• Full story: Barrett confirmed in major victory for conservatives
  
• Why Barrett’s addition to court may undermine climate fight
• Bob Woodward: The Trump Presidency – live event today
• Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter

12.27pm GMT

Cecile Richards writes for us this morning that with the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, it is not only abortion rights and Roe v Wade on the line. Parental leave, affordable childcare, equal pay, the Affordable Care Act - all are under threat. That should be a wake-up call to female voters, she says.

It’s outrageous that an impeached president who lost the popular vote can install a supreme court justice who would gut the Affordable Care Act despite majority support for the law – a law that made it so that women can no longer be charged more for health coverage because of our gender, or denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition such as breast cancer. It’s equally outrageous to see Republican senators prioritizing this bad-faith confirmation process despite their failure to pass a desperately-needed coronavirus relief bill. But none of this is surprising. Barrett’s nomination is part of a broader effort by the extreme right to allow minority views to rule over the will of the majority of Americans – in this case, women.

Women have been the majority of voters in every national election since 1964, and we represent the majority of mail-in ballots and early votes heading into November. Over the last four years, we have shown our political force by marching for women’s rights and Black lives, volunteering for causes, and donating to campaigns. We are a supermajority, and we should have the undivided attention of every elected official in this country. But we don’t, and that’s because deliberate efforts to undermine our democracy have created a system that’s less and less responsive to the needs of the people, especially women.

Related: Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment is a wake-up call for women voters | Cecile Richards

12.19pm GMT

Twitter will begin “pre-bunking” misinformation at the top of American users’ timelines in the final week before the US election, the company has announced. Facts about voting by mail and, once the count begins, election results, will be placed on the top of the timeline in an effort to get ahead of viral falsehoods before they are even posted.

“Election experts confirm that voting by mail is safe and secure, even with an increase in mail-in ballots,” says one message the company will run. “Even so, you might encounter unconfirmed claims that voting by mail leads to election fraud ahead of the 2020 US elections.”

Twitter says the practice is an important new tool in its fight against viral misinformation, because it does not require the company to wait for a specific falsehood to be shared and then debunked. Under the company’s current approach, the only people to ever see its fact-check labels, which are applied to topics including Covid and voting, are those who have already seen a tweet with misinformation, placing the company on a permanent back foot.

“Pre-bunk” branding aside, the approach mirrors the strategy Facebook and Instagram have been using to fight Covid misinformation since the early days of the pandemic. Both sites have received prominent banners at the top of their respective feeds, which Facebook says has led to more than 600 million people clicking through to read information from health authorities including the NHS and WHO.

Continue reading...

Read More