On Tuesday, The Washington Postreported that voters are casting early ballots in numbers on track to set a historic record — including in some critical battleground states.
"Early-voting counts suggest a record level of civic participation before Election Day. The tens of millions of ballots already cast show highly enthusiastic voters are making sure their votes are counted amid a pandemic," said the report.
15.8 million people in battleground states have already voted, and in some states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, more people have voted early so far than did in the entire early voting period of 2016. In North Carolina, meanwhile, 2 million ballots have been cast — more than double the same amount at this point in 2016.
Part of this is being driven by the expansion of mail-in voting, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
"More voters than ever before can vote by mail this election," said the report. "While some western states have long conducted their elections by mail, others, such as New Hampshire, are allowing all voters to cast ballots by mail for the first time. Several key states — such as Wisconsin Arizona, and Iowa — greatly expanded mail-in voting, bringing to 12 the number of states that now mail absentee applications to everyone registered."
"Despite weeks of campaigning and news still to come, the election is actually well underway," concluded the report. "A large share of Americans have not just made up their minds — they have sealed in their vote."
On Tuesday, The Daily Beast's Will Sommer reported that Austin Steinbart — a QAnon activist controversial even within the pro-Trump conspiracy world — plans to act as his own attorney in an upcoming federal criminal case.
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The QAnon conspiracy theory — which has been listed as a potential domestic terror threat by national security officials — holds that President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a Democratic Party-controlled ring of pedophiles who consume children in Satanic cannibalism rituals. Steinbart refers to himself under the alias "Baby Q" and claims he is the original government insider who created the movement, time traveling from the future.
Steinbart was arrested by the FBI in April after he uploaded footage of himself at a mental health clinic in Los Angeles, gaining unauthorized access to what appeared to be the brain scans of NFL players. He was originally released on pretrial leave, but was arrested again last month after being caught with a "Whizzinator" — an artificial plastic penis used to smuggle clean urine to beat drug tests.
"During a court hearing on Tuesday, Steinbart admitted to smoking marijuana but sidestepped the Whizzinator issue. Now his release has been revoked, and he’ll stay in jail pending trial," reported Sommer at the time. "The most immediate casualty of Steinbart’s Whizzinator misadventure appears to be the documentary about him. This week, the documentary’s creators said they would have to put the film on hold, both because Steinbart is in jail and because people keep making fun of the Whizzinator."
On Tuesday, following reports that President Donald Trump stormed out of a "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl for an unknown reason, the president tweeted that he is considering releasing footage ahead of CBS, to prevent reporters from spinning the "FAKE and BIASED" interview.
Commenters on social media laughed at the president for telegraphing his apparent fear over the content of the exchange.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that he is "considering" releasing footage from his "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl ahead of its broadcast time, "for the sake of accuracy in reporting."
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Reports indicate that the president stormed out of the middle of the interview. It is unclear what Stahl asked him that prompted his anger.
Host and progressive paragon Keith Olbermann has been issuing "worst person in the world" videos in which he makes a new case each week that President Donald Trump is the worst person and why.
He began by citing that COVID-19 is continuing to surge, with the astounding number of just over a 30 percent increase in the past two weeks. In Texas, hospitalizations are up 35 percent in as many weeks. Even the first lady can't get over her symptoms of the virus
"We could be just a month -- perhaps just days -- away from the exact same nightmarish, healthcare scenes and draconian closures and even lockdowns that snuck up on the proactively stupid, the psychotically self-absorbed, and the criminally negligent murders -- you know, on Donald Trump," he explained.
Trump is tired of the virus. Telling his staff on a staff-wide call that people don't care about the virus anymore. He even went so far as to complain about the debate topics saying that no one cares about Dr. Anthony Fauci anymore.
Trump even called those who report on the COVID-19 crisis "dumb bastards."
"And finally, the ultimate insult against Joe Biden, in Trump's mind, Trump says, 'He wants to listen to Dr. Fauci.' His dumb bastards in the crowd made a noise that I want to call mooing, but I don't want to be insulting to the cows," said Olbermann.
He recalled an old episode of "The Twilight Zone" where the earth has been decimated and there are few survivors who are listening to the advice of an old man in a cave. He tells them what is safe to eat. There's a newcomer to the camp who says that there is a warehouse full of canned goods they could be eating, but the man in the cave tells him that it is contaminated. The newcomer leads the people to the cave to break in and discover that the old man is a computer. They destroy the computer, gorge themselves on the canned goods and the next morning they're all dead. Olbermann said Trump is the guy breaking the computer.
The new angle of saying he's tired of it, doesn't want to talk about it and attacking Fauci as an idiot. Olbermann said that if this is what we'll see for the next several months or perhaps even years, then Trump has no business being in elected office.
Trump wants to turn a corner on COVID-19, Olbermann explained, he just wants to then turn it off another cliff.
In front of a TV audience on Oct. 15, President Donald Trump declared that he knew “nothing about” QAnon, before correcting himself to say: “I do know they are very much against pedophilia.”
What he didn’t do was disavow what has been referred to as a “collective delusion.” Part of that could be down to QAnon followers holding up Trump as some sort of savior – someone playing four-dimensional chess against shadowy political insiders and power players known as the “Deep State.”
But that is only part of what Anons – followers of QAnon – believe. What Trump didn’t mention is the atrocious claims that underlie this supposed chess match, and the demonic imagery and language that are used in the course of the conspiracy.
The QAnon conspiracy theory started with an anonymous 4chan post in October 2017. The author, who later signed his or her posts as “Q”, remains unknown. Since then Q has posted anonymous messages, known as Qdrops, on 8chan and now 8kun – on both online message and image boards.
The conspiracy claims that deep-state politicians and the “Hollywood elite” are involved in a large child abduction network that harvests the chemical compound adrenochrome — which is obtained from the oxidation of adrenaline — from sexually abused children subjected to satanic rituals.
Anons say that adrenochrome is consumed by some Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites for its psychedelic and anti-aging effects and is more potent when harvested from a frightened victim. Trump, they believe, is planning a day of reckoning that will see the arrest, conviction and even execution of dozens of current and former government officials for their involvement in child sex trafficking.
In analyzing the Qdrops, I have noted a discourse of evil woven throughout Q’s nearly 5,000 messages. Peppering the Qdrops are claims like “many in our government worship Satan.” According to Anons, Trump is engaged in a battle of cosmic significance between the “children of light” and the “children of darkness” and is working to dismantle pedophile networks that are abducting children for satanic rites.
Protesters at a rally in Minnesota. QAnon supporters believe the chemical compound adrenochrome is being harvested from abused children.
In using such language and imagery, Q does not portray perceived political adversaries as merely having a difference of opinion, but as being downright evil.
For example, in an Aug. 10, 2018, Qdrop titled “Many in Power Worship the Devil,” Q states: “PURE EVIL. HOW MANY IN WASHINGTON AND THOSE AROUND THE WORLD (IN POWER) WORSHIP THE DEVIL?”
On Aug. 26, 2020, Q posted an image suggesting that the 2020 Democratic National Convention logo resembled a Satanic Baphomet pentagram, which incorporates a goat’s head and a five-pointed star. Accompanying text asserts that one party – Republicans – discusses God while the other party – Democrats – discusses darkness.
Such dialogue rises beyond the level of us versus them. Instead, for Q and Anons it elevates the conspiracy to a matter of cosmic good versus monstrous evil.
This, I believe, is of grave concern. Presenting opponents as monstrously evil dehumanizes them. Through that process, Anons may see themselves as would-be monster-killers ready to use violence to remove the evil.
Remembering the past
This process of using the language of evil to dehumanize a perceived enemy is nothing new. It was seen in conspiracies such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, a fictional document first published in Russia in the early 1900s, link a satanic Jewish cabal to the Antichrist.
Examining past rhetoric targeting Jews reveals how such a discourse lubricates the machinery of violence – Hitler called the Protocols “immensely instructive.”
Jewish communities faced the blood libel — the idea that Jews kidnapped children for blood sacrifices — for centuries before it resurfaced in the Protocols. In the Middle Ages this was driven by a fear of Jewish magicians kidnapping and stabbing children for evil rituals. The blood produced from these rites was rumored to be ritually consumed as drink or mixed into matzo. It was a demonic fantasy not based in any reality.
Joel Finkelstein, of the anti-hate watchdog the Network Contagion Research Institute has noted that the QAnon conspiracy is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. Indeed, renowned genocide scholar Gregory Stantonwarned in an article in September that QAnon’s demonic fantasy was “a rebranded version of the Protocols” and noted that the conspiracy was gaining traction in neo-Nazi circles.
‘Satanic Panic’
For those who remember the “satanic panic” of the 1980s, these Anon narratives will sound hauntingly familiar. The satanic panic was based on a series of rumors spread by concerned parents and authority figures, ranging from therapists to law enforcement agencies, convinced that a demonic cabal had infiltrated society to its highest levels. Organizations set up to counter this perceived threat, like Believe the Children, argued that children were most at risk in day care centers run by secret satanists. Prosecutors accepted, with apparent earnest seriousness, the claims being made about child sexual abuse, secret tunnels, and satanic rituals at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. Similar sensational charges were brought against the Fells Acres Day School and the Wee Care Nursery School. Charges were eventually dropped or reversed in many of these cases.
As the unjust prosecutions demonstrate, the satanic panic damaged the reputations and livelihoods of innocent people.
It is tempting to dismiss QAnon as too small and fringe to lead to the violence associated with prior satanic panics. However, the emerging influence of Q is evident. It is seen not only in the growing number of supporters – QAnon Facebook pages alone boast 3 million followers – but also in Washington with a president who declines to disavow the conspiracy and a Republican QAnon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, looking set to head to Congress in November.
The size of the QAnon community is difficult to estimate. It is, by no means, mainstream. But past experience has shown us that when a minority drapes its cause in a cosmic discourse of good versus evil, atrocities can follow.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that a federal judge in California has voided a settlement between the Department of Education and student loan borrowers, accusing Secretary Betsy DeVos of sabotaging the agreement by denying thousands of claims without legitimate cause.
"The class-action settlement, which was reached earlier this year and received preliminary approval from the court, was meant to force the Education Department to move faster on final decisions for roughly 160,000 of the backlogged requests for loan forgiveness, known as 'borrower defense' claims. Some of the claims have languished at the department for years," reported Michael Stratford.
According to the report, the judge, William Alsup, "said he is alarmed that DeVos has in recent months responded by swiftly rejecting tens of thousands of the applications through 'perfunctory' denial notices. Of the applications in question in the class-action lawsuit, DeVos has denied 74,000 applications and granted 4,400 applications, which the judge noted was a denial rate of 94 percent." Many borrowers, Alsup noted, waited months only to receive a form letter denying their claim with no explanation — a process he slammed as "disturbingly Kafkaesque."
Allsup also said he would be authorizing depositions of as many as five officials from the Department of Education to explain the process used to deny the claims.
The loan forgiveness program is intended to help students who have accused their institutions of fraud, many of whom were given unrealistic promises about their program, their degree, or their own ability to repay the debt. Many of these schools, like ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, were shut down after federal investigations into their business practices, but this left thousands of defrauded students on the hook for loans. Under DeVos, the Department of Education has fiercely resisted every effort to give these students financial relief.
Hyper-visible on the campaign trail, US President Donald Trump has been far more discreet in on-air advertising than his rival Joe Biden in a presidential race that is shattering ad spending records.
Barack Obama's former vice president is projected to spend twice as much as the Republican billionaire incumbent on television advertisements by election day November 3, according to data compiled by firm Advertising Analytics.
Even more striking, since September 1 the group has seen team Trump "completely reduce... or reduce greatly" its broadcast ad funding in several Midwestern states and other battlegrounds like Pennsylvania that could determine his fate in the election, said Advertising Analytics vice president John Link.
It is thanks to wins in several of these states that Trump secured his shock 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton -- and where the president is now struggling in polls against Democrat Biden.
In bellwether Ohio, with the race on a knife edge, the president committed $7.8 million in September broadcast advertising, but ended scrapping all but $302,000 of that advertising, Analytics data shows.
Biden for his part committed $1.3 million to Ohio ads in September, and spent it all.
Trump's team no doubt has reinvested part of that spending to other states in the southern "Sun Belt," most notably Florida, an absolutely crucial state in the White House race, and Georgia.
But the Trump campaign's "overall spend on a weekly basis is being reduced," Link said.
Biden by contrast has expanded the map of ad spending to states that are not traditionally in play, such as Georgia, which has not voted Democratic in the presidential election since 1992. The state is rated a toss-up by RealClearPolitics.
Is Trump's gambit clever because he feels he does not need to spend so much in these states, as he asserts, or is it a sign that his war chest is depleted?
Either way it is a "risky strategy," Link said.
Airing television spots, particularly on broadcast networks, "is the strongest vehicle for impactful ad messaging," Link explained, because it allows campaigns to reach that often elusive but always courted demographic: undecided voters.
The proof is in the spending: the campaigns and groups that support them will not have pumped a historic amount of money -- projected by Ad Analytics at between $2.75 and $2.8 billion by November 3 -- into advertising if it didn't work.
Such astounding numbers include the record-breaking spending during the Democratic primary, which saw billionaire Michael Bloomberg spend lavishly to fund his own doomed campaign.
'Winning strategy'?
Trump's campaign admits it is using "strategic, surgical" ad spots instead of carpet-bombing media markets.
"It makes no sense to run TV ads in states we know we're going to win," Samantha Zager, a spokesman for Trump's campaign, told AFP.
Instead the Republican camp is relying on a precise database of American voters to target its ad efforts, Zager said.
She highlighted how Trump spent less than Clinton did four years ago, and still won.
"Maybe it's time for the mainstream media to accept our winning strategy and start questioning why Joe Biden is needlessly overspending on TV," Zager said.
Things however are different this year. The tempestuous Republican is not benefiting from an avalanche of free coverage he received in 2016.
The coronavirus pandemic, and Trump's time off the trail as he recovered from Covid-19, has led to fewer rallies and less wall-to-wall campaign coverage.
Even if the perpetual showman intensifies his schedule in the home stretch, networks have dedicated far less time to his rallies than in 2016, when lengthy broadcasts of events -- including when stages were empty -- were not uncommon as media heaped attention on the new Trump phenomenon.
Biden's deep pockets
The financial status of each candidate helps explain their advertising investments: Biden has just completed two months of record fundraising and had $432 million in the bank in late September, versus $251 million for Trump.
But the president's campaign, in collaboration with the Republican Party, intends to surge advertising investment by 40 percent in the last weeks compared to its planned budget.
Advertising remains vital, stressed Chris Jackson of research group Ipsos.
"Not because it's going to change minds, but because you do still have to get your people to go out and vote," Jackson told AFP.
And during such a "chaotic" year upended by the pandemic, rallying the faithful to the voting booth through advertising is even more important.
"If Biden can turn out his voters and things don't change" in the polls, Jackson said, "he's in a good position to potentially win the election."
The US Senate will vote on Monday, eight days ahead of the presidential election, to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the Senate Majority Leader said Tuesday.
"We'll be voting to confirm justice-to-be Barrett next Monday," Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said at a press conference.
"I think that will be another signature accomplishment in our effort to put on the courts, the federal courts, men and women who believe in the quaint notion that maybe the job of a judge is to actually follow the law," McConnell said.
Barrett, 48, was named by President Donald Trump to replace the late liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the nation's highest court.
Her confirmation by the Senate to the lifetime post would give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the nine-member panel.
Democratic senators urged their Republican colleagues to honor a pledge of four years ago not to seat a justice close to a presidential election, but the appeal failed and Republicans forged ahead with the plan to put Barrett on the court.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and although two Republican senators have said they will not vote Barrett is virtually assured of confirmation.
A long-time law professor at the University of Notre Dame, and an appeals court judge for the past three years, Barrett follows a somewhat fundamentalist school of US judicial thought, originalism, and is a devout Catholic.
During her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, she steadfastly avoided expressing her legal views, saying she would not address theoretical issues, but only judge cases as they come, on their own merits.
The Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to approve her nomination on Friday, sending it to the full Senate for the vote which McConnell said is expected on Monday.
Trump has said he wants Barrett in place if the election results are fought up to the high court, as in 2000.
Barrett refused to say if she would recuse herself if, in the days after joining the Supreme Court, she has to review any legal challenge to the results of the election.
Chances for approving a new spending package to support the US economy improved dramatically on Tuesday after the senior Democratic lawmaker said a bill is in the works and the top Senate Republican said he would bring it to a vote.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Bloomberg TV that legislators are starting to commit the measure to paper and she is optimistic it can win bipartisan support.
Whether policymakers can complete the negotiations in time for Congress to approve the package before the November 3 presidential election, however, remains a question mark.
"Our economy needs it. Hopefully by the end of the day today, we will know where we are," she said in an interview. "We are starting to write the bill."
While it must go through legislative steps, including approval by the House Appropriations Committee, "I am optimistic," Pelosi said, but cautioned "Legislation is tough."
The bill's prospects got a boost after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who repeatedly signaled that he would not support a massive package, said he would bring the measure to the Senate floor for a vote.
"If a Presidentially-supported bill clears the House, at some point we'll bring it to the floor, yes," McConnell told reporters.
Economists say the coronavirus-ravaged US economy has held up well because of the massive injection of about $3 trillion in support for businesses and households, but needs more support to avert another downturn.
The talks between the White House and congressional Democrats have dragged on for months, and Pelosi was due to speak with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to see if the sides can finally narrow their differences.
Mnuchin is conducting the negotiations while on a trip to the Middle East, where he is traveling to Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Deadline that's not a deadline
Pelosi on Sunday had said there were only 48 hours left to realistically agree on the package that could be approved before the election, but she explained Tuesday that the deadline was simply a process of working back on the timeline from election day.
"It isn't that this was a day that we would have a deal, it was having the terms on the table to be able to go to the next step. Legislation takes a long time," she said.
The House of Representatives approved a $2.2 trillion package while President Donald Trump's administration proposed a $1.8 trillion rescue measure.
Trump, who trails in national polls behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden, signaled he could go bigger, but Senate Republicans strenuously opposed the massive price tag and McConnell was trying to push much smaller, narrowly-targeted measures..
A New York Times/Siena College poll published Tuesday showed 72 percent of likely voters support a stimulus package. The survey also showed Trump had lost ground to Biden, trailing by nine points at 41 percent.
Since business shutdowns began in March, tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs, while the economy saw the worst contraction since the Great Depression.
The $2.2 trillion CARES Act expanded unemployment benefits and provided loans and grants to small businesses. However those provisions expired months ago.
IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath told AFP last week that a US rescue package of around $2 trillion would boost growth in the world's biggest economy by two percentage points next year, over the 3.1 percent GDP rise currently forecast.
President Donald Trump was said to have "abruptly" ended an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl at the White House.
According to CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins, the "drama" occurred on Tuesday afternoon.
"Apparently there was some drama while President Trump was taping his 60 Minutes interview today," Collins wrote on Twitter. "He abruptly ended his solo interview after around 45 minutes & did not return for a scheduled walk & talk he was supposed to tape with Pence, @abdallahcnn and I are told by sources."
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Minutes after the interview, the president tweeted an attack on Stahl for allegedly not wearing a mask at the White House.
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"Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris were also interviewed by '60 Minutes' and all four are scheduled to appear in the same program on Sunday," CNN reported. "While Biden and Harris taped their interviews separately, Trump and Pence were scheduled to appear on camera together, like they did four years ago, for a walk and talk session. But Trump did not return for the appearance with Pence, sources said."
"Stahl previously said that during an off-camera conversation with Trump in 2016, when he was running for President, he admitted his attacks on the press were meant to discredit negative stories that emerged about him," CNN noted.
President Donald Trump has spent months belittling people for wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
His anti-mask attitude reportedly resulted in White House and campaign staff not wearing masks so as to avoid angering their boss.
And Trump has repeatedly attacked Joe Biden for wearing facial coverings -- even after the president was hospitalized for COVID-19.
But on Tuesday, Trump dramatically shifted his position and mask-shamed CBS "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl, posting video of her not wearing a mask while Trump was.
Trump included video of their interview in his tweet:
According to a report from the Washington Post, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told fellow Republicans this Tuesday that he warned the White House not to make a stimulus deal with Democrats before the election.
"McConnell suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is not negotiating in good faith with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and any deal they reach could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week," the Post reports.
As the Post points out, McConnell's stance risks dashing any hopes that a stimulus deal would be passed before November 3rd.
