department stores and a Chevrolet dealership. Now it’s dotted with personal injury lawyers, touting for business with slogans such as, “Been in a wreck and need a check?” One of Williamson’s only two hotels was converted into a drug rehab centre.
But Copley’s eye was on something bigger than just local revival. His vote was underpinned by the sense that the president represents a more fundamental shift. Obama famously promised “change”; Copley says Trump delivered it. “A lot of people wanted someone different, and they got that,” he says. “Myself and a lot of people just wanted someone who said, ‘I’m gonna cut through all the garbage and try to make this place better.’”
Matthews and Copley come from very different places geographically, socially and politically. But what draws them together, along with other Trump supporters I speak to, is an unusual bond with a president they think is on their side. A man who sees and hears them in ways his predecessors did not. That bond has been tightened by their sense that a blow against him is a strike against them, in part because they feel judged for having voted for him in the first place.
Detroit, in the crucial swing state of Michigan, is a world away from rural Appalachia, but a military officer I speak to there shares much of Copley’s view of Trump. The son of what the president calls “an illegal” from Mexico, he was drawn to Trump in part by his anger that free trade agreements shipped his father’s car industry job out of the country. Softly spoken, courteous and unwaveringly proud to be a first-generation American, he has long voted Republican.
Initially, he had doubts about Trump. “When he came down the escalator to announce his presidency, we thought, good God. Is this really the best this party can produce? This is insane,” he says.
Talking outside a cafe in a Detroit suburb four years later, the officer, who asks me not to use his name, describes Trump as “energising and disappointing at the same time”. He’s disappointed that the president “doesn’t have a filter” and “can’t, won’t, exercise self-control. That’s one aspect I can’t defend him on. I can defend him on policy. I can defend him on truth and honesty and actually making our country better,” he says.
He acknowledges that voting for Trump requires compromises – in his case they are close to home, given that his father came from Mexico in the 1960s, looking for work and only became a US citizen years later. Now the fortysomething supports a president vilifying many of those who followed the same path as “illegals” and worse. “I believe the word illegal is correct. It is illegal,” he says. “I was telling my kids, ‘If my dad was here for 30 years and did nothing to legalise himself, then he’s got to go back.’”
He sidesteps whether his father should have crossed the border in the first place, although he says he is uncomfortable with Trump’s treatment of migrants, especially the separating of families. For all that, he is going to stick with the president for standing up for US interests, including efforts to end America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan, where he served, as well as confronting China over unfair trade practices. “We need to start turning the tables on China and bringing those jobs back. I think the foot-to-neck pressure he’s putting on China is making them aware that their free pass is pretty much over,” he says.
Having initially spoken on the record, he changes his mind when news breaks of the FBI breaking up a plot by a far-right group to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan. He feels the tenor of political conversation has become too fraught and fears for his safety.
Trump’s claim to have fought for American jobs, alongside a buoyant stock market, might have been enough to get the president re-elected a few months back. His approval ratings have never been strong, but he did best with voters on questions about the economy. All that changed with Covid-19, even before the president and several White House officials contracted it.
Yes, he did make fun of Kim Jong-un, calling him Rocket Man. But at least he was willing to meet with him
The pandemic has driven record unemployment. One in five of the US workforce is still on some form of benefit. The president’s rollercoaster daily briefings, in which he contradicted his own specialists, shook the confidence even of voters who had been prepared to forgive him other sins. Support for Trump’s handling of the pandemic plummeted as the death toll surged above 200,000 – the highest in the world.
But while coronavirus may cost Trump the election, his supporters deflect blame on to his medical advisers and state governors who ordered businesses to close and threw millions out of work. “Shutting our country completely down is not going to help. All you’re going to do is destroy our economy, which I think a lot of people want to see happen because that’s been one of Trump’s shining moments,” Copley says.
He is not alone in seeing plots against the president all around. Revelations that Trump failed to act on warnings about the dangers of coronavirus, or his years of paying almost no taxes, may outrage his critics, but are dismissed by much of his base as part of the establishment conspiracy to wreck his presidency. Even where Trump’s supporters acknowledge he is wrong, he is often excused. Only the most ardent apologists think his unfiltered takes on Twitter are a good idea. “Everybody knows he should stop,” Matthews says. “But he’s not going to. He’s the old man saying, ‘Get off my lawn.’ But I like the way he cares about America. That is endearing.” She scoffs at the “double standard” of Democrats once happy to be seen in Trump’s company when he was making political donations to the party and backing Hillary Clinton for president in 2008.
Copley is frustrated that Democrats won’t give Trump credit for actions they would normally agree with. Take the president’s attempts to negotiate with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. “Yes, he did make fun of Kim, calling him Rocket Man, and I thought it was so stupid. But at least he was willing to say, ‘I’m going to meet with him.’ Look how historic it was, that we had a United States president visit North Korea. That’s huge,” he says.
Some of Trump’s supporters wish he had been as statesmanlike as protests swept the country following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Andrea Zupancich was watching from the small city of Babbitt, 250 miles to the north, where she is an estate agent and part-time mayor. She twice backed Obama but in 2016 voted for Trump, helping to give the president a small victory over Clinton among white women voters. Any question that she would back the president again was settled when her daughter’s National Guard unit was deployed to police the Minneapolis protests. “When your child is in the military, you get used to the idea that they’re going to go save us from foreign entities and go fight for us. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she was going to protect Americans from Americans,” she says in the office of her estate agency, on the couple of run-down blocks that pass for a high street in Babbitt.
Andrea Zupancich is a part-time mayor who had twice backed Obama. Photograph: Tim Gruber
As Zupancich worried about her daughter’s safety, she was horrified to see the Democrats “siding with rioters” and accusing the president of fuelling the protests. “Minneapolis is a Democratic-run city and then they’re blaming the Republicans?” she says. “I have very good friends who are Democrats but old Democrats, and I believe exactly what they believe. But their party doesn’t go that way any more. The Democratic party has gone so far radical, like defunding the police.”
Zupancich was first drawn to Trump because he promised to curb China’s steel dumping, which battered a local economy built on demand for iron ore. China took from Babbitt in other ways, too. “We had a pool table [manufacturing] company and they were doing great. Then somehow China was able to replicate their pool tables and sell them for less than it costs to even make it here, so the company went out of business,” Zupancich says. “Trump has definitely helped. Our economy has boomed over the last couple of years. I met with Trump at a roundtable. He actually listens, and wants to hear what’s going on.”
In August, Zupancich joined five other northern Minnesota mayors in signing a letter calling Biden “out of touch” with working people and praising Trump for standing up to China, cutting taxes and “fighting for the working class”. Larry Cuffe, a former police officer who also voted for Obama and then switched to Trump because he thought Clinton had “ethical issues”, signed the letter as the mayor of Virginia, Minnesota. “You’ll see hundreds of signs in the yard saying, ‘We support police and our first responders’ because that’s the kind of place we are. Joe Biden supports defunding the police. I don’t appreciate that,” he says.
The video of a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the life drained out of him shocked even those Americans who previously excused police behaviour. Opinion polls showed two-thirds of voters supported Black Lives Matter in the early weeks, but that fell sharply as demonstrations spread across the country and Trump attacked the movement. “Trump’s right when he says this is a Marxist organisation,” Matthews says. “The leaders have said some outrageous things, like burn down the system.”
At my suggestion that there is a need to address racial injustice, and that the president is failing to do that, Matthews leaps in. “I wouldn’t agree. I don’t see an example of it,” she says. “Is anybody here stopping me from doing anything I want to do? We’re the only black people in this neighbourhood. Is anybody stopping me from living in this house? No. Is America in general a racist country? If they point to the police, every single person that was involved in whatever happened, they were resisting arrest.”
Matthews doesn’t deny there is a historical legacy of racism, but she does not see structural and systematic discrimination herself. “We don’t have generational wealth, that’s true. So we started behind. But that doesn’t mean that in 2020 we can’t get there. There’s just a curve we have to get past,” she says.
Trump, Matthews says, has done more to help black voters do that than any Democrat. “The Democrats don’t even tell people you can do it. Trump believes in helping people get out, get on.”
Vernon Robinson is a former US air force pilot living an hour’s drive north of Matthews in Winston-Salem, a traditionally southern city built on the tobacco and textile industries, where about one-third of the population is African American. We plan to meet outside a cafe, but when it is closed because of coronavirus, resort to keeping our distance in a hotel lobby.
Robinson says Trump is the first Republican president in decades to pay attention to African Americans like him. He thinks the party could pick up large numbers of those black voters who are religious, socially conservative and who want better-trained police, not fewer of them, if it only tried. “The idea that lunatic leftists are defunding cops – black folks are going to take the biggest hit. When you remove the police, then the bad guys go crazy. They are scaring the soccer moms, and it is the soccer moms who are going to decide this election,” he says.
Vernon Robinson, a former pilot, says Trump is helping African Americans. Photograph: Johnathon Kelso/The Guardian
The 65-year-old believes the Republican leadership gave up on black voters in the 1960s, then alienated them by wooing southern white voters opposed to the civil rights movement. Trump, he says, is different. Robinson ticks off the ways, including – before coronavirus – reducing black unemployment to the lowest in history; reform of a criminal justice system that disproportionately jails African American men; and cutting poverty among black people to a record low. Much of this was the result of policies or trends already under way when Trump came to office.
He’s not a Christian man, not a godly man. But he’s done things for religious freedom
Then there is abortion. Robinson paints the legalisation of terminations as a massacre of “black babies”. It’s an issue close to the hearts of many Trump voters: it drives the fight over who sits on the supreme court and is central to how evangelical Christians square their religious beliefs with backing a man who boasts of sexually assaulting women and adultery.
“Some people question my Christianity because I support Donald Trump,” Copley says. “You’ve got to say he’s not a Christian man, not a godly man. But he’s done things for religious freedom, he’s done things with conservative supreme court justices. Regardless of whether his heart is with the Lord or not, those are things we’re grateful for.”
Trump’s appointment of two, soon to be three, supreme court justices and hundreds of conservative federal judges will shape America for decades. More immediately, another conservative on the supreme court may be decisive in deciding if he remains in office. His escalating attempts to discredit any outcome that does not keep him in the White House is gaining ground. Matthews gives credence to Trump’s persistent allegation that postal voting will be rigged. “He’s gonna win and I think they’re gonna try to steal it,” she says. (At the time of writing, the polls say otherwise – even if they were horribly wrong at predicting that the vagaries of the US’s electoral college would rob Clinton of her popular vote victory in 2016.)
Even if Biden wins, more than 40% of voters – in the region of 60 million people – will back Trump. They will do so for myriad reasons, but what many share is an even stronger determination than four years ago to support their man. For every criticism of Trump, there is a counter. If he implicitly endorses the white nationalist Proud Boys, what about the Democrats’ support for Black Lives Matter? If he calls military men suckers, what about Biden’s failure to support the police? And where they do see a problem, they chalk it up to his inexperience, as a politician who came from outside the system.
Even as Trump’s presidency appears to be foundering, only the confidence of the Mexican American military officer in Detroit is shaken among those I spoke to. At the end of our conversation he wonders if, after all, it’s time for a change. “The point was he was someone different. Someone who, in my opinion, started speaking some truths that needed to be spoken,” he says. “President Trump’s done great, but I think we may have had enough.”
But that’s a rare flicker of doubt among the true believers. Matthews refuses even to entertain the idea that a majority of voters does not share her love of Trump. “Look at the last four years. Why would we want anyone else?”