In yet another disturbing U.S. Supreme Court decision, three conservative justices signed on to an opinion clearly suggesting they're open to arguments that might invalidate some Pennsylvania ballots after the election.

To understand what's going on, let's start with the positive news. The court as a whole rejected a plea from Republicans to reconsider a case in which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the deadline for mail-in ballots received three days after Election Day, as long as they're postmarked by Nov. 3 (or the postmark is absent or unclear). The court had already declined to involve itself on the issue in a 4-4 split decision, leaving the state court's extension in place.

Newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose nomination was not yet complete at the time of the previous decision, recused herself from the latest case. According to the Supreme Court's Public Information Office: "Justice Barrett did not participate in the consideration of this motion because of the need for a prompt resolution of it and because she has not had time to fully review the parties' filings."

But while the Supreme Court did not take up the case again, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's staunch conservatives, wrote a statement making it clear that he objected to the state court's extension and desperately wanted to overturn it. He also made clear that he would be open to reconsidering the issue after the election — that is, he would be open to throwing out at any mail-in ballots received and counted after Election Day in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that they would be cast and counted in accordance with the rules as they are. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas signed on to Alito's statement.

"[The] Court's denial of the motion to expedite is not a denial of a request for this Court to order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if the State Supreme Court's decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available," Alito wrote, in an extreme understatement for such an extraordinary claim. What he means is he's leaving open the possibility to later toss out some voters' ballots.

Alito's position is superbly arrogant. Whatever one may think of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's extension of the deadline to receive ballots, it is, in effect, the law of the state — just as the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions determine the state of federal law.

But rather than recognizing the court's authority, Alito warns that "the election in Pennsylvania" is "being conducted under a cloud." This claim is based on the idea that Alito himself objects to the court's ruling and nothing more.

In fact, it's his own statement, which threatens to invalidate ballots after they're cast and counted, that is putting the state's election "under a cloud."

Many legal experts argue that it's clearly the state supreme court's role to interpret questions of law in their state, and the Supreme Court shouldn't insert itself to intervene on state law matters. Alito, along with at least some of the other conservatives on the court, argue instead that because the Constitution grants authority over elections to state legislatures, the U.S. Supreme Court can and should step in to uphold the will of the Pennsylvania legislature, which did not want to extend the mail-in deadline.

Regardless of the merits of that debate, however, the legal facts are what they are. The state supreme court ruled, and a challenge to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court before the election failed. Voters are currently planning to act under the laws as they've currently been established. Alito himself acknowledges that there is not enough time at this point to take the case up again, which is why he did not dissent from the decision of his colleagues not take up the case now.

What's truly arrogant, though, is that in spite those facts on the ground, Alito is continuing to assert that the U.S. Supreme Court should have a say and might overturn the existing rules. He sees it as so necessary that he and the Supreme Court involve themselves in a case that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided that he's openly forecasting that they might overturn an election result and throw out ballots that were legitimately cast under the rules at the time. A more small-c conservative or modest justice would recognize that, whatever his objections in the case, his view hadn't won the day. But that's not how Alito sees it.

This arrogance is especially egregious give the matter at hand. While the issue, of cours,e has the potential to be highly influential, and thus the stakes are high, the state supreme court's decision is about the handling of ballots that would be cast by legitimate voters and presumably delivered by election day. Many states conduct elections this way — it's not as if the change is some extreme or unheard of remedy. Alito's extreme threat to disenfranchise people after the fact is not proportionate to the issue.

All that said, Pennsylvania voters with mail-in ballots would be well-advised at this point to not rely on the postal service to deliver their ballot, given the risks. They should seek out advice from their local election offices and potentially turn in their ballots in person or at official drop boxes, if possible.

Now, despite all the legitimate reasons I've described to be disturbed by Alito's statement, there are several reasons to think the issue is not particularly dire, as law professor Steve Vladeck explained.

In theory, Alito, along with Gorsuch, Thomas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett, could potentially hear a case after the election and decide to throw out enough ballots in Pennsylvania to swing the presidential race from Biden to Trump. But that seems quite unlikely to happen in fact, because a whole slew of factors would have to be in place for the move to work.

First, Pennsylvania would have to be the tipping point state in the electoral college. That's plausible, but far from guaranteed. Even more important, though, is that Pennsylvania would have to be the decisive state. This would mean that Biden only barely won the presidential election, with no extra states. That would likely mean Biden lost in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Texas, where he is currently either leading slightly or running neck-and-neck with Trump. Again, this is possible, but it probably isn't the most likely scenario.

The Pennsylvania race would also have to be extremely close, close enough for the mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to make the difference between Biden and Trump. Again that's possible, but it doesn't seem most likely when the New York Times polling average has Biden leading in the state by 6 points. Any ballots arriving after Election Day will be split between Trump and Biden — they could even potentially favor Trump — so it's only the final margin that would matter.

And for the Supreme Court's intervention to make the difference, Alito would need Barrett and at either Kavanaugh and Roberts to join him. It's impossible to give odds on how likely this is, but we can content ourselves by saying at least it's not a sure thing that a full five of six conservative justices on the court would be interested in going along with this plan after the votes have been cast.

Vladeck also noted that Pennsylvania has taken the wise step of planning to segregate any late-arriving ballots from the rest of the ballots it counts. That should forestall the possibility that the Supreme Court (or state legislature) would be inclined to say the state's whole election has been tainted by the inclusion of late-arriving ballots and try to circumvent the will of the people.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Democratic Rep. Katie Porter has spent her first couple of years in Congress really working hard to point out the corruption and greed being perpetrated by the CEOs of major industries. She's exposed the banking industry and its moral bankruptcy, and she has time and time again exposed the criminal negligence, greed, and corruption in the Trump administration. She is frequently using her time in House committee hearings to face off against the smartest men in the room: the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

These are men that can buy and sell all of us! Manly men, with big brains, right? Not really. They're just good at taking money from people. That's usually the entirety of their personal acumen. On Wednesday, former Celgene CEO Mark Alles joined two other pharmaceutical company CEOs to testify about drug pricing at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Porter decided to pull out her big white board and give Alles—and America—a lesson in what exactly CEOs of these companies do for a living: Price gouge the American people.

Porter first asked Alles to answer what the cost of the cancer drug Revlimid was in 2005, 2013, 2017, and today. Alles couldn't readily come up with those numbers because he's a big shot CEO. The short story is that Revlimid cost $215 per pill in 2005 and right now it costs $763 per pill. Obviously, the pill must have gotten better and/or the demand has diminished for the pill! Wrong. In fact, Alles admits that a lot more uses for the pill were discovered, meaning a ton more patients, and shockingly, nothing about the pill or its efficacy has changed.

So why is the price going up? Why is Medicare paying out $3.3 billion for Revlimid?

Rep. Porter has some ideas if CEO Alles doesn't. It turns out that Mr. Alles made $13 million, which is "200 times the average American's income and 360 times what the average senior makes on Social Security," she kindly explained to him. And lo and behold! Mr. Alles gets nice big bonuses if he raises the cost, say triples the cost since 2005, of Remlivid. In fact, to bring an average monthly course cost of the cancer drug to a patient up to $16,023, Mr. Alles was able to pocket an extra $500,000. Sweet deal. Fuck those cancer patients, amiright? Don't worry, everyone else will pay for it!

Finally, Rep. Porter gave a summation that even a smart guy like Alles can understand. "So to recap here: The drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging!"

Amen. The Committee's findings on Celgene price gouging can be found in their report here.

Rep. Porter grills Big Pharma CEO for price gouging www.youtube.com

Late Monday night, the Supreme Court issued a ruling blocking a lower court's decision to force Wisconsin election officials to extend the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots, as long as they were post-marked by Election Day. This decision to limit ballot access was unsurprising given the conservative majority on the court, but as I noted, Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurring opinion disturbed many readers because of the views it seemed to express about voting and elections.

But there's a related aspect of Kavanaugh's opinion that has attracted significant attention in addition to its ideological bent. It was, many commentators noted, extraordinarily sloppy for a Supreme Court ruling. The opinion was riddled with errors, embarrassingly so, and some of which even relate to the substance of his argument.

For instance, Kavanaugh wrote:

To be sure, in light of the pandemic, some state legislatures have exercised their Article I, §4, authority over elections and have changed their election rules for the November 2020 election. Of particular relevance here, a few States such as Mississippi no longer require that absentee ballots be received before election day. See, e.g., Miss. Code Ann. §23–15–637 (2020). Other States such as Vermont, by contrast, have decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules, including to the election-day deadline for receipt of absentee ballots. [emphasis added]

But as Vermont's own secretary of state confirmed, the state had changed its election rules this year. It sent every voter a ballot by the first of October:

That doesn't really change the substance of Kavanaugh's ruling, but it does throw doubt on his understanding of the current environment and shed light on his lackluster fact-checking.

Another mistake from Kavanaugh, though, really is important to his argument. He wrote of the reasons that states have for limiting the deadline for absentee ballot returns to Election Day itself:

States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter. Moreover, particularly in a Presidential election, counting all the votes quickly can help the State promptly resolve any disputes, address any need for recounts, and begin the process of canvassing and certifying the election results in an expeditious manner. See 3 U. S. C. §5. The States are aware of the risks described by Professor Pildes: "[L]ate-arriving ballots open up one of the greatest risks of what might, in our era of hyperpolarized political parties and existential politics, destabilize the election result. If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode."

But Kavanaugh's quote here from Professor Richard Pildes in The University of Chicago Law Review Online is extremely misleading. Pildes argued in the article cited for the opposite outcome. He urged that states extend deadlines for receiving ballots past Election Day:

States that require absentees to be received by election night or shortly after should move this date back. Even if this fall the same percentage of absentee ballots as in normal elections would be rejected for coming in too late, the same point noted above holds true: a 3 percent rejection rate risks undermining the perceived legitimacy of the election if 70 percent of the vote is cast by absentee ballot. And this problem would be compounded, of course, if mailing back ballots five days before the election is normally sufficient to get them back in time, but not this year. The overall burden on the U.S. Postal Service makes that five-day figure less realistic this time around. Moreover, if a significant number of votes come in after a receipt deadline that has not been changed and that is much tighter than in other states, ex post litigation challenging that deadline is easy to imagine. This is exactly what we do not want to face for a risk that can be mitigated in advance.

Now, Pildes' argument here isn't on exactly the same topic as the question before the court. But it's disingenuous for Kavanaugh to present him as if his argument supported the Supreme Court's decision. Pildes did agree that a long vote count could undermine trust in the election, but he also said that cutting off the deadline by Election Day also "risks undermining the perceived legitimacy of the election." It was dishonest and alarming for Kavanaugh not to acknowledge that the risks cut both ways, especially since the president that appointed him has been trying to discredit mail-in ballots.

Pildes added:

In Wisconsin's election, the federal court pushed the date back six days. But that was for a presidential primary. In the general election, participation rates will be much higher. In choosing an updated receipt deadline that anticipates a dramatic rise in mailed-in ballots, policymakers face a trade-off. The longer the permitted time, the more ballots will be valid. But the longer that time, the longer it will take for the final result to be known. If we thought voters would be patient, that would not pose any risk. But in our climate of existential politics—with partisans all too prepared to believe or charge that elections are being manipulated, and a social-media environment poised to heap fuel onto the fire—the longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.

Election administrators in different states must weigh in on whether, in their circumstances, a six-day deadline post-election is appropriate, as the federal district court held for Wisconsin. The National Vote at Home Institute, one of the leading advocacy organizations for absentee and mail-in voting, suggests the deadline should be three business days after the election, which seems unduly short under our new circumstances. But state legislatures and election officials need to start facing this issue soon.

Others picked up on another error in the section of Kavanaugh's opinion cited above. He warned about a situation in which "thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election" [emphasis added]. But this is completely wrong. Additional ballots don't flip the "results" of an election because there are no results until all the legitimate votes are counted. Kavanaugh surely knows this, because he worked on the Republican side in Bush v. Gore, which was an extensive argument about the counting of ballots after Election Day in Florida. There was no result until the election was certified. States don't typically "definitively announce the results of the election on election night," either, as Kavanaugh claimed. The media, of course, makes projections about what the final vote will be prior to certification, but that's not the same — as we learned in 2000 when the media incorrectly projected the Florida results. It's rhetoric like Kavanaugh's that truly serves to undermine the legitimacy of this process, rather than extensions of deadlines.

Kavanaugh's argument also incorrectly claimed that the the desire to obtain a quick election result was the Wisconsin legislator's reason for not extending the mail-in ballot deadline. But as Talking Points Memo reporter Tierney Sneed pointed out, this is clearly not so. Otherwise, Wisconsin would have permitted mail-in ballots that were received prior to Election day to be counted ahead of time, making the final count much more efficient. It has not done so, which likely means the ballot counting will extend past Election Night.

Despite Kavanaugh's claim, it's more plausible that the Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature doesn't want to receive late mail-in ballots because they think those votes will advantage Democrats.

Election law expert Rick Hasen pointed to another error in Kavanaugh's opinion in a piece for the Washington Post, pointing to an incorrect citation of precedent:

Kavanaugh cited a case that came to the Supreme Court during the disputed 2000 presidential election before Bush v. Gore — Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board — as standing for the proposition that state legislatures have this power — negating the power of state courts to expand voting rights under state constitutional provisions that protect the right to vote. As law professor Justin Levitt pointed out, though, Kavanaugh was wrong: The Supreme Court in the Palm Beach case unanimously raised but did not resolve that question. Kavanaugh further embraced this theory as advanced again by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Bush v. Gore itself, but that was an opinion joined only by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

At another point in the opinion, Kavanaugh tried a clever argument to suggest that no matter the deadline that is set, some voters will miss it:

But moving a deadline would not prevent ballots from arriving after the newly minted deadline any more than moving first base would mean no more close plays. And more to the point, the fact that some ballots will be late in any system with deadlines does not make Wisconsin's widely used deadline facially unconstitutional.

This is true, but Kavanaugh seems to misunderstand the difference between a deadline for sending a ballot and the deadline for receiving it. Extending the deadline for receiving the ballot give more grace to voters for a consideration that is out of their hands: how quickly the postal service can deliver ballots. That's how many such deadlines work; for example, you only need to send your taxes into the government by April 15 — it doesn't need to receive them by that date. Kavanaugh's failure to notice the difference in this analogy is telling.

It's notable that, in all the tumult controversy that surrounded Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, many people told us that — whatever his personal faults — he was an excellent and upstanding jurist. This latest opinion gives us reason to question that conclusion.

Hasen, in particular, seemed disturbed by this turn of events.

"Why was Justice Kavanaugh so sloppy with the facts and law here (and presumably in the earlier Wisconsin election per curiam)?" he asked on Twitter. "He is usually a careful writer. It just undermines his points. A huge, unforced error."

The errors and sloppiness reflect another sad fact about the court: There's little we can do to encourage good behavior among Supreme Court justices. Short of impeachment or expansion of the court — either of which would be heavy lifts, though they're possible — there are few ways to limit their power. That means Kavanaugh can write sloppy and erroneous opinions on the bench with little fear it will cost him.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) may be on his own in the final days leading up to the election as the Daily Beast reports that President Donald Trump is unlikely to hold any campaign events to help rescue the embattled Republican senator as he fights for re-election.

In a likely a foreshadow of the days to come, Graham touted his relationship with President Donald Trump during a campaign rally Tuesday — even as the president was nowhere to be found.

"We got off to a rocky start. He beat me pretty badly," Graham told his crowd of supporters at a campaign rally in Greenville, South Carolina referencing his previous bid for the White House. But, now, Graham said, "we've got something in common; I like him and he likes me."

Vice President Mike Pence was the only White House official to appear on the Republican senator's behalf.

As one of the most vulnerable senators up for re-election while Republicans desperately fight to retain control of his seat, it would seem like a no-brainer for Trump to go the extra mile to show his support for Graham. However, that is not the case in this election. So why hasn't Trump come to Graham's rescue?

Since Trump, himself, is also facing an uphill re-election battle, the president and his campaign team likely believe there are many other places he could be, rather than spending time campaigning in a historically red state that has not turned blue since 1976. Daily Beast reporters Sam Brodey and Hunter Woodall also echoed a similar stance.

"Trump himself has not visited South Carolina to support his erstwhile ally, and likely will not before the Nov. 3 election, when Graham faces Democrat Jaime Harrison," they reported. "A former chair of the state's Democratic Party, Harrison entered the race a long shot but has turned the Senate contest into a toss-up race, after raising a record $100 million sum for his campaign from a national liberal base that detests Graham."

In fact, not only has the president appeared to abandon Graham, he did not even so much as tweet his support of the politically endangered senator.

Another reason for Trump's ambivalence toward his South Carolina frenemy may be the president's stance on "suckers" and "losers." Over the last few weeks, Graham has used his public appearances to complain about Harrison's ability to outraise him. In fact, Graham himself admitted that he is concerned about Harrison's massive windfall and he has even been trolled by the Lincoln Project after he called for an investigation into Harrison's small-dollar campaign donations through Act Blue.

It is no secret Trump has a deep level of disdain for what he describes as whining politicians. On multiple occasions, the president criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) as he insisted the governor was "whining" for simply asking the federal government to do its part to help provide ventilators during a deadly pandemic.

However, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford offered a different perspective. He believes Graham may not want to get tangled in a presidential visit and all that comes with it.

"I think if anything, he's probably wanting to be quiet on the Trump front, though he's obviously been a fan, in hopes that he picks up some measure of support from suburban or working women that have been lost or some of the young millennials that have been lost," Sanford said.

Despite the suggestion, Sanford also declined to confirm whether or not he would be supporting Graham when he casts his ballot. As of Tuesday, October 27, the Five Thirty Eight poll suggests Graham and Harrison are tied which is likely an alarm bell for the Republican senator with just six days until the election.

There's a basic problem with the story that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been pushing about Joe Biden's actions in Ukraine: It's a lie. Of course, this is politics, and the fact that the story is simply lacking in any facts isn't necessarily an issue. The real problem with this lie is that it's an obvious lie. An extremely obvious lie. One that they've been trying to pass off for more than a year.

After all, the claims now being made are exactly those that Trump was trying to extort from the president of Ukraine in the scheme that ultimately got Trump impeached. This is the same scheme that the CIA warned that Russia was going to use in an effort to influence the election. The scheme the Russian state-owned media has been pushing for a year. It's part of the same scheme that Trump confessed back in February. And it's being pushed by Rudy Giuliani, the guy at the center of a criminal investigation, whose partners have already been indicted, and who pocketed half a million for helping out the henchman of a Russian oligarch.

Giuliani started pushing this same story in 2019 which, somehow, turned out to be exactly what he found on the mystery laptop, which was brought into a Trump-supporting repair shop by an anonymous person, and given to a blind shop owner whose security cameras were on the blink. It is the most amazing coincidence. In fact, the story is so ridiculous, that not only are social media sites tossing it into the trash, the media outlets that reliably ran whatever Giuliani brought them in the past are increasingly reluctant to play along.

So Trump and company have now given up trying to defend the actual story. Instead, they've moved on to the story about the story … a kind of meta-lie. Because somehow, they think that's better.

Just about the only thing that the Trump/Giuliani scheme seems to have accomplished is to get the phrase "Hunter Biden's laptop" repeated with metronomic regularity. That's despite the fact that there is no reason to think that the laptop recovered from the Wilmington store actually belonged to Joe Biden's surviving son. Not only did the laptop come in without an identifiable source, it did so at a time when Hunter Biden was living on the opposite coast. And a quick examination of the documents on that laptop seems to indicate that several were created after the date on which the shop owner says the laptop was dropped off.

Overall, the whole thing looks like not just a fraud intended to provide Giuliani another opportunity to put forward the same lies, it looks like a clumsy fraud. In fact, the only thing that keeps it from looking like a Russian set up, is that it all seems so amateurish. Maybe Team Putin is really this bush league. It's almost disappointing.

The claims from Giuliani are so bad, that even the most pro-Trump networks have been hesitant to fully embrace the story. When you can't get OAN to run with your Trump-endorsed conspiracy theory, you've entered a zone what would make the subterranean lizard people who control the pizza basement child-based pepperoni network blush.

But, as Politico explains, that doesn't mean Trump is completely ready to let this story drop. Sure, there's an understandable reluctance to post unsubstantiated emails that feature Hunter Biden delivering scenes from a mob film—if only because no one believes that Joe Biden would make a good Brando. Instead, they've launched a two-part plan B.

Part one is publishing images of a supposed Hunter Biden that supposedly came from the mystery laptop. Those images are now to be found on "a Chinese website owned partially by Steve Bannon." Because there is no better way to show that your team is the one sticking it to China, than getting China to help you in smearing Biden.

Part two is something that's more up Trump's alley … complaining. Rather than push the original conspiracy theories that no one, including Trump's allies, will pick up, Trump's campaign is pushing the idea that no one will take up the laptop story because they're all in on it. Giuliani has even taken to podcasting to complain that people are refusing to give him time to repeat his lies on television. And if there is anything this nation needs, it's more free air time for Rudy Giuliani.

Instead of talking directly about Biden, Trump's team is now busy focusing on the story of how no one will publish their thoroughly debunked material. For example, Twitter just keeps "censoring" Donald Trump, but they never touch Joe Biden's posts. The truth is that's because Trump keeps deliberately breaking the site's terms of service, while Biden does not. But the "people are censoring Trump" story is at least something traditional conservative outlets are willing to touch with a 10.5 foot pole.

If the umpteenth coming of the Hunter Biden story was already a limp choice for October surprise, this meta-fiction about that story is incredibly weak. The planted laptop story has already failed. The story about how people wouldn't cover the planted laptop story hasn't got enough heat to be detected.

Seriously, if there's anything you expect from Trump, it's more interesting lies. This isn't even worth being outraged over.

Over the years, veteran conservative columnist George F. Will has had plenty of criticisms of liberals and progressives — and contrary to what many of President Donald Trump's far-right supporters have claimed, Will is still politically right-wing. But there is no question that Will, who left the Republican Party and is now supporting former Vice President Joe Biden, has been a blistering critic of Trump. And this week in his Washington Post column, Will not only predicts that Biden will defeat Trump on November 3 — he predicts that the election will be so devastating for Republicans that Democrats will dominate the federal government for at least a decade.

"By a circuitous route to a predictable destination," Will predicts, "the 2020 presidential selection process seems almost certain to end Tuesday with a fumigation election. A presidency that began with dark words about 'American carnage' probably will receive what it has earned: repudiation."

As Will sees it, Trump has been so toxic for the GOP and the conservative movement that his presidency needs as vehement a "repudiation" as possible. And like members of the Lincoln Project — a right-wing anti-Trump group that has been airing pro-Biden ads — Will believes that a Democratic landslide on November 3 will encourage the reset that American conservatism needs.

Will writes, "In defeat, Trump... will probably say that if not for the pandemic, Americans would have voted their pocketbooks — which would have been bulging because of economic growth — and reelected him. Americans, however, are more complicated and civic-minded than one-dimensional economy voters."

Trump has claimed that he inherited a broken economy from his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, and brought about an economic miracle. But truth be told, the Great Recession was long gone by the time Obama left office in January 2017. Trump inherited an economy that was already in recovery.

Will explains, "The 4% growth Trump promised as a candidate and the 3% he promised as president became, pre-pandemic, 2.5 % during his first three years — a negligible improvement over the 2.4% of the last three Barack Obama years. This growth was partly fueled by increased deficit spending, from 4.4% of gross domestic product to 6.3%, by the International Monetary Fund's calculation."

Will goes on to slam Trump for tariffs before segueing into a discussion of demographics — which, the 79-year-old columnist warns, will not work in favor of Republicans during the rest of the 2020s.

"In Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection, voters under 30 were a solidly Republican age cohort; 2020, for the fifth consecutive election, it will be the most Democratic," Will explains. "The Atlantic's Ronald Brownstein believes this year's 'generational backlash'" against Trump presages for Republicans a dismal decade during which two large and diverse cohorts — Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012 — become, together, the electorate's largest bloc in an electorate that, says Brownstein, 'is beginning its most profound generational transition since the early 1980s,' when Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 became the largest bloc."

Will continues, "In 2016, Trump won just 36% of adults under 30; Obama averaged 63% in two elections. Furthermore, this will be the first presidential election in which the number of Millennial and Generation Z eligible voters will outnumber eligible Baby Boomers. Generation Z is 49% people of color."

The Never Trump conservative wraps up his column by offering another reason why he is predicting a Biden victory on Election Day: Americans are feeling fed up and just plain "exhausted" during the Trump era.

"Economic and demographic statistics are not, however, the only ones pertinent to next Tuesday's probable outcome," Will argues. "Novelist John Updike supplied another: 'a healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.' This nation and its patience are exhausted."

Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos asked Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday to correct his flawed opinion issued on Monday.

In that opinion, Kavanaugh had falsely claimed that Vermont was among the states that hadn't changed its election rules to accommodate the challenge of voting during a pandemic.

"States such as Vermont," he wrote, "have decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules, including to the election-day deadline for receipt of absentee ballots."

But this was false. (As I documented, Kavanaugh's opinion was deemed "sloppy" by many and was riddled with errors.)

Condos pointed out that, in fact, the state changed its rules to allow every voter in the state to receive a mail-in ballot.

"Vermont is not an accurate comparison for the assertion Justice Kavanaugh has made," Condos said in a letter the the clerk of the Supreme Court.

"First, beginning on Sept. 18, Vermont mailed every active registered voter a ballot and a prepaid return envelope. Second, given that more Vermonters are voting early and by mail than in a typical election year, I authorized Local Election Officials to begin processing such ballots confidentially and with strict security protocols during the 30 days preceding the election in order to facilitate timely results," he wrote. "These two actions factored significantly in our decision to hold to existing law requiring the election day receipt of mailed ballots rather than extending returns beyond election day based on postmark."

He concluded: "I respectfully ask that the record is corrected to reflect that."

This story was produce by The Reader.

On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died one month earlier. But Senate Republicans blocked his nomination on the grounds that it was too close to the presidential election, which was then seven months away. Four and a half years later, President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Although Barrett's nomination was made just over one month from the presidential election (which Trump appears to be losing), she was confirmed.

The Democrats claimed to be united in their opposition to Barrett's confirmation. Yet their resistance to having a justice rammed through at the 11th hour of a lame duck presidency feels like the resistance that the Washington Generals used to show against the Harlem Globetrotters. That is, pure theater in which the outcome is never in doubt.

What this tells us is that the corporate donors who control the Democratic Party are happy with a Justice Barrett. In her short time on the bench, she has ruled consistently in favor of corporations. Just weeks before her nomination to the high court, Judge Barrett delivered a key ruling blocking many gig workers from suing in court when tech companies cheat them out of overtime pay. This and other business-friendly rulings are why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett's appointment to the court. Barrett also belongs to the business-backed Federalist Society and will join five other Federalists on the Supreme Court.

The differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues like abortion and gay rights are important to be sure. But the areas of agreement between the two parties—both parties favor the interests of corporations over their workers and the environment—are also important. And these issues don't get discussed because there is no disagreement. It is just accepted by both parties that a lawyer must be business-friendly to qualify for a federal judgeship.

In a true representative democracy, a lawyer should not have to demonstrate her fealty to corporate power to become a federal judge. The interests of corporate America are closely aligned with only a small fraction of Americans: the investor class. Most of our interests are more closely aligned with those of workers and consumers. There are scores of talented lawyers who go to top law schools but do not go to work at corporate firms. Many of these lawyers devote their careers to representing ordinary people, often taking on the most powerful interests in industry and in government. These pro-people lawyers should also have a place on the federal courts.

Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights activist who distinguished himself representing victims of racial injustice before being nominated by President John F. Kennedy for a federal judgeship, and later to the Supreme Court. Marshall would never get on the court today. Without a track record of pro-corporate advocacy, the donors would reject him.

Some lawyers distinguish themselves by taking on powerful corporations that harm ordinary people through negligence or deliberate malfeasance, such as the lawyers who took on a power company's illegal dumping of toxic waste portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich. These lawyers often exhibit great skill, resourcefulness, and integrity in fighting powerful and ruthless corporations.

Probably the most successful lawyer ever in taking on the criminal acts of massive corporations is Steven Donziger. Donziger graduated from Harvard Law School, worked as a public defender in Washington, D.C., and in 1993 agreed to represent a group of 30,000 Indigenous people and villagers in Ecuador who had been deliberately poisoned by Chevron, one of the world's largest corporations with over $260 billion in assets.

Beginning in 1964, Chevron (then Texaco) began extracting oil in Ecuador. To save about $3 per barrel of oil produced, the company decided to ignore waste regulations and dump some 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits, polluting groundwater and farmland, and destroying a large section of the Ecuadorian Amazon in what came to be called the "Amazon Chernobyl" by locals and experts. Local drinking water became noxious, and citizens became ill. This has all been confirmed by courts in Ecuador after an eight-year trial, the submission of 105 technical evidentiary reports, and testimony from numerous witnesses.

"I did not set out to be an environmental lawyer," Donziger recently told Greenpeace. "I simply agreed to seek a remedy for 30,000 victims for the destruction of their lands and water; to seek care for the health impacts including birth defects, leukemia, and other cancers; and to help them restore their Amazon ecosystem and basic dignity."

Donziger made more than 250 trips to Ecuador over the next two decades as he led the legal fight against Chevron. Then in 2011, Donziger and his team secured a $9.5 billion judgment on behalf of the victims. The trial court decision was affirmed on the merits or for enforcement by multiple appellate courts in Ecuador and Canada, including the supreme courts of both countries.

Chevron refused to pay. During the trial, it threatened the affected communities with a "lifetime of litigation." Afterwards, Chevron engaged a team of 2,000 corporate lawyers from at least 60 firms to retaliate against Donziger and the lead plaintiffs in the case, filing a barrage of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) and RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) suits, legal tools used—and abused—by large companies to punish people who take them to court.

Chevron's vile and cynical legal strategy—designed to avoid paying compensation to the Indigenous people whose lives it deliberately destroyed to earn an extra $5 billion over 20 years—could not succeed without a federal judiciary populated by corporate-friendly judges willing to bend the law to protect corporate profits.

Chevron's RICO suit against Donziger was filed in the Southern District of New York, a Wall Street-friendly court. The case was presided over by U.S. district Judge Lewis Kaplan who, before being appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, spent decades as a corporate lawyer representing tobacco companies and banks. The record of the RICO case shows that Chevron paid a disgraced former Ecuadoran judge named Alberto Guerra about $2 million to testify that the verdict in Ecuador was the product of a bribe. Chevron's cash payments to Guerra should have disqualified him as a witness. Moreover, Guerra admitted to lying about the bribe in another international proceeding. Nevertheless, after denying Donziger his right to a jury trial, Judge Kaplan found that Guerra's story was credible.

Judge Kaplan later charged Donziger with criminal contempt, but the New York prosecutor's office refused to take the case. In a rare legal move, Kaplan then appointed a private corporate law firm (that also represents Chevron) to prosecute Donziger. Kaplan personally assigned Judge Loretta Preska, a member of the corporatist Federalist Society, to hear the case. Preska placed Donziger under house arrest and confiscated his passport.

I reached Donziger by phone at his apartment in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and teenage son. He says that his contempt trial before Judge Preska is scheduled for November 4, the day after the election. He is again being denied a jury trial.

Some 29 Nobel laureates, including nine Peace Prize winners, have signed a letter declaring that Chevron's legal assault on Donziger is "one of the most egregious cases of judicial harassment and defamation" ever seen. He has also been backed by 475 lawyers and bar associations who wrote an open letter outlining his wrongful detention and mistreatment by U.S. judicial authorities.

Donziger's story is also a story about the sad condition of the U.S. court system which, like the other two branches of our government, primarily serves the interests of the wealthy. On this topic, I strongly recommend a new book by Ronald Goldfarb called The Price of Justice.

Although the Democrats will do nothing to stop Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court, their leader, Joe Biden, has pledged that if elected, he would establish a bipartisan commission to study whether to expand the courts to achieve greater balance.

We recall from history class that President Franklin D. Roosevelt also threatened, in 1937, to add enough liberal justices to the court to protect his programs from the "obstructionist" conservatives. The key difference then was that FDR had an agenda of bold programs to pull the country out of the Great Depression, such as putting Americans to work building post offices, bridges, schools, highways, and parks; supporting farmers and labor unions; and ending alcohol prohibition.

The Democrats of today, however, are offering nothing but a promise to wear a face mask and to not send mean tweets at 3 a.m., while Joe Biden assured his wealthy donors at a New York fundraiser that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he is elected president. Even a Supreme Court packed with Republicans is likely to go along with that agenda.

Click here for the defense fund established on Donziger's behalf.

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader.

A handful of elderly supporters of President Donald Trump were treated for possible hypothermia after they were left stranded at an Omaha campaign rally.

The president spoke to thousands of supporters Tuesday night at Eppley Airfield before flying off in Air Force One, and some of the thousands of Trump fans waited in near-freezing temperatures for buses that couldn't reach them, reported the Washington Post.

At least seven attendees were taken to area hospitals, according to the Omaha Scanner monitoring service.

An ambulance was sent for "a 65 y/o male who 'got a little excited about what President Trump was talking about' and began to experience weakness," the service reported, and medics treated two attendees for seizures.

After the president departed, multiple attendees were treated at the scene or hospitalized for cold exposure.

One officer advising 8 to 9 elderly people who are struggling. Seperate officer advising they have located an elderly party who is frozen cold unable to move with an altered mental status.
— Omaha Scanner (@omaha_scanner) October 28, 2020

"One officer advising 8 to 9 elderly people who are struggling," Omaha Scanner tweeted. "[Another] officer advising they have located an elderly party who is frozen cold unable to move with an altered mental status."

Local officials said at least 30 people received medical treatment at the event and seven were taken to nearby hospitals.

The Trump campaign insisted enough buses had been provided, but reporters said traffic on a two-lane road outside the airport was throttled in one direction.

An estimated crowd of about 6,000 turned out to hear the president speak despite a local spike in coronavirus cases, and the campaign checked temperatures and provided masks but many attendees declined to wear them.

Thousands of people left out in the cold and stranded in #Omaha, #Nebraska after a #Trump rally. I'm told the shuttles aren't operating & there aren't enough busses. Police didn't seem to know what to do. Some walked. I saw at least one woman getting medical attention. pic.twitter.com/oIkmixaZt0
— Jeff Paul (@Jeff_Paul) October 28, 2020

Former President Barack Obama was in Florida on Tuesday campaigning for the Biden-Harris ticket. It's Obama, a man who is already a great orator, and after three and a half years of Donald Trump, it's like listening to Moses. Fox News as well as other news outlets covered the speech. This meant that there was a good chance that Donald Trump may or may not know about it happening. There was a good chance Trump saw some of it.

Let's see what Trump is thinking about right now: "Now Fox News is playing Obama's no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn't believe he won. Also, I PREPAID many Millions of Dollars in Taxes." I guess we know what he's doing to lead our country into 2021.

At one point, Obama went in on Trump directly, pointing out Trump's insistence that Lesley Stahl was really tough on him and 60 Minutes was just too tough for him to deal with are sort of sad. I mean, that's some high-level snowflake stuff. "Our current president whines that 60 minutes is too tough. Do you think he will stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl is a bully."

Then Obama went in on Trump's biggest supporters: foreign dictators.

BARACK OBAMA: Just yesterday he said that Putin of Russia, Xi of China, and Kim Jong-Un want him to win. We know! We know because you have been giving them whatever they want for the last four years. Of course they want you to win. That's not a good thing. You shouldn't brag about the fact that some of our greatest adversaries think they'd be better off with you in office. Of course they do. What does that say about you? I mean, think about that. Why are you bragging about that? Come on!

Obama went on to point out that a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration would, at the very least, be so much less exhausting since they would just be doing the job and not tweeting ridiculous things all the time. Specifically, Obama highlighted how desensitized we have all gotten as Trump has retweeted conspiracy theories that include the idea that Seal Team Six didn't in fact kill Osama Bin Laden.

Donald Trump had been tweeting all morning, and as we wrote above, was literally hate-tweeting Obama and Fox News at the same moment that Obama was criticizing him for tweeting instead of doing something productive in his role as head of the executive branch of our government.

President Obama slams Trump at Florida rally youtu.be

Obama takes Trump's lack of leadership to task and his penchant for bizarre conspiracy theories youtu.be

Barack Obama campaigns for Joe Biden in Florida – watch live youtu.be

Even if November 3 brings a major blue wave, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to recent polls, is likely to be reelected. McConnell is seeking a seventh term, but veteran progressive activist Ralph Nader, in an op-ed for the Louisville Courier, argues that the last thing the Kentucky senator deserves is to be reelected.

"I have studied and interacted with many members of Congress," Nader writes. "McConnell is the most brazen evil, cruel and powerful legislator in the last 50 years. His lack of empathy for the vulnerable and disadvantaged is stunning."

McConnell's record, Nader stresses, has been characterized by a total lack of compassion for those less fortunate than him. And he hasn't grown any more compassionate under Donald Trump's presidency.

"McConnell, comfortably embraced by the Congress' socialized medicine, loses no sleep saying yes to a corporate-profit-glutted, wasteful corporatized health care industry whose denials, co-payments and exemptions are costing thousands of uninsured and insured American lives a year. He fought but failed to end Obamacare, pleased to consign another 22 million people to the dreaded, uninsured hell," Nader writes, adding that he has vigorously fought against relief for Americans who are hurting financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Nader, "McConnell's back-of-the-hand to coal mine workers' safety, survivors' pensions and continuing black lung payments, mainly harms Kentucky, but his other aggressions against people in favor of big business affect the entire country. He bragged at an event in Owensboro that he and he alone decides what issues this Senate votes on."

McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984. This year, his latest Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, was hoping to unseat him. But McConnell appears heading for reelection.

"McConnell has the gall to campaign on 'Kentucky Values,'" Nader writes. "Voters in Kentucky, with a little homework, or a factual memory of this senatorial oligarch, shouldn't have difficulty in rejecting those claims. McConnell has gotten away with ferociously shredding Kentucky values for 36 years. He smugly expects six more years."

Four years ago, during the 2016 presidential election, Republican nominee Donald J. Trump got the "October surprise" his campaign was hoping for: James Comey, FBI director at the time, announced that he was reopening the investigation of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Journalist/author and New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt looks back on that October 2016 bombshell in his book, "Donald Trump v. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President" — and according to Schmidt, one person who urged Comey not to publicly announce his investigation was his wife, Patrice Comey.

Schmidt, in an article published on NBC News' website on October 28 and adapted from his book, explains, "FBI Director Jim Comey's decision to reopen the Clinton e-mail investigation 11 days before the 2016 election will likely go down in history as one of America's most dramatic October surprises. In the four years since that decision, it has become cemented in the minds of Clinton supporters and many political analysts as the turning point for her doomed campaign."

The then-FBI director, Schmidt explains, "turned to" his wife "as he searched for answers" in 2016 — and Patrice Comey advised against announcing the Clinton investigation.

"Patrice was an ardent Clinton supporter and had long dreamt of seeing a woman elected president," Schmidt notes. "She believed Trump was an existential threat and must never sit in the Oval Office. An argument between couples is normal. But in this argument, the Comeys — armed with knowledge that only a handful of Americans were privy to — had to weigh what felt like an incalculable decision. And of course, the stakes felt impossibly high. And as it turns out, they were."

Schmidt's piece describes, in detail, the conversations the Comeys had in October 2016 in their home in McLean, Virginia. On October 27, 2016, Schmidt explains, "There were less than two weeks to go before the presidential election, and now, the Clinton e-mail investigation that Comey had taken the rare step of personally and publicly closing in July was about to roar back to life. 'It's a shit show,' he told Patrice. 'They told me that there's thousands of e-mails.' It would fall to the director to make the final decision about what to do."

Patrice Comey told her husband, "You can't do this this close to the election. You can't do this to a candidate." And the then-FBI director told his wife, "I am screwed no matter what happens. If I disclose this, I'm screwed. If I don't disclose this, I'm screwed."

James Comey made his Clinton e-mails announcement, and that "October surprise" — just as his wife predicted — seriously damaged Clinton's campaign. On Election Day 2016, Schmidt didn't vote in the presidential election; he believed that by not voting for either Clinton or Trump, he was showing his neutrality or objectivity as a law enforcement agent.

"Patrice, on the other hand, was excited to vote," Schmidt writes. "She had waited decades to vote for a woman presidential candidate, and her eyes brimmed with tears as she selected Clinton."

Schmidt goes on to describe Election Night 2016, writing, "After the Associated Press called Florida for Trump at 10:50 p.m., Jim went to bed, still thinking Clinton would win. At 2:30 a.m., when the AP called the race for Donald Trump, Patrice cried on the phone with her daughters, not giving voice to what she feared: that their father might be blamed for Trump's election. Patrice finally went upstairs to their dark bedroom and woke up her husband to tell him the news. Jim sat right up. 'Oh, God,' he said."