First Thing election special: the Barrett hearings could be a holy war

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Amy Coney Barrett is expected on Capitol Hill on Monday for the first of four days of sSenate hearings on her supreme court confirmation. Republicans are pressing ahead with the confirmation process weeks from election day, even as several of their Senate caucus remain quarantined with Covid-19. And GOP leaders hope a battle with Democrats over Barrett’s religious background could tighten some key senate races sufficiently to retain their majority.

Barrett was previously part of a “right to life” organisation that promoted an Indiana clinic criticised for misleading vulnerable women seeking abortions. Another former member of People of Praise, a faith group to which Barrett also reportedly belonged, has accused the community of “brainwashing”. Stephanie Kirchgaessner discusses the judge’s past on the latest edition of the Today in Focus podcast.

Progressives fear the conservative Barrett will help to overturn Roe v Wade and undermine Obamacare. In her opening remarks to the Senate judiciary committee, she will insist that she has always “done my utmost to reach the result required by the law, whatever my own preferences might be.”

But judges’ politics always sway how they rule, says Zalman Rothschild, who analysed the recent spate of cases in which religious institutions challenged Covid lockdown orders as violations of religious freedom:

The findings are staggering: 0% of Democrat-appointed judges have sided with a religious institution; the vast majority (67%) of Republican-appointed judges have sided with a religious institution; and 0% of Trump-appointed judges have ruled against religious institutions.

America’s reckless president is going back on the road

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Donald Trump claims he is immune to Covid-19 – video

Donald Trump is hosting a rally in Florida on Monday night, followed by events in Pennsylvania and Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, as he hits the campaign trail again after claiming he is not only “cured” of Covid-19, but “immune” to the virus. Over the past two weeks, writes Ed Pilkington, “the president and his cohorts have shown a reckless disdain for basic health protections that overshadows even the administration’s past negligence in its response to coronavirus”.

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What Dr Fauci actually said versus how Trump used clip in campaign ad – video

Trump has also generated a public spat with his administration’s own coronavirus expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, by releasing a campaign ad misleadingly edited to give the appearance of Fauci praising the president’s handling of the pandemic. “In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci said in a statement:

The comments attributed to me without my permission in the campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.

• Piers Morgan says Trump smells of “quite expensive aftershave” and “a whiff of hairspray”, in an interview with the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone.

Biden’s double-digit poll lead is not enough for nervous Dems

Joe Biden is up to 16 points ahead in national polls after the chaos of the debate and Trump’s coronavirus infection. The former vice-president enjoys more than 50% support in some key swing states. Even Ted Cruz fears an election “bloodbath” for Republicans. But with three weeks until election day, Democrats scarred by the experience of 2016 remain cautious about counting votes before they are cast, as Chris McGreal reports.

• Biden can’t stop the slide towards cold war with China; in fact, he’d be better placed than Trump to build an international anti-China alliance. We should all be worried by that prospect, argues Alex Doherty.

Increasingly it is not just Republicans, but also Democrats and liberal intellectuals who see the relationship between China and the US as a zero-sum competition. China poses the first serious threat to US economic and political hegemony since the end of the cold war. And China’s extraordinary rise would preoccupy any occupant of the White House.

In other election news …

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Denver police: there was ‘verbal altercation’ before man shot dead during protests – video

• Denver police have arrested a suspect over a fatal shooting at opposing protests between left- and rightwing groups on Saturday. Matthew Dolloff, a security guard working for a local TV station, is accused of killing a man who sprayed Mace at him while participating in a so-called Patriot Rally.

• South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison raised $57m in the final quarter for his US Senate campaign against Lindsey Graham, the most ever raised by a senate candidate in a single three-month period.

Stat of the day

African Americans make up 13% of the US population, but account for a third of the nation’s Covid-19 cases. That could threaten both the voting rights and turnout of a vital Democratic voter bloc, as Kenya Evelyn reports from Florida.

View from the right

Andrew Sullivan is a lifelong conservative, despite his disavowal of the Republican party. In his latest Weekly Dish column, he says a Biden landslide may be the only way to cure the GOP – and the country – of Trumpism.

A Biden win would be a reprieve for the country; a Biden landslide would be an American miracle. Unlike anything else, it would cauterize the wound of Trump, preventing further infection. It would say to posterity: we made this hideous mistake, for understandable reasons, but after four years, we saw what we did and decisively changed course.

Don’t miss this

When Texas Republican Kenny Marchant first carried the state’s 24th congressional district in 2004, he did so with 69% of the vote. But his recent retirement left the seat open, and the 2020 race is a toss-up: a microcosm of Texas’s rapid diversification – and its potential political upheaval. Oliver Laughland reports.

Last Thing: LeBron’s Lakers steamrolled the Heat

Voting rights activist LeBron James has won a fourth NBA title against the Heat franchise with whom he claimed his first. James’s Los Angeles Lakers clinched the championship with a 106-93 victory in Game 6 of the NBA finals in Florida on Sunday night: the Lakers’ record-tying 17th title and the franchise’s first since Kobe Bryant’s fifth and final title a decade ago.

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