Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in as supreme court justice - as it happened

The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former center-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.

In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonizing and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.

The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.

By contrast the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms, and in that regard has remained similar to center-right and center-left parties in western Europe. Their principal difference is the approach to the economy.

The new study, the largest ever of its kind, was carried out by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, using newly developed methods to measure and quantify the health of the world’s democracies at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.

Biden recently said if he’s elected president, he would appoint a special commission to study the US court system and make recommendations to reform it.

Amid the Republican rush to appoint Barrett ahead of an election they have a good chance of losing up and down the ballot, many Democrats have urged Biden to commit to adding justices to the court to restore balance between liberals and moderates on the bench.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Biden said “there’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond ‘packing’” the court.

“The last thing we need to do is turn the supreme court into just a political football, [that means] whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” Biden said. “Presidents come and go. Supreme court justices stay for generations.”

The constitution does not specify how many justices there should be on the supreme court, leaving that to Congress to decide. The number of justices has expanded and contracted several times over the years.

Joe Biden has issued a statement on the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, saying that the “rushed and unprecedented” proceedings “should be a stark reminder to every American that your vote matters.”

The Democratic nominee said:

Just a few days after Election Day next week, the Supreme Court will hear the case on the Affordable Care Act. While panicked and erratic in mishandling the pandemic, Donald Trump has been crystal clear on one thing — for the past four years, and again just last night on 60 Minutes — he wants to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety and take away your health care and protections for pre-existing conditions.

This goal — the goal of the Republican Party for ten years — was a litmus test in selecting this nominee, regardless of the damage done to the U.S. Senate, to Americans’ faith in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and to our democracy, and regardless of how the Affordable Care Act has protected hundreds of millions of people before and during the pandemic.

But we will not give up. If you want to protect your health care, if you want your voice to be heard in Washington, if you want to say no, this abuse of power doesn’t represent you — then turn out and vote.

In Philadelphia, protesters took to the streets after police killed Walter Wallace Jr, a 27-year-old Black man.

Police with shields and riot gear attempted to disband a crowd gathered near the police district headquarters. The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Anna Orso captured a video of officers pushing back at the crowd after some people threw bottles.

Walter Wallace Sr told the Inquirer that his son appeared to have been shot 10 times. From the Inquirer:

“Why didn’t they use a Taser?” Wallace Sr asked outside a family residence on the block. “His mother was trying to defuse the situation.”

Wallace Sr said his son struggled with mental health issues and was on medication. “He has mental issues. Why you have to gun him down?”

Read more here.

As my colleague Sam Levine has spotted, justice Brett Kavanaugh’s justification in today’s supreme court ruling that blocked a deadline extension to count absentee ballots in Wisconsin doesn’t totally add up.

Kavanaugh cites Vermont as an example of a state that “decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules” due to the pandemic, even though, in fact, the state authorized the secretary of state to automatically mail a ballot to all registered voters this year, in order to make it easier for everyone to vote absentee.

“Mailing every voter a ballot by 10/1 factored into our decision to stick with an election day receipt deadline,” the Vermont secretary of state’s office said.

Amy Coney Barrett’s addition to the court could leave an indelible mark on how fiercely the US, and perhaps the rest of the world, can fight rising temperatures, even as scientists warn society has just years to take serious action.

Barrett, a 48-year-old devout Catholic, has said she does not hold “firm views” on climate change, calling it a “very contentious matter of public debate”. Because her father worked in oil and gas, she has previously recused herself from cases involving Royal Dutch Shell.

From deciding the legality of climate regulations for polluters to determining whether oil companies should pay for climate damages, Barrett and five other conservative justices will wield considerable influence.

While Barrett’s history of decisions on environmental issues is limited, her appointment to the court by Trump – as his third justice in four years – solidifies a transfer of power from an often progressive or moderate court.

“Adding one more conservative justice just gives all the conservative justices more fuel to be more political in what they’re going to do,” said Jean Su, an attorney who directs the energy justice program for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Prominently sidelined, now, is Chief Justice John Roberts, whose institutionalist instincts led him to cast crossover votes to prevent the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, to preserve a program protecting young immigrant arrivals and to uphold, on the grounds of precedent, the basic protections conferred by Roe v Wade.

It is no longer Roberts’ court, analysts say, because the chief justice has been shuffled to the bottom of the conservative deck, which now stacks high enough on the court, with the arrival of Barrett, to dispatch whatever rulings it pleases on issues from environmental regulations to reproductive rights to voting rights.

“She will help to dramatically flip the balance on the court,” said Nan Aron, president of the progressive Alliance for Justice advocacy group, of Barrett. “It will be certain now that the right has captured the federal judiciary, at the supreme court level, and that they are seeking to advance a dangerous agenda.”

Every issue of importance to progressive activists, starting with the basic right of every American to vote and extending to the need for regulations that protect employees from dangerous working conditions and consumers from predatory lenders, is on the chopping block with Barrett on the court, analysts say.

The court has recently issued rulings about the status of immigrants, the protection of LGBTQ+ people under anti-discrimination statutes, the ability of a president to come under criminal investigation, and the right to an abortion that could be overturned or subsumed in a churn of cases tailored by conservative activists to appeal to the new bench lineup.

Amy Coney Barrett is a constitutional ‘originalist’ – but what does it mean?

As the latest conservative judge to declare herself a constitutional “originalist” during confirmation hearings, Barrett could influence what kinds of arguments hold sway on the court for years to come – and what cases the court hears in the first place.

It has been rare over the course of American history for a particular brand of judicial philosophy to gain such prominence that it catches the public eye. A torrent of judicial appointments by Donald Trump over the last four years, however, including three supreme court nominees espousing “originalism”, has pushed the term into the political discourse.

Barrett defined the term for the Senate. “So in English, that means that I interpret the constitution as a law, that I interpret its text as text and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it,” she said. “So that meaning doesn’t change over time. And it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it.”

Aziz Huq, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, said that there is a thriving academic debate about the merits of originalism that is only “loosely connected” with the current political discourse, in which the term is often used on the right as a philosophical fig leaf for a conservative political agenda.

“The political discourse of originalism is closely aligned with the policy preferences of the Republican party that has promoted judges who happen to take this perspective,” Huq said. “It purports to be something that is moving outside politics, but it is – in its origins, and in the way that it has been applied in the courts – it is tightly linked to a particular partisan political orientation.”

Elected officials and others who have noticed that 86% of Trump’s judicial appointees are white and 75% are men have begun to hear something else in the term: a nostalgic appeal to the exclusive hold on power by white men at the time the constitution was written – a sense reinforced by the president’s repeated personal refusal to disavow white supremacy.

Barrett has to take one more oath before she joins the bench on the supreme court.

Justices have to take a constitutional oath and the judicial oath. Having done the former tonight at the White House, she is expected to do the latter at a private ceremony tomorrow.

Missing at Barrett’s swearing-in ceremony: most of the justices.

Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr points out that Clarence Thomas, who swore Barrett in and is perhaps the most conservative of the supreme court justices, was the only member of the highest court in attendance.

Twitter quickly flagged a tweet from Donald Trump spreading misinformation that there were discrepancies with mail-in voting, and demanding that a winner should be called on election night.

Official results are never tabulated by election night.

Here’s a thorough response to frequently asked questions about mail-in voting, from my colleague Sam Levine:

Thomas administered the constitutional oath to Barrett.

“The oath that I’ve solemnly taken tonight, means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor and that I will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences,” Barrett said. “I love the Constitution and the democratic republic that it establishes and I will devote myself to preserving it.”

A White House event celebrating Barrett’s nomination in the Rose Garden has been linked to a coronavirus outbreak that infected Donald Trump and several other aides, lawmakers and campaign staff.

At the event tonight, chairs for attendees were socially distanced, and most wore masks – but Trump, Barrett, and justice Clarence Thomas did not.

In a gloating tweet, Republicans in the House of Representatives noted Barrett’s confirmation and wrote, “Happy birthday @HillaryClinton!”

Clinton, who won the popular vote in the 2016 elections, lost to Trump due to the electoral college system in the US.

It is, indeed, Clinton’s birthday today.

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation will have an immediate effect on the outcome of the 2020 election.

Two decades ago, in Bush v Gore, the supreme court decided – effectively – that George W Bush would be the US president after settling a recount dispute in swing-state Florida. Back then, three conservative justices – William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – said that the Florida supreme court “impermissibly distorted” the state’s election code by ordering a recount of a close election where voting machines were found to have issues correctly counting votes.

Today, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch (both Trump appointees) endorsed that view in the Bush v Gore in a ruling to block a deadline extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin.

Kamala Harris, who returned from the campaign trail to the Senate to cast her “no” vote against Barrett’s confirmation, said, “Republicans denied the will of the American people by confirming a supreme court justice.”

She noted that this confirmation will likely help Republicans win a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, in a case the supreme court is scheduled to hear shortly after election day.

“We won’t forget this,” she said, echoing the words of senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who spoke prior to the confirmation vote.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is celebrating Barrett’s confirmation.

As my colleague Lois Beckett points out, the NRA now has three pro-gun, Trump-appointed judges on its side, against attempts – supported by the majority of Americans – to enact gun control measures.

Progressive Democrats have immediately renewed calls to expand the court to rebalance it.

“Republicans do this because they don’t believe Dems have the stones to play hardball like they do,” said representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. “And for a long time they’ve been correct. But do not let them bully the public into thinking their bulldozing is normal but a response isn’t. There is a legal process for expansion.”

In that supreme court ruling to block a deadline extension for mail-in votes to be counted, justice Brett Kavanaugh endorses Trump’s view that states should announce results on election night.

States “want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter,” he writes. “Moreover, particularly in a presidential election, counting all the votes quickly can help the state promptly resolve any disputes, address any need for recounts, and begin the process of canvassing and certifying the election results in an expeditious manner.”

In a significant footnote, Kavanaugh also writes that states courts do not have a “blank check” to step in on state laws governing federal elections.

This could foretell how the court – now with a 6-3 conservative, would rule if the results of the presidential election are contested.

The final vote to confirm Barrett, as expected, was 52-48.

Collins was the only Republican to side with Democrats against confirming Barrett.

Democrats, who were not in the chamber as Mitch McConnell delivered his concluding remarks, came back to cast their “no” votes.

Voting has begun...

As McConnell continues his cynical, revisionist version of how we’ve ended up at this moment – awaiting the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett – the supreme court, one member short, is still working.

Just now, the court upheld a federal appeals court ruling that blocks a deadline extension for mail-in-ballots, awarding a victory for Republicans in a crusade against expanding voting rights and access.

McConnell is also arguing that Democrats want “activist judges” who make policy rather than judge constitutionality.

In fact, his single-minded ideological mission to confirm far-right judicial nominees is why we’re here. Thanks to his efforts, the court will have a 6-member majority – five of whom were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Conservative judges are expected to rule against popular opinion on abortion rights, healthcare, LGBTQ+ rights and other issues.

Mitch McConnell is blaming Democrats for the increasing partisanship over supreme court nominations. He noted that he voted for justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer – both of whom are considered liberal.

He omitted the fact that he did not vote for Obama-appointees justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan. He omitted that he ruthlessly blocked Obama’s appointees to lower courts, and refused to grant even a hearing to Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to succeed Antonin Scalia.

“My version is totally accurate,” he said. It is decidedly not.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican leader who has single-mindedly engineered this moment, is now delivering his comments.

“Judge Barrett deserves to be confirmed to the supreme court,” he said. “In just a few minutes she will be on the supreme court.”

Minutes ahead of a more-or-less predetermined vote by the Republican majority to confirm Barrett to the supreme court, the Senate’s leading Democrat, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, delivered a sharp condemnation to his colleagues across the aisle.

“You may win this vote and Amy Coney Barrett may become the next associate justice of the supreme court, but you will never get your credibility back,” he said. “And the next time the American people give Democrats a majority in this chamber, you will have forfeited the right to tell us how to run that majority.”

CNN dug up an interview with White House press secretary from August 2015 where McEnany calls Joe Biden “likeable” and Donald Trump as a “tycoon”.

In the interview, with New York’s AM970, McEnany said that Republicans would be in trouble if Joe Biden, who was considering a run at the time, ran for president. “One of the things he is remarkable at is really kind of being a man of the people and resonating with middle class voters. Feeling like – coming off as human.”

McEnany said that even though Biden has gaffes, “as much as we make fun of them, to a certain extent they make him look human”.

Of Trump, McEnany said he is “remarkably coming off as a man of the people despite being this wealthy business tycoon”.

She described Trump against Biden as “the juxtaposition of kind of the man of the people and kind of this tycoon” and said it was a “problem” for Republicans.

Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a former national security official who gave key testimony during the impeachment hearing of Donald Trump last year, has a book deal with Harper Collins, according to the Associated Press.

The book will be titled “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” and will be released in the spring. The book will detail his family’s history emigrating from the Soviet Union to the United States as well as his “moment of truth” when testifying against Trump, according to a statement.

Vindman was an expert on Ukraine who was fired by Trump from his job on the National Security Council in February 2019. During his testimony, Vindman provided evidence that Trump offered Ukraine a quid pro quo for information on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid. The Senate acquitted Trump of his impeachment charges earlier this year.

A 39-year-old man was arrested and charged with setting aflame a ballot box in downtown Boston early Sunday morning. Police on Sunday night saw the man walking around the area where the box was set on fire.

A local district attorney said that the man appears to be emotionally disturbed and was likely not “plotting against our democracy” as part of a larger effort to undermine voting, according to the Boston Globe.

Officials say 122 ballots were inside the box, 87 of which remained legible and were able to be processed. The voters behind the damaged ballots will be notified and given the choice of sending in another ballot by mail or voting in-person.

A new report from Politico details the possibility of major staff departures from the Department of Health and Human Services should Donald Trump lose the election. At least 27 political appointees have left the department since the start of the pandemic, with multiple current and former employees saying that others are preparing for an exit if Biden wins.

Here’s more from Politico:

Many current and former officials told POLITICO that the coronavirus crisis has driven down morale at HHS and its agencies, saying that the round-the-clock nature of the response, unrelenting headlines about the Trump administration’s many fumbles and internal battles over policy have made the health department an especially difficult work environment.

“Those jobs are always hard. Those jobs in a no-win situation are extremely hard. Those jobs in a no-win situation, when there’s sniping and ‘Lord of the Flies’ situations, are impossible,” said a former senior official who left the department in the past year after witnessing feuds that hindered policymaking.

David Mansdoerfer, who served as deputy assistant secretary for health before departing in August 2019 for a job in academia, put it this way: “It’s a tough environment. But a lot of the folks who are leaving now came on early in the administration, and I think they all have great skill sets to add to outside organizations.”

Some officials also have groused that minor mistakes have blossomed into days-long media scandals with little basis in reality, like a recent episode when career CDC officials uploaded draft guidance on how coronavirus spreads in the air before hastily removing it, prompting accusations of political interference. CDC spokespeople said that the guidance was mistakenly posted too soon, and four officials insisted that the speculation of political interference was unfounded — but that it contributed to the unforgiving climate.

“It’s pretty shitty to come to work and be accused of meddling every single time something, somewhere goes wrong, even when no political [appointee] knows about it,” said one official with knowledge of the episode of the botched CDC guidance.

While at a campaign stop in Chester, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden told reporters that he will not consider pursuing term limits for Supreme Court justices.

“It’s a lifetime appointment. I’m not going to attempt to change that at all,” he said.

Concurrently, Biden tweeted on Twitter: “More than 60 million Americans have already voted. They deserve to have their voices heard on who replaced Justice Ginsburg.”

What the former vice president has in mind for the court has become a major point of discussion as Election Day nears, with Democrats voicing dissent over the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett so close to the presidential election.

Biden said last week that if he’s elected, he will form a bipartisan commission to explore potential changes to the Supreme Court. Before the announcement, Biden shied away from questions on whether he would increase the number of justices on the court, known as “court packing”.

The commission would have 180 days to give Biden recommendations on what changes can be made to the court. “It’s getting out of whack, the way in which it’s being handled,” Biden said in an interview when speaking about the court system.

This is Lauren Aratani taking over for Joan E Greve. Capitol Hill is bracing for the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court tonight. The Senate is scheduled to have its final confirmation vote around 7:30 pm tonight, followed by Barrett’s swearing in at the White House.

Multiple reports say that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas will administer the constitutional oath at the White House after the Senate casts its vote. The oath marks the final step before a justice is officially on the court.

Thomas was close to the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who Barrett considered a mentor, and the two shared a similar conservative judicial philosophy. Barrett has said that her own philosophy is similar to Scalia’s.

Reporters pressed Biden on his campaigning schedule for the final days before the election, given the Democrat had a light public schedule today, as the president held three rallies in Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to be traveling, continue to travel,” Biden said at a field office in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Biden added, “The big difference between us, and the reason why it looks like we’re not traveling, we’re not putting on super spreaders.”

Trump has recently held a number of large outdoor rallies that included no social distancing and inconsistent mask usage.

The Biden campaign has confirmed that the Democratic nominee will travel to Iowa and Wisconsin later this week.

Biden will visit the two Midwestern battleground states on Friday, just four days before the election.

The Democrat’s trip to Wisconsin is unsurprising, given Trump won the state by less than 1 point in 2016 and it is considered key to Biden’s path to victory.

But the trip to Iowa is more noteworthy. Trump won Iowa by 9 points in 2016, but recent polls have shown Biden and the president running neck and neck in the state.

Joe Biden made a surprise trip to Chester, Pennsylvania, today to talk to supporters and reporters at a field office.

The Democratic nominee delivered brief remarks in Chester, accusing Trump of having “waved the white flag” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Bottom line is Donald Trump is the worst possible president, worst possible person to lead us through this pandemic,” Biden said.

Taking questions from reporters, Biden said he intended to travel to several battleground states, including Iowa, in the days to come.

“I am not over-confident about anything,” Biden said, as national polls show him leading by an average of about 9 points.

Biden was not expected to make any in-person campaign appearances today, just eight days before the election. Trump, meanwhile, is holding three rallies in Pennsylvania today.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke about coronavirus relief negotiations again today, Pelosi’s spokesperson said.

The speaker’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, said she and Mnuchin spoke by phone for 52 minutes about the remaining obstacles in the negotiations.

Specifically, Pelosi said she is pushing the administration to accept Democrats’ bill language on developing a national testing strategy.

“It is clear that our progress depends on Leader McConnell agreeing to bipartisan, comprehensive legislation,” Hammill said. “The Speaker remains optimistic that an agreement can be reached before the election.”

At this point, it seems almost certain that a relief bill will not pass by Election Day, but Pelosi and Mnuchin could theoretically reach a deal by next Tuesday, which Trump could tout on the campaign trail.

Miranda Bryant reports for the Guardian from New York:

New York mayor Bill de Blasio sharply criticized the city’s board of elections after people were forced to queue for hours to vote – saying “long lines tell people to go home” – and called for the organization to be abolished.

In a press conference on Monday he praised the unprecedented turnout over the weekend – which saw almost 200,000 New Yorkers queue, some for hours, at the polls to vote early for the first time in a presidential election – but called on the Board of Elections to “step up” to the moment.

He said: “The Board of Elections was clearly not prepared for this kind of turnout, and needs to make adjustments immediately to be able to support all the New Yorkers who want to take part in the democratic process. We need this to be a better experience. Long lines tell people to go home. That’s just the reality. Long lines at a poll site discourage voting, they don’t encourage it.”

He called on them to increase staff and the number of voting machines and to extend voting hours, saying the city would provide any resources they need to do so.

However he stopped short of labelling it voter suppression, as fellow Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done.

Speaking on her way to vote in Parkchester, in the Bronx, on Sunday, the New York congresswoman said: “There is no place in the United States of America where two-, three-, four-hour waits to vote is acceptable. And just because it’s happening in a blue state doesn’t mean it’s not voter suppression.”

When asked by a reporter whether he agreed with AOC’s assessment, de Blasio said: “I would say it a little bit differently. I would say when the election authorities don’t make voting easy, they discourage people from voting. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy at the Board of Elections, I think there’s incompetence at the Board of Elections”.

Calling for it to be abolished and replaced with a city or state agency, he branded the Board of Elections a “vestige of a corrupt past.”

He said he would “happily team up” with New York governor Andrew Cuomo on legislation to abolish and replace the board in time for next year’s elections.

Beto O’Rourke said he hopes Biden visits Texas before Election Day, as polls show a close presidential race in the traditionally Republican state.

“This is Biden’s state to lose,” said O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman who also ran for the party’s presidential nomination.

It’s unclear whether Biden will visit Texas in the next week, but Kamala Harris is scheduled to campaign in the state on Friday.

Recent polls show Trump has a slight advantage in Texas, and the FiveThirtyEight polling average shows the president has a 1.4-point lead in the state.

Senate candidate Jason Lewis’ emergency hernia surgery was “successful and minimally invasive,” the Republican’s campaign manager said in a statement.

Lewis’ campaign announced earlier today that the former Minnesota congressman was “rushed to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain” early this morning.

“Following tests and examination, doctors determined that he is suffering from a severe internal hernia, a diagnosis which they indicated is life-threatening if not treated quickly,” Lewis’ campaign manager said in a statement.

According to the newest statement, Lewis’ doctors expect him to be released from the hospital in a couple days if his recovery continues as expected.

Recent polls have shown Lewis running neck and neck with Democratic incumbent Tina Smith.

A new poll found Trump maintains a narrow lead in Texas, a traditionally conservative state that he won by 9 points in 2016.

According to the New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump is 4 points ahead of Biden among likely voters in Texas, 47%-43%.

The Times’ Nate Cohn explains:

Even those who have long embraced the Democratic dream of a ‘blue Texas,’ powered by mobilizing the state’s growing Latino population, probably never imagined such staggering Democratic gains in once-solidly Republican areas. Yet the poll suggests that Hispanic voters might just be the group that keeps the state red a while longer.

Mr. Biden has a lead of only 57 percent to 34 percent among that group, somewhat beneath most estimates of Mrs. Clinton’s support among Hispanic voters four years ago. The finding broadly tracks with national surveys, which have shown Mr. Trump improving among Hispanic voters compared with his 2016 standing. Similarly, Hispanic voters in the Times/Siena poll say they backed Mrs. Clinton by a margin of 60 percent to 29 percent.

Texas has seen disproportionately high levels of early voting this election cycle. According to the US Elections Project, 7,347,266 Texans have already cast their ballots, representing nearly 82% of the state’s total 2016 turnout.

Trump is now speaking at Lancaster Airport in Lititz, Pennsylvania, for his second of three campaign rallies in the swing state of Pennsylvania today.

The president once again opened his speech by downplaying the recent surge in new coronavirus cases across dozens of states.

“No it’s not going to be a ‘dark winter,’” Trump said, mocking Biden’s concerned comments about the surge. “It’s going to be a great winter.”

The US set a single-day record for new cases over the weekend, reporting more than 83,000 cases on Friday.

Trump has falsely blamed the surge on increased testing, but new cases are far outpacing the rise in testing.

Trump attacked Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf during his rally in Allentown, the first of his three rallies in Pennsylvania today.

The president falsely claimed the Democratic governor has “the whole commonwealth shut down” and criticized Wolf for trying to put restrictions on the rally because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump indicated that he would try to punish Wolf in the future when he sought aid for his state.

“I’ll remember it, Tom. I’m going to remember it, Tom,” Trump said, eliciting cheers from rally attendees.

Trump then envisioned an imaginary phone call from Wolf, saying, “‘Hello, Mr President, this is Governor Wolf, I need help. I need help.’ You know what? These people are bad.”

A former Trump administration official, Miles Taylor, has said the president previously wanted to withhold wildfire relief from California because the solidly Democratic state overwhelmingly voted against him in 2016.

Trump has been speaking for more than an hour in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he is holding his first of three rallies today in the swing state.

The pro-Trump crowd has repeatedly booed Joe Biden and broken into chants of “Four more years!” and “God bless Trump!”

Senate candidate Jason Lewis has been rushed into emergency surgery, the Minnesota Republican’s campaign just announced.

“Early this morning, Congressman Lewis was rushed to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain,” Lewis’ campaign manager said in a statement.

“Following tests and examination, doctors determined that he is suffering from a severe internal hernia, a diagnosis which they indicated is life-threatening if not treated quickly.”

The campaign said Lewis, a former congresswoman who lost his seat in 2018, was “in good spirits, optimistic, and speculating about when he could resume campaigning.”

A recent poll showed Lewis locked in a virtual tie with Democratic incumbent Tina Smith, who previously had a significant lead in the race.

Vice-President Mike Pence will not be in the Senate chamber tonight to preside over Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation vote, according to Politico.

Politico reports:

Unless multiple Republican senators are absent, a highly unlikely scenario, Barrett has the votes to be confirmed without Pence breaking a tie. Fifty-two GOP senators are expected to support Barrett’s final confirmation.

‘Vice President Pence is campaigning in Minnesota today. The VP is not planning to be at the Senate tonight unless his vote is needed,’ said an aide to Pence.

Several of Pence’s closest aides tested positive for coronavirus over the weekend, but the vice president has not altered his campaign travel. Pence’s office said he tested negative for the virus today.

A loud chant of “Lock him up!” broke out at Trump’s rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as the president attacked Joe Biden.

The chant has become more common at Trump rallies in recent weeks, as the president has attacked his Democratic rival’s family as a “criminal enterprise.”

The chant mirrors calls of “Lock her up!” in connection to Hillary Clinton during Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump has taken the stage for his first of three rallies today in Pennsylvania, where polls show Biden pulling ahead by several points.

The president told the crowd in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that the country is “rounding the turn” in its coronavirus crisis, even though the number of new cases is surging in dozens of states.

Trump accused Biden of having “waved a white flag on life” when a reporter asked about Mark Meadows’ comment that the country is not going to get coronavirus under control.

Asked whether he had waved a “white flag” on coronavirus, as Biden asserted, Trump replied, “No, no, he has. He’s waved a white flag on life. He doesn’t leave his basement.”

Trump went on to attack Biden as a “pathetic candidate.”

Trump’s comments come one day after his chief of staff told CNN, “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”

The Biden team jumped on the remark, accusing the White House of having given up on getting the virus under control.

Biden said in a statement yesterday, “This wasn’t a slip by Meadows, it was a candid acknowledgement of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

Barack Obama will again campaign for Joe Biden in Florida tomorrow, after the former president visited Miami this weekend.

The Biden campaign just announced that Obama will hold a drive-in rally in Orlando tomorrow to encourage Floridians to vote early.

The trip will come three days after Obama held a similar drive-in rally in North Miami, where he criticized his successor’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“This pandemic would have been tough for any president, because we have not seen something like this in 100 years, but the idea that somehow this White House has done anything but completely screw this thing up is nonsense,” Obama said.

Obama’s visit comes as polls show Biden and Trump running neck and neck in Florida, which the president won by 1 point in 2016.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is among the more than 60 million Americans who have already cast their ballots in the election.

The progressive congresswoman, accompanied by her French bulldog named Deco, waited in line for two hours at her polling station in the Bronx yesterday to vote early.

Ocasio-Cortez said the long lines to vote in New York, a reliably Democratic state, still represented “voter suppression.”

“If we are waiting three hours, four hours, five hours, if this was happening in a swing state, there would be national coverage,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The congresswoman applauded her neighbors for remaining committed to vote despite the long lines.

“Frankly, this also shows the success of early voting as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I will wait two hours just like my neighbors are.”

Programming note: the final Senate vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court is expected to occur around 7.25pm ET tonight.

Barrett is expected to be confirmed in a mostly party-line vote, as Democrats sharply criticize Republicans for moving forward with a supreme court confirmation just eight days before Election Day.

A new poll shows Trump and Biden virtually tied in the traditionally Republican state of Georgia, which the president won by 5 points in 2016.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll conducted by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, Biden leads Trump by 1 point among Georgia’s likely voters, 47%-46%.

That result is well within the survey’s 4-point margin of error, meaning the candidates are virtually tied.

Biden is visiting Georgia tomorrow, and Kamala Harris was in the state on Friday, underscoring that Democrats believe Georgia is winnable for them.

But it’s important to remember that Biden doesn’t absolutely need to win Georgia in order to win the election. For Trump, he likely has no path to reelection unless he can carry Georgia again.

According to the US Elections Project, 2,755,027 Georgians have already cast their ballots, representing 66% of the state’s total 2016 turnout.

Trump is en route to Pennsylvania, where he will hold three campaign rallies today as polls show him trailing Joe Biden in the swing state.

The president’s trip to Pennsylvania comes as the state, like dozens of others, reports a surge in new coronavirus cases.

Two Texas counties, Denton in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and Williamson in the Austin suburbs, have now surpassed their total 2016 turnout with early voting, according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Those numbers may worry Republicans, given the two counties have been moving toward Democrats since 2016.

Republicans expect more of their supporters to turn out on Election Day itself, but early voting could give Democrats a slight advantage heading into November 3.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

There are eight days left until Election Day, and nearly 60 million Americans have already cast their ballots.

According to the US Elections Project, 59,477,414 Americans have already voted early in person or by mail.

Some states have seen particularly high early voting turnout. In Texas, for example, 7,193,582 people have already voted, representing about 80% of the state’s total 2016 turnout.

The early voting numbers indicate Americans are very motivated to cast their ballots this year, meaning this will likely be a high turnout election.

Qasim Rashid, who is running of Congress in Virginia, has this take on astronaut Kate Rubins being able to cast her vote for 3 November on the International Space Station this weekend.

Donald Trump came to the mountains of New Hampshire on Sunday but the New Hampshire Union Leader, a conservative newspaper in a state with a proud conservative tradition, didn’t come to him.

In an editorial, the newspaper’s board back Joe Biden for president, writing that while Trump is “not always 100% wrong … he is 100% wrong for America.”

It was the first time in more than 100 years the paper had backed a Democrat.

As election day nears with Joe Biden ahead in national and battleground state polls, Trump has seen a string of endorsements go against him. Among national papers, USA Today made its first official choice – for Biden.

At the weekend in Kansas, a solidly Republican state set to back Trump for president, the Topeka Capital-Journal also went for the Democrat.

Biden “should be the next president of the United States”, its editorial board said, “because he is caring, trustworthy and experienced. He should be the next president of the United States because he has committed to following the science and leading our country out of this pandemic.”

Read more here: Conservative New Hampshire paper backs Biden: ‘Trump is 100% wrong for America’

Here’s that clip that president Trump was alluding to in one of those tweets this morning – when Joe Biden says he is running against four more years of ‘George’.

“Not because I’m running, but because who I’m running against, this is the most consequential election in a long, long, long time,” the Democratic nominee says.

“And the character of the country in my view is literally on the ballot. What kind of country we’re gonna be? Four more years of George, er, George... we’re gonna find ourselves in a position where if Trump gets elected we’re going to be in a different world.”

Fox News described the gaffe as a “minor verbal flub”, but it has naturally been leapt upon by the Trump campaign and supporters.

Biden was speaking alongside his wife Jill at an “I Will Vote Concert” virtual campaign event that featured Pink and Cher among others.

It looks like we might be hearing more about just how unhappy Donald Trump was with that 60 Minutes interview at his Pennsylvania rallies later today.

He’s also unhappy at what he claims is a co-ordinated media campaign to keep mentioning Covid in the run-up to next week’s election. He appears to be suggesting that not saying the administration has made ‘tremendous progress’ fighting the pandemic should be some kind of election law violation.

At the risk of provoking his wrath with the media further, here are the latest coronavirus figures, as collated by the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.

The US has experienced 8,637,109 cases of the coronavirus, leading to 225,239 deaths in total so far. This is the highest number of cases and deaths in the world.

Yesterday the US recorded 60,789 new coronavirus cases, and 340 new Covid deaths. New cases are being recorded at a level roughly 34% higher than they were two weeks ago, and deaths are running at 12% higher than they were two weeks ago.

Footage of US president Donald Trump abruptly walking out of a CBS 60 Minutes interview has been released by the network, in a row that has been rumbling since the interview was taped on Tuesday.

Trump had already posted clips on his own social media, in an effort to show how he had been mistreated by interviewer Lesley Stahl. He had called the segment “fake” and “biased” in advance.

Trump had told Stahl “you brought up a lot of subjects that were inappropriately brought up”. She replied: “Well, I said, I’m going to ask you tough questions.”

It was after a question about whether his use of social media and name-calling was “turning people off” that Trump bought the recording to an end.

He answered: “No, I think I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have social media. The media is fake. And frankly, if I didn’t have social media, I’d have no way of getting out my voice.”

A few moments later, he told aide Hope Hicks: “I think we have enough of an interview here, Hope. OK? That’s enough. Let’s go.”

Trump also tweeted during the week complaining that Stahl had not been wearing a mask in the White House. CBS said that Stahl wore a mask at all times except during and for a few moments after the interview, and had tested negative for the coronavirus before arriving to interview the president.

For many, though, the clips did not give the impression that Trump was trying to convey – that he had been treated unfairly by CBS.

Jon Favreau, former speechwriter for Barack Obama, said that Trump came across as “weak and pathetic” and “a whiny, aggrieved baby”.

“He’s no longer even pretending to fight for his supporters against liberals, immigrants, the media, elites, the establishment. Donald Trump is fighting for Donald Trump. That’s it.”

And Amy Siskind, who wrote a book on Trump’s first year in office, said: “All he did was lie and obfuscate, and when he was called on it he got up and sulked out.”

There was also criticism in some quarters that Stahl had in fact avoided some of the more difficult questions she could have asked the president about his finances, the treatment of immigrant children separated from their parents at the US border by his administration, and the number of people involved in his campaign who have subsequently been charged with crimes.

A CNN fact check of the president’s contribution showed he made at least 16 false or misleading claims during the course of the interview.

In another segment of the CBS 60 Minutes special ahead of the election, Democratic vice president nominee Kamala Harris went on record to say that she believes Trump is racist. Asked “Do you think the president is racist?” by host Norah O’Donnell, the California senator replied:

Yes, I do, You can look at a pattern that goes back to him questioning the identity of the first Black president of the United States. You can look at Charlottesville, when there were peaceful protesters, And on the other side, neo-Nazis and he talks about fine people on either side. Calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. His first order of business was to institute a Muslim ban. It all speaks for itself.

The key to winning the White House, as we saw in 2016, is not in turning out a victory in the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton did, but it is in putting together a coalition of victories in enough states to hand you the electoral college, as Donald Trump did. 2020’s campaign has been very much focussed on Trump trying to retain those states he flipped from voting for Obama in 2012 to backing the Republicans in 2016.

Joe Biden, though, is currently enjoying a narrow but tightening lead in many of those swing states. You can keep an up-to-date view on the latest polling here: US election polls tracker – who is leading in the swing states, Trump or Biden?

In the Senate, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has bought props.

NBC News have more this morning on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s assessment of the US election – and specifically about the stories floating around about Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Putin appeared less friendly towards Trump in remarks broadcast by Russian state TV on Sunday. In what may be seen by some analysts as an attempt to try to curry favor with the Biden camp, he took the time to knock down what he made clear he regarded as false allegations from Trump about the Bidens.

“Yes, in Ukraine he [Hunter Biden] had or maybe still has a business, I don’t know. It doesn’t concern us. It concerns the Americans and the Ukrainians,” said Putin.

“But well yes he had at least one company, which he practically headed up, and judging from everything he made good money. I don’t see anything criminal about this, at least we don’t know anything about this [being criminal].”

Putin also reacted with visible irritation when asked about comments Trump has made concerning Putin’s ties to the former mayor of Moscow, and to an alleged payment made to Hunter Biden by the ex-mayor’s widow. Putin said he knew nothing about the existence of any commercial relationship between Hunter and the woman. Joe Biden says the accusation about his son is not true.

Read more here: NBC News – Putin rejects Trump’s criticism of Hunter Biden’s business

We’ve got an online event you can take part in tomorrow. Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 3pm EDT (That’s a 7pm kick-off if like me you are in London and also).

Woodward is a two-time Pulitzer prize winner and has written about nine American presidents. With Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein, he reported on the Watergate scandal, which led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

His new book, Rage, is his second volume about President Trump, following 2018’s Fear. During hours of on-the-record interviews and presidential tours of the White House over seven volatile months, Trump talked to Woodward about the pandemic, race relations, the economy and many other subjects relating to his presidency. Rage is a vivid and revealing portrait of the president who, in Woodward’s final line, is “the wrong man for the job”.

As the election approaches, join the veteran investigative reporter to hear his insights of the Trump presidency, its turmoil, contradictions and risks. He’ll be talking to the our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith. In this livestreamed event, you will also have the chance to ask your own questions.

Find out more and book tickets here.

Rhode Island’s Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is up in the Senate now.

Here’s a clip from Kirsten Gillibrand’s epic speech. The Democrats have been speaking all through the night to protest at Republicans rushing through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett just ahead of the election

Speaking of QAnon, the US House of Representatives recently voted to condemn the pro-Trump online conspiracy QAnon, but multiple QAnon-friendly lawmakers may soon be taking seats in the chamber.

More than two dozen candidates for Congress in the elections have endorsed or given credence to QAnon or promoted QAnon content online. At least one of them is expected to be elected to the House of Representatives next week, and a second has a good chance, writes Susan Cornwell at Reuters.

Right-wing small business owner Marjorie Taylor Greene, who declared in a 2017 video that “Q is a patriot,” is expected to win a House seat in rural northwest Georgia after her opponent dropped out.

Gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, who told a conservative podcast last spring that she hopes Q “is real,” has a good chance of winning her Republican-leaning district of western Colorado.

“There is no place for QAnon in the Republican party,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox News in August, becoming the highest-ranking Republican to publicly condemn QAnon. But there will be a place for Greene among House Republicans. “She’s a small business owner, and she’ll be given an opportunity,” McCarthy told.

In the 2017 video about QAnon uncovered this year by Politico, Greene, 46, said: *There*s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.”

After winning her primary runoff in August Greene backtracked, telling Fox News that QAnon doesn’t “represent” her and “wasn’t part of my campaign.”

That did not stop her from recently attacking a House Republican, Representative Denver Riggleman, who co-sponsored the House-passed resolution condemning QAnon. On Twitter, Greene called the resolution “useless” and asked why the lawmakers had not done a resolution condemning the anti-fascist movement antifa.

Boebert, 33, the House candidate from Colorado who has also spoken warmly about QAnon, wears a pistol on her hip in campaign photos. She defeated a five-term House Republican in a June primary after defying coronavirus lockdown orders by opening her restaurant.

Boebert’s restaurant is known as “Shooters Grill,” boasts of armed waitresses and is located in the small town of Rifle.

In a May conservative podcast, Boebert said of QAnon that “if this is real, then it could be really great for our country.” After her June primary victory, she backpedaled, telling a local television station that “I’m not a follower” of QAnon: “I’m not into conspiracies.”

She faces Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in a district that non-partisan analysts say leans Republican.

Skirmishes broke out between supporters and opponents of President Donald Trump as a Jews For Trump convoy of hundreds of cars draped with American flags and Trump 2020 banners rolled slowly through Manhattan and Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon.

The caravan traveled from Coney Island to the Trump Tower in Manhattan before heading to a rally in a Brooklyn park. Videos shared on Twitter showed several protesters pelting the vehicles with eggs or stones, snatching flags and shouting insults.

In one video showing physical fights between several people, police officers detain an unidentified man and protesters chant “let him go.” Another video showed a small group of people throwing objects from a Brooklyn highway overpass at vehicles bedecked with Trump flags.

Supporters of the baseless antisemetic QAnon conspiracy theory were among those in attendance.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – embroiled in embarrassment after his appearance in the new Borat movie – briefly greeted supporters from the passenger seat of a car driving near Trump Tower during the parade, videos show.

New York City police said seven people were taken into custody in connection with physical confrontations in Times Square. Charges were pending Sunday night, report the Associated Press.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has finished talking in the Senate now. She appears to have got up early to take part in the Democrats overnight marathon, rather than staying up all night. In truth, she sounded a little like she could have done with another cup of coffee first.

Here’s a clip of Sen. Tim Kaine, who was up speaking before her.

Nebraska’s Republican senator Ben Sasse is up now.

As Democrats continue to talk through the night in protest at the Republican decision to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court ahead of both the election and a crucial supreme court case on the Affordable Care Act, the New Yorker this morning has published the first extract from Barack Obama’s forthcoming memoir – and it is about Obamacare.

In the lengthy extract, Obama talks of Ted Kennedy as an inspiration on working to improve healthcare, and sets out how, unlike in the United Kingdon and in Germany, the idea of setting out universal healthcare provision in the United States floundered.

Harry Truman proposed a national health-care system twice, once in 1945 and again as part of his Fair Deal package, in 1949, but his appeal for public support was no match for the well-financed PR efforts of the American Medical Association and other industry lobbyists. Opponents didn’t just kill Truman’s effort. They convinced a large swath of the public that “socialized medicine” would lead to rationing, to the loss of the family doctor and of the freedoms Americans hold so dear. Rather than challenging private insurance head on, progressives shifted their energy to helping those populations the marketplace had left behind.

Obama also sets out how uphill the challenge seemed:

IBy the time I took office there were very few people ready to defend the existing system. More than forty-three million Americans were now uninsured, premiums for family coverage had risen ninety-seven per cent since 2000, and costs were only continuing to climb. And yet the prospect of trying to get a big health-care-reform bill through Congress at the height of a historic recession made my team nervous. Even my adviser David Axelrod—who had experienced the challenges of getting specialized care for a daughter with severe epilepsy and had left journalism to become a political consultant in part to pay for her treatment—had his doubts.

“The data’s pretty clear,” he said when we discussed the topic with Rahm Emanuel, my chief of staff. “People may hate the way things work in general, but most of them have insurance. They don’t really think about the flaws in the system until somebody in their own family gets sick. They like their doctor. They don’t trust Washington to fix anything. And, even if they think you’re sincere, they worry that any changes you make will cost them money and help somebody else.”

Read more: New Yorker – A president looks back on his toughest fight

Lewis Kendall reports for us today on Republican efforts to limit the opportunities to vote in North Carolina – one of the key battlegrounds in next week’s vote.

Last week, North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders requested the US supreme court stop a recent court decision that would extend the state’s deadline for mail-in ballots.

North Carolina law currently requires ballots be postmarked by election day and received no more than three days later. But newfound concerns over thousands of mail-in ballots being rejected for small voter errors across the state prompted the board – a bipartisan agency – to propose extending the deadline for receiving ballots to 12 November.

In an emailed statement, the North Carolina attorney general, Josh Stein, a Democrat, wrote that the recent filings were an attempt by Republicans to “block eligible voters from having their votes counted”.

“If voters comply with the statute and mail in their ballots on or before election day, they should not be penalized by slow mail delivery in a pandemic,” Stein wrote. “The Republicans have lost this argument at every turn because they are trying to stop votes from being counted.”

Read more here: North Carolina Republicans try to block mail ballot deadline extension proposal

If you were writing a script for this year, and you suggested that a week before the election, the vice president who had been in charge of the US response to the coronavirus outbreak would find his own team riddled with the virus, a decent editor would probably tell you that was a bit too ‘on the nose’. And yet, that’s where Mike Pence finds himself today.

The vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, tested positive on Saturday, and at least three other additional Pence staff members are believed to have tested positive.

Pence is still planning to attend several scheduled events this week, including the today’s final vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.

His unbroken travel plans amount to a breach of the recommendations of the Trump administration’s own public health agency. They would require the vice-president to be in quarantine for 14 days and always to wear a mask around other people.

Democrats have criticized his decision, with Montana Sen. Jon Tester calling it “absolutely irresponsible” and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying “It sets a terrible, terrible example for the American people.”

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is speaking in the Senate now. She is addressing the fact that the Senate has been rushing through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett rather than concentrating on a coronavirus stimulus and relief package. She says:

The weeks we should have dedicated to negotiate a real relief package have instead been spent rushing through the confirmation for a justice. The hypocrisy is truly stunning. The same people who denied Merrick Garland a hearing months before an election are now trying to ram this process through while the election is already happening. Millions of ballots have been cast. Americans are already voting. Their futures are on the line. They should have a say in this outcome.

But we know why Republicans are rushing. They’re rushing because they know it’s their last chance to impose a very extreme conservative view on this country.

They’re rushing because they see a clock ticking towards November, when the supreme court will hear arguments on whether 29 million Americans with pre-existing conditions will continue to have access to affordable health care. Rushing to seat Judge Barrett in time, so she can play her role in that case. A case that could strip millions of Americans of healthcare in the middle of a pandemic, at the very moment they need it the most. It’s simply inhumane.

With all eyes on the Senate today as it moves to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court, its worth reminding ourselves that on 3 November there is more than just the presidency at stake. There’s a whole slew of competitive Senate races on the ballot on the same day, which could swing the balance of power away from the Republicans currently pushing through the nomination of the proposed new justice.

Here’s a guide to the crucial battles: US Senate elections – the key races that will determine power in Washington

We’ve got a live feed of Senate proceedings up above in the blog – you may need to refresh the page to get the play button to appear. Here’s a clip of Sen. Chris Murphy from earlier.

Sen. Tim Kaine followed him, and he finished his speech by saying that Republican leaders would not wear masks to cover their noses and mouths and protect themselves and others from the coronavirus, but that the “soulless process” of confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court showed they were willing to “cover their eyes and their ears”.

Oliver Milman writes for us that the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is pretty stark in terms of consequences for the global environment.

The international effort to constrain dangerous global heating will hinge, in large part, on which of the dichotomous approaches of Donald Trump or Joe Biden prevails.

On 4 November, the day after the election, the US will exit the Paris climate agreement, a global pact that has wobbled but not collapsed from nearly four years of disparagement and disengagement under Trump.

Biden has vowed to immediately rejoin the Paris deal. The potential of a second Trump term, however, is foreboding for those whose anxiety has only escalated during the hottest summer ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, with huge wildfires scorching California and swaths of central South America, and extraordinary temperatures baking the Arctic.

“It’s a decision of great consequence, to both the US and the world,” said Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat and key architect of the Paris accords. “The rest of the world is moving to a low-carbon future, but we need to collectively start moving even faster, and the US still has a significant global role to play in marshaling this effort.”

Few countries are on track to fulfill commitments made in Paris five years ago to slash their planet-heating emissions and keep the global temperature rise to “well below” 2C of warming beyond the pre-industrial era. The world has already warmed by about 1C since this time, helping set in motion a cascade of heatwaves, fierce storms and flooding around the planet.

Read more here: Climate at a crossroads as Trump and Biden point in different directions

The summer has been characterised by a series of extreme weather events on both coasts of the US, and that looks set to continue.

Hundreds of thousands of Californians lost power as utilities sought to prevent the chance of their equipment sparking wildfires and the fire-weary state braced for a new bout of dry, windy weather.

More than 1 million people were expected be in the dark Monday during what officials have said could be the strongest wind event in California this year, reports the Associate Press.

It’s the fifth time this year that Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility, has cut power to customers in a bid to reduce the risk that downed or fouled power lines or other equipment could ignite a blaze during bone-dry weather conditions and gusty winds. On Sunday, the utility shut off power to 225,000 customers in Northern California and planned to do the same for another 136,000 customers in a total of 36 counties.

“This event is by far the largest we’ve experienced this year, the most extreme weather,” said Aaron Johnson, the utility’s vice president of wildfire safety and public engagement. “We’re trying to find ways to make the events less difficult.”

On the opposite coast, the threat is not fire, but Tropical Storm Zeta. It is expected to become a hurricane on Monday as it heads toward the eastern end of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and then is likely to move on for a possible landfall on the central Gulf Coast at midweek. Zeta on Sunday became the earliest ever 27th named storm of the Atlantic season.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy has just described himself as “sad and furious” on his way home from the Senate in the early hours of the morning having been part of the Democrats night long occupation of the Senate floor.

He describes as “catastrophic” the Republican plans to invalidate Obamacare in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

Healthcare has been a core issue during the election campaign. Jessica Glenza reports for us in New York:

The United States’ massive, largely private and very expensive health industry has ranked as a top voter concern for years, and helped drive Democrats to victory in the midterm elections of 2018, when the party took control of the House of Representatives.

But over the last six months of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 Americans, Covid-19 eclipsed healthcare as the top issue of the election, though voters like former teacher Ramae Hamrin argue the two are inseparable. Her daughter, an accomplished cross-country runner in college, was diagnosed with Covid-19 and now needs an inhaler.

“I do trust the Democrats more than I trust the Republicans to get anything done on this issue,” said Hamrin. Although, she added: “It’s hard to know who to trust these days.”

Although healthcare reform elicits concern across parties, it’s one in which Democrats hold a huge advantage. Biden has a 20-point lead over Trump on issues ranging from how to lower Americans’ health costs and to how to protect people from loathed insurance industry practices.

“Covid has made us all healthcare voters,” said David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, one of a handful of advocacy groups which does not take money from pharmaceutical companies.

Read more here: ‘The system is broken’: Americans cast their vote for better healthcare

While Democrats have been on the floor in the Senate, minority leader Chuck Schumer has tweeted out what he sees at stake.

Sen. Tim Kaine has just stood up to say that the Amy Coney Barrett hearing shows “just how misplaced the Senate’s priorities are” in the middle of a pandemic. He points out that the Senate hasn’t passed any legislation on coronavirus relief since April. He’s now reading out a list of American coronavirus victims during that period.

Have you liked an #IVoted tweet today?

After Donald Trump reportedly told donors it would be “tough” for Republicans to hold the Senate, and said he could not and did not want to help some senators, party chair Ronna McDaniel insisted the Senate would stay in GOP hands, saying: “I don’t see these senators distancing themselves from the president.”

In fact, as the party faces strong headwinds at the polls, senators including Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Martha McSally of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas have sought to put daylight between themselves and Trump.

Sasse predicted a “Senate bloodbath” and criticised Trump’s views and behaviour. McSally dodged opportunities to express support in a debate. Cornyn sought to portray himself as an independent thinker on policy.

Sasse is a shoo-in for re-election but McSally and Cornyn are in tight races.

“You know I don’t see these senators distancing themselves from the president,” McDaniel insisted on Fox News Sunday, before admitting: “I mean Ben Sasse is an exception, obviously.”

Read the full piece here:

Checking back in on the Democrats’ all-night marathon on the senate floor to protest the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation – speaking now is senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

The Democrats have all been on-message tonight, warning that Barrett’s elevation poses a threat to American health care. On 10 November, just one week after the election, the supreme court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that could strike down Barack Obama’s health care law.

“We’re here because Republicans have got themselves on this train that they cannot stop,” Murphy says. “This effort that has been under way for a decade, to strip away the Affordable Care Act’s protections.

“Two weeks from now, the Republicans will get a little bit closer to what they’ve been asking for for ten years, when this case comes before the supreme court, and Amy Coney Barrett sits on it as the deciding fifth vote to invalidate the Affordable Care Act.

“And why this matters more now... is because it’s unthinkable in ordinary times for 23m people to lose health insurance, or for folks that have a history of heart disease to all of a sudden not be able to buy insurance...

“But in the middle of a pandemic? That is a nightmarish, cataclysmic, dystopian future to wish for. In the middle of a pandemic to take health insurance away from 23m people?”

CSPAN is carrying the speeches live here.

Here’s video of McConnell on the senate floor reveling in the rotten fruit of his own hypocrisy imminent confirmation of judge Amy Coney Barrett as supreme court justice:

With some rebuttal by minority leader Chuck Schumer:

The Republican senate majority, America, is breaking faith with you. Doing the exact opposite of what it promised just four years ago to cement a majority on the supreme court that threatens your fundamental rights. Don’t forget it, America.”

The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.

In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonising and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.

The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.

By contrast the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms, and in that regard has remained similar to centre-right and centre-left parties in western Europe. Their principal difference is the approach to the economy.

The new study, the largest ever of its kind, was carried out by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, using newly developed methods to measure and quantify the health of the world’s democracies at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.

Anna Lührmann, V-Dem’s deputy director, said the Republican transformation had been “certainly the most dramatic shift in an established democracy”.

Read the full piece:

So much orange. The Trumps greeted trick-or-treaters at the White House for Halloween on Sunday.

“The spooky celebration was changed up a bit as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” AP reports. “Guests older than 2 were required to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. The same went for all White House personnel working the event, while any staff giving out candy also wore gloves.”

Americans used to go to drive-in theaters to watch blockbuster films. Now they go to watch Barack Obama.

Campaigning for Biden in south Florida at the weekend, Obama highlighted the 60 Minutes interview with Trump for voters in their vehicles.

“He likes to act tough and talk tough. He thinks scowling and being mean is tough,” Obama said. “But when ‘60 Minutes’ and Lesley Stahl are too tough for you, you ain’t all that tough.”

Here’s more footage from the interview, in which Trump complains that the media goes too easy on Biden:

In a separate interview on the program, Biden is asked about Trump’s accusation that he has “dementia”. Watch how Biden handles the charge:

Does Kamala Harris think Trump is a racist? She doesn’t hedge on this one:

And finally, as the United States sets new records for daily coronavirus cases, here’s Mike Pence pretending that the administration has done a great job in combatting the pandemic:

The Trump campaign effort to win the election by smearing Hunter Biden – never a strategy that seemed like a slam-dunk – was originally supposed to play out in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times reports.

But it appears that as the Journal worked to stand up the story, many people grew impatient. Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani dished the story to the Murdoch tabloid New York Post – after failing to sell it to the Murdoch network Fox News – and the key source in the story, an unknown businessman with past ties to Hunter Biden, started blurting the tale to anyone who would listen.

Meanwhile the Journal grew annoyed that Trump was telling associates that the Journal was about to publish a version of the story, which still hasn’t happened. Read the full tale of the rise and fall of the smear campaign that was supposed to save an election.

Nevada is a state Joe Biden dearly wants to keep in the Democratic column next week. But if you’ve been following the blog of Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada politics journalism, you know the race is a tight one, with the Democratic machine built on the huge restaurant and hospitality unions in Las Vegas hampered this year by a trickle of tourists and the closure of facilities from coronavirus.

Here’s Democratic Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto on the senate floor earlier this evening flaying Republicans for their decision to rush the Barrett nomination. Will they hear back home?

Here again is a link to the interview with Donald Trump published on Sunday by 60 Minutes, an institution in US television news known for editorial balance and seriousness of purpose. Significantly, the program also reaches millions of older voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016 but who appear to be splitting their vote this year between the candidates.

In this clip, via Vox’s Aaron Rupar, Trump whines about the difficulty level of the questions he is being confronted with, after interviewer Lesley Stahl refuses to endorse one of his conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation.

Hello and welcome to our round-the-clock coverage as the 2020 US election enters its final lap. Only eight days to go.

On Sunday, the number of early voters in the election surpassed 58m, the number who voted early in 2016. That means the 2020 election will mark the first time in history that more than half of the overall US vote was cast early.

We’re following news lines this morning from a record number of daily coronavirus cases in the United States, to an outbreak around vice-president Mike Pence, who continues nevertheless to campaign.

The US senate on Monday is expected to confirm judge Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court, marking a third successful nomination for Donald Trump. No president has installed three supreme court justices in one term since the 1980s.

The news program 60 minutes published its version of an interview with Donald Trump that Trump attempted to preempt by publishing video of his own three days ago, complaining that the interviewer, Lesley Stahl, had asked him unfairly difficult questions. We’ll dig into the CBS version this morning.

Welcome and thank you for reading!