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A staffer on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday suggested that Orthodox Catholics, Jews and Muslims should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court because of their “intolerant” beliefs.The comments came during a Twitter conversation between Biden campaign deputy data director Nikitha Rai and Brookings Institute senior fellow Shadi Hamid in which Rai attacked Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic beliefs. A search for Rai's Twitter account now yields a message saying, "This account doesn't exist."Hamid had responded to a tweet that said Barrett was a trustee at a Catholic school that opposed same-sex marriage as homosexual acts are "at odds with Scripture." Hamid replied, “Wait, why is this news? Isn’t this the standard position for any orthodox Catholic?” “Unfortunately yes,” Rai said. When Hamid pointed out that Orthodox Muslims and Jews generally hold the same view, Rai said, “True. I’d heavily prefer views like that not be elevated to SCOTUS, but unfortunately our current culture is relatively intolerant. It will be awhile before those types of beliefs are so taboo that they’re disqualifiers.”> Here’s a @JoeBiden staffer saying that orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism should be made “taboo” and driven from the public sphere. Beneath all the talk of “interfaith” and “pluralism,” this is what they really believe. pic.twitter.com/PrN8S1qaLG> > -- Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) September 29, 2020The former vice president often touts his Catholic faith on the campaign trail, though critics note that some of Biden’s positions — such as his support for abortion and same-sex marriage — stand in opposition to Catholic teachings.Barrett’s faith has been widely scrutinized in the media as “extreme” and cult-like since the president announced he would nominate the 48-year-old Notre Dame professor to fill the vacancy on the Court left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Barrett, a former clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has been attacked for her faith for years now, beginning with her 2017 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats questioned whether her Catholicism should disqualify her from being a judge.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said at the time.“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein added. “And that’s of concern.”
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The bill, which is unlikely to pass the GOP-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation. House Democrats introduced a new $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill aimed at breaking the impasse with Republicans on how to get financial assistance to Americans before the November election. The package, which is unlikely to pass the Republican-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation.
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Five weeks out from the 2020 presidential election, significant media attention is being given to the small possibility that President Donald Trump could again pull off a narrow Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote, or that even an Electoral College tie could push the election to the House. Those scenarios, though, are mainly making headlines because they're interesting fodder for the pundit class. All the data point to a big blowout victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.The major recent polls (Economist/YouGov: Biden +7, CNBC: Biden +9, Quinnipiac: Biden +10, NYT: Biden +8) show Biden with a truly commanding lead nationally. Equally important is how Biden leads. The 2016 election was always a much closer and more dynamic race, Trump was facing a much more unpopular opponent, and a much larger number of voters were undecided. None of those are the case this time.This year we have experienced a global pandemic which has so far killed over 200,000 Americans, a massive economic disruption, multiple Trump administration scandals, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yet Biden's large lead over Trump is basically identical to what it was at the end of last year. There is still the possibility that some new development — even bigger than those listed above — could shift the dynamics of the race, but that seems very unlikely.Biden also polls much better than Hillary Clinton ever did in the late stages of the 2016 election cycle — largely because there are significantly fewer undecided and third-party voters. In the RealClearPolitics polling average of the four-way race, Clinton's share of the vote never went over 46.2 percent while, by comparison, Biden has been bouncing right around 50 percent for the past few months with 7 percent third-party/undecided. To realistically win, Trump would need to pick up almost all the undecided voters and even flip some Biden voters.In 2016, both candidates were unpopular. The final YouGov poll found Clinton with a favorable rating of 43 percent and 56 percent unfavorable, compared to Trump's rating of 39 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable. This gave the outsider Trump a chance to win over voters who disliked both candidates. By comparison, right now Biden's favorability numbers are 45 percent to 47 percent compared to Trump at 42 percent favorable and 53 unfavorable. In addition, 52 percent of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled his job as president, while 57 percent of voters are upset or dissatisfied with Trump. Trump effectively needs to win over voters who dislike him, disapprove of his job performance, and are simply ambivalent about Biden.To be sure, in 2016, the very limited polling in certain critical swing states was off in important ways, and the final national polling undercounted Trump's support by roughly 1-2 points. Maybe there is another systematic undercounting of Trump's support in the polling this year, and maybe late-breaking events move voters towards him, and maybe a large share of voters who disapprove of Trump's job performance can be persuaded to vote against Biden — but that is a lot of maybes.It is just as likely that Biden will outperform his already big lead. Elections tend to be referendums on incumbents, which is particularly true this year. Trump's polling numbers in head-to-head matchups with Biden have closely mirrored his overall job approval numbers. At the same time, Trump's job approval has been stuck in the low 40s effectively his entire time in office. Almost unique among modern presidents, he has never appealed to the majority of the country and has basically never tried. There really is no precedent for a chronically unpopular president who never tried to reach out beyond his base.If the final election results follow this job approval pattern, Biden wins in a landslide even larger than his current polling lead. Winning by such a large margin would swamp Trump's modest advantage in the Electoral College.More stories from theweek.com Trump's ear piece conspiracy is a perennial rehash 'Sully' Sullenberger savages Trump's 'lethal lies and incompetence' in new Lincoln Project ad Let's be real: Biden is cruising to victory
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WHERE AND WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH? It's a mountainous, forested patch of land that sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora.
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Maybe there's some irony in a British immigrant preaching pro-democracy revolution in America, but these are strange times. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight, "was distressing enough" before President Trump rushed to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by "a liberal icon with an extremely conservative justice who's being called 'the female Antonin Scalia,'" Amy Coney Barrett, 48."Look, this has been a very dark week for a lot of people," Oliver said. "The Supreme Court is about to lurch to the right for the foreseeable future. And if things seem hopeless right now, it's because -- to be completely honest -- they basically are.""The fact is, when Barrett is confirmed, a president who lost the popular vote will have picked a quarter of the federal judiciary and a third of the Supreme Court, and his choices will have been rubber-stamped by a Senate Republican majority representing 15 million fewer people than the Democratic minority," Oliver said. "And if that sounds absurd to you, it's because it clearly is, especially when those courts have allowed Republicans to set wildly unpopular policy that wouldn't actually pass muster with voters." So what can be done?If the Democrats manage to win the White House and Congress, they need to go "bold" and enact "significant structural change," Oliver said. That's risky -- "expanding the court is a bit like doing yoga naked -- one way to dampen your enthusiasm for the idea is to picture Donald Trump doing it, too," he said -- but "it is past time for big change." Eliminating the Electoral College and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, he argued, "would actually make our system more democratic.""The unavoidable truth here is that the system is already rigged, and its rigged in a way that has allowed a party without popular support to drastically reshape an entire branch of government for the foreseeable future by appealing almost exclusively to white voters in some of the least populous regions of the country," Oliver said. "That is not a mandate, and it's not democracy, it's a f---ing travesty. We're at the end of a generational battle, and the heartbreaking thing is, we lost.""But the next battle has to start right now," he said, and "we must be willing to fight tirelessly and with every tool and tactic at our disposal." Watch below. More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes
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It was the sort of kind, grandfatherly gesture that brings a bit of light and joy to these dark, worrying times. When David Attenborough gave an ancient shark’s tooth to Prince George at the weekend, the little boy’s face lit up with delight. The seven-year-old was thrilled to be told the tooth once belonged to a megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark that could grow to a length of more than 50ft. He was given the tooth when Sir David attended a private viewing of his latest documentary, A Life On Our Planet, with members of the royal family. As any parent knows, tantrums and tears await anyone who has the temerity to try to take back such a precious gift. But that’s exactly what Malta apparently plans to do.
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The bill, which is unlikely to pass the GOP-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation. House Democrats introduced a new $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill aimed at breaking the impasse with Republicans on how to get financial assistance to Americans before the November election. The package, which is unlikely to pass the Republican-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation.
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Taiwan said on Monday the European Union had stepped in to help after a global alliance of mayors stopped referring to Taiwanese cities as part of China, in a rare win for the island amid growing Chinese pressure. China has ramped up efforts to get international groups and companies to refer on their websites and in official documents to democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as being part of China, to the ire of Taiwan's government and many of its people. Over the weekend, Taiwan officials expressed anger after the Brussels-based Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy began listing on its website its six Taiwan member cites as belonging to China.
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President Trump ignored every pressing topic Monday as he welcomed one of his favorite things to the White House.The New York Times dropped a bombshell report Sunday evening revealing Trump leveraged business losses to avoid paying taxes for years, as well as using other dubious financial strategies to lower his tax bills. Trump denied the report in a Sunday press conference, and on Monday, avoided questions about his tax returns altogether as he praised an electric pick-up truck.The White House unexpectedly called reporters to the South Lawn on Monday, where they found Trump inspecting a Lordstown Motors 2021 electric pick-up truck. "We've all done a good job," Trump said after praising the truck's manufacturers, and then, out of nowhere, said "it's hotter now than it was before, and that's something really different." But before he could get too close to acknowledging fossil fuels' role in warming the Earth, he pivoted to call the truck "an incredible piece of science" and implied electrification is sure to "happen with more and more trucks and cars." He then walked away to reporters shouting "can you say anything about the tax returns?" and "when are you going to release them?"> MOMENTS AGO: President Trump leaves truck event, not answering as reporter yells: "Can you say anything about the TAX RETURNS, Mr. President? When are you going to RELEASE THEM?" pic.twitter.com/b1ZNJ5rLRa> > — The Hill (@thehill) September 28, 2020It's far from the first time Trump has brought trucks to the White House, though they're usually a bit bigger than this one. And as The Washington Post has reported, it's something his advisers will do to cheer the president up when he's "inconsolable."More stories from theweek.com 'Sully' Sullenberger savages Trump's 'lethal lies and incompetence' in new Lincoln Project ad Joe Biden releases 2019 tax returns in 'pre-debate move' amid Trump revelations Trump literally can't afford to lose the election
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A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of northern California's Napa Valley wine country to spread across nearly 2,000 acres (809 hectares), forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said. Fire crews were out in force, scrambling to fend off flames threatening neighborhoods and vineyards at the northern end of the famed wine-growing valley and surrounding hillsides, about 75 miles (120 km) north of San Francisco. The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn near Calistoga and raced toward the adjacent communities of Deer Park and St. Helena, with flames reaching within a mile of the Adventist Health St. Helena hospital.
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Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday accepted an appeal by the family of slain American journalist Daniel Pearl seeking to keep a British-born Pakistani man on death row over the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter. The court delayed until next week hearing the appeal over the lower-court acquittal of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who had been on death row since his conviction in 2002 over Pearl's killing. The Supreme Court ordered Sheikh to remain in custody but Faisal Siddiqi, the lawyer for Pearl's family, told The Associated Press on Monday the court will decide next week whether Sheikh will remain imprisoned during the course of the appeal, which could be years.
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It was the sort of kind, grandfatherly gesture that brings a bit of light and joy to these dark, worrying times. When David Attenborough gave an ancient shark’s tooth to Prince George at the weekend, the little boy’s face lit up with delight. The seven-year-old was thrilled to be told the tooth once belonged to a megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark that could grow to a length of more than 50ft. He was given the tooth when Sir David attended a private viewing of his latest documentary, A Life On Our Planet, with members of the royal family. As any parent knows, tantrums and tears await anyone who has the temerity to try to take back such a precious gift. But that’s exactly what Malta apparently plans to do.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci is calling for the United States to "double down" on public health measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic and expressing concern over Florida letting bars and restaurants fully reopen.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke to Good Morning America on Monday after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced last week he would be lifting restrictions on bars and restaurants and allowing them to operate at 100 percent capacity."That is very concerning to me," Fauci told GMA. "We have always said that ... that is something we really need to be careful about, because when you're dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you're really asking for trouble."Fauci went on to say that "now's the time" to "double down" on "common sense" public health measures, while the U.S. is reporting an average of about 40,000 COVID-19 cases every day. Fauci had previously stressed the need to get the daily number of cases in the U.S. down to 10,000 a day by September."We're not in a good place with regard to what I had said back then," Fauci said on Monday. "There are states that are starting to show [an] uptick in cases, and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states. And, I hope not, but we very well might start seeing increases in deaths." > FULL INTERVIEW: https://t.co/RBF8en28xI> > -- Good Morning America (@GMA) September 28, 2020More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes
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The positivity rate has risen to 26% in South Dakota, up from 17% the previous week, according to the analysis using testing data from The COVID Tracking Project. The World Health Organization considers rates above 5% concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered. Several states such as New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine have positive test rates of less than 1%.
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After weeks and months of President Donald Trump characterizing former Vice President Joe Biden as an senile old man who can’t string two sentences together, his campaign has finally realized that they should start raising expectations for his performance at the first debate this Tuesday night.Apparently, Donald Trump Jr. didn’t get the memo.The president’s eldest son kicked off his Fox & Friends appearance by attacking CNN’s Jake Tapper for not pressing Jill Biden harder on her husband’s history of making “gaffes” during an interview on State of the Union Sunday. “Once a Democrat operative, all of it—always a Democrat operative,” he said, unconvincingly.“Joe Biden can’t remember where he is 50 percent of the time,” Trump Jr. declared. “He forgets the office that he’s running for.” He added, with no sense of irony, “If Donald Trump made one Joe Biden-type error, once, it would be all over! Joe does it every day.”“So that’s why he’s in debate prep,” he continued, mocking his father’s opponent for doing his homework. “He can’t be on the campaign trail because he needs to be able to perform for two hours, despite having done this for 50 years.”Is Trump or Biden More Likely to Keel Over on Debate Night?But he wasn’t done. He called Biden “the guy who’s most inept in terms of speaking, in terms of ability” and telling the Fox hosts, “You would think that after half a century in Washington, D.C., Ainsley, you’d be able to remember your platform, you’d be able to remember a couple talking points and not need a TelePrompter. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”In recent weeks, Trump’s top campaign staff have been doing whatever they can to undo the president’s attempts to lower expectations for Biden’s performance. “Joe Biden is not formidable anywhere else but he is formidable on the debate stage,” campaign manager Bill Stepien told NBC News this month.Communications director Tim Murtaugh went even further, telling Fox News, “Biden spent decades skillfully debating in the Senate, won two debates while running for vice president and just came through 11 debates in Democratic primaries where he defeated two dozen challengers. Joe Biden is a master debater who knows what he is doing.”And yet, like his father, Donald Trump Jr. seems unable to help himself from giving Biden an exceedingly low bar to overcome. At least he didn’t accuse him or anyone else from his family of being on drugs this time.Later in his Fox & Friends interview, Trump Jr. actually seemed to realize what he had done, backtracking a bit to claim, “Joe Biden should be decent in the debate, he’s been doing it for half a century. I’m worried about Joe Biden the other 22 hours of the day where he can’t seem to leave the basement.”The message seemed to be, don’t let a successful debate performance fool you.Jimmy Kimmel on Donald Trump Jr.’s Attempts to ‘Cancel’ Him and Hosting the Virtual EmmysRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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The remains of 117 Chinese soldiers who died in the 1950-53 Korean War were returned to China on Sunday in an annual repatriation delayed this year by the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea handed over the remains at a ceremony at Incheon airport outside Seoul, and a Chinese military transport plane flew them to Shenyang, a northeastern Chinese city near the North Korean border. Chinese soldiers fought on the North Korean side against US-led forces in the South during the war on the Korean Peninsula. Most of the 117 remains were found in the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. It was the seventh annual repatriation, and the largest since the 437 returned in the first one in 2014. In all, the remains of 716 Chinese soldiers have been sent back. This year's return, originally planned for the spring, was postponed for several months because of the spread of Covid-19.
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Five weeks out from the 2020 presidential election, significant media attention is being given to the small possibility that President Donald Trump could again pull off a narrow Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote, or that even an Electoral College tie could push the election to the House. Those scenarios, though, are mainly making headlines because they're interesting fodder for the pundit class. All the data point to a big blowout victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.The major recent polls (Economist/YouGov: Biden +7, CNBC: Biden +9, Quinnipiac: Biden +10, NYT: Biden +8) show Biden with a truly commanding lead nationally. Equally important is how Biden leads. The 2016 election was always a much closer and more dynamic race, Trump was facing a much more unpopular opponent, and a much larger number of voters were undecided. None of those are the case this time.This year we have experienced a global pandemic which has so far killed over 200,000 Americans, a massive economic disruption, multiple Trump administration scandals, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yet Biden's large lead over Trump is basically identical to what it was at the end of last year. There is still the possibility that some new development — even bigger than those listed above — could shift the dynamics of the race, but that seems very unlikely.Biden also polls much better than Hillary Clinton ever did in the late stages of the 2016 election cycle — largely because there are significantly fewer undecided and third-party voters. In the RealClearPolitics polling average of the four-way race, Clinton's share of the vote never went over 46.2 percent while, by comparison, Biden has been bouncing right around 50 percent for the past few months with 7 percent third-party/undecided. To realistically win, Trump would need to pick up almost all the undecided voters and even flip some Biden voters.In 2016, both candidates were unpopular. The final YouGov poll found Clinton with a favorable rating of 43 percent and 56 percent unfavorable, compared to Trump's rating of 39 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable. This gave the outsider Trump a chance to win over voters who disliked both candidates. By comparison, right now Biden's favorability numbers are 45 percent to 47 percent compared to Trump at 42 percent favorable and 53 unfavorable. In addition, 52 percent of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled his job as president, while 57 percent of voters are upset or dissatisfied with Trump. Trump effectively needs to win over voters who dislike him, disapprove of his job performance, and are simply ambivalent about Biden.To be sure, in 2016, the very limited polling in certain critical swing states was off in important ways, and the final national polling undercounted Trump's support by roughly 1-2 points. Maybe there is another systematic undercounting of Trump's support in the polling this year, and maybe late-breaking events move voters towards him, and maybe a large share of voters who disapprove of Trump's job performance can be persuaded to vote against Biden — but that is a lot of maybes.It is just as likely that Biden will outperform his already big lead. Elections tend to be referendums on incumbents, which is particularly true this year. Trump's polling numbers in head-to-head matchups with Biden have closely mirrored his overall job approval numbers. At the same time, Trump's job approval has been stuck in the low 40s effectively his entire time in office. Almost unique among modern presidents, he has never appealed to the majority of the country and has basically never tried. There really is no precedent for a chronically unpopular president who never tried to reach out beyond his base.If the final election results follow this job approval pattern, Biden wins in a landslide even larger than his current polling lead. Winning by such a large margin would swamp Trump's modest advantage in the Electoral College.More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes
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Taiwan said on Monday the European Union had stepped in to help after a global alliance of mayors stopped referring to Taiwanese cities as part of China, in a rare win for the island amid growing Chinese pressure. China has ramped up efforts to get international groups and companies to refer on their websites and in official documents to democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as being part of China, to the ire of Taiwan's government and many of its people. Over the weekend, Taiwan officials expressed anger after the Brussels-based Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy began listing on its website its six Taiwan member cites as belonging to China.
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South Korea said Saturday it will request North Korea to further investigate the killing of a South Korean government official who was shot by North Korean troops after being found adrift near the rivals’ disputed sea boundary while apparently trying to defect. Seoul could also possibly call for a joint investigation into Tuesday’s shooting, which sparked outrage in the South and drew a rare apology from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Kim was quoted as saying he was “very sorry” over what he described as an “unexpected, unfortunate incident" in a message sent by Pyongyang's United Front Department, a North Korean government agency in charge of inter-Korean relations.
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