Category: reason

Trump Is Losing Old People to Biden in Battleground States

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A new poll shows President Donald Trump trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 30 points among older voters in Michigan. If the trend holds in other battleground states—and recent numbers suggest it might—then the Trump 2020 reelection campaign is in deep trouble. Americans aged 65 and older reliably show up to vote in larger numbers than their younger counterparts and tend to vote more conservatively.

“A Democratic candidate has not won voters over the age of 65 in two decades, and in 2016 Trump beat Clinton in that group by 8 points,” points out Forbes. “In 2012, Mitt Romney won seniors by 12 points over Obama (56%-44%), and John McCain edged out Obama by 8 points in 2008 (53%-45%), according to exit polls.”

Back in early September, Michigan residents 65 and up only marginally preferred Biden, with the former vice president and 2020 Democratic candidate beating Trump by 7.5 percent among this group (with a 4-point margin of error).

But a new WDIV/Detroit News poll conducted between September 30 and October 3 found that Trump has lost 22 points with older voters since then. In the latest poll, 59.1 percent of older Michigan voters supported Biden, while just 29.2 percent supported Trump.

“This is a five-alarm fire for the president’s campaign, if true,” tweeted NBC News’ Sahil Kapur.

Older Michigan voters—who overwhelmingly say they plan to vote by mail this year—preferred Biden regardless of gender, with Biden making especially big gains among older white men. “White men over 65 have shifted by 22.1% since early September with Biden now holding an 8.8% lead,” notes Detroit’s WDIV Local 4 News. “White women over 65 have shifted by 17.6% with Biden now holding a 15.4% lead.”

Trump still leads among white Michigan voters ages 50 to 64 but appears to be losing ground with that group, too. In the WDIV/Detroit News poll conducted between September 1–3, more than half (51.8 percent) preferred Trump while just 42.2 percent preferred Biden. But in the latest Michigan polling, Biden and Trump were tied at 46 percent among those ages 50-64.

And older voters’ turn away from Trump isn’t merely a Michigan phenomenon. Recent polling in other toss-up states, including Florida and Pennsylvania, found similar shifts.

Older Voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona Like Biden

An AARP poll of Floridians found that voters ages 50 and above “are not a lock for either major-party presidential candidate,” with 50 percent going toward Trump to Biden’s 47 percent in a poll (with a 2.2-point margin of error) that was conducted August 30–September 8. Among voters ages 65 and older, however, Trump trailed Biden by just one percentage point.

In the latest New York Times-Siena College Research Institute poll of Pennsylvanians, 53 percent of the oldest voters preferred Biden and 42 percent preferred Trump.

In the group’s poll of Floridians, voters 65 and older were fairly evenly split between the Republican and Democratic candidates, with 47 percent supporting Biden and 45 percent supporting Trump. (Both the Florida and Pennsylvania polls had roughly 4-point margins of error.)

The latest poll of Arizona voters from The New York Times and Siena College Research Institute, conducted October 1–3, found Biden and Trump are extremely close among older voters there, too: 48 percent of those ages 65 and older said they would vote for Biden and 47 percent said they would vote for Trump.

Jorgensen Garners Interest From Millennials and Generation Z

In Arizona, 3 percent of all likely voters surveyed said they support Jo Jorgensen. The Libertarian Party (L.P.) presidential candidate drew the most support in Arizona from young voters, with 8 percent support among the 18- to 29-year-old crowd polled and only 1 percent support from voters 65 and older.

Jorgensen was also the top candidate for 3 percent of survey respondents in the Pennsylvania poll, and top choice for 2 percent in Florida. As in Arizona, Jorgensen attracted support from millennial and Gen Z voters in both states.

While just 1 percent of the oldest cohort in Florida supported Jorgensen, 6 percent of the 30- to 44-year-olds and 4 percent of the 18- to 29-year-olds polled did. (Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins was supported by 2 percent of each younger group in the Sunshine State.) In Pennsylvania, 6 percent each of the youngest and second-youngest groups supported Jorgensen, with her support dwindling to 3 percent among 45- to 64-year-olds and zero percent among the oldest group.

So, older voters aren’t fleeing Trump for the L.P. this year; slack seems to be picked up solely by Biden and Democrats.

If older voters prefer Biden in November, it will be a big deal. Remember, voters 65 and above “have gone for Republican presidential candidates since 2004” and “favored Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 52 to 45 percent margin,” as Robert Griffin, research director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, points out.

He also notes that older voters are more likely to describe Biden than Trump as moderate—which could help explain Biden’s good showing among older Americans. They’re not swinging leftward, it could just be that Trump is a chaos agent and Biden is as status quo as they come.

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In other Supreme Court news: justices ruled yesterday (with no dissents) to allow South Carolina Republicans “to reinstate the state’s witness-signature requirement on absentee ballots pending appeal.” More here.

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QUICK HITS

  • John McAfee is being charged with tax evasion by the Department of Justice. McAfee has been accused of earning “millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary” but not filing any federal tax returns between 2014 and 2018.
  • “President Donald Trump has been touting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine since March as effective treatments for COVID-19,” writes Ron Bailey. But “last week, when the president was hospitalized for a COVID-19 infection, his physicians listed the medications with which he is being treated” and “hydroxychloroquine is notable by its absence.”
  • “Nearly a third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients experienced some type of altered mental function—ranging from confusion to delirium to unresponsiveness” in a large new study published Monday in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology. For the study, researchers looked at the first 509 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the Chicago area.
  • Almost, you guys:

  • Sigh: “The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees airlines and U.S. transportation policy had his mask off for extended periods on a Delta flight to Mississippi on Thursday night, according to another passenger, and the company said he had to be reminded twice by a flight attendant to follow the airline’s mask requirement.”

Myles Cosgrove, a Louisville, Kentucky, detective who participated in the fruitless and legally dubious drug raid that killed Breonna Taylor last March, told investigators the incident unfolded so quickly that he was not consciously aware of using his gun. That detail, which emerged from audio recordings of grand jury proceedings that were released on Friday, is alarming in light of the fact that Cosgrove fired 16 rounds—including the fatal bullet, according to the FBI’s ballistic analysis.

  • In California, a day of activism around prisoners’ rights:

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Today in Supreme Court History

I have now posted 366 installments of “Today in Supreme Court History,” one for each day of the past year (including February 29). Finding something SCOTUS-related for every day of the calendar was complicated.

There were some easy dates to find:

  • Dates on which famous Supreme Court cases were argued and decided.
  • Dates on which the Justices were born, confirmed, took the oath, resigned, or died.
  • Dates on which Presidents nominated a Justice to the Supreme Court.

Those dates filled up about half of the calendar. But there were huge gaps–especially over the summer, when the Court and the Senate are usually not in session.

Next, I moved to more creative Supreme Court connections: I searched the Supreme Court cases database on Westlaw for specific dates, like “September 6” or “July 9.” Then I went through hundreds of entries to find specific facts in a case that referenced that date. I tried to only include cases that were well-known. Even with this approach, I still had dozens of empty date.

Next, I got even more resourceful. I looked through the chronology of the Constitutional Convention, which stretched through the summer of 1787, as well as the subsequent ratification process. I also referenced the publication date of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. I also added dates from the ratification process of the twenty-seven amendments. Admittedly, these events are more tangentially related to the Supreme Court. Yet, I still had some blanks.

Next, I looked at the dates of birth, death, and inauguration of the Presidents. Then I referenced the Justices that President would ultimately appoint to the Supreme Court.

Finally, I had about a dozen or so slots left. I simply added fun facts about American history that bear no real relationship to the Supreme Court. I welcome any suggestions of dates to add.

I have become fond of this feature, and received some favorable feedback. I will restart it tomorrow. On October 7, 1982, I.N.S. v. Chadha was argued.

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Today in Supreme Court History

I have now posted 366 installments of “Today in Supreme Court History,” one for each day of the past year (including February 29). Finding something SCOTUS-related for every day of the calendar was complicated.

There were some easy dates to find:

  • Dates on which famous Supreme Court cases were argued and decided.
  • Dates on which the Justices were born, confirmed, took the oath, resigned, or died.
  • Dates on which Presidents nominated a Justice to the Supreme Court.

Those dates filled up about half of the calendar. But there were huge gaps–especially over the summer, when the Court and the Senate are usually not in session.

Next, I moved to more creative Supreme Court connections: I searched the Supreme Court cases database on Westlaw for specific dates, like “September 6” or “July 9.” Then I went through hundreds of entries to find specific facts in a case that referenced that date. I tried to only include cases that were well-known. Even with this approach, I still had dozens of empty date.

Next, I got even more resourceful. I looked through the chronology of the Constitutional Convention, which stretched through the summer of 1787, as well as the subsequent ratification process. I also referenced the publication date of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. I also added dates from the ratification process of the twenty-seven amendments. Admittedly, these events are more tangentially related to the Supreme Court. Yet, I still had some blanks.

Next, I looked at the dates of birth, death, and inauguration of the Presidents. Then I referenced the Justices that President would ultimately appoint to the Supreme Court.

Finally, I had about a dozen or so slots left. I simply added fun facts about American history that bear no real relationship to the Supreme Court. I welcome any suggestions of dates to add.

I have become fond of this feature, and received some favorable feedback. I will restart it tomorrow. On October 7, 1982, I.N.S. v. Chadha was argued.

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Trump’s Student Visa Disaster 

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There are 1.2 million foreign students in the United States, enrolled in 5,300 American colleges and universities. Most come to America on nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 visas that require them to maintain a full course load at universities approved by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Student and Exchange Visitor Program. In order to guard against diploma mills, the program grants accreditation mostly to universities that offer classroom instruction and usually limits foreign students to three credit hours of online instruction per semester.

When COVID-19 hit and colleges moved online, ICE did the sensible thing and allowed international students to finish their spring and summer semesters by taking their classes online without voiding their visas. The agency rescinded that guidance in early July, however, ordering international students attending online-only programs to either leave or face deportation and risk getting barred from the U.S. for 10 years. This meant several hundred thousand foreign students would have had to quickly terminate leases on apartments, uproot the lives they’ve built here, and find exorbitantly expensive flights back home without any idea of when they would be allowed to return to complete their education.

Lawsuits by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prompted the Trump administration to issue new rules in late July allowing foreigners who are already enrolled to continue their studies online. But even though students who are here will be allowed to stay, the new rules will still deny visas to incoming freshmen from abroad whose universities are offering only online courses in response to the pandemic. They can either defer for a semester or begin their programs online from their home countries—a logistically challenging proposition for many due to time differences.

Roughly 80,000 people, or about 30 percent of new international students, even before the new pandemic visa rules, had decided not to come this fall, according to Brad Farnsworth, vice president of the American Council on Education. Given the political uncertainty, many of them might permanently abandon their plans to study in the U.S. and go to more welcoming countries instead.

The ban is a major hit to American universities. International students constitute 5.5 percent of all students. They pump around $41 billion into colleges annually and support nearly 460,000 jobs on campus and in surrounding communities. Many of them pay full tuition, which subsidizes the price tag for American kids. Universities also depend on foreign graduate students to assist in classroom instruction, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

America was already facing declining international enrollment for three years straight. The administration’s move will only intensify that trend.

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Trump’s Student Visa Disaster 

topicsimmigration

There are 1.2 million foreign students in the United States, enrolled in 5,300 American colleges and universities. Most come to America on nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 visas that require them to maintain a full course load at universities approved by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Student and Exchange Visitor Program. In order to guard against diploma mills, the program grants accreditation mostly to universities that offer classroom instruction and usually limits foreign students to three credit hours of online instruction per semester.

When COVID-19 hit and colleges moved online, ICE did the sensible thing and allowed international students to finish their spring and summer semesters by taking their classes online without voiding their visas. The agency rescinded that guidance in early July, however, ordering international students attending online-only programs to either leave or face deportation and risk getting barred from the U.S. for 10 years. This meant several hundred thousand foreign students would have had to quickly terminate leases on apartments, uproot the lives they’ve built here, and find exorbitantly expensive flights back home without any idea of when they would be allowed to return to complete their education.

Lawsuits by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prompted the Trump administration to issue new rules in late July allowing foreigners who are already enrolled to continue their studies online. But even though students who are here will be allowed to stay, the new rules will still deny visas to incoming freshmen from abroad whose universities are offering only online courses in response to the pandemic. They can either defer for a semester or begin their programs online from their home countries—a logistically challenging proposition for many due to time differences.

Roughly 80,000 people, or about 30 percent of new international students, even before the new pandemic visa rules, had decided not to come this fall, according to Brad Farnsworth, vice president of the American Council on Education. Given the political uncertainty, many of them might permanently abandon their plans to study in the U.S. and go to more welcoming countries instead.

The ban is a major hit to American universities. International students constitute 5.5 percent of all students. They pump around $41 billion into colleges annually and support nearly 460,000 jobs on campus and in surrounding communities. Many of them pay full tuition, which subsidizes the price tag for American kids. Universities also depend on foreign graduate students to assist in classroom instruction, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

America was already facing declining international enrollment for three years straight. The administration’s move will only intensify that trend.

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Brickbat: It’s Never Temporary

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The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, responsible for regional transportation planning and financing in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, has voted to make permanent telecommuting practices adopted to reduce the spread of coronavirus. “There is an opportunity to do things that could not have been done in the past,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a member of the commission. The plan would require  “large, office-based employers” to have at least 60 percent of their employees working from home on any given workday.

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Brickbat: It’s Never Temporary

SFTraffic_1161x653

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, responsible for regional transportation planning and financing in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, has voted to make permanent telecommuting practices adopted to reduce the spread of coronavirus. “There is an opportunity to do things that could not have been done in the past,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a member of the commission. The plan would require  “large, office-based employers” to have at least 60 percent of their employees working from home on any given workday.

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Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Rutgers Law School

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A treatise on Swedish civil procedure, a law school textbook, a new journal for law student writers—such accomplishments might seem important only in the cloistered world of law professors. In fact, they were some of the first ways that Ruth Bader Ginsburg began to change the law.

As a law professor, Ginsburg led the creation of the field of women’s studies in law. Her first step in doing so took her to Sweden.

She graduated from Columbia Law School, first in her class, in 1959. After she clerked for a federal district judge, she was hired by Columbia for an international law project. In conjunction with a Swedish scholar, she wrote “Civil Procedure in Sweden,” published in 1965 by a Dutch academic press (Martinus Nijhoff). To study Swedish law, Ginsburg learned Swedish.

One reviewer, in the Kentucky Law Journal (pdf), found the book “so well written that it makes not only profitable, instructive, at times even revealing reading, but … also interesting. Certainly, one does not expect this kind of book in the field of civil procedure.” Other reviewers liked the Swedish book, too, and it’s still cited by courts and scholars today.

As part of the research, professor Ginsburg traveled to Sweden. There, she was inspired to see that 20 to 25 percent of law students were women.

While the Swedish book was in progress, she was hired by Rutgers Law School in 1963 to teach civil procedure. As a scholar, judge, and justice, she would become renowned for the clarity of her explanations of complex questions in civil procedure.

The law school tenure standard of the time was writing two law review articles. Hers, both on civil procedure, appeared in the Harvard and Columbia law reviews.

A Needed Textbook

Professor Ginsburg’s second book aimed to do more than make Swedish law accessible to English-reading scholars. The new book would make women’s rights accessible to law professors, law students, and lawyers.

What law students learn depends on what professors can teach. Teaching depends on what textbooks exist. Although some professors do collect or write their own materials for class, most of what gets taught in law school is from textbooks. Only if a textbook on women’s rights existed could women’s rights be broadly studied in law school.

By 1971 there were professors who sympathized with women’s rights, but were far from expert on the subject. They could teach it only if someone else wrote a textbook. They had neither the time nor inclination to determine which cases and materials were most important, collect and edit them, and then organize them into an orderly narrative. So Ginsburg did it all for them. She also provided her own analysis.

Ginsburg’s “Materials on Sex-based Discrimination and the Law” was published in 1971. The front matter describes it as a “preliminary draft.” Another version was titled “Constitutional Aspects of Sex Discrimination.” The textbook wasn’t lengthy—a hundred pages and change. She used it for her brand-new Rutgers seminar on women’s rights.

While the book by itself wasn’t long enough for a full semester, it did have enough for a professor to teach a women’s rights module as a unit in a broader class, or to use it as a foundation for a class dedicated to women’s rights. The textbook could also be a starting point for a practicing lawyer who wanted to become active in women’s rights.

Unlike “Civil Procedure in Sweden,” the Ginsburg textbook is little cited. As an introduction to the field of women’s law, it was soon outdated, thanks in part to the judicial victories that Ginsburg was winning with her briefs.

Women’s Rights Law Journal

Besides writing her own books and articles, Ginsburg guided the first legal journal dedicated to women’s issues, the Women’s Rights Law Reporter. The entering class of 1970 at Rutgers Law School was 20 percent women. Some of them met with a recent Rutgers Law graduate, Ann Marie Boylan, who had published the first issue of the Reporter from her apartment in Newark. But she couldn’t keep up the whole publication by herself.

The Rutgers students talked with the law school dean and worked out a deal. The Women’s Rights Law Reporter got an office space on campus and raised enough money in donations and subscriptions to pay its expenses, such as printing and mailing.

Besides fundraising for self-sufficiency, the dean’s other condition was that the student-written Women’s Rights Law Reporter had to have a faculty adviser. That would be professor Ginsburg.

The Reporter published “short articles and case summaries exclusively on women’s rights issues,” explained cofounder Elizabeth Langer in a 2010 article for Barnard College. “Our first issues were collectively conceived and published with conscious effort made to avoid the traditional law review hierarchy.”

As Langer recalled: “Professor Ginsburg devoted many hours to writing and editing, counseling the staff, attending meetings, and inevitably mediating with the administration when problems arose.”

In the Reporter’s first issue from Rutgers, the lead article was Ginsburg’s analysis of the Supreme Court’s recent decision supporting women’s rights, in Reed v. Reed, for which Ginsburg had coauthored the merits briefs.

Rutgers professor Ginsburg would later become a Columbia professor, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then a Justice of the Supreme Court. Her illustrious career would be founded on the same characteristics she had shown in those early years at Rutgers: vision, clarity, and generosity.

This article was originally published in Epoch Times, Sept. 23, 2020, and is slightly revised.

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