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Iran Seeks Leverage in Nuclear Standoff With U.S.

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 12:58:11 +0000

National Media Agency in MI | Apadana Media

National Media Agency in MI | Iran Seeks Leverage in Nuclear Standoff

News: Tehran wants U.S. to lift sanctions as price to recommit to landmark accord; some say moves aim to pressure Biden

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, shown in 2019, faces pressure to shorten the steps toward building a nuclear weapon.
PHOTO: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/KREMLIN/REUTERS

Since President Trump withdrew the U.S. from a multilateral agreement aimed at curbing Iran’s atomic ambitions, Tehran has moved steadily to step up uranium enrichment and, most recently, said it was starting work to produce a key material used in nuclear warheads.

European diplomats, who have sought to salvage the accord, say they see the Iranian moves as an effort to increase pressure on Washington and President-elect Joe Biden to rejoin to the deal and lift sanctions.

The question now is: Have the Iranians gone so far that a U.S. return is less likely?

Since the Trump administration started its maximum-pressure sanctions campaign, policy makers in Tehran skeptical of the 2015 accord have gained more sway, pressing President Hassan Rouhani to take increasingly serious steps that shorten the path to a nuclear weapon, according to Iranian officials.

“The hard-liners want to show public opinion they can achieve better outcomes,” said one senior Iranian official.

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Iranian Guard drones in drill mirror those in Saudi attacks

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 11:37:13 +0000

US News Agency in MI | Iranian Guard drones in drill mirror in Saudi attacks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard conducted a drill Friday that saw “suicide drones” crash into targets and explode, triangle-shaped aircraft that strongly resembled those used in a 2019 attack in Saudi Arabia that temporarily cut the kingdom’s oil production by half.

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Iran has long denied launching the attack on the sites of Abqaiq and Khurais while Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels initially claimed the assault.

However, the United States, Saudi Arabia and U.N. experts believe the drones were Iranian, likely launched amid an escalating series of incidents stemming from President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

The Guard’s decision to use the drones on Friday alongside a series of missile drills comes as Iran tries to pressure President-elect Joe Biden over the nuclear accord, which he has said America could re-enter.

Tehran recently seized a South Korean oil tanker and begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels, as the U.S. sent B-52 bombers, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine into the region as a deterrent in Trump’s final days as president.

“The nuclear issue is likely to be the Biden administration’s first foreign policy test,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy. “Ultimately, the United States holds the best hand, but Iran may still be able to play the game quite well, even with a weak hand.”

Iranian state television described the drill as taking place in the country’s vast central desert, the latest in a series of snap exercises called amid the escalating tensions over its nuclear program. The footage showed four of the unmanned, triangle-shaped drones flying in a tight formation.

Another scene showed the drones smash into targets Iran described as being “hypothetical enemy bases” and detonate. One target appeared to be a missile vehicle — a telling target in a region where American forces and their Gulf Arab allies rely on Patriot missile batteries for defense.

Looking at the footage frame by frame, the triangle-shape drone appeared to have two fins on either side. This strongly resembles the so-called “Delta” drones used both in the Abqaiq and Khurais assault in September 2019, as well as a May 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s crucial East-West pipeline. Saudi Arabia showed damaged drones to journalists after the attacks, while U.N. experts included images of the drone in a report.

Experts refer to such bomb-carrying drones as “loitering munitions.” The drone flies to a destination, likely programmed before its flight, and either explodes in the air over the target or on impact against it.

Iranian officials did not acknowledge the resemblance, nor did they immediately identify the drones used.

“The message of this drill is our might and firm determination to defend our sovereignty, our holy ruling system and our values against the enemies of Islam and Iran,” said Gen. Hossein Salami, the Guard’s top commander.

The Guard also launched solid-fuel ballistic missiles named Dezful and Zolfaghar during the drill, with state TV repeatedly airing imagery of the simultaneous launch of eight missiles from truck-based launchers.

Iran’s missile program has a 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) range, far enough to reach archenemy Israel and U.S. military bases in the region. Last January, after the U.S. killed a top Iranian general in a drone strike in Baghdad, Tehran retaliated by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops, which saw dozens of troops injured with concussions.

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Associated Press journalists Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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Iran bares its teeth, while its rivals mend fences

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 06:55:33 +0000

World News: Iran bares its teeth, while its rivals mend fences | Apadana Media

Saudi Arabia has brought Qatar back into the fold, as Iran stirs things up in the Gulf

The third day of January marked a year since America assassinated Qassem Suleimani, a talismanic Iranian general who marshalled militias across the Middle East. The mood was febrile. American officials feared commemorative reprisals. Muhammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, tweeted that “intelligence from Iraq” indicated an American “plot to fabricate pretext for war”. The uss Nimitz, an American aircraft-carrier, having been ordered home from the Persian Gulf days earlier as a conciliatory gesture to Iran, was told to stay put. In the end, January 3rd passed without incident. Yet the day that followed was anything but uneventful.

On January 4th Iran said it had resumed enriching uranium to 20% purity, a level that is nine-tenths of the way to weapons-grade, at its underground Fordow facility. Under the terms of a nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers in 2015, but abrogated by America in 2018, Iran is forbidden to enrich anything at all at Fordow, let alone to such levels.

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How to watch the Georgia runoff elections

Apadana Central — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 14:37:11 +0000

Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock are looking to defeat incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.

US Elections | Georgia Elections | Georgia votes in crucial runoff elections

US Elections | Georgia Elections | Apadana Media

The races will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will greatly affect the kind of legislation President-elect Joe Biden would be able to pass through the chamber once he takes office later this month.

The Senate would be tied 50-50 Republicans and Democrats if Ossoff and Warnock both win their races, but Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be able to act as a tie-breaking vote, which would give control of the chamber to Democrats. If Republicans win either or both of the seats, the GOP will keep control of the chamber.

Biden, who won Georgia in the presidential election, and President Donald Trump both traveled to the state on Monday to campaign for their party’s candidates.

Here’s what you need to know about how to watch CNN’s election coverage.

Why are there runoff elections?

Under state law, Senate races advance to a runoff if no candidate surpasses 50% of the vote, as was the case for both of Georgia’s US Senate seats after the November election. Perdue received 49.73% of the vote and Ossoff received 47.95%, and Warnock received 32.9% compared with Loeffler’s 25.91% in the special election.

What time does CNN’s coverage start?

CNN’s coverage of the runoff elections starts at 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Tune in to CNN or CNN International, or watch on mobile devices via CNN’s apps for iOS and Android, and via CNNgo apps for Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Android TV. You can also follow CNN’s live election coverage on CNN.com.

Who are the candidates?

Kelly Loeffler

In December 2019, Loeffler was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to take over the Senate seat previously held by Republican Johnny Isakson, who retired over health concerns. Loeffler, who was sworn in to office in January 2020, was a political novice, a prominent GOP donor and a businesswoman.

She was an executive at a financial services firm in Atlanta but left the post to serve in the Senate. She is also known as a co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. She had considered running for the Senate in 2014.

Loeffler is facing off against Warnock.

Raphael Warnock

Warnock, a Democrat, is a senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which has long been a haven for the Black freedom struggle. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father in 1960.

In a video announcing his candidacy last year, Warnock described his path from Savannah’s Kayton Homes housing project to the pulpit.

“Some might ask why a pastor thinks he should serve in the Senate,” said Warnock. “I’ve always thought that my impact doesn’t stop at the church door. That’s actually where it starts.”

Jon Ossoff

Ossoff, a Democrat, rose to national prominence during a 2017 special House election that the political newcomer nearly won in a longtime conservative stronghold in Georgia. He ultimately lost to Republican Karen Handel in what was at the time the most expensive House race in history.

Ossoff describes himself as a media executive, investigative journalist and small business owner on his campaign website. He began working with a former BBC journalist, Ron McCullagh, in 2013, and then used money from an inheritance to buy a stake in McCullagh’s investigative film company and renamed it Insight TWI, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The company has produced documentaries on mass killings and sexual slavery by ISIS, and a corruption investigation on judges in Ghana.

Ossoff is attempting to unseat Perdue.

David Perdue

Perdue, a close Trump ally, has served as a senator from Georgia since his election in 2014.

Perdue has served on the Armed Services, Banking, Budget, and Foreign Relations committees, according to his Senate website.

He had never run for public office before 2014, according to his Senate website, and prior to running for office was the CEO of Reebok athletic brand and Dollar General stores.

Perdue’s term technically expired Sunday when a new Congress was sworn in, leaving his seat temporarily vacant, according to Sydney Butler, chief of staff to the secretary of the Senate — who oversees the chamber’s operations and procedures. Officials in Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s and Perdue’s offices say that even if he is projected the winner Tuesday, the seat will remain vacant until the runoff results are certified — which could take up to two weeks.

CNN’s Madison Park, Eric Bradner, Clare Foran, Donald Judd, Alex Rogers and Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.

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Republicans narrow Democrats’ path to Senate majority by keeping key GOP seats

Apadana Central — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 09:46:50 +0000

Republicans have so far thwarted well-funded Democratic bids in Iowa, South Carolina, Kansas, Texas and Montana and taken back a Democratic seat in Alabama.

Democrats have captured a seat in Colorado, and have their sights set on several other Republican senators.

Republicans hold 53 Senate seats. Democrats need to win a net gain of three, and the White House, to take back the chamber.

A dozen Republican Senate seats were at risk, while only a couple Democratic senators had competitive contests.

President Donald Trump’s performance is crucial to Republicans’ chances of keeping the Senate.

Both parties have so far flipped a seat: Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones lost to former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville in a state Trump dominated. And former Gov. John Hickenlooper defeated Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in Colorado, where Biden also triumphed over Trump.

With the parties offsetting those two seats, control of the Senate could come down to three races.

In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly, a NASA astronaut and the husband of former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, has led Republican Sen. Martha McSally in every CNN-approved public poll this year. McSally, who was appointed to fill the seat once held by the late Sen. John McCain, has run behind Trump, waffled in her public support for him and failed to excite some conservatives. The senator has repeatedly suggested that Kelly was beholden to China due to his participation in US-China forums, but Kelly has defended himself by pointing to his record as a captain in the Navy.

In Maine, state House speaker Sara Gideon is trying to oust Sen. Susan Collins, the last Republican member of Congress in New England. Since her first victory in 1996, Collins developed a Maine-centric, independent image, winning her last election with nearly 69% of the vote.

But her approval fell during the Trump era, due in part to her support of the 2017 GOP tax plan and the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Polls this fall show her behind in the race, as attack ads portray her as beholden to special interests.

Collins focused her message on what she has delivered for Maine, including financial relief for small businesses during the pandemic, and a promise that her seniority in the Senate could lead to more federal funding for her state. She also separated herself from Trump in a state he is very likely to lose, opposing Barrett and even declining to say who she would vote for president.

LIVE UPDATES: 2020 House and Senate races

And so the race for the Senate could come down to North Carolina, where Biden has established a slim advantage, according to a recent CNN poll.

Recent revelations of Senate Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham’s alleged extramarital affair have undercut the image he carefully crafted as a man of integrity who serves in the Army Reserve. But while voters disapproved, he still has an edge over Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

Before the sex scandal emerged, Cunningham was up 42% to 37%, according to a Times/Siena poll from mid-September. Since then, CNN released a poll showing that Cunningham’s lead had narrowed to 47% to 44%, in large part because he had maintained his lead with women.

Denise Adams, a Winston-Salem City Council member, told CNN that women “realize what’s at stake,” adding that health care, abortion access and education funding are all on the ballot.

“I ain’t trying to call nobody’s pot kettle black,” she added. “Right now, Democrats in North Carolina are united, and our task ahead of us is to bring this baby home.”

Republicans have denied Democrats a number of pickup opportunities, including in hard-fought races in Iowa and Montana.

Republicans cheered a crucial victory in Iowa, where they had tied Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield to leaders in Washington like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with McConnell, had spent millions airing an ad warning that “the Theresa Greenfield-Nancy Pelosi health care plan could take away our employer-provided health insurance,” even though neither Democrat backs a single-payer proposal. Democrats had charged that Greenfield’s opponent, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, has changed, hitting her for campaign violations resulting in a Federal Election Commission fine and for buying a condo in Washington.

Ernst had also had a couple of missteps, backtracking on her suggestion that fewer people have died of Covid-19 than official health reports suggest and flubbing a debate question on the price of soybeans. But she had held slim leads in recent polls and Trump also won the state.

In another victory for the GOP, Republican Sen. Steve Daines will hold onto his seat, CNN projects, defeating Gov. Steve Bullock.

National Democrats had pushed for Bullock, the state’s two-term Democratic governor, to run, believing he would make a formidable challenger. His entry into the race made it a competitive contest, but ultimately, he came up short, conceding the race to Daines early Wednesday morning.

An intense fight for the Senate

Some political forecasters said Democrats were favored to win control of the Senate. Democratic candidates bet early on a message centered on protecting the Affordable Care Act, which they leaned into even more heavily as a pandemic heightened the health care concerns of the country.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates were tied to a historically unpopular President who put even red states in play. They said for months that their loss would lead to socialism, even though Democrats chose Joe Biden, the epitome of the establishment, as their presidential nominee.

Republicans hope that an economic rebound and the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will have reminded voters why they put the GOP in charge and save their Senate majority.

At a rally in Kentucky on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that if Democrats take back the chamber, they will abolish the filibuster to pass sweeping progressive legislation, pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices and grant statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. He promised that if he is reelected, those measures “will not come up in Mitch McConnell’s Senate.”

McConnell won his own re-election on Tuesday, defeating Democratic opponent Amy McGrath.

The Trump effect

Trump’s presidential approval rating has never hit 50%, according to Gallup, and he polled at 46% in October, lower than the three previous presidents who were reelected, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Trump has remained unpopular throughout his term. He did not build the “big, beautiful” wall, but separated thousands of migrant parents from their children. He signed a tax overhaul bill into law that provided a short-term boost to the economy but added more than a trillion to the debt. He failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He was impeached and acquitted of charges that he had used his power for political gain when he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden. He has praised Republican candidates who support him, even when they promote the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory that he is working to squash a secret cabal of pedophiles. He proposed a ban on Muslims traveling to the US. And he inflamed the racial divisions within the country after Charlottesville and the police killing of George Floyd. He ridiculed his opponents, whether they were women, minorities or senators in his own party in tough election races, like Collins, who he recently tweeted was “Not worth the work!”

Trump’s conduct has imperiled not only his own hold on the White House, but also GOP control of the Senate.

“Trump should stop tweeting about individual Republican candidates because all it does is confuse the base,” GOP strategist Scott Reed told CNN. “It doesn’t help anybody, except Twitter, and I don’t know why in the hell anybody would be helping Twitter right now.”

The steady unpopularity at the top of the ticket, along with the demographic changes of some Southern states, and a massive fundraising effort by Democrats sparked in part by the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, gave Democrats confidence that they could compete in conservative states.

Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue’s race against Democrat Jon Ossoff has turned increasingly nasty in the final weeks of the campaign.

Perdue, a 70-year-old former Fortune 500 CEO, has dismissed Ossoff, a 33-year-old media executive, as not knowing how to create or keep a job. Ossoff recently told CNN that Perdue’s butchering of Harris’ name at a campaign rally was “unquestionably” racist. At their recent debate, Ossoff called the senator a “crook” who was “fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading” while attacking “the health of the people” who he represents. Perdue snapped back that the Democrat had worked for “the mouthpiece of terrorism and Communist China” — claims Ossoff called “ridiculous.” The candidates are also running against Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel, and if no one gets more than 50% on Election Day, the two top vote-getters will compete in a runoff on January 5.

Georgia GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s race will go to a runoff between her and Democrat Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. In the unusual melee election, the appointed senator faced multiple candidates, including GOP Rep. Doug Collins, who targeted the same swath of conservative voters as she did. Loeffler recently told CNN that there are “no” issues on which she disagreed with the President, leaving Warnock to claim liberal and more independent voters.

Republicans hope that John James, a Republican businessman who flew Army helicopters in the Iraq War, can defeat Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters and become the state’s first Black senator. But Peters led in the polls there, and the state is pivotal to Biden’s campaign strategy.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of the election cycle was in South Carolina, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Sen. Fritz Hollings retired 15 years ago. In the Senate elections since 2004, the South Carolina Democratic candidate never cracked 45% of the vote.

But in his race against GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, Democrat Jaime Harrison raised $57 million between July and September, the largest single-quarter total by any candidate in US Senate history, and lost.

Democrats have had a financial advantage in many other Senate races. Political groups have spent more than $1.7 billion to advertise in them, according to Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, 54% of which was spent by Democratic groups.

Some Republican strategists said that Democrats were throwing good money at bad races. McConnell easily won over Democrat Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, despite groups on the left spending nearly $50 million on ads against him. Texas Sen. John Cornyn defeated MJ Hegar, a former Air Force helicopter pilot, despite being outraised by $6.7 million in the third fundraising quarter. And Senate Leadership Fund, the McConnell-aligned super PAC, spent over $16 million on ads in Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly 90 years, amid anemic fundraising by GOP Rep. Roger Marshall. Still, Marshall beat Democratic candidate Barbara Bollier.

“Yes, they’re being outspent heavily with all this national money,” said Reed, speaking of Republicans. “But at the end of the day, I’m convinced they’re going to hold the Senate.”

If Democrats do capture the Senate, it will be because of women.

A double-digit gender gap is clear in a number of Senate races, according to a series of New York Times/Siena College polls over the past two months. In Arizona, for example, Kelly led McSally overall, 50% to 43%. He was down several points among men but overcame it with a substantial 57% to 38% advantage among women.

Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, told CNN that Republican efforts to attack the Affordable Care Act, block legislation addressing the gender pay gap and their anti-abortion views have made the GOP unpopular with women. Schriock said that Trump’s behavior and “the chaos that he produces constantly” also don’t appeal to women.

“(It) is just not anything women voters are interested in right now,” she added.

This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

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Analysis: Donald Trump’s call to halt vote counts is his most brazen swipe at democracy

Apadana Central — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 09:42:58 +0000

Donald Trump appeared in the East Room of the White House early on Wednesday morning to claim falsely that he had already beaten Democrat Joe Biden, and the election was being stolen from him in a massive act of fraud. He vowed to mount a challenge in the Supreme Court and declared that he had already won states that were still counting votes, including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The election has not yet been won, and the President and the former vice president are still locked in a tight battle for the decisive states with millions of votes still being counted.

Trump’s remarks essentially amounted to a demand for the legally cast votes of American citizens not to be recorded in a historic act of disenfranchisement. And they brought closer the potential constitutional nightmare that many have feared since Donald Trump started to tarnish an election that he apparently worried he could lose months ago. His rhetorical broadside was also notable because it came at a moment of huge tension in a deeply divided nation — a time when a president, even one whose political fate is in the process of being written — could be expected to call for calm.

Donald Trump’s comments were especially remarkable since it appears that the President has a good chance of winning outstanding states in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, which could hand him a second term. And the implication of his authoritarian remarks was that the President wants vote counting to stop in those states but to go on in Arizona, where he trails Biden.

They were also a warning sign of the kind of behavior that might be expected in a second term from a President who has survived impeachment and may be heading for a new mandate that he would view as a validation of his norm-crushing behavior. In some ways, Trump’s aggressive response to a night of nail-biting tension and a yet-to-be-decided result could also take the gloss from what would be a stunning political achievement if he wins reelection despite expectations that his handling of the pandemic would cause the country to turn against him.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us,” Trump said in the East Room. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.”

Trump wary of early and mail-in votes

Donald Trump is angry that hundreds of thousands of mail-in and early votes — cast disproportionately by Democrats — are still being counted, leaving open the possibility that Biden could challenge Trump’s leads in the Midwest. But those votes were made in a way that is just as legitimate as the ballots that were lodged by voters showing up in their precincts in the traditional manner.

“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump said. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country.”

“Frankly we did win this election,” he said, despite millions of votes still outstanding.

The President made his televised statement after his opponent delivered his own remarks and said that all of the votes must be counted.

“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who has won this election,” Biden told his crowd in Wilmington, Delaware.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has consistently taken aim at the institutions that have underpinned American government for decades. He has attacked the judiciary, the intelligence services and made clear for example that he believes that the Justice Department should be loyal to him rather than the law. He has even said that as president he has absolute power under the Constitution to do whatever he wants.

“I have an Article Two where I have the right to do whatever I want as President,” Trump declared last year.

It was not immediately clear on what grounds Trump planned to try to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the election because, so far, he has not provided evidence for any voting irregularities.

“These are legally cast ballots or at least will be determined to be legally cast ballots by the appropriate local county and state officials,” Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“And for a president to say we are going to disenfranchise those legally cast ballots — it really is extraordinary.”

The President’s statement sparked a sharp response from Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon.

” It was outrageous because it is a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens,” she said in a written statement.

“The counting will not stop.”

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Early takeaways from election night

Apadana Central — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 09:40:42 +0000

US Elections: Early takeaways from election night | Apadana Media

US Elections News: Several battleground states are still counting votes, and the presidency and control of the Senate remain within either party’s reach.

As of 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday, CNN had not projected winners in Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Alaska was also too early to call. According to CNN’s projections, Biden has won 224 electoral votes to Trump’s 213.

Huge numbers of mail-in ballots remained uncounted in Democratic strongholds in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Trump currently leads the vote count.

With many votes left to count, here are five takeaways from the 2020 election so far:

Trump prematurely declared victory

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Trump called for legitimate vote-counting to be halted, declaring victory with millions of votes outstanding in several swing states and falsely claiming that Democrats were trying to “steal the election.”

The moment was a chilling threat to democracy. But Trump’s declaration bears no impact on states’ vote counts, with many planning to resume processing absentee ballots later Wednesday morning.

Biden spoke to supporters earlier Wednesday morning in Delaware, telling them that “we believe we’re on track to win this election.”

“Keep the faith guys, we’re going to win this,” Biden said.

Down-ballot Democratic disappointment

Two Democratic Senate challengers, Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Amy McGrath in Kentucky, raised about $200 million combined to challenge Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Both were blown out. Democratic challengers in Iowa and Montana also lost.

Despite record-shattering fundraising numbers across the map, Democrats’ hopes of a net gain of three seats if Biden wins, or four if Trump wins, to give them a Senate majority were slipping. Those hopes could now depend on Georgia, where at least one and potentially two Senate races are headed to runoffs. Results in Maine and North Carolina — two top Democratic targets — remain outstanding.

Many races were left to be decided as of 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday, but Republicans had ousted a few Democratic House members while defending some seats in key districts, potentially shrinking a Democratic majority that was widely expected to grow.

All about Omaha?

Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes up by congressional district. While Trump easily won Nebraska overall, he lost the Omaha-based 2nd District — and if Biden reaches 270 electoral votes, that single electoral vote could prove decisive.

As of 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Biden led in Arizona, Nevada and Maine (though he trailed in Maine’s 2nd District). If he won those states, he would have 248 electoral votes — 22 shy of 270.

He trails in North Carolina with most of the vote counted there. But Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all have large numbers of mail-in ballots left to count. If Biden were to win Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes and 16 more from either Georgia or Michigan, he would reach exactly 270 electoral votes — a path to the presidency that wouldn’t be possible without Nebraska’s 2nd District.

Trumpism is here to stay

The fate of Trump’s re-election bid has not yet been decided. But Tuesday’s results were not the large-scale repudiation that would carry Biden to a landslide victory and force Republicans to re-evaluate their party’s approach.

Democrats’ effort to put three states Trump won handily in 2016 — Iowa, Ohio and Texas — fell flat. Florida continued to flummox the party. Republicans, meanwhile, were on track to pick up House seats, and fended off a number of serious Senate challenges

Georgia and Arizona appear more competitive than they were in 2016, and it’s not yet clear whether Biden has rebuilt the “blue wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But 2020 did not bring anything close to a remaking of the electoral map.

Democrats struggled with Latinos

For months, Democratic organizers and operatives warned that the party was at risk of a poor performance in Florida’s heavily Cuban Miami-Dade County, and that it hadn’t been reaching nearly enough Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley to turn Texas into a battleground.

Those fears proved to be founded, as Biden fell well short of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in those areas.

Latinos are not a monolith, and the politics of Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in Orlando and Mexicans in South Texas can vary widely. But after falling short of expectations in several key areas — and doing so against a President who has treated immigrants harshly and mismanaged a pandemic that was disproportionately deadly for Latinos — Democrats must now face hard truths about their shrinking margins with a fast-growing segment of the electorate.

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Contest between Trump and Biden narrows to key states

Apadana Central — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 09:36:14 +0000

Election: Contest between Trump and Biden narrows to key states | Apadana Media

Election: Biden holds the lead in the Electoral College at this stage in the night, 224-213; 270 electoral votes are needed to become president.

Experts had warned for months that a result may not be known on election night, or even days afterward, as voters voted by mail in record numbers. As of early Wednesday morning, it was still too close to call in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Georgia and the potentially critical state of Pennsylvania.

Trump won a close race in Florida, which was one of the states Biden had hoped to peel away from the President’s 2016 map and has a narrow edge in North Carolina. The former vice president has taken the lead in Wisconsin and is hoping that Arizona, where he has a 5-percentage point lead with 82% of the ballots counted, could be his first victory of the night that turns a red state blue.

Increasingly it appears that the result of the entire election could hinge on whether Biden can restore the Democratic “blue wall” in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a scenario that could stretch into the coming days as large numbers of mail-in votes are counted.

Biden currently leads the Electoral College at this early stage in the night, but the key battlegrounds that will decide who serves as president for the next four years are still in play.

The night unfolded as the most unorthodox election night in modern memory. At times it appeared like one candidate or the other was heading for an early win in important states. But batches of mail-in and early votes meant the count often dramatically shifted one way or the other.

Polls are now closed across the US on a nerve-jangling night that will set the nation’s course for the next four years and cast judgment on the most tumultuous presidency of the modern age. Results are flowing in from battlegrounds and it’s too early to make a projection in many key states.

CNN projects Biden will win Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Delaware, Washington, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts and one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes. Nebraska awards two electoral votes to its statewide winner and divides three others over its three congressional districts.

CNN projects Trump will also win in Montana, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee and four of Nebraska’s five electoral votes.

Trump’s chilling threat to vote counting

Trump attempted to claim victory in the presidential race and called for a halt to legitimate vote counting that is underway around the country in a chilling threat to American democracy

In fact, the election is far from over with millions of votes outstanding in key states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — ballots that were cast before Election Day that have yet to be counted. Yet Trump sought to mislead his loyal supporters by conflating the legitimate counting of ballots with voting as he falsely claimed Democrats were trying to “steal the election.”

Facing the real possibility that he could lose, Trump — as expected — appeared to be seizing the opportunity to confuse his supporters about the democratic process and suggest that there was something nefarious about the fact that many states are still counting votes. The lengthy vote count, which could extend for several days, was widely anticipated because so many Americans cast vote-by-mail ballots to protect themselves from exposure to the coronavirus in the middle of a pandemic.

While making the ludicrous suggestion that the counting of legally cast votes should stop as he watched his margins narrow in several key swing states, Trump made a wild threat that his lawyers would take their case to the Supreme Court even though it remains unclear what their legal rationale would be.

Even within Trump’s short speech there was a glaring inconsistency in his position as he advocated for votes to continue to be counted in Arizona, a state that he believes is more favorable to him, while expressing anger that one network had called it early. CNN has not projected a winner in Arizona.

He celebrated his victories in Florida and Ohio, and claimed to win multiple states that CNN has yet to project. His call for an end to the counting was the kind of dangerous election night speech that political observers long feared Trump would make, in which he falsely claimed, “This is a major fraud on our nation.”

Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon ripped Trump’s speech as “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”

“The President’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect,” she said, adding, “It was unprecedented because never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election. Having encouraged Republican efforts in multiple states to prevent the legal counting of these ballots before Election Day, now Donald Trump is saying these ballots can’t be counted after Election Day either.”

Biden was the first candidate to speak to supporters early Wednesday morning, after a night of results didn’t deliver a quick winner, saying that “we believe we’re on track to win this election.”

The former vice president said it was not up to him or Trump to decide the winner of the election and that the votes would be counted.

“Keep the faith guys, we’re going to win this,” Biden said.

Trump wins two must-have states

Wins for Trump in the Sunshine State and Ohio are crucial to keep open his pathway to win a second term.

Florida Democrats were concerned early in the night about populous southern Miami-Dade County where Biden appeared to be underperforming Clinton’s mark in 2016.

The early Biden deficit in Miami-Dade could be a sign of what was apparent in pre-election polls that suggested the President had been making incursions into traditional Democratic support with Black and Latino men. Former President Barack Obama made two trips to Miami-Dade in the closing days of the race to drive up turnout.

Miami-Dade, which Biden is still likely to win, has large concentrations of voters of Cuban and Venezuelan descent who tend to be more conservative than other Latino groups and were targeted by the President with claims that Democrats were akin to socialists.

The President also opened up a solid lead in Ohio after early returns showed Biden in the lead. The Buckeye State was another battleground that Trump’s campaign thought he must win in order to earn another four years in Washington. Biden spent time in the state on Monday and was another place that the Democrat had hoped to flip.

Biden does not need to win Florida and Ohio in order to win the presidency, but his campaign had hoped to flip those states after several encouraging polls in the final weeks of the campaign.

Biden performs well in Arizona

Biden appears to have made significant gains in Arizona where demographic changes have accelerated the state’s shift from traditional Republican territory to a potential Democratic pick up. The President’s unpopularity and the rapid growth of the state — from its rising Latino population to the influx of retirees from the Midwest and other parts of the country — has made its politics more unpredictable, even in just the four years since 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the state 49% to 45.5%.

Clinton built up Democratic margins in populous Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs — and the majority of the state’s voters — and Biden appears to be continuing that trend Tuesday night, with turnout looking strong in that key county.

Even within the patchwork of early returns, some trends were emerging that pointed to the fact that is a very different race than 2016. In states like Ohio and parts of Florida, Biden appears to be performing better in the suburbs than Clinton did four years ago. At the same time, the President’s team seems to have succeeded in turning out their voters as promised — in some cases making up for what appeared to be an advantage for Democrats in the early vote count in key swing states.

Results may not be known for days

Millions of ballots were still outstanding in those critical three states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, many of them vote-by-mail ballots that were cast early and were expected to favor Democrats.

Even Georgia appeared at a standstill as officials in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta and its populous suburbs said they had stopped counting mail-in ballots around 10:30 p.m. ET and that count would resume at 8 a.m. Wednesday. The Fulton County tabulation was initially delayed by a water leak near the room where ballots were being counted but no ballots were damaged.

Election officials in the so-called “Blue Wall” states of the Midwest tried to prepare the public late Tuesday night for the likelihood that a full count would continue through the night, and could stretch well into Wednesday and later this week — meaning America may not know the winner of the presidential contest for quite some time.

The slow count in those Midwestern states is creating mounting anxiety for Democrats, who had hoped Biden could post some early wins on the board in swing states to prevent President Trump from declaring a premature victory before even crossing the 270 electoral vote threshold that he needs to win.

For weeks now, Trump has hammered the message that voters should know the results on election night — even though that is rarely the case in America — while suggesting that a later count could be a sign of voting irregularities, even though there is no evidence to support that and counting has been much more complex this cycle because so many people cast votes by mail in order to stay safe during the pandemic.

Michigan officials are predicting record turnout, and are hoping that ballots counted overnight could give a sense of at least the unofficial result within 24 hours of poll closures, instead of several days as some were initially expecting, but that appeared uncertain.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told reporters Tuesday night that the state could “potentially see a full result of every tabulation out of Michigan in the next 24 hours,” which would be an improvement on the state’s original prediction that it would not finish tabulating results until Friday. The state is on track to break turnout records with more than 3 million absentee ballots cast.

“I’m here tonight to ask you all to be patient,” Benson said. “No matter how long it takes, no matter what candidates say, we’re going to work methodically and meticulously to count every single valid ballot and that, and only that, will determine who wins every race on the ballot in the state of Michigan.”

The tipping point state of Pennsylvania may see some of the longest delays, not only because of its very complex ballot with its inner and outer envelopes, but also because election officials were not permitted to start counting the vote-by-mail ballots until Election Day. Late Tuesday night, the Pennsylvania secretary of state urged patience and told result-watchers to expect batches of vote totals to come in in fits and starts throughout the night.

In Wisconsin, some results in the key area of Milwaukee may not be reported until after 5 a.m. on Wednesday, meaning the vote tallies in some of the most critical areas for Biden would not be known until then.

Historic amount of early votes

Across the country, officials were counting the more than 100 million votes that were cast before Election Day, according to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edison Research and Catalist.

In an unprecedented move, which could indicate some mail-in votes are in danger of not reaching their destination in time to be counted, a federal judge in Washington ordered the US Postal Service to start sweeping all processing facilities by 3 p.m., including in parts of battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, New Hampshire and Florida. Democrats had previously criticized the US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, for introducing reforms in the agency that they said could slow down the delivery of mail-in ballots.

Democrats are nervous about widespread slowdowns within the Postal Service system after budget cuts and staff shortages, which has led to intense scrutiny of DeJoy’s motivations.

Polls began closing at 6 p.m. ET but there are wide variations in ballot counting rules across the country.

The economy is the top issue on the minds of voters Tuesday, according to the preliminary results of a nationwide CNN exit poll. Those results are incomplete because Americans were still voting, but in those early measures about a third said the economy is the most critical issue. About 1 in 5 said racial inequality is the top issue and 1 in 6 said the coronavirus pandemic was most important to their vote. However, a majority said the nation should prioritize containing Covid-19 over rebuilding the economy.

Republicans have made a huge effort to invalidate ballots and limit voter turnout through legal challenges and questionable monitoring tactics that bordered on voter intimidation in some states. Trump spent his final days trying to cast aspersions on vote counting, insisting that a winner should be declared on Tuesday night, even though America has long counted ballots well into the days and weeks after Election Day.

With Biden leading in many national and battleground state polls, the President’s team is counting on explosive Election Day turnout within the GOP and relying on their intensive, data-driven ground game to turn out quiet Trump voters, who they say have not been reflected in the polls.

Biden and Trump close their campaigns

At the end of what has been a remarkably stable race, the President crossed the finish line after a frenetic sprint across the battleground states, during which he continued to undermine the integrity of the election by falsely raising the specter of cheating in the possible tipping point state of Pennsylvania.

After months of refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and repeatedly lodging false claims about widespread voter fraud — when there is no evidence that it exists — the President gave a more muted interview to “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning, predicting that he had a “very solid chance of winning” and said he would declare victory “when there’s victory, if there’s victory,” adding there is no reason to play games. He later visited Republican National Committee offices in northern Virginia and predicted a “great night ahead,” but also reflected the uncertainty of Election Day, saying he had prepared neither a victory speech nor a concession speech.

“Hopefully we’ll be only doing one of those two and you know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me it’s not,” he said.

Biden ended his final day of campaigning on a more optimistic note, promising to unite the country and calling it the “beginning of a new day.” On Tuesday morning, he sought to remind Americans of his blue-collar roots with a visit to his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was surrounded by supporters on the street outside who chanted “Scranton loves Joe.”

Inside on one of the living room walls where he grew up, he wrote: “From this House to the White House with the Grace of God,” signing his name and the date “11.3.2020,” before heading to Philadelphia where the campaign is hoping to drive up turnout in the final hours.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

US News | Apadana Media

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The single most important quality a president must have

Apadana Central — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:11:19 +0000

This week, we ask the question: What comes next for America and the presidency? President Donald Trump upended countless longstanding norms when he took office, prompting Americans, foreign allies and enemies alike to wonder, what does the office of the presidency really stand for? In our CNN Digital video conversation, we’ll discuss whether the American presidency has been transformed and redefined forever, but first we start with a prescription for its restoration, in a piece by David Gergen.

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Wave of new COVID-19 cases crashes across U.S. and Europe as winter looms

Marjaneh Rouhani — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 23:15:07 +0000

October 26, 2020

By James Mackenzie and Lisa Shumaker

MILAN/CHICAGO (Reuters) – US News: The United States, Russia, France and many other countries are setting records for corona virus infections as a tidal wave of cases washes over parts of the Northern Hemisphere, forcing some countries to impose new curbs.

The gloom weighed on global financial markets on Monday as surging infections clouded the economic outlook. [MKTS/GLOB]

U.S. stocks had their worst day in four weeks over the double whammy of record corona virus cases and political deadlock in negotiations to provide more economic aid. [.N]

Word that a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc produced immune responses in both elderly and young people offered some positive news as autumn turns to winter in northern countries and more people socialise indoors.

But British Health Secretary Matt Hancock cautioned that the vaccine would not be widely available until next year and said, “We’re not there yet”.

Any vaccine faces both scientific and public relations hurdles. Surveys have shown only about half of Americans would get a COVID-19 vaccination due to concerns about safety, effectiveness and the approval process.

In the United States, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is at a two-month high, straining health care systems in some states.

U.S. President Donald Trump, facing a tough re-election battle on Nov. 3, lashed out again at reports that the corona virus is surging.

He repeated his unfounded claim that COVID-19 cases are rising because there is more testing, an assertion not supported by data and one that has been rejected by health experts.

“Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high,” Trump said in a Twitter post.

The number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States last week rose 24% while the number of tests performed rose 5.5%, according to a Reuters analysis. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR)

‘LOCKDOWN LIGHT’

In Europe the picture was unrelentingly grim as a string of countries reported record increases, led by France, which posted more than 50,000 daily cases for the first time on Sunday, while the continent passed the threshold of 250,000 deaths. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)

France may even be experiencing 100,000 new infections a day, professor Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads a council that advises the government, told RTL radio.

Governments have been desperate to avoid the lockdowns which curbed the disease earlier in the year at the cost of shutting down their entire economies. But the steady rise in new cases has forced many in Europe to tighten curbs.

“We are facing very, very difficult months ahead,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a meeting of leaders from her Christian Democrat party, according to daily Bild.

She plans “lockdown light” that will focus on closing bars, restaurants and public events, the newspaper said.

The Spanish government faced a backlash over its plans to put one of Europe’s worst COVID-19 hot spots under a six-month state of emergency. Opposition parties said six months was too long, epidemiologists said this may be too little too late and some citizens balked at nightly curfews.

Russia’s daily tally of new COVID-19 infections surged to a record high of 17,347 on Monday as the Kremlin warned the pandemic was beginning to take a greater toll outside Moscow.

Russia in August became the first country to grant regulatory approval for a vaccine against COVID-19 after less than two months of human testing, raising eyebrows among sceptical scientists in the West. Regulators approved a second vaccine earlier this month.

With 1.5 million infections, the country of around 145 million people has recorded the world’s fourth largest COVID-19 case load – after the United States, India and Brazil.

Italy, the country worst hit in the early stages of the crisis in March, imposed new restrictions, ordering restaurants and bars to close from 6 p.m., shutting cinemas and gyms and imposing local curfews in several regions.

More than 43 million people are reported to have been infected by the coronavirus globally and 1.15 million have died, according to a Reuters tally. The United States has the highest number of deaths and infections.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Nick Macfie and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Cynthia Osterman)

US News | Apadana Media

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