NATION AND WORLD/IN BRIEF
Biden looking to expand voter map
MIAMI — As President Donald Trump recovers from the coronavirus, Joe Biden is capitalizing on having the campaign trail largely to himself by hitting critical swing states and investing in longtime Republican bastions that he hopes might expand his path to victory.
The Democratic presidential nominee made his second trip to Florida in a little over two weeks Monday. His visit to Miami was designed to encroach on some of Trump’s turf, even swinging through Little Havana, a typically conservative area known for its staunch opposition to the communist government that Fidel Castro installed in Cuba.
He’ll follow up with a trip later this week to Arizona, which hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996. Even Biden’s former primary rival, Bernie Sanders, has resumed in-person campaigning for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak in March. The progressive Vermont senator held socially distanced rallies in the swing states of New Hampshire and Michigan and proclaimed, “We need Joe Biden as our president.”
Biden is complementing the expanded campaign travel with a late-stage ad push, reserving more than $6 million in television airtime in Texas — for decades deeply red — through the end of October, according to an Associated Press analysis of CMAG data. He also plans to spend $4 million on advertising in Georgia, another Republicanleaning state that Democrats are feeling bullish about.
Trump, meanwhile, has scaled back advertising in both states and has begun doing the same in Ohio, which he also won in 2016.
Infected senator vows ‘moon suit’
WASHINGTON — Shuttered by COVID-19 infections, the Republican-led Senate is refusing to delay confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court.
They are even willing to make special arrangements so sick senators can vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and Democrats appear powerless to stop them.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Monday that he’ll go to the Capitol “in a moon suit” to vote if he’s still testing positive for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 209,000 Americans and infected millions.
The push to put conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before Nov. 3 is like nothing seen in U.S. history so close to a presidential election. Trump’s nomination of Barrett in a Rose Garden ceremony apparently became ground zero for the infections now gripping the president, his White House and its Senate allies. Three GOP senators, including Johnson, have now tested positive for the virus and several more are quarantined at home — denying Republicans a functioning majority.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee,
said after talking by phone Monday with Trump that the president is “very excited” about Barrett being confirmed to the Supreme Court.
The rush to confirm Trump’s third court nominee is as much about securing a conservative court for a generation to come as it is about giving Republicans what they see as their best chances at reelection. With Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden in polls and their own Senate majority at risk, Republicans hope a Supreme Court vote in the week before Election Day will save their jobs.