An air of inevitability at Barrett's supreme court hearing

Welcome to today’s US election briefing for Australia.

For a second day the biggest election news didn’t come from the campaign trail but from the confirmation hearings of supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. But though Donald Trump wasn’t in the room, his presence – and words – loomed large.

Trump has been candid about exactly what he expects from his judicial picks. He has said he would choose judges who would “do the right thing” on the Affordable Care Act (ie junk it) and overturn the landmark abortion rights decision Roe v Wade. He has said he wanted a ninth justice, as Barrett would be, in place quickly in case the election result is in dispute – suggesting he expects a conservative majority would side with him.

Democrats zeroed in on all these issues, but Barrett insisted she came with no agenda and would follow the law in all cases. However, her previous positions on some issues are well known – she signed on to a 2006 newspaper ad stating “it’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v Wade” for starters. You can read our full report here.

As my colleague Lauren Gambino points out, all this is playing out with an “air of inevitability” anyway. With the Republicans controlling the Senate, this is the hearing to confirm Barrett, rather than the traditional opportunity to “consider” her nomination. The die is almost certainly cast here.

What isn’t inevitable is how it might play out politically – with Democrats hoping highlighting the potential peril to Obamacare posed by Barrett’s confirmation will boost turnout for them in November.

The big stories

Joe Biden’s lead over Trump has surged to a record 17 points, an Opinium Research and Guardian poll shows. Take all polls with a (large) grain of salt, obviously, but surveys consistently spell trouble for Trump.

Members of anti-government paramilitary groups discussed kidnapping Virginia’s Democrat governor, the FBI has alleged. The claim came to light in hearings for the men recently charged over an alleged plot targeting Michigan’s Democrat leader.

Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black Trump supporters, due to spam and platform manipulation, some of which used stolen images or claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.

Pete Buttigieg, the unassuming former presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has emerged as an effective political surrogate for Biden in the conservative media. He has been dubbed “Slayer Pete” after recent turns on Fox News. (But his husband is not happy with the Guardian’s description of their dogs.)

The US supreme court has allowed the Trump administration to immediately end counting for the 2020 census, cutting it short by two weeks, amid concerns of an undercount.

A surge of white supremacism in a county in the swing state of North Carolina has spurred progressive organising, according to this fascinating dispatch.

Quote of the day

At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump pleads – rather literally – with a voting bloc polls suggest may be abandoning him.

Election view

Republicans want to use what “they claim is Barrett’s private life as both a sword and a shield”, writes Jill Filipovic, touting Barrett’s faith and role as a mother as a qualification, while decrying any scrutiny of her religion. The first day of hearings was rank hypocrisy from start to finish, Filipovic says.

Podcast of the day

Trump has repeatedly stated that he may refuse to accept defeat in the coming election. As Lawrence Douglas explains, things could get very messy if the result is close.

Around the web

As Biden’s son-in-law, Howard Krein, has been advising his campaign on its coronavirus response, Krein’s venture capital business has been running a special initiative to invest in health care startups that offer solutions to the pandemic, Politico reports.

“How would Republicans behave if Judge Barrett were a Democrat whose strongly held religious beliefs came from Islam instead of Catholicism?” asks Wajahat Ali in the NYT.

I watched a chunk of the West Wing for the first time during lockdown and wow, it has not aged well – an entertaining but insufferably smug 1990s liberal fantasy with 1950s gender politics. So I don’t share the enthusiasm for this one-off reboot intended to get the vote out, nor do I understand who among their zealous fanbase wouldn’t already be voting, but hey, it’s good to see actors keeping busy in a tough year.

What the numbers say: 128,000

The number of people who voted in the state of Georgia on the first day of early voting yesterday, smashing the previous record, despite waiting more than 10 hours in some cases to do so. More than 10 million Americans have already voted.

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