Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday September 18.
McConnell vowed to hold a vote on Trump’s replacement of Ginsburg but would not say if that would happen before or after the election, six weeks away.
By Saturday, Trump called for the Senate to confirm his nomination, and Lindsay Graham reversed his earlier promise to not support a new nominee during an election. Only two GOP senators–Collins and Murkowski–said they will not support a nominee until after the next president takes office: Collins: “In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the president or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3.”
Trump held his first indoor rally since Tulsa in June on Sunday night. The city threatened to fine the venue for breaking COIVD restrictions.
Trump said this week of US COVID numbers: “If you take the blue states out,” he said, “we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level.”
Election 2020
In North Carolina, about 3-4% of mail in ballots are being rejected every day due to inconsistencies. In North Carolina: As of September 17, Black voters’ ballots are being rejected at more than four times the rate of white voters
On Monday the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to block the Green Party from being on the November ballot. It was a 4-3 decision, with the chief justice siding with the liberals.
Many Florida ex-felons cannot vote in this election thanks for a judges panel were five of the six who voted to block them are Trump appointees.
Courts on both sides of the United States issued rulings on Thursday that could expand mail-in voting in the election in November, as the postmaster general privately apologized to state officials for missteps in his agency’s efforts to educate voters on mail-in ballots.
Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, posted a video live on his personal Facebook page in which he said: government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.
“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.”
“If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,”
“There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
Even Barr got in on the doomsaying this week: Attorney General William P. Barr said in a recent interview that the United States would be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if President Trump was not re-elected… “I think we were getting into position where we were going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to the socialist path,” Mr. Barr said. “I think if Trump loses this election that that will be the case.”“There’s now a clear fork in the road for our country,”
Bouie: Instead of making a conventional appeal to voters to give him another term in office, Trump is issuing a threat, of sorts: I cannot lose. If I do lose, the election was stolen. Anyone protesting my effort to hold onto power is an insurrectionist. And sometimes, “there has to be retribution.”
Here is a list of recent ways Trump has and is using the federal government to either distort or suppress information in ways that will aid his reelection.
Ignatius writes this week that U.S. Cyber Command is blocking Russian election interference free from political interference from the White House: Thanks to these efforts, it will be “virtually impossible” for the Russians or anyone else to penetrate voting systems in the roughly 8,000 jurisdictions around the country, the defense official said.
Dan Coates, Trump’s former DNI, called for a high level commission to assure Americans of the security of their vote this November: We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted.
The op-ed does not attack Trump specifically, but seems to motivated by concern about Trump’s behavior: Total destruction and sowing salt in the earth of American democracy is a catastrophe well beyond simple defeat and a poison for generations. An electoral victory on these terms would be no victory at all. The judgment of history, reflecting on the death of enlightened democracy, would be harsh.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 43%
COVID Cases / Deaths: 6,706,374 / 198,099