Author: PolitCens

U.S. Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden return to the campaign trail Friday after sparring the night before in separate televised town hall events.
 
Trump and Biden visit three battleground states as the November 3 presidential election draws closer in an ongoing effort to capture support from voters, 18 million of whom have already cast ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.
 
Trump makes stops in Florida and Georgia, two southern states that are considered crucial to his chances of winning a second term in the White House. The president delivers remarks in Ft. Myers, Florida about protecting senior citizens before attending rallies in Ocala, Florida and Macon, Georgia.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden (C) speaks with steelworkers during a backyard conversation in Detroit, Michigan, Sept. 9, 2020. On Oct. 16, 2020, Biden is due in Southfield and Detroit, Michigan.Biden travels to Southfield, Michigan, for a speech on expanding access to affordable health care before attending an event in Detroit, Michigan, to urge voters to cast ballots before Election Day.
 
Most polls show Biden continues to lead in the race for the White House as he has for months. Trump hopes to gain ground on the campaign and in the next presidential debate that has been scheduled for Oct. 22.  
 
Trump withdrew from the second presidential debate after organizers said it would be held virtually following the president’s coronavirus diagnosis earlier this month. Instead, he participated in a town hall format late Thursday in Miami, Florida. Biden took part in a separate town hall at the same time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
 
Biden’s vice-presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, has suspended campaign travel until Monday after two people associated with the campaign tested positive for COVID-19. The Biden campaign said neither Harris nor Biden were exposed to the coronavirus.WATCH: Mike O’Sullivan’s report about the dueling town halls Thursday Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 14 MB720p | 24 MB1080p | 53 MBOriginal | 71 MB Embed” />Copy Download Audio 
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More than 17 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2020 election, a record-shattering avalanche of early votes driven both by Democratic enthusiasm and a pandemic that has transformed the way the nation votes.  
The total represents 12% of all the votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, even as eight states are not yet reporting their totals and voters still have more than two weeks to cast ballots.
Americans’ rush to vote is leading election experts to predict that a record 150 million votes may be cast and turnout rates could be higher than in any presidential election since 1908.
“It’s crazy,” said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who has long tracked voting for his site ElectProject.org. McDonald’s analysis shows roughly 10 times as many people have voted compared with this point in 2016.
“We can be certain this will be a high-turnout election,” McDonald said.
So far, the turnout has been lopsided, with Democrats outvoting Republicans by a 2-1 ratio in the 42 states included in The Associated Press count. Republicans have been bracing themselves for this early Democratic advantage for months, as they’ve watched President Donald Trump rail against mail ballots and raise unfounded worries about fraud. Polling, and now early voting, suggest the rhetoric has turn his party’s rank-and-file away from a method of voting that, traditionally, they dominated in the weeks before Election Day.
That gives Democrats a tactical advantage in the final stretch of the campaign. In many critical battleground states, Democrats have “banked” a chunk of their voters and can turn their time and money toward harder-to-find infrequent voters.  
But it does not necessarily mean Democrats will lead in votes by the time ballots are counted. Both parties anticipate a swell of Republican votes on Election Day that could, in a matter of hours, dramatically shift the dynamic.  
“The Republican numbers are going to pick up,” said John Couvillon, a GOP pollster who is tracking early voting. “The question is at what velocity, and when?”
Couvillon said Democrats can’t rest on their voting lead, but Republicans are themselves making a big gamble. A number of factors, from rising virus infections to the weather, can impact in-person turnout on Election Day. “If you’re putting all your faith into one day of voting, that’s really high risk,” Couvillon said.
That’s why, despite Trump’s rhetoric, his campaign and party are encouraging their own voters to cast ballots by mail or early and in-person. The campaign, which has been sending volunteers and staffers into the field for months despite the pandemic, touts that it has registered more voters this year than Democrats in key swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania — a sharp reversal from the usual pattern as a presidential election looms.  
But it’s had limited success in selling absentee voting. In key swing states, Republicans remain far less interested in voting by mail.
In Pennsylvania, more than three-quarters of the more than 437,000 ballots sent through the mail so far have been from Democrats. In Florida, half of all ballots sent through the mail so far have been from Democrats and less than a third of them from Republicans. Even in Colorado, a state where every voter is mailed a ballot and Republicans usually dominate the first week of voting, only 19% of ballots returned have been from Republicans.
“This is all encouraging, but three weeks is a lifetime,” Democratic data strategist Tom Bonier said of the early vote numbers. “We may be midway through the first quarter and Democrats have put a couple of points on the board.”
The massive amount of voting has occurred without any of the violent skirmishes at polling places that some activists and law enforcement officials feared. It has featured high-profile errors — 100,000 faulty mail ballots sent out in New York, 50,000 in Columbus, Ohio, and a vendor supplying that state and Pennsylvania blaming delays on sending ballots on overwhelming demand. But there’s little evidence of mass disruption that some feared as election offices had to abruptly shift to deal with an influx of early voting.
But there have been extraordinary lines and hours-long wait times in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina as they’ve opened in-person early voting. The delays were largely a result of insufficient resources to handle the surge, something advocates contend is a form of voter suppression.  
Republicans argue that these signs of enthusiasm are meaningless — Democratic early voters are people who would have voted anyway, they say. But an AP analysis of the early vote shows 8% of early voters had never cast a ballot before, and 13.8% had voted in half or fewer of previous elections for which they were eligible.
The data also show voters embracing mail voting, which health officials say is the safest way to avoid coronavirus infection while voting. Of the early voters, 82% cast ballots through the mail and 18% in person. Black voters cast 10% of the ballots cast, about the same as their share of the national electorate, according to the AP analysis of data from L2, a political data firm. That’s a sign that those voters, who have been less likely to vote by mail than white people and Latinos, have warmed to the method.  
Mail ballots so far have skewed toward older voters, with half coming from voters over age 64. Traditionally, younger and minority voters send their mail ballots in closer to Election Day or vote in person.  
The mail ballots already returned in several states dwarf the entire total in prior elections. In Wisconsin, more than five times as many mail ballots have been cast compared with the entire number in 2016. North Carolina has seen nearly triple the number so far.  
In-person early voting began this week in several major states and also broke records, particularly in crowded, Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas. In Texas, Houston’s Harris County saw a record 125,000 ballots cast. In Georgia, hours-long lines threaded from election offices through much of the state’s urban areas.
Tunde Ezekiel, a 39-year-old lawyer and Democrat who voted early in Atlanta on Thursday, said he wanted to be certain he had a chance to oust Trump from office: “I don’t know what things are going to look like on Election Day. … And I didn’t want to take any chances.”
The obvious enthusiasm among Democrats has cheered party operatives, but they note that it’s hard to tell which way turnout will eventually fall. Republicans may be just as motivated, but saving themselves for Election Day.
“High turnout can benefit either side,” Bonier said. “It just depends.” 
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The US is seeing unprecedented numbers of voters who are choosing to cast ballots ahead of the November 3rd presidential election.  More than 14 million Americans have voted already, at least 10 times the norm at this point, and millions more are expected to do so before Election Day.  VOA’s Carolyn Presutti examines who is voting and how that could affect the outcome of the presidential election.
Camera: Miguel Amaya, Aleksandr Bergan   Producer: Miguel AmayaLesia Bakalets contributed to this report in Miami
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Judge Amy Coney Barrett, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy left on the Supreme Court by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, cleared the first hurdle to her confirmation this week. In four marathon hearing days, Barrett deflected questions on how she would rule on issues from abortion to the election to gun rights. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on the next steps in the process.
Camera: Adam Greenbaum      Producers: Katherine Gypson, Emma Morris, Michael Rummel 
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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday criticized what he called President Donald Trump’s “panicked” response to the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump defended his handling of a crisis that has killed more than 217,000 Americans.The rivals spoke in simultaneous town halls broadcast on separate television networks after a debate originally scheduled for Thursday was called off after Trump contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.The split-screen showdown offered a stark reminder of the many ways the campaign season has been changed by a pandemic that has prompted more than 18 million people to cast ballots more than two weeks before Election Day on Nov. 3.Biden, speaking to voters in Philadelphia on ABC, blamed the Republican president for concealing the deadliness of the virus that has infected nearly 8 million people in the United States.”He said he didn’t tell anybody because he was afraid Americans would panic,” Biden said. “Americans don’t panic. He panicked.”Rose Garden eventTrump defended both his response to the pandemic as well as his own personal conduct, including staging a Rose Garden event at the White House where few wore masks or practiced social distancing, which resulted in numerous attendees contracting the disease.”Hey, I’m president — I have to see people, I can’t be in a basement,” Trump said on NBC in front of an outdoor audience of voters in Miami, implicitly criticizing Biden for spending months off the campaign trail as the pandemic raged.Trump did not answer questions about the last time he tested negative before getting the virus, saying he did not recall precisely.Trump, who aggressively interrupted Biden during a chaotic debate two weeks ago, maintained a belligerent tone, sparring frequently with moderator Savannah Guthrie.He said he “heard different stories” about the efficacy of masks, even though his own administration’s public health experts have said wearing them is key to stopping the spread of the virus.The president declined to denounce QAnon, the false conspiracy theory that Democrats are part of a global pedophile ring, first praising its adherents for opposing pedophilia before saying he knew nothing about the movement.Trump also dodged questions about a New York Times investigation of two decades of his tax returns, which he has refused to release publicly despite decades of precedent for presidential candidates.He appeared to confirm the paper’s report that he has about $400 million in personally guaranteed loans, arguing that the amount was a “peanut” compared with his worth. He also did not deny the Times’ report that he paid only $750 in federal income tax during his first year in the White House, although he said at one point the paper’s numbers were “wrong.”Early voting surgeThe second presidential debate had originally been scheduled for Thursday night, but Trump pulled out of the event after organizers decided to turn it into a virtual affair following his COVID-19 diagnosis two weeks ago. A final debate is still scheduled for Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tennessee.Trump, who spent three days in a military hospital but has since returned to the campaign trail, is trying to alter the dynamics of the race. Reuters/Ipsos polls show Biden has a significant national lead, although his advantage in battleground states is less pronounced.North Carolina, a highly competitive state, saw huge lines as it began more than two weeks of in-person early voting on Thursday, following record turnout in Georgia and Texas earlier in the week.About 18.3 million Americans have voted either in person or by mail so far, representing 12.9% of the total votes counted in the 2016 general election, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.Voters are seeking to avoid in-person lines on Election Day to stay safe as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations continue to rise, but also to make sure their ballots will count. Many are concerned that Trump will challenge widely used mail-in ballots, after his repeated claims without evidence that they were fraudulent.Supreme Court battleThe Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee for a vacant Supreme Court seat, prompted careful answers from both candidates. Republicans have pushed to seat Barrett before the election after refusing to do so for former Democratic President Barack Obama’s court nominee in 2016, saying it was inappropriate in an election year.Biden said he was not a “fan” of court-packing, the idea promoted by some Democrats of adding justices to countermand what they view as a stolen seat. But he declined to rule it out after moderator George Stephanopoulos pressed him, saying: “It depends on how this turns out.”Trump would not say whether he would like to see abortion rights invalidated, an outcome that many legal scholars believe is more likely with the conservative Barrett on the court.”I think that she’s going to make a great decision,” he said. “I did not tell her what decision to make.”$1.5 billionIn a sign of Democratic determination to defeat Trump, a massive amount of money has poured into the party’s coffers in recent months.Democratic fundraising organization ActBlue said on Thursday it collected $1.5 billion online from July to September, the most it had ever raised in one quarter. By comparison, major Republican fundraising platform WinRed said on Monday that it collected $623.5 million in the same period.Biden’s campaign collected $383 million in September, setting a new record for a U.S. campaign for the second consecutive month. The Trump campaign has not released its monthly figures.Both candidates have been visiting battleground states this week, with Trump holding rallies in Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa and Biden traveling to Ohio and Florida. 
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Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris has suspended campaign travel until Monday after two people associated with the campaign tested positive for COVID-19, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign announced Thursday.
The campaign said Biden was not exposed to the coronavirus, although he and his running mate campaigned together on Oct. 8 in the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona.
 
Biden and Harris have tested negative for COVID-19 several times since then, the campaign said.
 
Harris’ communications director, Liz Allen, tested positive on Wednesday, as did a flight crew member who was on the campaign trip to the southwest, according to the campaign.
 
Campaign manager Jen O’Malley said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines do not require Biden and Harris to quarantine, but that Harris would suspend travel for several days “out of an abundance of caution.”
 
Their infections are the campaign’s first coronavirus scare after months of stringent precautionary measures that have been ridiculed by political rival, President Donald Trump, even after Trump, first lady Melania Trump and others at the White House contracted COVID-19.
 
During the televised presidential debate last month, Trump said, “I don’t wear a mask like him. Every time you seen him, he’s wearing a mask.”
 
Harris will not attend campaign events in Ohio and North Carolina, the next two states she was scheduled to visit ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
 
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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard arguments Thursday supporting and opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett as the panel finishes four days of hearings to fill a vacancy on the country’s highest court.
 
Democrats invoked committee rules to push a final vote by the panel on Barrett’s nomination by a week until next Thursday. A vote in the full Senate could come by the end of the month, just days ahead of the Nov. 3 national presidential and congressional elections.
 
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters in his home state of Kentucky, “We have the votes” to confirm the nomination of the 48-year-old Barrett. McConnell said the full Senate would start consideration of her nomination on Oct. 23.
 
Barrett would be the fifth woman ever to serve on the court. The 48-year-old Barrett currently is a federal appellate court judge whose lifetime Supreme Court appointment by President Donald Trump would give conservatives a distinct 6-3 ideological advantage on the high court, likely affecting the outcome of U.S. legal disputes for decades.    
 
Barrett answered lawmakers’ questions for hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, Republican and Democratic lawmakers called witnesses to buttress their case for and against Barrett’s confirmation.
 
Two members of the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary testified about their positive evaluation of Barrett as “well qualified” to serve on the Supreme Court.Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett tests her microphone during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 14, 2020.Republicans also called one of her former law clerks and a former student of hers at the University of Notre Dame law school to testify on her behalf. Meanwhile, Democrats called witnesses to testify about their experiences dealing with health care and access to abortion in the U.S., two issues a Justice Barrett would face on the Supreme Court.
 
Through two days of questioning, Barrett, like other Supreme Court nominees of both Republican and Democratic presidents in the last two-plus decades, deflected numerous questions about her views on legal cases she might have to consider on the court.  
 
On Wednesday, Democrats again pressed Barrett on a key upcoming case deciding the legality of the country’s national healthcare law, which, if it’s invalidated, would impact millions of Americans.  
   
Barrett reiterated she is not hostile to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, that was championed by former president Barack Obama. The law is facing a new challenge in a Nov. 10 Supreme Court hearing, by which time Barrett could hold a seat on the nine-member court.  
 
Barrett defended her refusal to answer how she views an array of controversial legal disputes.
   
“A judge needs to have an open mind, every step of the way,” Barrett told senators. “If I were to just say how I thought I would resolve a case just because I saw the issue, it would be short-circuiting that whole process through which I should go.”  
 
Barrett is a favorite of U.S. conservatives looking to give the court a decided conservative majority. She has cited the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she served as a law clerk two decades ago, as her philosophical mentor, for his strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as written two centuries ago rather than interpreting it to address current life in the U.S.Lawyers Randall D. Noel and Pamela J. Roberts testify during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 15, 2020.But Barrett on Wednesday told the lead Democratic Judiciary Committee member, Senator Dianne Feinstein, “When I said that Justice Scalia’s philosophy is mine too, I certainly didn’t mean to say that every sentence that came out of Justice Scalia’s mouth or every sentence that he wrote is one that I would agree with.”
 
Barrett, a devout Catholic, has told the Judiciary Committee that she wouldn’t let her personal and religious views determine how she would decide cases.  
   
“I have no agenda,” Barrett said Tuesday. “I’ll follow the law.”  
   
But Barrett repeatedly declined to say how she might rule on the court’s 1973 legalization of abortions in the United States, gun ownership rights sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution and whether, in the Nov. 10 case, the country’s national health care law should remain in effect.  
   
She also rebuffed a question on whether she would recuse herself, if she is quickly confirmed by the Senate, from considering any legal disputes arising from the Nov. 3 national election. Trump is trying to win a second four-year term in the White House and faces Democratic former vice president Joe Biden.  
   
Trump has assailed mass balloting by mail and said he wants a fully staffed court ready to rule on any legal disputes over balloting and election results. With eight current justices, the court could deadlock 4-to-4 if Barrett is not confirmed in time to hear election-related cases.  
   
Barrett said she has had no conversations with Trump or his staff “on how I would rule” on election disputes. She said it would have been unethical for her as a sitting federal appellate court judge to have such a discussion.  
   
Democrats fear that Barrett would vote to undo many of the reforms championed by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including the right of same-sex couples to wed and abortion rights. Barrett has said as an appellate court judge she has set aside her Catholic beliefs opposing abortion to issue rulings according to U.S. law and could do so again on the Supreme Court.  
 
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday the Trump administration will not let disagreements over Democrats’ demands for a national coronavirus testing strategy foil attempts to agree on coronavirus relief legislation.Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC television he would tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the administration generally agrees with a strategy to test people for COVID-19 throughout the U.S.“When I speak to Pelosi today, I’m going to tell her that we’re not going to let the testing issue stand in the way, that we’ll fundamentally agree with their testing language subject to some minor issues, Mnuchin said.Mnuchin also clarified remarks he made Wednesday at a conference sponsored by the Milken Institute, when he said it would be “difficult” to reach a stimulus deal before the November 3 presidential election.  “What I said was that a deal would be hard to get done before the election but we’re going to keep trying, so I don’t want to say that it’s not likely, it’s just there are significant issues,” Mnuchin added.Mnuchin said the administration, which has a $1.88 trillion proposal on the table, has prioritized a proposal to reallocate $300 billion that legislators approved earlier this year in the CARES Act for another round of emergency aid for airlines and small businesses.The Republican White House and the Democrat-led House of Representatives have struggled for weeks to agree on another comprehensive relief bill after the expiration of earlier Congressionally approved benefits for laid-off workers and other support.Pelosi, whose party approved a $2.2 trillion relief measure in the House, has said the administration’s $1.88 trillion proposal is not enough.Mnuchin’s comments on CNBC came minutes after the U.S. Labor Department reported the number of people who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time rose to 898,000 in the week that ended Oct. 10. It was the highest number since Aug. 22, and another indication the recovery of the U.S. jobs market may be losing momentum. As the White House and lawmakers discuss an economic relief package, the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. reached a world-leading 217,000 on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. There were 59,000 new coronavirus infections in the U.S. on Wednesday, according to Hopkins, a reflection of increased infections in Midwestern U.S. states, boosting the total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. to 7.9 million, the most in the world. 
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Members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee are set to hear Thursday from witnesses supporting and opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the panel finishes its confirmation hearings.Democrats are expected to invoke committee rules to push a final vote on Barrett’s nomination by a week to Oct. 22. A vote in the full Senate could come by the end of the month.Wednesday marked the third day of the hearings, with Democrats again pressing Barrett on a key upcoming case that if overturned could impact healthcare for millions of Americans.Barrett reiterated she is not hostile to the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration healthcare law that will face a challenge before the nation’s highest court on Nov. 10.“A judge needs to have an open mind, every step of the way,” Barrett told senators Wednesday. “If I were to just say how I thought I would resolve a case just because I saw the issue, it would be short-circuiting that whole process through which I should go.”Wednesday was the second day of questions for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee after a nearly 12-hour session Tuesday in which Barrett declined to answer a range of questions from senators on how she might rule on legal disputes she would face if confirmed to fill a crucial vacancy on the country’s highest court.Barrett has told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee conducting her confirmation hearing this week that she wouldn’t let her personal and religious views determine how she would decide cases.“I have no agenda,” Barrett said Tuesday. “I’ll follow the law.”Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., listens during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before the Senate Judiciary Committee Oct. 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Barrett has repeatedly declined to say how she might rule on the court’s 1973 legalization of abortions in the United States, gun ownership rights sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution and whether, in a case to be heard by the court next month, the country’s national health care law should remain in effect.She has also rebuffed a question on whether she would recuse herself, if she is quickly confirmed by the Senate, from considering any legal disputes arising from the Nov. 3 national election. Trump, who nominated Barrett, is trying to win a second four-year term in the White House and faces Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden.Trump has assailed mass balloting by mail and said he wants a fully staffed court ready to rule on any legal disputes over balloting and election results. With eight current justices, the court could potentially deadlock 4-4.Barrett said she has had no conversations with Trump or his staff “on how I would rule” on election disputes. She said it would have been unethical for her as a sitting federal appellate court judge to have such a discussion.The 48-year-old Barrett is a favorite of U.S. conservatives looking to give the court a commanding 6-3 conservative majority. She has cited the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she served as a law clerk two decades ago, as her philosophical mentor, for his strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as written two centuries ago rather than interpreting it to address current life in the U.S.Addressing her past association on Wednesday, Barrett told ranking Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, “When I said that Justice Scalia’s philosophy is mine too, I certainly didn’t mean to say that every sentence that came out of Justice Scalia’s mouth or every sentence that he wrote is one that I would agree with.”If confirmed, Barrett would replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month at 87. She would be the fifth woman ever to serve on the court.Democrats fear that Barrett would vote to undo many of the reforms championed by Ginsburg, including the right of same-sex couples to wed and abortion rights.Barrett told senators on Wednesday that in part she could not comment on how she would approach cases on abortion because several cases on the issue are working their way through lower courts.Barrett has said as an appellate court judge she has set aside her devout Catholic beliefs to issue rulings according to U.S. law and could do so again on the Supreme Court.But she made no promises on how she might rule on abortion, which the Catholic Church opposes.She said high court precedent from long-ago rulings is “presumptively controlling,” and that some decisions fall into the “super precedent” category, such as the 1954 decision banning school segregation by races as unequal treatment of Black people and unconstitutional.Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett listens during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Scalia dissented against abortion rights, but Barrett declined to say whether she also thinks the legality of abortion was wrongly decided.Earlier this week, Barrett assured Graham that despite her family owning a gun, she could fairly “decide such a case” calling for tighter restrictions on gun ownership sanctioned by the Constitution’s Second Amendment.Barrett said that even as the court has ruled that Americans have a personal right to own a gun, the ruling “leaves room for gun regulation. I promise I would come to that with an open mind. Any issue should be decided by the facts of the case.”At another point in Tuesday’s questioning, Barrett told Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, “I’m 100% committed to judicial independence.”But Klobuchar said she fears that a Justice Barrett “would be the polar opposite” of Ginsburg in the way she votes on key cases. “That’s what concerns me,” Klobuchar said.Barrett did express a willingness to consider breaking the long-held Supreme Court tradition of not allowing cameras into the courtroom.“I would certainly keep an open mind about cameras in the Supreme Court,” Barrett said.Public support for Barrett appears to be rising in the weeks since Trump announced her nomination on Sept. 26. In Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted Oct. 2-4 before confirmation hearings began, 46% of voters said the Senate should confirm Barrett, a nine-point increase in a week-long span.”The hearing to me is an opportunity to not punch through a glass ceiling, but a reinforced concrete barrier around conservative women. You are going to shatter that barrier,” Graham told Barrett on Wednesday.He predicted Monday that the committee’s 12 Republicans will all vote in favor of Barrett’s nomination with all 10 Democrats opposed. Republican leaders say they have enough votes in the full Senate to confirm her nomination.
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Voters in the electoral battleground state of North Carolina are the latest in the United States to get their chance to cast early ballots in person for the Nov. 3 election.
 
The start of early voting Thursday coincides with campaign events in the state for President Donald Trump and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris. Trump is visiting Greenville, while Harris is making stops in Charlotte and Asheville.
 
Many states have seen a surge in early voting, with concerns about crowds at polling places in the middle of a pandemic driving many voters’ decisions to find a way to cast their ballots on a less busy day or by mail.
 
According to the United States Election Project, which is tracking state election data, more than 16 million people in the United States had voted as of Wednesday night.  That included 500,000 in North Carolina, a figure equal to 10% of the state’s entire turnout in the 2016 election.
 
That number will likely rise sharply with Thursday’s in-person voting, mirroring scenes in other states this week where people turned out in record numbers for their states’ opening of early voting.
 
North Carolina’s half-million votes already cast have come in the form of absentee ballots returned through the mail, a system that has come under legal challenge in the state and elsewhere in the country.
 
Rules vary by state, but in North Carolina all absentee ballots must have the signature of a witness affirming the identity of the voter.
 
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that if an absentee ballot lacks a witness, voters can no longer remedy the situation and have their vote counted by sending in an affidavit to prove it is legitimate.
 
State officials had issued a directive allowing such fixes, but Republicans challenged the system, arguing it both took away state legislators’ power to make election rules and diluted the votes of people who followed the original rules.
 
Wednesday’s court ruling did allow other smaller fixes to absentee ballots, such as if a witness signature was in the wrong place.
 
State board of elections data showed that as of Wednesday, in addition to the 500,000 absentee ballots that had been accepted, election officials also received about 12,000 others that had some type of problem.
 
In 2016, Trump defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton 49.8% to 46.2% in North Carolina.  Two polls released this week show another close contest.   
 
A New York Times/Siena poll put former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of Trump 46% to 42% in North Carolina with a 4.5% margin of error.  A Reuters/Ipsos polls gave Biden a 48% to 47% percent advantage with a 4% margin of error.
 
U.S. presidents are elected using a system called the Electoral College.  Each state is assigned a number of electors based on its representation in Congress, and the winner must amass a majority of the 538 total electors.  North Carolina has 15 electoral votes, the tenth most of any state. 
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Members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee are set to hear Thursday from witnesses supporting and opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the panel finishes its confirmation hearings.Democrats are expected to invoke committee rules to push a final vote on Barrett’s nomination by a week to Oct. 22. A vote in the full Senate could come by the end of the month.Wednesday marked the third day of the hearings, with Democrats again pressing Barrett on a key upcoming case that if overturned could impact healthcare for millions of Americans.Barrett reiterated she is not hostile to the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration healthcare law that will face a challenge before the nation’s highest court on Nov. 10.“A judge needs to have an open mind, every step of the way,” Barrett told senators Wednesday. “If I were to just say how I thought I would resolve a case just because I saw the issue, it would be short-circuiting that whole process through which I should go.”Wednesday was the second day of questions for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee after a nearly 12-hour session Tuesday in which Barrett declined to answer a range of questions from senators on how she might rule on legal disputes she would face if confirmed to fill a crucial vacancy on the country’s highest court.Barrett has told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee conducting her confirmation hearing this week that she wouldn’t let her personal and religious views determine how she would decide cases.“I have no agenda,” Barrett said Tuesday. “I’ll follow the law.”Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., listens during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before the Senate Judiciary Committee Oct. 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Barrett has repeatedly declined to say how she might rule on the court’s 1973 legalization of abortions in the United States, gun ownership rights sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution and whether, in a case to be heard by the court next month, the country’s national health care law should remain in effect.She has also rebuffed a question on whether she would recuse herself, if she is quickly confirmed by the Senate, from considering any legal disputes arising from the Nov. 3 national election. Trump, who nominated Barrett, is trying to win a second four-year term in the White House and faces Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden.Trump has assailed mass balloting by mail and said he wants a fully staffed court ready to rule on any legal disputes over balloting and election results. With eight current justices, the court could potentially deadlock 4-4.Barrett said she has had no conversations with Trump or his staff “on how I would rule” on election disputes. She said it would have been unethical for her as a sitting federal appellate court judge to have such a discussion.The 48-year-old Barrett is a favorite of U.S. conservatives looking to give the court a commanding 6-3 conservative majority. She has cited the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she served as a law clerk two decades ago, as her philosophical mentor, for his strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as written two centuries ago rather than interpreting it to address current life in the U.S.Addressing her past association on Wednesday, Barrett told ranking Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, “When I said that Justice Scalia’s philosophy is mine too, I certainly didn’t mean to say that every sentence that came out of Justice Scalia’s mouth or every sentence that he wrote is one that I would agree with.”If confirmed, Barrett would replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month at 87. She would be the fifth woman ever to serve on the court.Democrats fear that Barrett would vote to undo many of the reforms championed by Ginsburg, including the right of same-sex couples to wed and abortion rights.Barrett told senators on Wednesday that in part she could not comment on how she would approach cases on abortion because several cases on the issue are working their way through lower courts.Barrett has said as an appellate court judge she has set aside her devout Catholic beliefs to issue rulings according to U.S. law and could do so again on the Supreme Court.But she made no promises on how she might rule on abortion, which the Catholic Church opposes.She said high court precedent from long-ago rulings is “presumptively controlling,” and that some decisions fall into the “super precedent” category, such as the 1954 decision banning school segregation by races as unequal treatment of Black people and unconstitutional.Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett listens during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Scalia dissented against abortion rights, but Barrett declined to say whether she also thinks the legality of abortion was wrongly decided.Earlier this week, Barrett assured Graham that despite her family owning a gun, she could fairly “decide such a case” calling for tighter restrictions on gun ownership sanctioned by the Constitution’s Second Amendment.Barrett said that even as the court has ruled that Americans have a personal right to own a gun, the ruling “leaves room for gun regulation. I promise I would come to that with an open mind. Any issue should be decided by the facts of the case.”At another point in Tuesday’s questioning, Barrett told Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, “I’m 100% committed to judicial independence.”But Klobuchar said she fears that a Justice Barrett “would be the polar opposite” of Ginsburg in the way she votes on key cases. “That’s what concerns me,” Klobuchar said.Barrett did express a willingness to consider breaking the long-held Supreme Court tradition of not allowing cameras into the courtroom.“I would certainly keep an open mind about cameras in the Supreme Court,” Barrett said.Public support for Barrett appears to be rising in the weeks since Trump announced her nomination on Sept. 26. In Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted Oct. 2-4 before confirmation hearings began, 46% of voters said the Senate should confirm Barrett, a nine-point increase in a week-long span.”The hearing to me is an opportunity to not punch through a glass ceiling, but a reinforced concrete barrier around conservative women. You are going to shatter that barrier,” Graham told Barrett on Wednesday.He predicted Monday that the committee’s 12 Republicans will all vote in favor of Barrett’s nomination with all 10 Democrats opposed. Republican leaders say they have enough votes in the full Senate to confirm her nomination.
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The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday accused Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, author of a tell-all book about first lady Melania Trump, of breaking their nondisclosure agreement and asked a court to set aside profits from the book in a government trust.
 
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Justice Department lawyers said Wolkoff, a former aide who fell out with the first lady, failed to submit to government review a draft of her book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” which offers an unflattering portrayal of President Donald Trump’s wife.
 
 “The United States seeks to hold Ms. Wolkoff to her contractual and fiduciary obligations and to ensure that she is not unjustly enriched by her breach of the duties she freely assumed when she served as an adviser to the first lady,” said a copy of the complaint seen by Reuters.
 
 The book was published six weeks ago.
 
 The complaint says Wolkoff and Mrs. Trump in August 2017 sealed a “Gratuitous Services Agreement” related to “nonpublic, privileged and/or confidential information” that she might obtain during her service under the agreement.
 
 “This was a contract with the United States and therefore enforceable by the United States,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
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It is Presidential Donald Trump’s first week back on the campaign trail since his COVID-19 diagnosis and after his doctor said he is no longer infectious to others. With three weeks left to go until election day, Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are crisscrossing battleground states this week to energize their supporters. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett told the US Senate Tuesday she would not bring her own agenda to the bench if she is confirmed to the nation’s highest court. In the first full day of questioning from senators, Barrett deflected a range of inquiries on issues impacting a wide range of Americans, from abortion to healthcare to gun rights. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.Produced by: Katherine Gypson                               Camera: Adam Greenbaum  
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident from continuing through the end of October. President Donald Trump’s administration had asked the nation’s high court to suspend a district court’s order permitting the 2020 census to continue through the end of the month. The Trump administration argued that the head count needed to end immediately so the U.S. Census Bureau had enough time to crunch the numbers before a congressionally mandated year-end deadline for turning in figures used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets. A coalition of local governments and civil rights groups had sued the administration, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the count ended early. They said the census schedule was cut short to accommodate a July order from Trump that would exclude people in the country illegally.Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.  FILE – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks during a panel discussion celebrating Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to be a Supreme Court Justice, Sept. 25, 2019, at the Library of Congress in Washington.”Moreover, meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress,” Sotomayor wrote. Last month, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, sided with the plaintiffs and issued an injunction that suspended a Sept. 30 deadline for finishing the 2020 census and a Dec. 31 deadline for submitting numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets — a process known as apportionment. That caused the deadlines to revert back to a previous Census Bureau plan that had field operations ending Oct. 31 and the reporting of apportionment figures at the end of April 2021. When the Census Bureau, and the Commerce Department, which oversees the statistical agency, picked an Oct. 5 end date, Koh struck that down too, accusing officials of “lurching from one hasty, unexplained plan to the next … and undermining the credibility of the Census Bureau and the 2020 Census.” An appellate court panel upheld Koh’s order allowing the census to continue through October but struck down the part that suspended the Dec. 31 deadline for turning in apportionment numbers. The panel of three appellate judges said that just because the year-end deadline is impossible to meet doesn’t mean the court should require the Census Bureau to miss it. With plans for the count hampered by the pandemic, the Census Bureau in April had proposed extending the deadline for finishing the count from the end of July to the end of October and pushing the apportionment deadline from Dec. 31 to next April. The proposal to extend the apportionment deadline passed the Democratic-controlled House, but the Republican-controlled Senate didn’t take up the request. Then, in late July and early August, bureau officials shortened the count schedule by a month so that it would finish at the end of September. The Republicans’ inaction coincided with a July order from Trump directing the Census Bureau to have the apportionment count exclude people who are in the country illegally. The order was later ruled unlawful by a panel of three district judges in New York, but the Trump administration is appealing that case to the Supreme Court. By sticking to the Dec. 31 deadline, control of the apportionment count would remain in the hands of the Trump administration no matter who wins the presidential election next month.  
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The government elections agency in the U.S. state of Virginia said Tuesday its voter registration system was shut down by a fiber optic cable that had been accidentally severed on the last day of registration before the Nov. 3 general election. The shutdown affected connectivity for the citizens’ registration portal, the election registrar’s office and multiple other state agencies, the Virginia Department of Elections said in a statement. The agency said technicians were working to repair the cable that the Virginia Information Technologies Agency said was cut during a utilities project in Chesterfield County. The state did not say when connectivity would be restored. Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax has called for the registration deadline to be extended due to the service outage. In 2016, an undetermined number of Virginia residents were unable to meet the voter registration deadline because of unprecedented demand. A federal judge granted a brief extension of the deadline after a lawsuit by the New Virginia Majority Education Fund. On Tuesday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, which filed the 2016 lawsuit on behalf of the fund, swiftly denounced the disruption, saying Virginia election officials “have again failed the public.”  
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Voters under 30 are a keenly watched voting bloc in the United States, with race being a top issue for many young people.  “There are huge differences in who young people support, candidate-wise, by race and gender,” Abby Kiesa, director of impact at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) based at Tufts University, told VOA. “For example, for a huge portion of young people of color, we are much more likely to see use of color, especially young Black and Latino young people, vote for Democratic candidates. However, when we look at white youth, we don’t see as strong support.” FILE – New voters, including many University of New Hampshire students, stand in line to fill out voter registration forms in Durham, New Hampshire, Nov. 6, 2018.In addition to millennials and Generation Z being 37% of the electorate, according to Marvi Ali and her sister Zara exiting their high school in Wilmington, Delaware. (E. Sarai/VOA)According to data from CIRCLE, young racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than their white counterparts to have advocated for a policy or participated in a demonstration. “Youth of color are much more likely to have advocated for a policy than white youth — 41% versus 34%. Overall, 28% of young people in that age group say they have participated in a march or demonstration, but 37% of youth of color have done so, compared to just 22% of white youth,” Kiesa told VOA via email. Whether these levels of civic engagement will translate to voter turnout will be seen in November. Kathleen Struck contributed to this report.
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