Halloween Costume ideas 2015
Latest Post
Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

Local Police Say Biden Staffer May Have Been ‘At Fault’ in ‘Trump Train’ Highway IncidentLocal police in Texas said over the weekend that the vehicle of a Joe Biden staffer may be "at fault" in a minor collision that occurred during an incident where Trump supporters in trucks surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus.The incident occurred on I-35 in Hays County and involved a Biden staffer's white SUV making contact with a Trump supporter's black truck.The San Marcos Police Department, which is handling any potential police reports on the crash, said it has researched the collision and watched footage of the incident online.“The at-fault vehicle may be the white SUV and the victim appears to be the black truck,” the police department said in a statement.“Calls to the driver of the white SUV have gone unanswered and SMPD has not been contacted by the driver of the black truck. Since SMPD has not spoken to either driver at this time, additional investigation would be required to fully ascertain who was at fault,” the department said.The police department also said the Biden bus requested a police escort, but due to traffic police were not able to reach the campaign bus before it exited the jurisdiction.Katie Naranjo, chair of the Travis County Democratic Party said in a tweet that Trump supporters followed the Biden bus through central Texas "to intimidate Biden supporters."“They ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats. Don’t let bullies win, vote,” she wrote.The Biden campaign also condemned the group of Trump supporters, accusing them of endangering those close to the campaign.“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” said Tariq Thowfeek, the Biden campaign's Texas communications director.President Trump on Saturday tweeted a video that appears to show his supporters surrounding the bus along with the words "I LOVE TEXAS!"The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Wednesday moved the presidential race in Texas from "lean Republican" to "toss up." Trump is up by one point in the state as of Tuesday, a day before the election, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3ekyg4P

Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

‘We Love What They Did’: Marco Rubio Praises Texas Trump Fan Caravan That Swarmed Biden BusFlorida Sen. Marco Rubio has seemingly joined Donald Trump in endorsing vehicular intimidation of political rivals just days before the presidential election.Hours after President Trump defended a group of his supporters who were seen swarming a Biden campaign bus in Texas over the weekend, forcing the Democratic nominee to cancel a rally event, the Republican lawmaker also threw in his support of the harassment—and stressed “we love what they did.”At a Sunday night rally for Trump’s re-election campaign at Miami-Opa-Locka Executive Airport, Rubio brought up the video that shows a blockade of pro-Trump demonstrators ambushing a Biden-Harris campaign bus and allegedly attempting to force it off the road.“I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas,” Rubio said to a large, mostly mask-less crowd. “Did you see it? All the cars on the road, we love what they did.”> Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) at last night's rally on the Texas Trump caravan that menacingly surrounded Biden bus: > > "We love what they did, but here's the thing they don't know: We do that in Florida every day. I love seeing the boat parades ... We thank all the great patriots..." pic.twitter.com/kRaLcW60jn> > — The Recount (@therecount) November 2, 2020The Republican lawmaker then tried to justify the harassment that led to a rally cancellation in what has become a key battleground state ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election. In several videos posted on Twitter, a group of cars—many adorned with Trump flags—are seen riding alongside and boxing in the Biden campaign bus as it was being driven from San Antonio to Austin. At one point in a video, a pickup truck can be seen colliding with an SUV that was driving behind the Biden campaign vehicle.Currently, polls showing the typically red stronghold now only marginally favoring the president.“We do that in Florida every day,” Rubio added. “I love seeing the boat parades... We thank all the great patriots.”Biden Team Cancels Texas Event After Highway ‘Ambush’ by MAGA CavalryRubio’s seeming support of the MAGA caravan comes amid national anxiety about voter intimidation—a tactic the Trump campaign has implicitly endorsed—particularly in swing states like Florida.The FBI on Sunday confirmed it was “aware of... and investigating” the Texas incident, prompting Trump to defend his supporters. Earlier, Trump tweeted a video of his supporters following the Biden campaign bus, adding, “I LOVE TEXAS!” Neither the former vice president nor his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, was aboard the bus.“In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat-run cities and hurting our people!” Trump said. (In a tweet Monday morning, the president suggested the news of the FBI investigation was “FALSE.”)The MAGA road show’s questionable support over the weekend also resulted in clogged freeways from New Jersey to Washington state to Arizona as Trump supporters intentionally blocked major highways.Trump also claimed his supporters were “protecting” the bus, stating at a Michigan campaign rally Sunday, “Did you see the way our people, they were, ya know, protecting this bus… because they’re nice.”On Sunday afternoon, Biden responded to the GOP voter intimidation while at an event in Pennsylvania: “Folks, that’s not who we are,” he said. “We are so much better than this. It’s not who we are.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2I194UQ

Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

Clip showing Biden naming the wrong state at a rally is fakeIt's an awkward moment when a presidential candidate greets the audience at a rally and names the wrong state. Fortunately for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, that didn't happen to him this week, despite a widely shared video that appears to show him saying “Hello, Minnesota” to a crowd in Florida.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/326PmhU

Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

Pennsylvania AG Declares ‘Trump Is Going to Lose’ If Every Vote Is CountedPennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro predicted over the weekend that President Trump will lose Pennsylvania in Tuesday's election if every vote in the battleground state is counted."If all the votes are added up in PA, Trump is going to lose. That’s why he’s working overtime to subtract as many votes as possible from this process," Shapiro said in a tweet Saturday afternoon.Last week, Shapiro accused Trump of “actively trying to undermine this election” because he is unable to win Pennsylvania.“He’s doing that because he knows that if all legal eligible votes are counted, he’s more likely than not going to come out on the losing side here in Pennsylvania,” the attorney general said.Democrats have been successful in recent weeks in court against Republicans on Pennsylvania ballot issues. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court granted Democrats a win when it ruled that Pennsylvania election officials may count ballots postmarked on Election Day and received within three days. Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that ballots from voters in the battleground state may not be rejected due to signature comparisons alone.On Sunday after Trump threatened to sue over the three-day grace period for Pennsylvania ballots, Shapiro said that he expects to win any other legal challenges the administration launches, saying, "if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time."Shapiro has promised that he will make sure every ballot gets counted in the hotly contested swing state. More than 2.4 million Pennsylvanians have already voted by mail as of Tuesday.Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes could end up deciding the presidential election. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has a narrow lead over Trump in Pennsylvania at 49 points to Trump's 45 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Both candidates are campaigning in the state on Tuesday, the last day before Election Day.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/362cNde

Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

U.S. Supreme Court hands narrow win to Black Lives Matter activist over protest incidentThe U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson in his ongoing effort to avoid a lawsuit filed by a police officer injured during a 2016 protest in Louisiana triggered by the police killing of a Black man. The justices threw out a lower court ruling that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed and said that more analysis was needed on whether Louisiana state law allows for such a claim. McKesson has argued that the rights of freedom of speech and assembly under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment should shield him from the lawsuit that accused him of negligence for leading the protest in Baton Rouge, but the court did not resolve that issue.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2JxSBbT

Twitter Facebook

November 02, 2020 ,

Biden says to defeat the coronavirus, 'we've first got to beat Donald Trump'With two days to go before the election, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden went to Pennsylvania on Sunday, a battleground state that President Trump won by just 44,000 votes in 2016.Polls show Biden with a lead of about 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, and both candidates have been holding events across the state. Biden is courting voters by sharing three messages: that he will bring back the economy, slow the spread of the coronavirus, and have a non-tumultuous presidency. It's time for Trump to "pack his bags and go home," Biden said during an evening event in Philadelphia. "We're done with the chaos, with the tweets, with the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility. The truth is, to beat the virus, we've first got to beat Donald Trump."Biden also brought up an incident that took place on Friday in Texas, when motorists with Trump 2020 flags surrounded a Biden campaign bus and allegedly tried to run it off the road. Trump, who retweeted video of the episode, has "no sense of empathy, no sense of concern," Biden said. Trump responded to an FBI investigation of the incident by arguing "these patriots did nothing wrong."During an earlier event at a Philadelphia church, Biden said Trump "failed to protect this nation," and in two days, "we could put an end to a presidency that fanned the flames of hate." He declared that Trump is "terrified of what is going to happen in Pennsylvania. He knows that the people of Pennsylvania get to have their say — if you have your say, he doesn't stand a chance."Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), are holding multiple events in Pennsylvania on Monday, and the day will end with Biden appearing at a Pittsburgh rally with Lady Gaga and Harris attending a Philadelphia concert with John Legend.More stories from theweek.com COVID-19 keeps proving everyone wrong Is this the year the New South turns blue? Democrats' first priority




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3mLGlTs

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

When He’s Not Whining, Even Trump Is Bored at His Closing RalliesAt the first rally during his final three days of campaigning against the one he calls “Sleepy Joe,” President Donald Trump couldn’t help but sound tired.During his campaign stop in Newtown, Bucks County, the president was conspicuously subdued, delivering one of his laziest, most bored-sounding rally speeches in recent memory. Lacking his standard energy and lib-owning peppiness, Trump sleepwalked his way through his prepared and ad-libbed remarks about how the Hunter Biden emails and foreign-dealings story was somehow the “biggest” story in the country, a country ravaged by Trump’s own mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis and an economic implosion.He mocked The New York Times for having “apologized” to its readers for something or other. He accused his enemies during his self-described “little special speech” of trying to “silence his voice.” He spoke of “the riots,” the politicians who “let Minneapolis burn,” and the progressives and left-wing educators who wanted American schoolkids “indoctrinated” with history that put greater emphasis on matters such as the horrors of slavery. (His solution? “Patriotic education,” whatever that means.) He sneered at the crowd sizes former President Barack Obama was attracting recently, in support of the current Democratic nominee. And he, of course, mocked “Joe Biden, who’s not all there,” to the crowd’s giddy laughter.He promised that a second term of his presidency would see more “tough on crime” policy and appointments, and in the same breath trashed Biden for championing the 1994 “crime bill” and for being too tough on crime and Black communities.But it was all perfunctory and listless, exhibiting none of the hunger or drive that Trump has used to sell his MAGA rallies as rock concerts for cultural conservatives, maskless Fox Business fans, and zealous immigration restrictionists. “He’s been doing so many of these [recently]. You’d be tired, too,” one senior Trump 2020 aide told The Daily Beast near the end of this first rally. “The president hates [media] coverage of him sounding low-energy, though, so I expect this to change fast.”By the time the second Pennsylvania event of the day rolled around, the president apparently got the memo and the aide was vindicated—but only somewhat.Trump’s Inner Circle Braces for DisasterAt his second visit to the state on Saturday, Trump pulled himself out of his early-afternoon lethargy just in time for his swing through Reading, though his energy levels and rally flamboyance were still at best a facsimile of the wildest, most red-meat stops in his campaign.And it was primarily just whining, and then some more whining.The leader of the free world again groused, as is standard fare, about “corrupt news” and “fake news,” and about how the supposedly lefty “Big Tech” and Democrats and “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) “play dirty” to fight him and conservatives. Despite a newly minted 6-3 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump complained about how he’s recently had to deal with “many, many disappointing decisions” from the highest court in the land, and that conservatives “don’t control the Supreme Court,” despite the fact that they do. He baselessly warned that liberals would “cheat” with the “ballots” to defeat him in the 2020 election.Trump insisted he was “running against the left-wing media, the big tech giants… [and] some RINOs… RINOs are worse than the… sicko Democrats.”And he went on yet another extended riff on “father and son” Joe and Hunter Biden, inspiring a round of “LOCK HIM UP” chants from the crowd. The president also referenced the elder Biden’s 2018 comments during which the former VP discussed a hypothetical about beating up Trump in school, and complained about an alleged double standard that’s applied when Trump discusses or encourages violent acts.The president also made time for jokes, saying that his wife’s coronavirus infection put to bed long-running gossip that he and first lady Melania Trump don’t sleep in the same bed or live together. “Our great first lady tested positive,” the president reminded his audience. “At least those rumors that we don’t live together turned out to be false,” he said. “That’s the only good thing about her testing positive.”For his third stop of the day, it was more of the same.As the night fell on Butler, Pennsylvania, the president claimed there’s no better or more fun place to be “than a Trump rally,” to which the crowd of fans cheered. The president bashed the “nasty deep state,” and once again jeered at Biden for his “aviator glasses” and those “new eyes” of his.When he wasn’t talking about how “the plague [had] come in from China” and wrecked the U.S. economy, he was accusing Biden and running mate Kamala Harris of wanting to “destroy Pennsylvania.”And at the fourth Pennsylvania rally, in Montoursville, the president who has so often claimed all things MAGA are censored on social media, marveled at the news that Trump supporters had surrounded a Team Biden bus on a highway and were now “trending.”“Anybody see the picture of their crazy bus driving down the highway? They are surrounded by like, hundreds of cars, and they’re all Trump flags all over the place,” the president celebrated.“What a group… It's like a hot thing. See, that’s really No. 1 trending,” Trump added.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/35PwR2B

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Dozens of undelivered ballots found at Miami-Dade post office with mail backlogSpecial agents with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General discovered 48 pieces of election mail sitting in a post office in South Miami-Dade County on Friday, the office announced Saturday morning. Forty-two of them were ballots that had not yet been delivered to voters, officials said, while the other six had already been filled out and were brought to the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections Friday night.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2HRDZU5

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Biden backer: Candidate's late large donor reveal 'defeats the entire purpose of transparency'Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, disclosed his campaign's top donors Saturday evening, but the announcement didn't satisfy everyone, even among his supporters.This is the first time Biden made the list public since he won the Democratic nomination. Biden, who has reeled in $383 million throughout his run, named 817 "bundlers" who raised at least $100,000 for the candidate through their personal networks, often giving their own maximum donation, as well. Per Politico, the list contains several top Democratic politicians and officials, Wall Street executives, Silicon Valley tycoons, and Hollywood celebrities.Vox notes campaign-finance reform advocates had grown concerned that Biden had kept the information under wraps up to this point, especially since 90 million people have already voted. Previously, Democratic candidates have regularly disclosed their bundlers in the name of transparency. "Congratulations on clearing an artificially low bar they set for themselves that defeats the entire purpose of transparency — allowing voters to know who is funding the campaigns asking for their support before casting their ballots," said Tyson Brody, a Democratic operative who worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Brody is backing Biden in the election, per Vox, but is critical of the influence large campaign donors can have on elections.While the campaign's decision to release names late in the game means many voters submitted their ballots with incomplete information, Vox notes that it isn't surprising. One of Biden's central messages is his ability to relate to the working and middle classes, which led to a focus on small, grassroots donations. Big name contributors, on the other hand, could have undercut the campaign's strategy. Read more at Vox and Politico.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3mEPWLy

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Kamala Makes High Stakes Wager for Team Biden in TexasWhen Hillary Clinton made a last-minute visit to Arizona in the final week before the 2016 presidential election, fretful Democrats worried—justifiably, it turned out—that the nominee’s political adventurism could come at a high cost.Four years later, the Biden campaign is meeting Clinton’s high-stakes red-state wager and raising her by the second-biggest prize in the Electoral College.In the surest sign yet that Texas is in genuine play this election cycle, the Biden campaign dispatched Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the vice presidential nominee, to a three-city tour of the Lone Star State on Friday, the last day of early voting in the state.“It’s good to be in Texas,” Harris told supporters in Houston, her third appearance in a trip that also included the suburb-rich Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the border city of McAllen, where the rising Latino population has made Hidalgo County one of the fastest growing in the country. “They’ve done a great job in terms of early voting and so we just want to remind people what’s at stake and that their votes really matter. Lots of important issues, and they have the power to determine the outcome of this race.”For state Democrats who have been desperate for the national party to share in their enthusiasm that this year is finally the year that the “demographics is destiny” chant becomes reality, Harris’ tour presages a future where the state is embraced as a potential swing state instead of dismissed as a Republican California. Or, as youth activist Clarissa Conde said before introducing Harris at an event near McAllen, “a more resilient and compassionate Texas, a more equal and equitable Texas.”Even in a campaign as rich as former Vice President Joe Biden’s, time is the most valuable commodity in the final week of a presidential campaign, particularly the hours devoted to in-person appearances across the nation’s second-largest state by population. While the late-coming investment in Texas—once polls showed a neck-and-neck race, the Biden campaign started buying millions in airtime in major Texas media markets—does force the cash-strapped Trump campaign to allocate precious resources in a state that should be a fait accompli, Harris told reporters that the visits are, just as importantly, in recognition of the hard-working party members who have rarely gotten thanks from national Democrats.“There are people here who matter, people here who are working hard, people who love their country and we need to be here and be responsive to them,” Harris told reporters on the tarmac in McAllen after her first appearance in Forth Worth. “That’s why we are here—because there are a lot of important people in South Texas.”Harris’ remarks in the state were not always particularly Texas-centric, unusual for get-out-the-vote events in a state with as pervasive a brand. Beyond speaking in front of a Lone Star Flag the size of a parking lot in each stop, Harris’ comments in her trio of appearances were standard stump-speech material—more geared for general base-boosting than winning over Texans at the last minute—although she did nod to the state’s unique demographic profile.Biden Campaign Can’t Resist Making a Last-Minute Play for Texas, Georgia “When this administration has orphaned 545 children because of a policy that has been about separating children from their parents at the border, everything is at stake,” Harris told voters in McAllen. “When we are looking at the fact that 200,000 of our front-line workers have been DREAMers who were promised DACA protection, everything is at stake. Everything is at stake when we need to create a pathway toward citizenship.”Part of the campaign’s strategy may be rooted in the fact that the Biden campaign is, by necessity, winging its Texas strategy to a certain degree—when no Democrat has won the state’s electoral votes since Jimmy Carter, there’s not exactly a playbook for turning out blue voters in Texas.The campaign’s manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon—who herself waged one of the highest profile political battles in modern Texas history when she managed Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for U.S. Senate two years ago—said as much in a call with high-dollar donors last week“Texas is a place that is a little bit harder for us to monitor because we’ve never actually had to before, in a presidential race,” O’Malley Dillon said in a state-of-the-race call with top campaign donors last week, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. “We’re still trying to work through that, but we are seeing massive turnout in Texas… and I would say, continuing to focus on the lower-propensity voters to make sure that they’re trying to vote early to give us a more efficient bucket of people to go to for election day is job No. 1.”If early voting numbers are any indication, the gambit has potential to pay off. With four days until Election Day, Texas already surpassed its 2016 turnout, reporting 9,009,850 votes already cast on Friday morning. Granted, some of that is rooted in expanded interest in mail-in voting due to the pandemic, as well as the state’s explosive population growth—Texas’ estimated population has grown by more than 7 percent in just four years—and the fact that the state has a famously low turnout rate.But that kind of growth has hidden benefits for Democrats. The state’s decade-long pitch as a tax haven for corporate headquarters has brought in hundreds of thousands of people from more liberal, higher-tax states, and those voters don’t check their politics at the state line.The excitement for those demographic changes to result in electoral changes is palpable.“I can’t wait for Texas to be the deciding state in this presidential election,” said Tina Knowles—businesswoman, fashion designer and mother of Texas native Beyoncé—before introducing Harris in Houston. “Y’all know if we win Texas, it’s game over.”That dynamic has borne out in urban and suburban counties, particularly in Harris County, a.k.a. Houston, where the 1.4 million ballots cast this cycle have already broken historical turnout records. Considering that political scientists with an eye on Texas have said that turnout would need to exceed at least 1.5 million in Harris County for a statewide Biden victory to enter the realm of possibility, that’s a very good sign for the former vice president’s campaign—and makes his running mate’s trip at least worth the price of jet fuel.“We’re putting a lot of resources into Texas,” Harris told reporters upon landing in Houston. “Texas has so much at stake in this election and they deserve to be heard, they deserve to be engaged by us because we intend to earn every vote. We’re not gonna tell anybody they’re supposed to vote for us—we want to earn those votes.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2HMU799

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Why the Left Is Mad about the Supreme CourtWhen Joe Biden finally answered, after several weeks of hemming and hawing, whether he would indulge the recently revived left-wing fantasy of adding justices to the Supreme Court, it was revealing. And not simply in the way that his response -- “to put together a national . . . bipartisan commission” some months after Election Day -- betrayed his decades as a political creature. (Have a problem? Form a “commission.”) For although this response has come to be seen as a kind of demurral, Biden still maintained that the Supreme Court was “out of whack.”This is, in essence, the same belief held by others on the left, amplified during the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Here as in other things, Biden seems to differ from the left primarily tactically, sharing many of its ends but aware that some of them -- and some of its preferred means, such as Court-packing -- are unpopular. But there remains the shared contention that what President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have accomplished in placing three “conservative” appointees on the Supreme Court in one presidential term remains somehow illegitimate.Superficially, this almost certainly proceeds from a sense on the left that they got played. Ignoring arguments of precedent, and the fact that, while McConnell undoubtedly played hardball, he did so well within his constitutional powers, many liberals are simply aggrieved at conservative political victories. And it is their right to be so aggrieved; goodness knows the Right has felt the same way under different circumstances. But that many on the left prefer to respond by seeking to dramatically alter the century-and-a-half-old configuration of the Supreme Court -- something not even FDR could do as president -- suggests something deeper is at play.The fundamental source of this agitation is that the Left was convinced the Court would always be on its side, becoming its personal tool for achieving desired outcomes outside the electoral process.A fuller understanding requires looking back at recent history. And it requires looking at it more honestly than do the recent laments that, for example, Republican presidents over the past several decades have disproportionately appointed more justices to the Supreme Court than they deserve. For conservatives of a few decades’ past -- and still, even, to some extent now -- this is not a sign of success but of a particularly cruel kind of failure, if not even their preferred appointees could be trusted once on the Court. The modern conservative legal movement, animated primarily by a renewed commitment to understanding the Constitution as it was understood by those who drafted it (known as originalism), didn’t just come out of nowhere with the 1982 birth of the Federalist Society or the 1985 originalist stirrings of Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese. These and other stirrings came in response to a recognition on the right that the Left had either welcomed or been actively complicit in the transformation of the Supreme Court into a super-legislature, a way for liberals to achieve judicially what they could not electorally.To conservatives, this fact alone comported ill with the Constitution, never mind that many of the decisions achieved by the Court -- most notoriously Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 -- proceeded to do further violence to the constitutional order. Their response was not merely to capitulate to this state of affairs, but to work, slowly yet surely, to change it. The Federalist Society helped these efforts greatly, bringing originalist-inclined law students together, connecting them to like-minded professors, helping to seed law schools and courts nationwide with trustworthy exponents of its philosophy, broadly speaking, and more. And this was done despite significant resistance from the left, which treasured the Court and wished to keep it under its control. Liberals aghast at McConnell’s hardball today shouldn’t just look back at the 2018 treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, but also to the infamous Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, the treatment of lower-court nominee Miguel Estrada, and more.And yet, for all of the Right’s successes on the Court, it must still witness what it views as fairly spectacular failures. The first Court with majority Republican appointees essentially affirmed Roe; in 2012 a Republican-appointed chief justice rewrote the Affordable Care Act to uphold it as constitutional; in 2015 the Court found a right to same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment; and just this past summer, Neil Gorsuch, an apparent textualist, divined protection from transgender discrimination in legislation penned within living memory that originally contained no such protections. To be sure, the Right has had its triumphs -- often though not always corresponding to defeats for the Left, only inasmuch as the Left was defying or hoping to defy the Constitution -- such that it remains interested in the game. And so it is likely to remain, while still wary of the Court’s ability to uphold the Constitution, even with an ostensible 6–3 majority.Yet this complicated history, full of the kind of back-and-forth one would expect from the political process, helps to explain the depth of the Left’s anger about the Court’s current status. They are mad that conservatives discovered their thinly veiled attempts at transforming the judiciary and decided to try to recapture it with the help of a philosophy that emphasized a renewed commitment to the Constitution. Now that, after decades of patience and persistence, conservatives have established a beachhead on a Court liberals thought would always be theirs, they are infuriated. Some, such as Sheldon Whitehouse, see evidence of a nefarious conspiracy in what has been accomplished openly yet at great difficulty. But the true root of this remains a frustration that, in at least one area, the Right has refused to go along with the Left’s capture of an institution, that it has not consented to the triumphalist narrative the Left imagines culminates with it forever in charge of everything, never dealing with anything more than token opposition.With Joe Biden perhaps days away from securing the presidency, however, it is worth keeping in mind that the Right’s approach is not infallible. As it’s suffered in the past, it may in the future as well. Besides even Republican appointees’ having an uneven record of constitutional fidelity, there is also a risk that conservatives abandon such fidelity outright in favor of simply turning the institution into a rightward version of what it once was for the Left. Of course that is not, and has never been, the point of originalism, even as the Right may face this calumny regularly if the Court appears antagonistic to unconstitutional overtures from an empowered Left during a Biden administration.There is also a reality, one that has genuinely harmed conservatism, that many of its exponents have devoted so much intellectual and political energy to law generally and to the Supreme Court in particular that they have abdicated responsibilities in other areas, particularly legislative. It was worth doing, of course; the nature of the courts and Congress had changed to make it desirable. But if done in isolation it will also have been done in vain. For it will do little good if an originalist-dominated Supreme Court returns power to a legislature that fears exercising these powers and accepting their concomitant responsibilities. Even so, there are still many lessons in the recent political history of the Supreme Court, for both Left and Right. But at the moment, it is the Left that seems unwilling to learn the lesson that the pendulum swings, and instead hopes to hold the pendulum permanently in one place.Perhaps a certain commission will do the trick . . .




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/383GJs6

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Bricks thrown at police, Northwestern University students pepper-sprayed in off-campus clash as protesters again call on university to defund its policeEVANSTON, Ill. — After leaving campus, protesters from Northwestern University who were demonstrating Saturday night clashed with Evanston authorities, and a school spokesman said both students and officers reported dangerous conditions from attacks by the other side. Jon Yates, a spokesman with the university, said he had been in contact with the department and was told officers used pepper ...




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3mKYnVw

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Prince William caught Covid in April but kept diagnosis secretThe Duke of Cambridge was struck down with coronavirus in April but kept the diagnosis secret so as not to “worry” anyone, it has emerged. The Duke, 38, is said to have struggled to breathe during his illness and was treated by doctors before isolating at the family home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk. He is said to have later told one observer at an engagement: “There were important things going on and I didn’t want to worry anyone." The Duke’s diagnosis came shortly after it was announced that both his father, the Prince of Wales, and Boris Johnson had contracted the virus. He was reportedly concerned that revealing his own plight to the nation would create further panic. Kensington Palace sources played down the severity of his illness. But a source told The Sun: "William was hit pretty hard by the virus - it really knocked him for six. "At one stage he was struggling to breathe, so obviously everyone around him was pretty panicked. "After seeing medics and testing positive - which was obviously quite a shock given how fit and healthy he is - William was determined it should be business as usual though. "He was determined to fulfil his engagements.” There was no public hint that the Duke had fallen ill during the height of the pandemic, not least as he continued to work throughout April, carrying out 14 telephone and video call engagements throughout the month. Memorably, he was filmed standing at the door of Anmer Hall with the Duchess of Cambridge, 38, and their children, Prince George, seven, Princess Charlotte, five, and two-year-old Prince Louis as they lead the nation in a Clap for Carers.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2HVOaqz

Twitter Facebook

November 01, 2020 ,

Early voters flock to El Dorado County vote centers open SaturdayOn Saturday, El Dorado County opened up all of its vote centers ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. The foothills community is demonstrating the same election excitement seen across the country. “Early voting’s been incredible. We’ve had more ballots returned by mail than in any previous election,” said Bill O’Neill. O’Neill is the county’s Registrar of Voters. This weekend, he said they are also seeing high in-person turnout. O’Neill encourages people to vote early to avoid longer lines on Tuesday. Get the full story in the video above.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/34NtKJd

Twitter Facebook

October 31, 2020 ,

Obama: Trump failed to take pandemic, presidency seriouslyCalling Joe Biden his “brother,” Barack Obama on Saturday accused Donald Trump of failing to take the coronavirus pandemic and the presidency seriously as Democrats leaned on America's first Black president to energize Black voters in battleground Michigan on the final weekend of the 2020 campaign. Obama, the 44th president, and Biden, his vice president who wants to be the 46th, held drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential to swing the longtime Democratic state to Biden's column after Trump won it in 2016.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/35PomED

Twitter Facebook

October 31, 2020 ,

Last North Carolina polls before election give Biden, Cunningham narrow leadsTwo new polls are shoring up predictions that Democrats will sweep North Carolina's statewide races next week.Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a 6-point lead over Trump in the typically red state, an NBC News/Marist poll of likely voters out Friday reveals. Meanwhile Democrat Cal Cunningham has a 10-point advantage over Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), suggesting he'll be one of the seats Democrats can count on to flip the Senate. And Gov. Roy Cooper (D) has the biggest lead of all: a whopping 19 points over GOP challenger Dan Forest.A New York Times/Siena College poll out Friday was a bit more cautious. Biden received 48 percent support to Trump's 45, a point down from where the Democrat was earlier this month in the same poll. Cunningham has the same margin over Tillis, 46-43, a slight decline from where he's been over the past month. Biden has held a modest lead over Trump in North Carolina for the past few months, leaving his chances in the swing state still uncertain. Cunningham has tended to pull in higher but still modest margins than Biden, even after he admittedly exchanged romantic texts with a woman who isn't his wife, while polls have universally given Cooper a major advantage.NBC News and Marist surveyed 800 likely voters from Oct. 25–28, with a 4.7 percentage point margin of error. The Times and Siena College surveyed 1,034 likely voters from Oct. 23–27, with a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/34IHwNh

Twitter Facebook

October 31, 2020 ,

Migrant Children From Other Countries Are Being Expelled Into MexicoU.S. border authorities have been expelling migrant children from other countries into Mexico, violating a diplomatic agreement with Mexico and testing the limits of immigration and child welfare laws.The expulsions, laid out in a sharply critical internal email from a senior Border Patrol official, have taken place under an aggressive border closure policy the Trump administration has said is necessary to prevent the coronavirus from spreading into the United States. But they conflict with the terms upon which the Mexican government agreed to help implement the order, which were that only Mexican children and others who had adult supervision could be pushed back into Mexico after attempting to cross the border.The expulsions put children from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador at risk by sending them with no accompanying adult into a country where they have no family connections. Most appear to have been put, at least at first, into the care of Mexican child welfare authorities, who oversee shelters operated by religious organizations and other private groups.The expulsions, which appear to number more than 200 over the past eight months, reflect the haphazard nature with which many of the administration's most aggressive immigration policies have been introduced. In many cases, they have led to the shuffling of young children among U.S. government agencies and now, among the governments of countries that are not their own. For years now, the Trump administration's handling of migrant children has left members of families separated for months on end and unable to reach one another.A report to the courts earlier this month revealed that the parents of 545 such children currently in the United States, some of them separated from their families as long ago as 2017, still have not been located.Under existing diplomatic agreements and U.S. policies, children from countries other than Mexico are supposed to be put on flights operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to their home countries, where they can be reunited with their families.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 also that they are a clear violation of U.S. policy."Recently, we have identified several suspected instances where Single Minors (SM) from countries other than Mexico have been expelled via ports of entry rather than referred to ICE Air Operations for expulsion flights," Sanchez wrote.Referring to the federal public health statute upon which the administration's border closure policy rests, he continued, "Please note that if not corrected, these actions will place Title 42 operations in significant jeopardy and must be ceased immediately. To reiterate, under no circumstances should a SM from a country other than Mexico be knowingly expelled to Mexico."Brian Hastings, chief of the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector, acknowledged in an interview that non-Mexican children had been sent back into Mexico.Hastings said that without rapidly returning migrants under the pandemic rule, "we would have massive amounts of infections, massive amounts of commingling, and again, we would fill a hospital." He said that border agents are directed to contact the Mexican consular office each time an unaccompanied child is expelled.And Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, acknowledged in a separate interview this week that such expulsions would violate an agreement between Mexico and the United States. "That's not part of their policy," Morgan said of Mexico.The two officials said that the expulsion policy has helped prevent the kind of overcrowding in border facilities that led to widespread criticism over the agency's care for children last year.But border agents have now been directed to exempt most children under the age of 10 from the expulsion policy and transfer them to shelters in the United States that are overseen by the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, Hastings said.The coronavirus pandemic created an opportunity for the Trump administration to enact its most stringent border restrictions yet. Thousands of children have since been rapidly expelled to their home countries after crossing the border into the United States -- a departure from years of established practices, under which children traveling without adult guardians were transferred into a U.S. government shelter system, where they were assigned to caseworkers who worked to reunite them with American sponsors while their cases for asylum were being considered in the courts.Contrary to that policy, the children expelled during the pandemic have been held only briefly in Border Patrol facilities or in hotels before being sent to their homes countries, often without any notification to their families ahead of time. Some have had to borrow cellphones when they arrive at airports to look for family members who may be willing to take them in.The latest expulsions add a new and potentially more devastating complication, creating even more confusion for families from Central America and elsewhere who may be trying to find their children.It is possible that some of the expelled children may have had family members in Mexico who were themselves waiting for entry to the United States, but Mexican authorities did not provide information about children handed off to their shelters.A Salvadoran father living in California who asked not to be named because he is in the country illegally said he first learned that his 15-year-old daughter had been expelled into Mexico in August, when he received a phone call from the Salvadoran Embassy in Ciudad Juarez."They said I had to stay calm because she was going to be OK," the father said. "I didn't know what to ask; it was just all confusing." His daughter had no family in Mexico, he said.She had been waiting in El Salvador to be approved for a visa to enter the United States under a special program for victims of sexual violence, based on what had happened to her in her home country, he said. He was not sure why she had tried to cross the U.S. border before she was approved to do so -- he assumed it was out of fears for her own safety.After lawyers intervened on the girl's behalf, arguing that her rights had been violated during the expulsion, she was allowed into the United States and is now living in a shelter in Arizona. Her father said he is waiting for permission from the U.S. government to be reunited with his daughter."I've been out of my mind," he said. "This is a really, really stressful situation. It's about your kids, you want always the best for them, but at the same time you know that you can't physically protect them or do anything right now, so that is really frustrating."Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the practice of expelling migrant children in federal court, arguing that it violates child welfare laws, such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, as well as national immigration laws, which require special protections for migrant children traveling alone."Even apart from the general illegality of Title 42, it is separately illegal under the immigration laws to expel a non-Mexican child to Mexico," said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the case.The government has recently begun referring to migrant children who cross the border alone differently -- as "single minors" rather than "unaccompanied alien children" -- reinforcing the notion that while the pandemic-related border closure is in place, such children are not eligible for the legal protections that would otherwise have been available to them.According to public data, U.S. authorities have expelled more than 200,000 people since the new public health border closure took effect, but the administration would not answer questions about how many of them were children nor about how many were sent to Mexico. In December, border authorities acknowledged in federal court that at least 8,800 children have been expelled from the United States since March.Human rights organization Women's Refugee Commission, working with several other advocacy organizations, filed a public records request with Mexican authorities and received data suggesting that at least 208 Central American children had been returned to the custody of Mexican authorities between March 21 and June 5 of this year.Mexican child welfare authorities did not respond to requests for comment.Adults have also been expelled during the pandemic, in relatively large numbers, allowing some of them to quickly attempt to reenter the country.To combat repeat attempts, Hastings said, the Border Patrol has begun expulsion flights into the interior of Mexico for Mexican adults who have tried to enter the United States four or more times.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/31ZftHl

MKRdezign

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Powered by Blogger.
Javascript DisablePlease Enable Javascript To See All Widget