Las Notis is a daily news column that gets you up to speed on the political, media + other goings-on in the United States, Latin America, and the diaspora—all in one quick digest.
Here’s your glimpse at what’s going on today:
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- The hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett started on Monday. She explained her own views on the law, saying that she is a “strict textualist” in the style of her former mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. “The text is text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. It does not change over time, and it is not up to me to update it or infuse my own views into it,” she said. She faces more questions from Democrats, who plan to ask about her record on abortion and other civil rights. [NYT]
- Joe Biden has avoided questions about whether he’d expand the Supreme Court if he wins the presidential election. He didn’t give a straight answer on Monday, but did share that he is “not a fan” of the idea. “I’ve already spoken on — I’m not a fan of court-packing. But I’m not — I don’t want to get off on that whole issue,” Biden said “I want to keep focused.” [WaPo]
- Despite a shutdown that closed several borders, Peru opened its famed tourist site Machu Picchu so that a single tourist from Japan who had been there since the start of the pandemic could leave. The tourist, Jesse Katayama, had only planned to stay in Machu Picchu for a few days, but got stranded for seven months. [BBC]
- State officials have demanded that the California Republican Party stop collecting voter ballots through about 50 unofficial mailboxes they have admitted to deceptively planting in three counties. Such actions, state officials have said, are illegal and could lead to voter fraud. [SF Chronicle]
- Biden has had his eye on Latino voters in Florida, and recently he’s ramped up efforts to appeal not just to Cuban-Americans, but the state’s population of nearly 400,000 Colombian-Americans. Although many Colombian-Americans identify as Democrats, polling has shown that Florida Colombians supporting Trump have grown recently. Biden has responded by writing an op/ed in a Colombian newspaper and discussing issues in Colombia. [NBC Latino]