Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Uncertain U.S. election outcome opens way for protests

By Michael Martina and Heather Timmons

DETROIT (Reuters) – After months of protests about racism and police brutality, the United States is now likely to see street demonstrations over the cliffhanger presidential election, after President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory and called for voting to stop.

About 100 people gathered for an interfaith event before a planned march through downtown Detroit, in the battleground state of Michigan, on Wednesday morning to demand a full vote count and what they called a peaceful transition of power.

The protest flyer called people to action to stop Trump from “stealing the election.”

Democrat-leaning activists were planning “protect the vote” rallies around Michigan on Wednesday afternoon, including one in front of the state capitol in Lansing.

“The message is that Michigan is fighting back and every vote must be counted,” said Kenny Williams Jr., a spokesman for Detroit Action, one of the groups organizing the Detroit event. “We understand that Republicans will likely try every trick in the book to win this election. But we are making our voices heard in saying that every vote must be counted.”

The excruciatingly close election hung in the balance, with a handful of closely contested states set to decide the outcome in the coming hours or days.

Trump falsely claimed victory in the early hours of the morning and made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud in an extraordinary attack on the electoral process.

Michigan is still counting tens of thousands of ballots and expects to have an unofficial tally by the end of the day, the state’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, told reporters.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden is narrowly leading Republican Trump with about 96% of the votes tallied in Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Trump’s remarks were the sort of call that protest organizers had planned for. The “Protect the Results” coalition of over 130 groups, from Planned Parenthood to Republicans for the Rule of Law, has said it had about 500 protests organized around the country.

“There were two criteria that were out there: One is Trump officially trying to block the counting of votes and other was falsely declaring that he won, and he did both last night,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that supports left-wing Democrats running for office.

Fears of violence on Tuesday did not materialize as Americans turned out by the millions to vote. There were only a handful of incidents reported on an otherwise tranquil Election Day.

The concerns about possible unrest were heightened after a summer of protests, some of which turned violent, against racial injustice following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

(Reporting by Michael Martina in Detroit and Heather Timmons in Washington; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Frank McGurty; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Biden leads in pivotal Wisconsin; Trump campaign sues in Michigan

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Steve Holland

WILMINGTON, Del./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Joe Biden held a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in Wisconsin after officials completed their vote count and pulled further ahead in Michigan, even as the Republican incumbent’s campaign vowed to pursue a recount and a lawsuit to challenge the results in the two Midwestern battleground states.

Wisconsin and Michigan are critical in the race to the 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College needed to win the White House. Trump won both states in his 2016 election victory. Losing them would greatly harm his quest for another four years in office.

Trump, who made attacking the integrity of U.S. elections a central campaign theme, in the early-morning hours falsely claimed victory in the election and made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud. His campaign on Wednesday said it had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the count in Michigan, asserting it had not been allowed to observe the opening of ballots.

Biden led by 38,000 votes out of more than 5 million ballots in Michigan.

“Michigan’s elections have been conducted transparently, with access provided for both political parties and the public, and using a robust system of checks and balances to ensure that all ballots are counted fairly and accurately,” Ryan Jarvi, press secretary to Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, said in a statement.

Wisconsin officials finished their tally at around midday after an all-night effort, showing Biden with a lead of just over 20,000 votes, or 0.6%, according to Edison Research. The Trump campaign immediately said it would request a recount, which is permitted under state law when the margin is below 1%.

CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press projected Biden as the winner in Wisconsin, though Edison Research, which provides voting data to the National Election Pool media consortium, has not announced a winner because of the pending recount.

Closely contested states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina were still counting votes, leaving the national election outcome still in doubt.

THE PANDEMIC EFFECT

Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but many states routinely take days to finish counting ballots. There was a surge in mail-in ballots nationally amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump led in the two Southern states, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as in Pennsylvania. But if Trump loses Wisconsin and Michigan, he would have to win all three as well as either Arizona or Nevada, where Biden was leading in the latest vote counts.

At the moment, not including Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump 227 to 213 in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state’s population.

Biden led in Arizona, a battleground state with a high Latino population, which would make him only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in 72 years. Trump won the state in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, Trump led by about 389,000 votes as officials gradually worked their way through millions of mail-in ballots, which were seen as likely to benefit Biden. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien called the president the winner in Pennsylvania even though state officials had not completed the count.

In dueling conference calls with reporters earlier on Wednesday, officials from each campaign insisted their candidate would prevail.

“If we count all legal ballots, we win,” Stepien said, setting the stage for the post-election litigation over ballot counting.

Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon told reporters the former vice president was on track to win the election, while senior legal adviser Bob Bauer said there were no grounds for Trump to invalidate lawfully cast ballots.

“We’re going to defend this vote, the vote by which Joe Biden has been elected to the presidency,” said Bauer, adding that the campaign’s legal team was prepared for any challenge.

Biden was expected to deliver an address later on Wednesday. The campaign also launched a new group, the Biden Fight Fund, to raise money for legal fights over the election.

Trump continued to make unsubstantiated attacks on the vote-counting process on Twitter on Wednesday, hours after he appeared at the White House and declared victory in an election that was far from decided. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged multiple posts from the president for promoting misleading claims.

“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said before launching an extraordinary attack on the electoral process by a sitting president. “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

Trump provided no evidence to back up his claim of fraud and did not explain how he would fight the results at the Supreme Court.

In the nationwide popular vote, Biden on Wednesday was comfortably ahead of Trump, with about 3 million more votes. Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton after winning crucial battleground states even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.

The election uncertainty only added to the anxiety many Americans were feeling following a vitriolic campaign that unfolded amid a pandemic that has killed more than 233,000 Americans and left millions more jobless. The country has also grappled with months of unrest involving protests over racism and police brutality.

Biden’s hopes of a decisive early victory were dashed on Tuesday evening when Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas. Among other undecided states, Nevada does not expect to update its vote count until Thursday, state officials said.

TEAMS OF LAWYERS

It was not clear what Trump meant by saying overnight that he would ask the Supreme Court to halt “voting.” The high court does not hear direct challenges but instead reviews cases that have worked their way up from lower courts.

Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, although U.S. election experts say fraud is very rare.

Legal experts have said the election outcome could get bogged down in state-by-state litigation over a host of issues, including whether states can include late-arriving ballots that were mailed by Election Day. Both campaigns have marshaled teams of lawyers in preparation for any disputes.

The Supreme Court previously allowed Pennsylvania to move forward with a plan to count ballots mailed by Election Day that arrive up to three days later, but some conservative justices suggested they would be willing to reconsider the matter. State officials planned to segregate those ballots as a precaution.

The election will also decide which party controls the U.S. Congress for the next two years, and the Democratic drive to win control of the Senate appeared to be falling short. Democrats had flipped two Republican-held seats while losing one of their own, and five other races remained undecided – Alaska, Michigan, North Carolina and two in Georgia.

Trump’s strong performance in Florida, a must-win state for his re-election, was powered by his improved numbers with Latinos.

Edison’s national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among nonwhite voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of the nonwhite votes than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 in all three groups.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Wilmington, Delaware, and Jeff Mason in Washington; Additional reporting by Jason Lange, Steve Holland and Susan Heavey in Washington, and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Will Dunham)

U.S. formally exits global climate pact amid election uncertainty

By Valerie Volcovici and Kate Abnett

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States formally exited the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, fulfilling an old promise by President Donald Trump to withdraw the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter from the global pact to fight climate change.

But the outcome of the tight U.S. election contest will determine for how long. Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has promised to rejoin the agreement if elected.

“The U.S. withdrawal will leave a gap in our regime, and the global efforts to achieve the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told Reuters.

The United States still remains a party to the UNFCCC. Espinosa said the body will be “ready to assist the U.S. in any effort in order to rejoin the Paris Agreement”.

Trump first announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the pact in June 2017, arguing it would undermine the U.S. economy. The administration formally served notice to the United Nations one year ago on Nov. 4, 2019.

The departure makes the United States the only country of 197 signatories to have withdrawn from the agreement struck in 2015.

“If climate deniers keep control of the White House and Congress, delivering a climate-safe planet will be more challenging,” said Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat instrumental in brokering the Paris accord, who now heads the non-profit European Climate Foundation.

Calling the withdrawal a “lost opportunity”, Tanguy Gahouma-Bekale, chair of the African Group of Negotiators in global climate talks, said it would also create a shortfall in global climate finances. He pointed to an Obama-era pledge to contribute $3 billion to a fund to help vulnerable countries tackle climate change, of which only $1 billion was delivered.

UNIVERSAL SUPPORT

Other major emitters have pressed on with climate action, even without guarantees the U.S. will follow suit.

A spokeswoman for the European Union’s executive Commission said the Paris accord has the “universal support” of the rest of the international community.

China, Japan and South Korea have all followed the EU in pledging to become carbon neutral. The challenge now is to translate these long-term targets for 2050 – or, in China’s case, for 2060 – into policies to slash emissions this decade.

A strong emissions-cutting pledge from the world’s largest economy “would give a big shot of momentum” to those efforts, said Pete Betts, a former climate negotiator for the EU and Britain, who is now an associate fellow at London-based think-tank Chatham House.

“The U.S. would put its diplomatic heft in efforts to persuade other major economies to raise their efforts,” he said.

Countries representing 51% of the world’s emissions have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions to net zero – with some going further and committing to zero out all greenhouse gases, research coalition Climate Action Tracker said.

A net zero pledge from the United States – which Biden says he would make, if elected – would see 63% of global emissions covered by such commitments.

Despite the lack of encouragement from the current White House, many U.S. states and businesses have nonetheless moved to cut emissions, while climate change has risen up the global investor agenda, including on Wall Street.

Groups representing New York-based BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager, and other asset managers in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, who manage trillions of dollars in assets between them, issued a joint statement urging the United States to quickly rejoin the accord.

If Biden were to win, he could rejoin the Paris accord through a process that would take 30 days.

A Trump win, however, would “seal the fate of the United States – at least at the federal level – as a country that was isolated from the rest of the world: powerless to shape the international dialogue or direction on climate,” said Nat Keohane, senior vice president for climate at the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici, Kate Abnett; additional reporting by Matthew Green in London; Editing by Richard Valdmanis, David Gregorio, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Kirsten Donovan)

Former felons among battleground Florida voters for the first time

By Simon Lewis

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) – Shikila Calder, 32, thought about voting early this year, but decided to save her vote – the first of her life – for Election Day on Tuesday.

“It made it special. It was exhilarating,” said Calder, one of potentially thousands of people with past felony convictions voting in a general election for the first time this year, after their rights were restored in a 2018 referendum.

Under Florida law, Calder had been denied the right to vote owning to a conviction for which she served time and repaid her debt to society a decade ago, she said after voting at a community center in the city of St. Petersburg.

“I have my voice back,” she said, a beaming smile visible in spite of her face mask. “I’m welcomed back into my community as a person and I don’t have that big label on me as a bad person.”

An amendment to Florida’s constitution was to restore voting rights to an estimated 1.4 million felons in the battleground state, ahead of the crucial election between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

But far fewer former felons were voting on Tuesday after the Republican-led Florida Senate passed a law last year requiring that only those who had paid all legal fines, fees and restitution associated with their convictions could register to vote.

The law was challenged by voting rights groups, which argued the law disproportionately impacted African Americans, who are more likely than whites to have felony convictions and more likely to owe financial obligations.

The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed the challenge in July, leaving the law in place.

Donors, including NBA star LeBron James and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, have been helping to pay off former felons’ fines so they could vote, but it is unclear how many were able to register ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The Florida Rights Restoration Council, a campaign group that fought for the constitutional amendment, was expected to release an estimate of how many were able to vote.

Calder, who is black, said she has paid all obligations related to her sentence.

She said she voted for Biden because she trusted former President Barack Obama’s vice president to improve education and tackle racism in America.

Since serving prison time, Calder has trained as a phlebotomist and works at a St. Petersburg hospital.

“I don’t regret my past because it made me who I am today,” she said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis; Editing by Dan Grebler)

FBI investigating robocalls urging people to ‘stay home’ on Election Day

By Christopher Bing, Elizabeth Culliford and Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI is looking into a spate of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home on Election Day as the nation remains on high alert to ensure voting is not compromised, a Department of Homeland Security official said Tuesday.

U.S. state and local officials have been raising the alarm over at least two separate automated call campaigns as million of Americans cast their votes on Tuesday to decide between President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden.

Experts who spoke to Reuters say they are mystified by one of the campaigns, which tells people to remain home but does not explicitly mention voting.

“There’s a little bit of confusion about this one across the industry,” said Giulia Porter, vice president at RoboKiller, a company that fights telemarketers and robocalls and has been tracking the campaign.

Audio of the calls, which RoboKiller shared with Reuters, features a synthetic female voice saying: “Hello. This is just a test call. Time to stay home. Stay safe and stay home.” Porter said the call had been placed millions of times in the past 11 months or so but had on Tuesday shot up to No. 5 or No. 6 in the list of top spam calls.

“This robocall is being sent at a very high volume,” she said.

Porter said her company was still in the process of compiling figures on the campaign’s intensity on Tuesday but estimated that “thousands or tens of thousands” of people had received it.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

One of them was Hashim Warren, a 40-year-old Democratic voter who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and works in marketing at a web development company.

Warren, who is Black, said the call triggered anxieties he and his wife already had about potential violence around the election from far-right supporters of President Donald Trump.

“Instead of saying like, Election Day is not today, the fact that it said ‘stay safe’ felt both vile and prescient as if they knew there were other things, real things happening in the world, not robocalls, that were making myself and my wife feel anxious,” Warren said in a telephone interview.

Janaka Stucky, 42, a Democratic voter who lives in Medford, Massachusetts, also received the robocall this morning.

“My first thought was that actually it was a municipal test call for a COVID lockdown thing,” he told Reuters.

“The more I thought about it I was like, oh this actually feels really off and weird and then started to feel like it was some sort of, maybe, voter suppression effort,” he added.

He said he voted weeks ago. “Joke’s on the robocalls. I’m stocked up on Halloween candy and I already voted,” he said.

Robocalls with similar or identical messages urging people to stay home were reported in series of battleground states including Florida and Iowa.

In Michigan, officials said they had reports of a separate batch of robocalls urging residents in the heavily Black city of Flint to “vote tomorrow” due to purported long lines.

“Obviously this is FALSE and an effort to suppress the vote,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a message posted to Twitter. “Don’t fall for it.”

It’s unclear what relation, if any, the Michigan calls have to do with the “stay home” calls.

Robocalls have long been a problem in the United States, which has struggled for years to put a lid on unwanted or scammy messages.

AT&T Inc, one of America’s leading telecommunications providers, did not return a message seeking comment. Verizon Communications Inc referred questions to USTelecom, an industry association.

USTelecom did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

(Reporting by Christopher Bing, Raphael Satter, and Elizabeth Culliford; Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in London.; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. manufacturing near two-year high; road ahead difficult

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. manufacturing activity accelerated more than expected in October, with new orders jumping to their highest level in nearly 17 years amid a shift in spending toward goods like motor vehicles and food as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on.

The survey on Monday from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) was the last piece of major economic data before Tuesday’s bitterly contested presidential election. But the outlook for manufacturing is challenging.

While the coronavirus crisis has boosted demand for goods complementing the pandemic life, a resurgence in new cases across the country could lead to authorities re-imposing restrictions to slow the spread of the respiratory illness as winter approaches, which could crimp activity. Government money for businesses and workers hit by the pandemic, which boosted economic growth in the third quarter, has dried up.

“Manufacturing rebounded strongly with fewer restrictions on economic activity and stimulus efforts, but the path forward will be more difficult as the economy continues to cope with the pandemic,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The ISM said its index of national factory activity increased to a reading of 59.3 last month. That was the highest since November 2018 and followed a reading of 55.4 in September.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in manufacturing, which accounts for 11.3% of the U.S. economy. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index rising to 55.8 in October.

The jump in activity, however, likely overstates the health of the manufacturing sector. A report from the Federal Reserve last month showed output at factories dropping 0.3% in September and remaining 6.4% below its pre-pandemic level.

Manufacturers and suppliers said last month they “continue to operate in reconfigured factories” and with every month were “becoming more proficient at expanding output.”

Though sentiment among manufacturers remained upbeat, there were two positive comments for every cautious comment, a slight decrease compared to September.

The outcome of Tuesday’s vote is expected to lead to a brief period of uncertainty. President Donald Trump is trailing former Vice President and Democratic Party candidate, Joe Biden, in national opinion polls.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher following their steepest weekly loss. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices rose.

NEW ORDERS SURGE

Fifteen industries, including apparel, food, furniture and transportation equipment reported growth last month. Textile mills and printing reported a contraction.

Manufacturing’s continued recovery will likely keep the economy floating, with growth expected to slow sharply in the fourth quarter after a historic 33.1% annualized rate of expansion in the July-September period.

Growth last quarter, which followed a record 31.4% pace of contraction in the April-June quarter, was juiced up by more than $3 trillion in government pandemic relief. There is no deal in sight for another round of fiscal stimulus.

A separate report from the Commerce Department on Monday showed construction spending rose a moderate 0.3% in September, slowing after a 0.8% increase in August.

The coronavirus crisis has pulled spending away from services towards goods that complement the changed life-style. Spending on goods has surpassed its pre-pandemic level.

Makers of chemical products reported “business continues to be robust.” Food manufacturers said they had “increased production due to stores stocking up for the second wave of COVID-19.” Manufacturers of computer and electronic products said the coronavirus continued “to have an effect on supplier support and operations, more from a decreased labor perspective rather than unavailable material.”

The ISM’s forward-looking new orders sub-index surged to a reading of 67.9 last month, the highest reading since January 2004, from 60.2 in September. Customers’ inventories remained too low for the 49th straight month and order backlogs steadily increased, which bodes well for future production.

“On the upside, social distancing efforts, which have been a factor in consumers pivoting spending away from services and toward goods, is showing no signs of abating, especially as virus case counts are surging again,” said Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“This shift to goods spending should continue to underpin orders, but is unlikely to go on with the same muster as it did earlier when an initial flurry of spending on manufactured goods aimed at setting up at-home offices and remote classrooms boosted goods spending.”

With orders booming, manufacturing employment expanded for the first time since July 2019. The ISM’s manufacturing employment gauge rose to a reading of 53.2 from 49.6 in September. That likely supported overall job growth in October.

According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls probably increased by 700,000 jobs last month after rising 661,000 in September. Employment growth has cooled from a record 4.781 million in June. About 11.5 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost during the pandemic have been recovered.

The government is scheduled to publish October’s employment report on Friday.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani,; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Explainer: U.S. election lingo, from naked ballots to a red mirage

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – Every U.S. presidential election has its own lingo, like the “hanging chads” on voting cards in Florida that led to a landmark court battle in 2000. Below is some of the jargon used in the days leading up to the Nov. 3 election pitting President Donald Trump against his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

NAKED BALLOTS

Sixteen states, including Pennsylvania, require voters to return mail ballots in a special “secrecy” envelope. Ballots that don’t arrive in the envelope will be considered “naked” and might be disqualified. Celebrities including Naomi Campbell, Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman disrobed in a video to promote proper voting procedures, “the least sexy thing a completely naked person can say,” according to actor Josh Gad, who also stripped for the video by activist group Represent.Us. The group, which has promoted anti-corruption resolutions in U.S. cities, says it does not endorse either candidate.

RED MIRAGE/BLUE SHIFT

Fearing crowded polling places amid the coronavirus pandemic, a record number of Americans, particularly Democrats, cast mail-in ballots this year, and counting them could take days. As a result, initial results on Election Day may show Republicans, indicated by red on election maps, holding large leads in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, which counts mail-in ballots received three days after Nov. 3. As ballots are tallied in the ensuing days, that “red mirage” could fade, giving way to a “blue shift.” Experts see a possible “blue mirage” and “red shift” in Florida and North Carolina, which process mailed-in ballots before Election Day.

SPOILED BALLOTS

Ballots that are improperly marked can be rejected as spoiled. Trump said in an Oct. 27 Twitter post that the phrase “can I change my vote” was trending on Google and urged Americans to submit a new ballot for him. Some states allow voters to request a new absentee ballot but first they have to request their original ballot be marked as spoiled. Following Trump’s tweet, Google data showed a spike in searches for “spoiled ballots.”

DUELING ELECTORS

A candidate becomes president by securing the most “electoral” votes rather than a majority of the national popular vote. The Electoral College system allots electors to the 50 states largely based on their population, and the candidate who wins the popular vote in a state generally gets its electors. But legal experts say Trump could try to convince Republican lawmakers in closely contested states to approve the Republican slate of electors based on early vote tallies. As more ballots are counted, Biden might eventually be certified as the winner of the same state. The result: Dueling electors and an outcome that could be determined by Congress.

COURT PACKING

Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court justice on Oct. 26 to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to many for her advocacy for women’s issues. Democrats had argued Ginsburg’s seat should be filled after the election and in response to Barrett’s confirmation some have suggested that a Biden Administration could expand the court beyond its traditional nine justices. The idea surfaced briefly in the late 1930’s and was criticized as “court packing.” Biden has said he will establish a bipartisan commission to consider changes to the court system, which he said is “getting out of whack.”

POLL WATCHERS

The Republican National Committee is mobilizing thousands of supporters to monitor early voting sites and ballot drop boxes, looking for irregularities such as people dropping off multiple ballots in states where that generally is not allowed. This marks the first presidential election in nearly four decades in which the Republicans can engage in “ballot security” activities without prior review and approval from the Department of Justice. Some voting rights advocates worry that gun-toting groups might show up outside polling places and intimidate voters.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)

‘You are no longer my mother’: How the election is dividing American families

By Tim Reid, Gabriella Borter and Michael Martina

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – When lifelong Democrat Mayra Gomez told her 21-year-old son five months ago that she was voting for Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election, he cut her out of his life.

“He specifically told me, ‘You are no longer my mother, because you are voting for Trump’,” Gomez, 41, a personal care worker in Milwaukee, told Reuters. Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile, even if Trump loses his re-election bid.

“The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people not talking to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gomez, who is a fan of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and handling of the economy.

Gomez is not alone in thinking the bitter splits within families and among friends over Trump’s tumultuous presidency will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair, even after he leaves office – whenever that is.

In interviews with 10 voters – five Trump supporters and five backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden – few could see the wrecked personal relationships caused by Trump’s tenure fully healing, and most believed them destroyed forever.

Throughout his nearly four-year norm-smashing presidency Trump has stirred strong emotions among both supporters and opponents. Many of his backers admire his moves to overhaul immigration, his appointment of conservative judges, his willingness to throw convention to the wind and his harsh rhetoric, which they call straight talk.

Democrats and other critics see the former real estate developer and reality show personality as a threat to American democracy, a serial liar and a racist who mismanaged the novel coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people in the United States so far. Trump dismisses those characterizations as “fake news.”

Now, with Trump trailing Biden in opinion polls, people are beginning to ask whether the fractures caused by one of the most polarizing presidencies in U.S. history could be healed if Trump loses the election.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think national healing is as easy as changing the president,” said Jaime Saal, a psychotherapist at the Rochester Center for Behavioral Medicine in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

“It takes time and it takes effort, and it takes both parties – no pun intended – being willing to let go and move forward,” she said.

Saal said tensions in people’s personal relationships have spiked given the political, health and social dynamics facing the United States. Most often she sees clients who have political rifts with siblings, parents or in-laws, as opposed to spouses.

NEIGHBOR VS NEIGHBOR

Trump’s election in 2016 divided families, tore up friendships and turned neighbor against neighbor. Many have turned to Facebook and Twitter to deliver no-holds-barred posts bashing both Trump and his many critics, while the president’s own freewheeling tweets have also inflamed tensions.

A September report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found that nearly 80% of Trump and Biden supporters said they had few or no friends who supported the other candidate.

A study by the Gallup polling organization in January found that Trump’s third year in office set a new record for party polarization. While 89% of Republicans approved of Trump’s performance in office in 2019, only 7% of Democrats thought he was doing a good job.

Gayle McCormick, 77, who separated from her husband William, 81, after he voted for Trump in 2016, said, “I think the legacy of Trump is going to take a long time to recover from.”

The two still spend time together, although she is now based in Vancouver, he in Alaska. Two of her grandchildren no longer speak to her because of her support for Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago. She has also become estranged from other relatives and friends who are Trump supporters.

She is not sure those rifts with friends and family will ever mend, because each believes the other to have a totally alien value system.

Democratic voter Rosanna Guadagno, 49, said her brother disowned her after she refused to support Trump four years ago. Last year her mother suffered a stroke, but her brother – who lived in the same California city as her mother – did not let her know when their mother died six months later. She was told the news after three days in an email from her sister-in-law.

“I was excluded from everything that had to do with her death, and it was devastating,” said Guadagno, a social psychologist who works at Stanford University, California.

Whoever wins the election, Guadagno is pessimistic that she can reconcile with her brother, although she says she still loves him.

UNCERTAIN POST-TRUMP WORLD

Sarah Guth, 39, a Spanish interpreter from Denver, Colorado, said she has cut several Trump-supporting friends out of her life. She could not reconcile herself to their support for issues such as separating immigrant children from parents at the southern border, or for Trump himself after he was caught on tape bragging about groping women.

Guth and her Trump-voting father did not speak to each other for several months after the 2016 election. The two now do speak, but avoid politics.

Guth says some of her friends cannot accept her support for a candidate – Joe Biden – who is pro-choice on the question of abortion.

“We had such fundamental disagreements about such basic stuff. It showed both sides that we really don’t have anything in common. I don’t believe that will change in the post-Trump era.”

Fervent Trump supporter Dave Wallace, 65, a retired oil industry sales manager in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is more optimistic about feuding families in a post-Trump world.

Wallace says his support for Trump has caused tensions with his son and daughter-in-law.

“The hatred for Trump among Democrats, it’s just amazing to me,” Wallace said. “I think it’s just Trump, the way he makes people feel. I do think the angst will decrease when we’re back to a normal politician who doesn’t piss people off.”

Jay J. Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, said this “political sectarianism” has become not only tribal, but moral.

“Because Trump has been one of the most polarizing figures in American history around core values and issues, people are unwilling to compromise and that is not something you can make go away,” Van Bavel said.

Jacquelyn Hammond, 47, a bartender in Asheville, North Carolina, no longer speaks to her Trump-supporting mother Carol, and is also discouraging her son from speaking to her.

She said she would like to heal the relationship, but believes that will be difficult, even if Trump loses the election.

“Trump is like the catalyst of an earthquake that just divided two continents of thought. Once the Earth divides like that, there’s no going back. This is a marked time in our history where people had to jump from one side to the other. And depending on what side you choose, that is going to be the trajectory for the rest of your life,” she said.

Hammond said she first realized her relationship with her mother was in trouble shortly after the 2016 election when she defended Clinton while driving with her mother.

“She stopped the car and told me not to disrespect her politics. And if I don’t want to respect her politics, I can get out of the car.”

Bonnie Coughlin, 65, has voted mostly Republican all her life, except in 2016 when she backed a third party candidate. This time she is all in for Biden, even holding a small rally for him on the side of a highway near Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania.

Raised in a Republican, religiously conservative family in Missouri, she says her relationships with her sister, father and some cousins – all ardent Trump supporters – have soured.

Coughlin says she still loves them, but “I look at them differently. It’s because they have willingly embraced someone who is so heartless and just shows no empathy to anyone in any circumstances.”

She added: “And if Biden wins, I don’t think they will go quietly into the night and accept it.”

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Los Angeles, Gabriella Borter in Raleigh, N.C. and Michael Martina in Detroit; Additional reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in London; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Wallis)

Explainer: Can Trump call in troops to quell Election Day unrest?

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – There have been pockets of unrest in battleground states ahead of the showdown between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in Tuesday’s election.

On Saturday, peaceful participants at a rally in North Carolina to turn out the vote were pepper-sprayed by law enforcement officials. The Biden campaign canceled two events after a caravan of vehicles with Trump campaign flags swarmed a bus carrying campaign workers in Texas on Friday.

Trump, who previously declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he decides Tuesday’s election results are fraudulent, could bring in the military or federal agents to quell civil unrest on Election Day.

Here is a look at the laws that give Trump authority in this area, and the limitations on his power.

WHAT IS THE INSURRECTION ACT?

Under the U.S. Constitution, governors of U.S. states have primary authority to maintain order within state borders. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars the federal military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

The Insurrection Act, an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act dating back to 1807, permits the president to send in U.S. forces to suppress a domestic insurrection.

The Insurrection Act has been invoked dozens of times in U.S. history, but rarely since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

It was last invoked in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush when the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King led to deadly riots. California’s governor supported Bush’s use of the law.

The act gives a president “awesome powers” and should be used as a last resort, said retired Army Major General John Altenburg, now a Washington lawyer.

DID TRUMP INVOKE THE ACT IN RESPONSE TO THIS YEAR’S ANTI-RACISM PROTESTS?

Trump considered invoking the act in response to violence and looting at mostly peaceful anti-racism protests in June. Trump dropped the idea after public pushback from Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Instead, Trump sent U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents to cities like Washington and Portland, Oregon.

Those agents had military-style equipment but they were civilians and not members of the armed forces.

In the event of unrest on Election Day on Tuesday or in the ensuing days, Trump is more likely to activate those federal agents than the military, said Jimmy Gurulé, a University of Notre Dame law professor and former Justice Department official.

To do so, Trump would need to cite some violation of federal law that the agents are policing against. The DHS agents sent to Portland earlier this year were charged with enforcing a law against vandalizing federal property like courthouses.

CAN TRUMP ACTIVATE THE NATIONAL GUARD?

Yes, the U.S. government could activate, or “federalize,” the Army National Guard, a reserve force of part-time soldiers. Those civilian soldiers are usually activated by governors, but federal law also allows the U.S. government to mobilize them.

Once federalized, National Guard soldiers are under the full command and control of the defense secretary until they are returned to state status.

This year, many state governors have activated the National Guard to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and support local law enforcement in quelling disturbances.

SO TRUMP NEED NOT HAVE A GOVERNOR’S APPROVAL FOR SENDING IN TROOPS?

Right. Under the Insurrection Act, if a president determines that a rebellion has made it “impracticable” to enforce U.S. law through ordinary judicial proceedings, he may activate the armed forces without a governor’s approval “to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

Historically, presidents and governors have generally agreed on the need for troops.

Trump can activate DHS agents, who are federal government employees, or the National Guard, without state approval.

There are limits, however, on the president’s power. Federal law makes it illegal for the military or other federal agents to interfere with an election. Deploying the military or DHS to polling places is illegal, for example.

CAN A COURT BLOCK A PRESIDENT’S USE OF FORCE?

Yes, but courts have historically been reluctant to second-guess a president’s military declarations, said Robert Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas.

“When a president claims that the facts on the ground warrant invocation of the Insurrection Act, courts ordinarily would not second-guess this,” Chesney said. Judges, however, could break with precedent if they believed Trump had relied on false claims to justify the use of force, he said.

If Trump sends in DHS or other federal agents, they must respect the constitutional rights of civilians. Advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union accused the agents in Portland of making arrests that violated the constitutional rights of protesters and journalists.

But the Trump administration had the lawful authority to use the agents, legal experts said.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Howard Goller and Peter Cooney)

Trump’s appointee Barrett takes part in first Supreme Court arguments

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Amy Coney Barrett participated in her first case as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, with President Donald Trump’s appointee welcomed by Chief Justice John Roberts before questioning one of the lawyers in a dispute in which an environmental group is seeking government documents.

Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, Barrett made her debut not in a public session in the ornate courtroom where the justices usually hear cases but rather in a teleconference format, with a live audio feed available to the public.

Although Barrett officially started work last Tuesday, she did not participate in Friday’s private conference in which the justices discussed what new cases to hear because she was preparing for this week’s arguments, a court spokeswoman said.

“It gives me great pleasure on behalf of myself and my colleagues to welcome Justice Barrett to the court,” Chief Justice John Roberts said at the outset. “… Justice Barrett, we wish you a long and happy career in our common calling.”

With the justices taking turn by seniority, Barrett was the last to weigh in on the case brought by the Sierra Club seeking documents related to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s consideration of a regulation finalized in 2014. The agency concluded that the environmental regulation for cooling water intake structures that are used by power plants and other industrial facilities would not adversely affect endangered species, including fish, turtles and shellfish.

Barrett, following fellow Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh, continued with his line of questioning on how courts determine which internal agency documents are subject to a federal law called the Freedom of Information Act, which lets people request certain materials.

“What other factors would a court consider?” Barrett asked, in relation to how courts decide whether a draft document, as opposed to a final report, can be sought as part of such a request.

A federal judge in California ruled in 2017 that 11 documents had to be disclosed. The government appealed and the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 ruled partly for the government but still found that nine documents had to be released.

It was the first of two cases on Monday. The second was an employment benefits dispute involving a former railroad worker.

The Republican-led Senate confirmed Barrett one week ago, with Democrats strongly opposed. Trump on Sept. 26 announced Barrett as his nominee to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of cancer on Sept. 18. Barrett previously was appointed by Trump as a federal appeals court judge in 2017 after she served as a law professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

Barrett’s confirmation expanded the Supreme Court’s conservative majority to 6-3.

Monday’s case was argued a day before the U.S. election in which the Republican president is seeking a second term in office against Democratic challenger Joe Biden. In campaign rallies, Trump has touted his appointment of Barrett, receiving applause from his supporters.

No Supreme Court justice has ever been confirmed so close to a presidential election. At 48, Barrett could serve in her lifetime post for decades alongside Trump’s two other Supreme Court appointees, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

The first major case in which Barrett will take part comes on Wednesday when the court hears a religious rights dispute involving the city of Philadelphia’s refusal to place children for foster care with a Catholic agency that bars same-sex couples from serving as foster parents.

Next week, the court hears arguments in litigation in which Trump and Republican-governed states are seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 healthcare law also called Obamacare that has helped millions of Americans obtain medical insurance.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)