Barrett was voted on and sworn in on Monday evening at a White House event that was turned into a campaign ad for Trump.
DHS is expelling unaccompanied migrant children to Mexico in violation of our agreements with Mexico: Rumors of children from other countries being expelled into Mexico have swirled among nonprofit workers advocating for child welfare in Mexico and the United States. But locating any such children has been difficult because of spotty reporting from Mexican government authorities.
But an email from the U.S. Border Patrol’s assistant chief, Eduardo Sanchez, obtained by The New York Times, makes it clear that such transfers have not only occurred, but that they are a clear violation of U.S. policy.
New York Times reports on Barr’s DOJ giving preferable treatment to a Turkish bank.
Election 2020
The Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin cannot extend the deadline for receiving ballots from November 3 to November 6. The case was decided by the 5 conservative justices. The argument seems to be that they don’t want single judges–a federal appeals court judge in this case–changing election rules while the election is ongoing. Gorsuch: “No one doubts that conducting a national election amid a pandemic poses serious challenges. But none of that means individual judges may improvise with their own election rules in place of those the people’s representatives have adopted.”
Last week the court deadlocked, with Roberts on the liberal side, on a similar case in Pennsylvania. Roberts explains the distinction: “While the Pennsylvania applications implicated the authority of state courts to apply their own constitutions to election regulations, this case involves federal intrusion on state lawmaking processes. Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin.” Kavanaugh’s portions of the rulings are raising eyebrows.
Edsall in the Times: The reality is that in order to remain competitive, the party has been forced to adopt policies and strategies designed to restrict and constrain the majority electorate: voter suppression, gerrymandering, dependence on an Electoral College that favors small, rural states, and legislation designed to weaken and defund the labor movement.
In this context, it’s not a surprise that Trump and his partisan allies would be guided by an “anti-democracy attitude” that “has so taken hold that it could actually undo a presidential election.” What is more surprising is that it possibly could succeed.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to allow the extension of the deadline for return of ballots.
Examples of voter suppression measures in Pennsylvania.
Frum writes this week: We are hearing louder and louder voices on the Republican side questioning whether universal voting rights should even theoretically be guaranteed by the American constitutional system…. The U.S. Constitution in many ways protects minorities against majorities. In the Trump era, we see instead politicians like Lee trying to pretend that minorities are majorities—and to grab the powers that legitimately belong to majorities away from them.
That’s the thing that needs to stop. That’s the thing that needs to change. And if Trump and his allies seem in these final days to act more frantically, more abusively, than usual, perhaps it is because they sense that the change is coming.
Closing Arguments & Predictions:
Tom Nichols on Never Trumpers: I believe that if all of us had caved, Trump would now be much closer to victory, not just at the polls, but over the Constitution itself. Many of us instead held firm and made the case for democracy and the rule of law from the right flank against our own tribe…. when Trump is gone (whether after this election or in 2024), I will continue to oppose everyone who had anything to do with inflicting this scar on American history, long after the members of the Trump family are finally bankrupt, in rehab, in jail, or living in seclusion in Manhattan among the neighbors who already despise them.
Current and former Trump Administration officials reach out to Ron Suskind to share their concerns anonymously: They are worried that the president could use the power of the government — the one they all serve or served within — to keep himself in office or to create favorable terms for negotiating his exit from the White House. Like many other experts inside and outside the government, they are also concerned about foreign adversaries using the internet to sow chaos, exacerbate divisions and undermine our democratic process….
They are loath to give up too many precise details, but it’s not hard to speculate from what we already know. Disruption would most likely begin on Election Day morning somewhere on the East Coast, where polls open first. Miami and Philadelphia (already convulsed this week after another police shooting), in big swing states, would be likely locations. It could be anything, maybe violent, maybe not, started by anyone, or something planned and executed by any number of organizations, almost all of them on the right fringe, many adoring of Mr. Trump. The options are vast and test the imagination.
The F.B.I., meanwhile, is bracing for huge challenges. “We are all-hands-on-deck for the foreseeable future,” the F.B.I. official I mentioned earlier told me. “We’ve been talking to our state and local counterparts and gearing up for the expectation that it’s going to be a significant law-enforcement challenge for probably weeks or months,” this official said. “It feels pretty terrifying.”
Echoing this, Trump said on a rally on Saturday: “We’re going to be waiting. Nov. 3 is going to come and go, and we’re not going to know. And you’re going to have bedlam in our country.”
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Trump’s Approval: 44.2.%
COVID Cases / Deaths: 9024298 / 229109