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More than half of registered voters support President Trump using executive action to bypass Congress and extend coronavirus relief measures, according to a new poll. Trump opted to sign a series of executive orders this past Saturday rather than wait for Congress to reach an agreement on legislation as a prior relief package was set to expire. Democrats and the White House met repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, but despite making 'progress' both sides said they were still too far away to be even close to making a deal. A new poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies and provided exclusively to The Spectator found that 51 percent of voters agreed that it was right for Trump to take executive action under these circumstances, while just 24 percent disagreed.

SeattleSo the revolution devours its children. On Tuesday, Seattle’s police chief Carmen Best announced her retirement just hours after the city council had voted to strip her department of roughly 130 of its 1,400 officers, with more such cuts promised in the future. Best, 54, was Seattle’s first black police chief. She had served in the department for 28 years. Announcing her departure, Best remarked: ‘It’s not about the money. And it’s not about the demonstrations in our city. Be real. I have a lot thicker skin than that.’‘It’s really about the overreaching lack of respect for the men and women who work so hard, day in and day out,’ Best added.

News of Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate was greeted by everything but the popping of champagne corks by my right-wing friends at lunch. The consensus of the policy wonks, policy makers, businessmen and journalists at my table was that Harris is good news for Donald Trump. ‘She’s unlikable’ and ‘she’s a cop’ were the instant reactions — though if Harris really were a cop, and not a former prosecutor, she might find some support among Americans horrified by the riots in Chicago, Portland and everywhere else that’s succumbed to left-wing Democratic control. I expected Harris all along, ever since Biden imposed a sex test on his list of potential running mates.

The Green party has nominated Howie Hawkins to the presidency of the United States. But Hawkins’s victory has seemed preordained since he began his campaign. And it has pushed America’s second largest third party further towards the political fringe.A former perennial candidate for New York governor, Hawkins is one of the founders of the Green party, which has only existed since 2001. Previously, the Green party was a decentralized network of state-based parties that would convene to nominate a presidential candidate, such as Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000.I reported in November that several candidates for the Green nomination protested how the party was tipping the scales in Hawkins’s favor.

Only part of the dramatic racial differences in age-adjusted COVID-19 death rates can be explained by racial differences. The remainder reflects a substantially lower black survival rate because, we are told, of poverty and inadequate access to healthcare. Once taking into account Latino outcomes, however, these factors alone are unlikely to explain the lower black survival rate. Why are the outcomes for Latinos so much better than for black Americans?There is no comprehensive national measure of cases by race and ethnicity. The CDC has estimates for only 57 percent of national cases. Using these partial estimates, together with population data, I estimated that the black case rate is 2.53 times the white rate, and the Latino rate is 11.

Donald Trump has been tight-lipped about his second-term agenda, preferring to speak about the past accomplishments of his administration when making the case that voters ought to re-elect him. Fox News host Sean Hannity gave the President two opportunities to lay out a second-term objective during interviews in June and July. At his second at-bat, Trump said he wanted to beat the coronavirus, rebuild the economy, negotiate new trade deals and appoint more federal judges. The list still didn't feel specific when compared to some of his 2016 promises: build a wall and make Mexico pay for it; renegotiate NAFTA; withdraw from TPP; repeal and replace Obamacare; renegotiate the Iran Deal, and cut taxes.

Not everyone appreciates the extent to which the Democrats pushing Joe Biden for president are students of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For those of you who think low, let me say straight away that I am not thinking of Coleridge’s penchant for laudanum. No, I am thinking of that other goad to fantasy, Coleridge’s idea, articulated in his book Biographia Literaria (1817), of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’. (But speaking of thinking low, if we enlarge our gaze to encompass Joe himself, we might also trespass upon the subject of plagiarism. Coleridge cribbed wantonly from the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling just as Joe did from Neil Kinnock and others.

Conservatives in a place like New York — squirming daily beneath the iron heel of a newly hawkish progressive minority — will tell you, like gay hanky-codes of yore, all the right-wing dog whistles to watch out for on the streets. The American flag is a big one. The once innocuous sight of a stranger sporting the stars and stripes on a t-shirt or hat, or outside a business, is now a good indicator you’re encountering someone who plans to vote Trump in November. Our nation’s flag is like garlic and holy water to the Black Lives Matter sentry. Unless it’s upside-down. Mask defiance is another.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital — again. The 87-year-old has overcome many health concerns while sitting on the SCOTUS, but an additional liver cancer diagnosis and a recent number of hospital visits leave little room for optimism. The prospect of President Trump replacing an iconic Democratic-appointed justice is a big fear among leftists. But is this fear rooted more in media hysteria than honest judgment? A single SCOTUS seat is limited in power, especially considering the unpredictable voting patterns of recent GOP-appointed justices. The exact legacy of RBG is up for debate, but everyone, regardless of political leanings, can admire her perseverance.

Donald Trump’s tweet mooting an election delay isn’t a sign of strength but weakness. Maybe he’ll say it was just a joke. Maybe it was intended to distract from the bad economic news. Maybe he’s trying to inure the public to the idea of a postponement. Maybe he’s preparing for his post-presidency with a farrago of excuses and complaints and lies. Or maybe Trump is simply flailing, a prospective loser who is already losing it.His erstwhile champion Herman Cain, who denounced the idea of wearing a mask, has just died at 74 from coronavirus complications. His national security adviser has the virus. So does Rep. Louie Gohmert, who refused to wear a mask. Trump’s incessant attempts to depict the pandemic as a hoax have turned out be the palpable fraud.