Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with the United States Conference of Mayors in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with the United States Conference of Mayors in Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Julia Preston of the Marshall Project has this for us today, on the huge task facing Joe Biden to undo four years of cruel immigration policy descisions by the Donald Trump administration. She writes:
In one beating, the woman from El Salvador told the immigration judge, her boyfriend’s punches disfigured her jaw and knocked out two front teeth. After raping her, he forced her to have his name tattooed in jagged letters on her back, boasting that he was marking her with his brand.
The judge seemed moved by her testimony. In the hearing in September in the Baltimore immigration court, he found that the woman’s terror of going back to her country, where she said the boyfriend was lying in wait, was credible. But he swiftly denied her asylum claim, saying the danger she faced did not fit any definition of persecution under current interpretations of American law.
The outcome for the woman, identified in her confidential asylum case as L M, was the result of a decision in 2018 by President Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Setting aside two decades of precedent, Sessions ruled that domestic violence and most gang violence could not be the basis for asylum.
As president-elect Joe Biden moves deliberately to transition towards the White House, even while Trump refuses to accept defeat, he has laid out a fast-paced agenda to unwind Trump’s harsh immigration policies. But even if Biden quickly orders a final end to family separations and re-opens the border for asylum-seekers, his plans could stall without action at the justice department, which holds extensive power over the immigration system.
To carry out Biden’s proposals, his attorney general will have to reverse decisions by Sessions and Attorney General William Barr that sharply limited asylum, particularly for people like L M who are fleeing from Central America. Biden’s justice officials will have to contend with an immigration appeals court loaded by Barr with conservative judges known for denying asylum.
Just a quick snap from Associated Press here that Rep. Bryan Steil has become the latest Republican lawmaker to test positive for Covid-19. He represents Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district.
The congressman said he began experiencing mild symptoms over the weekend and contacted his health care provider while at home in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Rep. Bryan Steil speaking at a campaign rally prior to the election. Photograph: Morry Gash/AP
Steil said he spent all of last week working in Washington, DC.
“Following CDC guidelines, I am immediately quarantining and will continue serving the people of Southeast Wisconsin from my home in Janesville,” he said.
Axios this morning are reporting that one of Trump’s close allies – Blackstone chairman, CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman – has said that the president has lost the election. They write:
It’s all theatrics now. Even if Trump doesn’t move on fast, you can. Schwarzman saidin a statement to Axios that Biden won and it’s time to move on. “I’m a fan of good process. In my comments three days after the election, I was trying to be a voice of reason and express why it’s in the national interest to have all Americans believe the election is being resolved correctly. But the outcome is very certain today, and the country should move on.
“I supported President Trump and the strong economic path he built. Like many in the business community, I am ready to help President-elect Biden and his team as they confront the significant challenges of rebuilding our post-COVID economy.”
This will be the first time there’s been a Senate runoff in Georgia since 2008. According to Kantar/CMAG data, nearly $245 million will be spent on the runoffs on TV and radio ads since election day by candidates and outside groups. The candidate spending the most is Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff with more than $43 million, followed by Republican Kelly Loeffler with $41 million. Her opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock has spent $36.9m with David Perdue spending $28.8 million.
Joe Biden’s projected win in Georgia was the first time the state flipped blue in a presidential contest since the state voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and gave Democrats in the state a jolt of enthusiasm ahead of the January runoffs. But it also served as a siren for state Republicans, who will now have to keep their base motivated without Trump at the top of the ticket. Although Trump has not yet conceded the election, most Republicans recognize that they will need to win at least one of the Georgia Senate races to act as a check upon the Biden administration.
In a statement to CBS News, Georgia Republican Party spokesperson Abigail Sigler said the state party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee were working with the Perdue and Loeffler campaigns to build a “massive field operation.”
“We are working around the clock to ensure voters understand they have a clear choice: they can elect radical liberals who will be rubber stamps for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer’s agenda or they can send two conservative outsiders to fight for their Georgia values,” Sigler said.
If you fancy something to get your ears around, then I can highly recommend today’s Today in Focus podcast.
Black and Latino voters overwhelmingly favoured the Democrats in the 2020 US election. Without their huge margins in key states, Joe Biden could not have won, Gary Younge tells host Anushka Asthana. By 2045, white voters will be in the minority. These changing demographics are a concern for the Republican party. In 2013, just a year after turnout rates for black voters surpassed those for white voters for the first time, the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which affected poor, young and minority voters.
It’s important to remember, Gary tells Anushka, that the US was a slave state for more than 200 years; and an apartheid state, after the abolition of slavery, for another century. It has only been a non-racial democracy for 55 years. And that now hangs in the balance. If Biden does not produce something transformative, the disillusionment among voters may grow and people may once again look for someone who can disrupt the status quo, which is how Donald Trump won in 2016.
By the way, whoever Joe Biden ends up announcing in his cabinet this week, I think we can be fairly certain it isn’t going to be this fantasy line-up from Fox News.
Trump planning to veto defense bill over proposals to remove Confederate names from bases – reports
While Donald Trump may be heading slowly and reluctantly to the White House door marked ‘one-term president exit’, he’s still in charge until 20 January, and NBC News are reporting on one of the things he is threatening to do before then – veto the defense bill over proposals to rename military bases that currently honor those who fought against the United States army as Confederates.
President Donald Trump is threatening to veto legislation to fund the military as one of his final acts in office unless a widely supported, bipartisan provision to rename military bases honoring Confederate military leaders is removed, according to White House, defense and congressional sources.
Trump’s stance has put in doubt legislation that had been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate. While some Republicans are now shifting their positions to align with Trump, Democrats are refusing to budge on the agreed-to amendment, threatening passage of the legislation.
The effort to change the names of military bases honoring Confederate military leaders has been a target for Trump for months. It was among the disagreements he had with his former defense secretary Mark Esper, who was quietly working with Congress to codify the renaming of bases in the bill before Trump fired him this month.
Both chambers overwhelmingly passed a provision that would change the names of Confederate-named bases as part of their defense bills. But the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, James Inhofe, indicated that he’s gotten the message from Trump, and he called it a “big issue” of contention in negotiations with Democrats.
“My experience dealing with Covid-19 in South Dakota is one of failed leadership. Our governor has made it clear it’s up to the people, so we have to come up with creative ideas to help stop the spread.”
Those are the words of physician Nancy Babbitt, lamenting the heightened risks vulnerable residents are facing amid state governor Kristi Noem’s determinedly hands-off pandemic policy – including being the only state without a mask mandate to curb infection. Talli Nauman has been in Rapid City, South Dakota, for us.
South Dakota has an alarming positivity rate of almost 60% – nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected – second only in the US to neighboring Wyoming.
More than 66,000 South Dakotans have contracted the disease and at least 644 have died, a number likely to rise as hospitals reach breaking point.
The South Dakota Medical Association has issued a statement in support of a mask mandate. The state’s largest city of Sioux Falls put one into effect, and the second largest, Rapid City, is awaiting a final council vote.
With USA Today newspaper headlines reporting earlier this month that South and North Dakota are in a situation “as bad as it gets anywhere in the world for Covid-19”, Noem held her first pandemic media availability in three months, firing back: “That is absolutely false” and citing different data sources.
Several news outlets this morning are reporting case studies of families that have recently held large gatherings that have turned into Covid-spreading events. It’s a real concern in the run-up to Thanksgiving. For the Washington Post today, the case study is Enriqueta Aragonez:
Reclined on a hospital bed in Arlington, Texas, with plastic tubes snaking from her nose and pneumonia in both of her lungs, the 57-year-old had a message for everyone doubting the need for covid-19 restrictions.
“I went to my nephew’s house and loved seeing my family but now, I’m fighting against covid-19,” Aragonez said in a video message. “Please protect yourself. It’s real.”
Aragonez is one of 15 family members who contracted the coronavirus after a small indoor birthday celebration earlier this month where no one wore masks. Weeks later, in an emotional video shared by the City of Arlington, the family is begging others to avoid gathering with anyone outside their immediate household.
“Of course we regret getting together but we all have in mind that this could be a lesson for all of us,” Alexa Aragonez, Enriqueta’s daughter, told the Washington Post on Sunday. “One moment of carelessness has cost us a month of peace, has cost us sleep, has cost us laughs, has cost us a lot of money.”
Doctors, nurses, infectious disease experts and hospital leaders have united in warning Americans against traveling or gathering in large groups for Thanksgiving, a US holiday traditionally marked by bringing extended family and friends around a dinner table.
Experts and frontline workers are fearful such events will cause an explosion of new Covid-19 cases, which could overburden hospitals struggling to recruit nurses amid an “exponential” rise in cases.
“Looking at the landscape right now and the number of people who are still set on having larger, multi-household, in-person Thanksgiving dinners, one can only assume that the current trend of new Covid cases will continue to increase,” said Dr Iahn Gonsenhauser, chief quality and patient safety officer at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.
If people move forward with such Thanksgiving plans, Gonsenhauser anticipates it would extend the public health crisis “to the point of requiring strict lockdowns just in time for the Christmas holiday”. Several experts said they had canceled plans and limited their own celebrations strictly to members of their own household.
“In the strongest possible terms, we urge you to celebrate responsibly,” the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and American Nurses Association said in an open letter to the American public. The letter urged Americans to have “scaled-back” celebrations, and to wear masks, wash hands and social distance.
“We must protect the doctors, nurses and other caregivers who have tirelessly battled this virus for months,” the letter said. “You can do your part to ensure they can continue to care for you and your loved ones.”
