Barrett was voted on and sworn in on Monday evening.
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 with ties to Jared Kushner.
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.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to allow the extension of the deadline for return of ballots in Pennsylvania.
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.
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.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 44.2%
COVID Cases/Deaths: 9,024,298 / 229,109