Category: 2020 Election

Democrats File Lawsuit to Expand Voting Access in Nevada

Today, the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Nevada State Democratic Party, and Priorities USA filed suit in the Eighth Judicial District Court of Clark County seeking to expand voting access for Nevada’s primary on June 9.

The suit is also being brought on behalf of several Nevadans whose right to vote is being infringed under the current policies in light of the coronavirus pandemic and who recognize the importance of providing safeguards to vote by mail and making sure that those who vote in person can do so safely — including a student who was displaced from university housing due to coronavirus and cannot easily obtain a ballot sent to his university address and other individuals who would have to drive outrageous distances because of the lack of polling locations.

Under the Nevada Secretary of State’s current policy, 87% of Nevada’s population could be serviced by two voting centers, likely resulting in long lines like in Wisconsin, while hundreds of thousands of voters deemed “inactive” would not be mailed an absentee ballot. Other rules barring volunteers from assisting voters and allowing arbitrary ballot rejections based on signature mismatches also threaten Nevadans’ ability to safely participate in the election. Continue reading.

Despite GOP Claims Of ‘Fraud,’ Most Voters Want Mail Ballots

Donald Trump and his Republican allies have spent the last several weeks fighting efforts to allow all Americans to vote by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. But a new poll finds that the vast majority of voters actually support the idea.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Tuesday, found that 58 percent of registered voters would support a permanent rule allowing all eligible voters to vote by mail. Another 9 percent support such a policy for this November’s election due to the pandemic, while only 29 percent are against vote-by-mail altogether.

Republicans have vocally opposed allowing all voters the option to vote by mail. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Democratic efforts to add vote-by-mail to a coronavirus relief bill last month a “disgusting” scheme for “some political benefit.”

The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests

New York Times logoGroups in a loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals and financed lawsuits, polling and research to combat the stay-at-home orders.

WASHINGTON — An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The groups have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits, and paid for polling and research to undercut the arguments behind restrictions that have closed businesses and limited the movement of most Americans.

Among those fighting the orders are FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, which played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy. Continue reading.

Trump shows a total inability to have empathy or remorse when confronted with the consequences of his actions

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump was confronted with the direct and dangerous consequences of his own actions of Monday, he immediately began boasting about his fan base and refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

It was a disturbing moment, and it seemed deeply revealing of his character.

The exchange came during Monday’s coronavirus press briefing when PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor pressed Trump on a family she had come across in her reporting. Continue reading.

Trump wants to lift lockdowns. Other countries’ attempts show why the U.S. isn’t ready.

Washington Post logoHere’s the already iconic image of a divided America in the middle of a pandemic. In one of a smattering of protests over the weekend against coronavirus lockdowns, a supporter of President Trump in Denver jeered at a counterprotesting medical worker from a silver Ram truck. “This is a free country,” she said, before telling the medical worker to “go back to China.”

Trump later defended these scenes, arguing that the protesters — some of whom were mobilized by far-right, pro-gun groups on Facebook and assembled near city halls or other public buildings in mostly small numbers over the past few days — were agitating against governors who “have gone too far” in their imposition of restrictions on daily life. A recent poll found that a majority of Americans fear that the government is moving too quickly to lift restrictions. But Trump may pull at this seam in the coming weeks, hoping to focus his base’s ire on domestic opponents even as he finds it impossible to dispel the scrutiny of his own missteps in the early stages of the crisis.

Still, the economic anxiety in the United States, as is the case elsewhere in the world, is all too real. New projections from Columbia University researchers suggest that a coronavirus-provoked recession could spike U.S. job losses — and poverty — to five-decade highs. Far from U.S. state capitals, protests are building against lockdowns in poorer countries. About 2 billion people around the world depend on day work and live in countries whose governments are mostly unable to compensate for their loss of wages. Continue reading.

We Are Living in a Failed State

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos. Continue reading.

Trump, Head of Government, Leans Into Antigovernment Message

New York Times logoWith his poll numbers fading after a rally-around-the-leader bump, the president is stoking protests against stay-at-home orders.

First he was the self-described “wartime president.” Then he trumpeted the “total” authority of the federal government. But in the past few days, President Trump has nurtured protests against state-issued stay-at-home orders aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus.

Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Mr. Trump’s approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Mr. Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.

Not even the president’s re-election campaign can harness him: His team is often reactive to his moods and whims, trying but not always succeeding in steering him in a particular direction. Now, with Mr. Trump’s poll numbers falling after a rally-around-the-leader bump, he is road-testing a new turn on a familiar theme — veering into messages aimed at appealing to Americans whose lives have been disrupted by the legally enforceable stay-at-home orders. Continue reading.

Trump blames testing criticism on politics

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday lashed out at governors who have clamored for more widespread coronavirus testing, accusing them of playing politics or simply being ignorant of resources in their own states.

Trump and other administration officials devoted a significant portion of the daily coronavirus press briefing to outlining efforts to scale up the production of testing materials as governors across the country warn more federal help is needed to increase capacity.

The briefing at times appeared intended to rebuke the criticism directly, with Trump insisting his administration had already done a commendable job and that those who disagreed were trying to score political points. Continue reading.

A Key G.O.P. Strategy: Blame China. But Trump Goes Off Message.

New York Times logoRepublicans increasingly believe that elevating China’s culpability for spreading the coronavirus may be the best way to improve their difficult election chances. The president is muddying the message.

Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.

With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.

Republican senators locked in difficult races are preparing commercials condemning China. Conservatives with future presidential ambitions of their own, like Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, are competing to see who can talk tougher toward the country where the virus first emerged. Party officials are publicly and privately brandishing polling data in hopes Mr. Trump will confront Beijing. Continue reading.

Coronavirus steals Trump economic edge

The Hill logoPresident Trump has the money, the bully pulpit and a firm grip on his party as he leans into his reelection race, but he no longer has what was long seen as the greatest strength of his presidency: a strong economy.

With less than 200 days to go before the election, Trump is now running as a president seeking to rebuild an economy that a little more than a month ago was riding along with historically low unemployment.

Since then, about 22 million people have filed unemployment claims, inviting comparisons to the Great Depression. Continue reading.