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New Trump Lawsuit Aims to Stop Certification of Pennsylvania Election Results

President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a new legal effort this week aimed at stopping the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, as the president continued to refuse to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
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Trump Campaign Launches New Lawsuit in Pennsylvania

President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a new legal effort this week aimed at stopping the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, as the president continued to refuse to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
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Facebook Extends Ban on US Political Ads for Another Month

As election misinformation raged online, Facebook Inc. said on Wednesday its post-election ban on political ads would likely last another month, raising concerns from campaigns and groups eager to reach voters for key Georgia Senate races in January.
 
The ban, one of Facebook’s measures to combat misinformation and other abuses on its site, was supposed to last about a week but could be extended. Alphabet Inc.’s Google also appeared to be sticking with its post-election political ad ban.
 
“While multiple sources have projected a presidential winner, we still believe it’s important to help prevent confusion or abuse on our platform,” Facebook told advertisers in an email seen by Reuters. It said to expect the pause to last another month though there “may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner.”
 
Facebook later confirmed the extension in a blog post.
 
Baseless claims about the election reverberated around social media this week as President Donald Trump challenged the validity of the outcome, even as state officials reported no significant irregularities, and legal experts cautioned he had little chance to overturn Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
 
In one Facebook group created on Sunday, which rapidly grew to nearly 400,000 members by Wednesday, members calling for a nationwide recount swapped unfounded accusations about alleged election fraud and shifting state vote counts every few seconds.
 
“The reality is right now that we are not through the danger zone,” said Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
 
Google declined to answer questions about the length of its ad pause, although one advertiser said the company had floated the possibility of extending it through or after December. A Google spokeswoman previously said the company would lift its ban based on factors such as the time needed for votes to be counted and whether there was civil unrest.
 
The extensions mean that the top two digital advertising behemoths, which together control more than half the market, are not accepting election ads ahead of the two U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia that could decide control of that chamber.
 
Democratic and Republican digital strategists who spoke to Reuters railed against those decisions, saying the ad bans were overly broad and failed to combat a much bigger problem on the platforms: the organic spread of viral lies in unpaid posts.
 
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, along with the Senate campaigns of Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, called for an exemption for the Georgia Senate run-offs so they could make voters aware of upcoming deadlines.
 
Ossoff faces incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue, and Warnock faces incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
 
“It is driving us absolutely bonkers,” said Mark Jablonowski, managing partner of DSPolitical, a digital firm that works with Democratic causes.
 
“They’re essentially holding the rest of the political process hostage,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, who said he thought the companies’ concerns about ads on the election outcome did not require a blanket ban. “This is something that deserves a scalpel and they’re using a rusty ax,” he added.
 
The companies declined to say when they would lift other “break-glass” election measures introduced for unpaid posts, like Facebook’s limits on the distribution of live videos and demotions of content that its systems predict may be misinformation.
 
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said those emergency measures would not be permanent, but that rollback was “not imminent.”
 
Google’s YouTube, which is labeling all election-related videos with information about the outcome, said it would stick with that approach “as long as it’s necessary.”
 
The video-sharing company bans “demonstrably false” claims about the election process, but has used the tool sparingly, saying hyperbolic statements about a political party “stealing” the election does not violate the policy.
 
However, Twitter Inc. has stopped using its most restrictive election-related warning labels, which hid and limited engagement on violating tweets. Instead, the company is now using lighter-touch labels that “provide additional context,” spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said.
 
Twitter placed a label reading “this claim about election fraud is disputed” on two of Trump’s tweets Tuesday morning, but each was retweeted more than 80,000 times by that evening.
 
Democratic strategists, including members of the Biden campaign who tweeted criticism of Facebook, said social media companies’ measures were not effectively curbing the spread of viral lies.
 
Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, said the ad pauses were needed but not sufficient for tackling false information.
 
“Clearly President Trump does not think the election is over, so I don’t think the platforms should treat it as if it is,” she said. 
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Republicans Gain Half of Total US Senate Seats

U.S. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won reelection Wednesday, assuring Republicans of at least 50 seats in the 100-member Senate for the next two years, while leaving control of the chamber uncertain until two runoff elections are held in Georgia in early January.After slow vote-counting in the northwestern-most state of the U.S. after the November 3 election, news media concluded that Sullivan had an insurmountable lead over Al Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran as an independent candidate with Democratic support. The contest was called with Sullivan, a conservative, ahead by 20 percentage points.FILE – Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 7, 2020.With Republicans assured of at least half the Senate seats, attention now turns to the two January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia.Two conservative Republican lawmakers — Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — now hold the two seats, but both failed in separate contests last week to win a majority, forcing them into the runoffs.Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff, an investigative journalist who narrowly lost a 2017 race for a seat in the House of Representatives before trying to oust Perdue from the Senate seat he has held since 2015.FILE – Republican candidate for Senate Sen. David Perdue speaks at Peachtree Dekalb Airport in Atlanta, Nov. 2, 2020.FILE – Democratic candidate for Senate Jon Ossoff points after a news conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 10, 2020.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in early 2020, is facing Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.Warnock led a multi-candidate field in last week’s voting, with Loeffler second, but he finished well short of the majority he needed to avoid a runoff. In their initial contest last week, Perdue narrowly led Ossoff, but a third candidate won enough votes to keep both Perdue and Ossoff from hitting 50%.Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Sen. Kelly Loeffler gestures at a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia, Nov. 11, 2020.FILE – Raphael Warnock, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks during a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 3, 2020.As it stands, Democrats will hold at least 48 seats in the Senate over the next two years, a net gain of one seat after losing one and gaining two in last week’s voting.If Republicans retain either of the Georgia seats or both, they will hold a majority in the Senate for the next two years. But if Ossoff and Warnock were both to win, there would be a 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats.In the case of a tie vote in the Senate, the decisive vote is cast by the vice president, in this case Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Democrats would thus be able to secure a majority on all the chamber’s committees that consider legislation and approve the president’s appointments to key government positions and judgeships on federal courts.Such a legislative majority, if Democrats voted as a bloc, would give President-elect Joe Biden a chance to win approval for his legislative agenda on a host of issues.But if Republicans retain control of the Senate, coupled with continued Democratic control of the House of Representatives that is already assured, the prospective Biden administration and fractious lawmakers likely would be forced into extensive negotiations over such contentious issues as taxes, immigration, health care and more. 
 
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US State of Georgia Orders Trump-Biden Vote Recount

The top elections official in the southern U.S. state of Georgia on Wednesday ordered a hand audit of the close vote there between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. With almost all the votes counted in Georgia, Trump’s Democratic challenger for a four-year term in the White House is leading by 14,112 votes out of the nearly 5 million votes cast in the state. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said he wanted Trump to win the election, but pushed back against Republican claims that the Georgia vote count was plagued by irregularities. Georgia has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, Nov. 11, 2020.As he announced the close inspection of the Georgia vote, Raffensperger surrounded himself by local election officials and voiced support and admiration for their work. “Their job is hard. They executed their responsibilities, and they did their job,” Raffensperger said. He said he will invite both Democratic and Republican observers to watch the recount because “the stakes are high.” Ballots will be re-scanned on computers in the state, in addition to a human review of printed text on ballots, a process officials hope to complete by November 20. “This will help build confidence,” Raffensperger said. “It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass, all at once.” According to unofficial vote counts throughout the United States, Biden has already won the popular vote in enough states to amass more than the 270-vote majority needed in the 538-member Electoral College to claim victory. The Electoral College is determinative in deciding U.S. presidential elections, not the national popular vote, although the most populous states hold the most sway in the Electoral College. U.S. national news media have not declared the winner in Georgia, where 16 electoral votes are at stake, nor in the western state of Arizona, where Biden is leading by 12,813 votes and 11 electoral votes are at stake.  
 
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Trump Loyalists Get Top Pentagon Jobs After Esper Firing

A day after President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, three staunch loyalists to the president were named to top defense jobs. Among them was a former Fox News commentator who failed to get through Senate confirmation because of offensive remarks he made, including about Islam.
The abrupt changes sent reverberations through the Pentagon as nervous civilian and military personnel waited for the next shoe to drop. And they fueled worries of a wider effort to drum out anyone considered not loyal enough to Trump.
The unease was palpable inside the building throughout the day over concerns about what the Trump administration may do in the months before President-elect Joe Biden takes office and whether there will be a greater effort to politicize the historically apolitical military. While radical policy shifts seem unlikely before the Jan. 20 inauguration, the changes could further damage prospects for a smooth transition already hampered by Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss.
James Anderson, who had been acting undersecretary for policy, resigned Tuesday morning and he was quickly replaced by Anthony Tata, a retired Army one-star general. A short time later, Joseph Kernan, a retired Navy vice admiral, stepped down as undersecretary for intelligence, hastening what had been an already planned post-election departure. Kernan was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who becomes acting undersecretary for intelligence.
The departures came on Christopher Miller’s second day on the job as defense chief. Miller also brought in his own chief of staff, Kash Patel, to replace Jen Stewart, who had worked in that job for Esper. Patel and Cohen-Watnick are both considered staunchly loyal to Trump and previously worked at the National Security Council.
Patel was among the small group of aides who traveled with Trump extensively during the final stretch of the campaign. He also is a former prosecutor in the national security division of the Department of Justice and former staff member on the House Intelligence Committee. In that post, he was a top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Patel was linked in media accounts to efforts to discredit the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He moved to the National Security Council in February 2019, and earlier this year, he traveled to Syria for rare high-level talks aimed at securing the release of two Americans who have been missing for years, including journalist Austin Tice.
Cohen-Watnick was a protégé of Trump’s initial national security adviser, Michael Flynn, but was replaced in the summer of 2017 by Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, as part of a string of shakeups at the White House and National Security Council.
While the personnel changes added to the tumult in the wake of Esper’s departure, it’s not clear how much impact they could have on the massive Pentagon bureaucracy. The department is anchored by the tenet of civilian control of the military, and much of the day-to-day activities are conducted by career policy experts and military leaders in the U.S. and around the globe who adhere to a strict chain of command.FILE – Pentagon is seen from an airplane over Washington, DC.Also, many of Trump’s policies and defense priorities have already been put in motion by Esper and his predecessors, guided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including the chairman, Army Gen. Mark Milley. All of those military leaders remain in place.
This is Trump’s second attempt to secure the policy job for Tata. Earlier this year, Trump appointed Tata to the post, but the Senate canceled a hearing on the nomination when it became clear that it would be difficult if not impossible to get him confirmed. Tata withdrew his name from consideration for the job, which is the third-highest position in the department. Trump then appointed Tata to serve in the job of deputy undersecretary.
There has been continuing tumult in the Pentagon’s policy shop. John Rood was forced to resign as undersecretary for policy in February after he drew White House ire for warning against the U.S. withholding aid to Ukraine, the issue that led to the president’s impeachment.
Tata will be “performing the duties of” the undersecretary job, rather than holding the “acting” title. Officials who carry the “acting” title have more authority than those who are “performing the duties of” the job.
According to reports, Tata posted tweets in 2018 calling Islam the “most oppressive violent religion I know of,” and he called former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and referred to him as Muslim. The tweets were later taken down.
At the time of the Senate hearing, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump must not prioritize loyalty over competence and install someone in a job if the “appointee cannot gain the support of the Senate, as is clearly the case with Tata.”
Defense officials said Miller, who previously was director of the National Counterterrorism Center, continues meeting with staff and becoming familiar with the Pentagon and its wide range of complex and critical national security issues and mission.
Anderson’s departure was first reported by Politico.
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Trump, Republicans Rebuff Transition Process

President-elect Joe Biden dismissed the Trump administration’s refusal to begin the official transition process, even as key Republican Party leaders sided with President Donald Trump in his uphill legal fight to overturn Biden’s projected presidential election victory. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
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Biden: ‘Embarrassment’ That Trump Has Not Conceded Election Loss

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday he is not worried about President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede after last week’s national election, but that he thinks it is an “embarrassment” for Trump and the country. “I think it will not help the president’s legacy,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is working on his transition to power and planning his first steps after his expected inauguration on January 20.  Trump, without offering major evidence of voting or vote-count irregularities, has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in several states, trying to overturn Biden’s projected election victory.  Signs by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump hang outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, Nov. 10, 2020.But Biden said, “We’ve already begun the transition” and that Trump’s refusal to concede “does not change the dynamic.” Biden is focusing first on addressing the  coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 238,000 Americans — the most in any country.  Biden said he might make a couple of key appointments to his administration before the annual Thanksgiving holiday, which falls on November 26 this year.  “The fact they’re not willing to acknowledge our victory is not of much consequence,” he said. Trump, in trying to contest the election results, has kept his administration officials from cooperating with Biden’s representatives to arrange a transition of power.  The General Services Administration, a U.S. government agency, has refused to certify Biden’s presumptive victory. That is keeping Biden officials from taking over office space in federal agencies, being assigned government email addresses and receiving federal money to fund the transition.  But Biden brushed it aside without much concern.  “We can get through without the funding,” he said, while also acknowledging he had yet to start receiving the Presidential Daily Brief on U.S. intelligence findings around the world.  “The PDB would be useful,” he said, “but I’m not the sitting president.”  Biden said there was no need for his team to file litigation to try to force acknowledgment that he had won the election.  “I think it will all come to fruition on January 20,” he said.  Asked what he would tell Trump if he were watching the news conference, Biden smiled and said, “Mr. President, I’ll look forward to speaking with you.” 
 
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Trump’s Legal Challenge to Biden Win Seen as Uphill Battle

The Trump campaign’s latest legal challenge to the November 3 presidential election results may be a case of “too little, too late,” some legal experts say.With the election over and former vice president Joe Biden projected as the winner, President Donald Trump faces an uphill battle in his push to overturn the results with scant evidence of fraudulent voting or improper vote counting.That is the assessment of a number of legal experts after Trump’s reelection campaign filed a sweeping new lawsuit that challenges the legality of millions of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that was carried by Biden and put him over the top.The Trump campaign’s 105-page complaint, filed in federal court in Philadelphia late Monday, advances an untested legal theory about voting by mail while rehashing previous arguments and offering little new evidence of fraud, the experts say.Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference on legal challenges to vote counting in Pennsylvania, November 7, 2020, in Philadelphia.The Trump lawyers’ apparent goal is to persuade the courts to discount the massive number of votes cast by mail, most of which were cast by Biden supporters.The suit alleges that Pennsylvania’s use of disparate procedures for handling voting by mail and voting in person represents a “violation” of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and it asks for an injunction against certifying the state’s election results. U.S. states have different deadlines for certifying their results; Pennsylvania’s deadline is November 23.Danielle Lang, co-director of the voting rights and redistricting program at Campaign Legal Center, said the new lawsuit is “more voluminous but not any more meritorious” than previous ones.Voters in Pennsylvania had the choice between voting in person and voting by mail, Lang noted.“It was always going to be the case that those different methods of voting would be accompanied by different procedures, but it doesn’t mean those procedures are less secure or less appropriate or less constitutional,” Lang said.The lawsuit argues that of the approximately 6.75 million ballots cast in Pennsylvania, the 2.6 million that were sent by mail had fewer safeguards to ensure their transparency and verifiability. The majority of the mail ballots were cast by Biden supporters.While the suit alleges that “almost every critical aspect” of the voting process in Pennsylvania was “shrouded in secrecy,” its core claim is that in-person voters and those voting by mail were treated differently.
“Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another,” the suit states, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in the disputed 2000 presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.In that case, the Supreme Court objected to Florida’s patchwork of standards for accepting and rejecting contested ballots, effectively bringing the Florida recount to a halt and giving the presidency to Bush.FILE – An election worker places a vote-by-mail ballot into an official ballot drop box outside a voting site in Miami, Florida.But having different standards for voting by mail and voting in person does not constitute a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine.“If this claim succeeded, it would mean that voting was unconstitutional across the entire country,” Hasen wrote in an email. “The claim is especially weak when voters had the choice to vote using either system.”What is more, Hasen said, it may be too late for the Trump campaign, which has known about the Pennsylvania voting procedures for months, to bring a lawsuit now.“Otherwise you give the campaign an option to sue over things only if they lose and disenfranchise voters who relied on the legality of the existing system,” Hasen wrote.Election administration is a state matter, and legal experts say it is highly unlikely — but not out of the question — that the Supreme Court will get involved in resolving the dispute.The Supreme Court is seen at sundown on the eve of Election Day, in Washington, D.C., November 2, 2020.“Even if the Supreme Court gets involved, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of flipping enough votes to change the outcome of the presidential election,” said Michael R. Dimino, a law professor and election expert at Widener University Commonwealth Law School.
In the lead-up to the November 3 election, the Trump campaign and Republicans filed dozens of lawsuits against states’ plans to expand voting by mail during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.President Trump repeatedly denounced the use of mail-in ballots, arguing with little proof that they were ripe for fraud. While Republicans were able to prevent some changes in voting procedures, most states went ahead with expanded voting by mail, eventually allowing more than 65 million Americans to cast ballots via the postal system.Biden on Saturday was projected by news organizations as the winner on the strength of what is deemed an insurmountable vote lead in enough states to give him a majority in the Electoral College, or at least 270 electoral votes. The results remain subject to court challenges and recounts, and will not be official until certified by the individual states which must happen by December 8.The challenge now facing the Trump legal team is that there may not be enough disputed ballots at stake to alter the election outcome, according to legal experts. Unlike in 2000, when former President George W. Bush won a disputed election by a few hundred ballots in Florida, Trump is running behind Biden by tens of thousands of votes in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.Not all legal experts think the Trump lawsuit is without merit. Dimino said the lawsuit presents “some good arguments” that the vote count in Pennsylvania was not conducted in accordance with law.Election challengers, left, wait outside after an election official, right, closed the door to the central counting board, November 4, 2020, in Detroit.For example, the complaint alleges that Republican vote-count observers were denied “meaningful access” — asserting that poll watchers were kept too far from the ballot counting in Philadelphia. In that case, a judge last week agreed with the Trump campaign and ordered that the watchers be moved closer, Dimino noted.
“And the campaign has other good claims that the administration of the election was at least questionable,” Dimino said. “So there is definitely a chance that the legal arguments will prevail.”
However, the most formidable challenge for the Trump team is “convincing judges that the election violations should result in discarding a large enough number of votes to alter the outcome,” Dimino said.
That would require evidence of systemic fraud and irregularities, something the Trump campaign has yet to produce.Even if Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral ballots were given to Trump — a seemingly far-fetched scenario given his substantial disadvantage in the vote tally — the president would still need to win at least one additional state to reverse Biden’s projected victory.In the week since the Nov. 3 election, the Trump campaign and the president’s supporters have filed lawsuits in four other states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.With a couple of notable exceptions, most of the legal action has failed, with judges either dismissing the suits or demanding tangible evidence.A voter picks up an informational flier while filling out a ballot during absentee early voting at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, October 31, 2020.In Michigan, the latest legal challenge to the vote-counting procedures came from a conservative group on Sunday. The lawsuit, filed by the Great Lakes Justice Law Center, seeks a new election in Wayne County — the Detroit area — alleging Tuesday’s election there was marred by fraud.Tom Spencer, a veteran Republican lawyer who served as co-counsel on the Bush legal team during the Florida recount, said that despite the tough odds, Trump should pursue all available legal avenues.“I remember the Gore lawyers in Florida saying you know, we have to do this not only for Gore but also for the American people so that they have confidence in the outcome and that they know that our client has turned every stone in order to make it,” said Spencer, now vice president of the Lawyers Democracy Fund.
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US Election Results Dismay Trump’s Populist Allies in Europe

There was undisguised glee among Europe’s liberals and centrists when Joe Biden was projected the winner of the race for the White House. But for the continent’s populist nationalists, including a group of national leaders in Central Europe, the election outcome has prompted dismay, and some foreboding.With Trump out of the White House they would be deprived of a powerful cheerleading ally in Washington and some centrists predict his departure will have a knock-on effect of retarding the political fortunes of leaders on the continent of Europe who espouse populist politics.“Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms also in Europe,” tweeted Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council and now head of the European People’s Party, Europe’s largest transnational political party made up Christian Democrats and moderate Conservatives.President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 4, 2020, in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen and First Lady Melania Trump listen.While most European leaders congratulated Joe Biden Saturday when he was projected as the victor by America’s TV networks – based on the provisional tallies of the states – Central European populist leaders noticeably withheld their compliments, or were slower than Western European counterparts in doing so.These included Janez Jansa, prime minister of Slovenia, where Melania Trump was born.  Echoing the objections of Donald Trump, who disputes Biden’s projection as the winner, Jansa complained the media was premature in announcing the outcome, tweeting “complaints have been filed.” The Slovenian leader noted “the courts have not even begun to decide.”Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa says Democratic US presidential nomiee Joe Biden’s projection as the winner, the media was premature in announcing the outcome of the election.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who like his Slovenian counterpart endorsed Trump in the run-up to the vote, also withheld his congratulations Saturday. A pro-government news site owned by Orban’s political allies declared America was in the grip of chaos and criticized “big media” for declaring Biden the winner.But Orban shifted Monday and offered his congratulations, albeit not on a phone call but via a letter. “Let me congratulate you for a successful presidential campaign. I wish you good health and continued success in performing your exceedingly responsible duties,” Orban wrote in the letter quoted by state news agency MTI.Orban, who faces an election in 2022, was largely ostracized by the Obama administration for presiding over what Washington saw as an erosion of the country’s democratic checks and balances. Biden served as Obama’s vice president. In 2018 the Orban government was offended when the U.S. Department of State announced a $700,000 grant to help nurture independent media outlets in Hungary.EU pressureFor Central Europe’s populist governments, Trump’s reversal coincides with an approaching rule-of-law showdown with Brussels. The European Union parliament and the Council of Europe have agreed on a mechanism for the disbursement of the bloc’s funds that would require countries like Hungary and Poland to uphold democratic rules — or lose the cash.Hungarian ministers last week accused the EU of failing to focus on pressing problems, including rising anti-Semitism and Islamist terrorism. “Ideological pressure is used under the guise of the rule of law against certain countries just because we say no to migration, no to multiculturalism, and because we have a different view on the role of family in society,” said Hungary’s justice minister, Judit Varga.In practical terms the departure of Trump gives the populist leaders less cover in their confrontations with Brussels and the bloc’s more liberal-minded Western European states, say analysts. Populists also believe their close alliance with Washington gave them a boost in electoral terms, making them appear in tune with the zeitgeist; they fear they may now appear to be going against the gain of history.Trump is credited by members of Poland’s Law and Justice Party with helping Polish President Andrzej Duda win reelection in June in a closely fought race. An eve-of-poll White House meeting, as well as Trump’s decision to move some American troops stationed in Germany to Poland, boosted Duda’s campaign, they say.File – Polish President and presidential candidate of the Law and Justice (PiS) party Andrzej Duda holds up a bouquet after the announcement of the first exit poll results on the second round of the presidential election in Pultusk, July 12, 2020.Biden is expected to be much tougher on rule-of-law issues, although diplomats say they would be surprised if he reversed military and business deals with Central Europe’s populist governments already in the pipeline, if for no other reason than that might be exploited by Moscow, which has been courting them. Populism out, liberalism in?For populists out of power but hoping to win forthcoming elections, including Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Lega party, Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally and Tino Chrupalla of Germany’s AfD, a Biden win means they may find themselves leaning into a headwind of liberalism. Their opponents are already predicting that 2021 will see in Germany the AfD slump and the Greens surge, and that the following year France’s Emmanuel Macron will secure reelection.Other forecasts under this optimistic scenario suggest liberalism will be back and populism out, with the PiS losing in 2023 and Britain’s opposition Labour Party ousting Britain’s populist-leaning Conservatives in 2024.Denis MacShane, a former British Labour Party lawmaker and one-time minister for Europe, says Biden’s projected win shows populist nationalism is not “taking over.” He highlights a series of election setbacks populists have suffered in recent months. Writing in The Article, a British news-site, he says: “Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Finland all have social democratic prime ministers. Greens are the new rising force in European politics. In New Zealand, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern, has won a new term of office, seeing off rightwing nationalist populist opposition.”He added: “Political scientists, intellectuals and commentators now need to get down to work and stop leaning on the crutch of populism as a catch-all explanation of politics going into the next decade.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at the Labour Election Day party after the it won the general election, in Auckland, Oct. 16, 2020.Biden’s projected win has certainly spooked populist leaders currently out of power. Tomio Okamura, head of the Czech Republic’s far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party, said a Biden victory represents a victory for migration and the dictatorship of minorities. Jan Skopecek of the Civic Democratic Party, a Euro-skeptic party in the Czech Republic, the second largest in the country’s chamber of deputies, warned this week that Biden supports radical leftist views and would struggle to pinpoint Czechia on the map.But the closeness of the U.S. presidential vote, as well as Republican seat gains in the House of Representatives and the likelihood Republicans will retain a majority in the U.S. Senate, is providing some solace for Europe’s populist nationalists.They say the election doesn’t amount to a repudiation of populism as Trump managed to increase his overall vote, and they highlight how Trump even in defeat broadened his electoral coalition, making it more multi-ethnic.They also say populist nationalism has been a long time in the making and is rooted deeply now. Distrust of establishment parties and political elites will persist amid continuing squabbles over immigration and fears of distant and unaccountable international organizations, they argue.European populists have seen their support fall off since the coronavirus pandemic emerged. A survey in October by British pollster YouGov showed a decline in populist thinking in eight European countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy. Political analysts said the findings were likely tied to the pandemic because of the natural tendency for people to rally around their governments at times of national crisis.Populists, like some establishment parties, have also struggled to maintain a consistent message about how to handle the pandemic.But some analysts say there will likely be plenty of fertile ground for populists to hoe in the meantime. Support for populist beliefs could recover quickly as the focus of the crisis shifts to the economic fallout, impacting politics even more. Income disparity and industrial and rural decline — the bread-and-butter of populism — are likely to worsen after the pandemic. Migration is likely to increase. The transition towards green economies is also likely to help populists recruit supporters.“We live in a populist era,” said Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research institute based in Germany. He doesn’t believe that the US election will come to be seen as marking the end of populist nationalism.“At least all the signs suggest that this isn’t going to happen I don’t see evidence of a turnaround. It isn’t as though, say, Biden won by 10 percent. It is tempting to think that everything will go back to normal, but I don’t think this is going to happen. Populists have their ups and downs but the trend is upwards,” he said. 
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Pentagon Policy Chief Resigns Following Esper Firing

Another top U.S. Pentagon official is leaving his post, a day after the termination of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. In his resignation letter to President Donald Trump dated Tuesday, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Anderson listed some of his achievements and said it had been an honor to serve his country. “Now, as ever, our long-term success depends on adhering to the U.S. Constitution all public servants swear to support and defend,” he wrote. 
 Acting policy chief of @DeptofDefense resigns following clash with @WhiteHouse. pic.twitter.com/SdTKhhx0pY— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) November 10, 2020On Monday, Trump announced via Twitter that he had fired the defense secretary. “Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump wrote Monday. Trump Fires Defense Secretary Via Twitter Christopher Miller, Director of National Counterterrorism Center, will serve as acting secretary of defense ‘effective immediately’Esper had been expected to serve through the transition period between now and President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration in late January 2021. 
 
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US Supreme Court to Hear Obamacare Case

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a Republican effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act health care law.The hearing comes weeks after Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.At the center of the case is a requirement in the 2010 law for most people to have a minimum level of health insurance or face a financial penalty.In a 2012 case, the Supreme Court ruled that provision was allowed on the basis that it represented a tax that Congress is allowed to levy. In 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress and set the penalty to zero.A group of states, led by Texas, is leading the current charge to dismantle the health care law, commonly known as Obamacare.  They argue that the mandate for individuals to purchase health coverage is unconstitutional, and that without that provision, the entire Affordable Care Act must be struck down.Part of the original congressional intent in requiring people to have coverage was that it would bring more healthy people into the system who would pay premiums without using many services, helping to offset costs of individuals who needed more care, including those with pre-existing conditions who had previously been denied coverage.Texas and its partners argue that eliminating the individual mandate would create an imbalance and push health costs unfairly higher.The opposition is led by California, and points to the 2017 action by Congress as evidence that lawmakers had no problem with removing only the penalty for the individual mandate while allowing the rest of the Affordable Care Act to remain in place. They further argue that as the law stands, with no penalty in place, it merely encourages people to have health insurance, and thus cannot be seen as an unconstitutional imposition by the government.The court is expected to issue its ruling in the case by late June or early July.Of the justices who were members of the court during the 2012 case, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to strike down the entire law.  Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor voted to uphold it.Justices Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have since joined the court. If the court strikes down the law, up to 20 million people could lose their health coverage and insurance companies could be allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. 
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Trump’s US Election Loss Dismays His Populist Allies in Europe

There was undisguised glee among Europe’s liberals and centrists when Joe Biden was projected the winner of the race for the White House. But for the continent’s populist nationalists, including a group of national leaders in Central Europe, the election outcome has prompted dismay, and some foreboding.With Trump out of the White House they would be deprived of a powerful cheerleading ally in Washington and some centrists predict his departure will have a knock-on effect of retarding the political fortunes of leaders on the continent of Europe who espouse populist politics.“Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms also in Europe,” tweeted Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council and now head of the European People’s Party, Europe’s largest transnational political party made up Christian Democrats and moderate Conservatives.President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 4, 2020, in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen and First Lady Melania Trump listen.While most European leaders congratulated Joe Biden Saturday when he was projected as the victor by America’s TV networks – based on the provisional tallies of the states – Central European populist leaders noticeably withheld their compliments, or were slower than Western European counterparts in doing so.These included Janez Jansa, prime minister of Slovenia, where Melania Trump was born.  Echoing the objections of Donald Trump, who disputes Biden’s projection as the winner, Jansa complained the media was premature in announcing the outcome, tweeting “complaints have been filed.” The Slovenian leader noted “the courts have not even begun to decide.”Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa says Democratic US presidential nomiee Joe Biden’s projection as the winner, the media was premature in announcing the outcome of the election.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who like his Slovenian counterpart endorsed Trump in the run-up to the vote, also withheld his congratulations Saturday. A pro-government news site owned by Orban’s political allies declared America was in the grip of chaos and criticized “big media” for declaring Biden the winner.But Orban shifted Monday and offered his congratulations, albeit not on a phone call but via a letter. “Let me congratulate you for a successful presidential campaign. I wish you good health and continued success in performing your exceedingly responsible duties,” Orban wrote in the letter quoted by state news agency MTI.Orban, who faces an election in 2022, was largely ostracized by the Obama administration for presiding over what Washington saw as an erosion of the country’s democratic checks and balances. Biden served as Obama’s vice president. In 2018 the Orban government was offended when the U.S. Department of State announced a $700,000 grant to help nurture independent media outlets in Hungary.EU pressureFor Central Europe’s populist governments, Trump’s reversal coincides with an approaching rule-of-law showdown with Brussels. The European Union parliament and the Council of Europe have agreed on a mechanism for the disbursement of the bloc’s funds that would require countries like Hungary and Poland to uphold democratic rules — or lose the cash.Hungarian ministers last week accused the EU of failing to focus on pressing problems, including rising anti-Semitism and Islamist terrorism. “Ideological pressure is used under the guise of the rule of law against certain countries just because we say no to migration, no to multiculturalism, and because we have a different view on the role of family in society,” said Hungary’s justice minister, Judit Varga.In practical terms the departure of Trump gives the populist leaders less cover in their confrontations with Brussels and the bloc’s more liberal-minded Western European states, say analysts. Populists also believe their close alliance with Washington gave them a boost in electoral terms, making them appear in tune with the zeitgeist; they fear they may now appear to be going against the gain of history.Trump is credited by members of Poland’s Law and Justice Party with helping Polish President Andrzej Duda win reelection in June in a closely fought race. An eve-of-poll White House meeting, as well as Trump’s decision to move some American troops stationed in Germany to Poland, boosted Duda’s campaign, they say.File – Polish President and presidential candidate of the Law and Justice (PiS) party Andrzej Duda holds up a bouquet after the announcement of the first exit poll results on the second round of the presidential election in Pultusk, July 12, 2020.Biden is expected to be much tougher on rule-of-law issues, although diplomats say they would be surprised if he reversed military and business deals with Central Europe’s populist governments already in the pipeline, if for no other reason than that might be exploited by Moscow, which has been courting them. Populism out, liberalism in?For populists out of power but hoping to win forthcoming elections, including Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Lega party, Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally and Tino Chrupalla of Germany’s AfD, a Biden win means they may find themselves leaning into a headwind of liberalism. Their opponents are already predicting that 2021 will see in Germany the AfD slump and the Greens surge, and that the following year France’s Emmanuel Macron will secure reelection.Other forecasts under this optimistic scenario suggest liberalism will be back and populism out, with the PiS losing in 2023 and Britain’s opposition Labour Party ousting Britain’s populist-leaning Conservatives in 2024.Denis MacShane, a former British Labour Party lawmaker and one-time minister for Europe, says Biden’s projected win shows populist nationalism is not “taking over.” He highlights a series of election setbacks populists have suffered in recent months. Writing in The Article, a British news-site, he says: “Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Finland all have social democratic prime ministers. Greens are the new rising force in European politics. In New Zealand, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern, has won a new term of office, seeing off rightwing nationalist populist opposition.”He added: “Political scientists, intellectuals and commentators now need to get down to work and stop leaning on the crutch of populism as a catch-all explanation of politics going into the next decade.” 
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at the Labour Election Day party after the it won the general election, in Auckland, Oct. 16, 2020.Biden’s projected win has certainly spooked populist leaders currently out of power. Tomio Okamura, head of the Czech Republic’s far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party, said a Biden victory represents a victory for migration and the dictatorship of minorities. Jan Skopecek of the Civic Democratic Party, a Euro-skeptic party in the Czech Republic, the second largest in the country’s chamber of deputies, warned this week that Biden supports radical leftist views and would struggle to pinpoint Czechia on the map.But the closeness of the U.S. presidential vote, as well as Republican seat gains in the House of Representatives and the likelihood Republicans will retain a majority in the U.S. Senate, is providing some solace for Europe’s populist nationalists.They say the election doesn’t amount to a repudiation of populism as Trump managed to increase his overall vote, and they highlight how Trump even in defeat broadened his electoral coalition, making it more multi-ethnic.They also say populist nationalism has been a long time in the making and is rooted deeply now. Distrust of establishment parties and political elites will persist amid continuing squabbles over immigration and fears of distant and unaccountable international organizations, they argue.European populists have seen their support fall off since the coronavirus pandemic emerged. A survey in October by British pollster YouGov showed a decline in populist thinking in eight European countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy. Political analysts said the findings were likely tied to the pandemic because of the natural tendency for people to rally around their governments at times of national crisis.Populists, like some establishment parties, have also struggled to maintain a consistent message about how to handle the pandemic.But some analysts say there will likely be plenty of fertile ground for populists to hoe in the meantime. Support for populist beliefs could recover quickly as the focus of the crisis shifts to the economic fallout, impacting politics even more. Income disparity and industrial and rural decline — the bread-and-butter of populism — are likely to worsen after the pandemic. Migration is likely to increase. The transition towards green economies is also likely to help populists recruit supporters.“We live in a populist era,” said Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research institute based in Germany. He doesn’t believe that the US election will come to be seen as marking the end of populist nationalism.“At least all the signs suggest that this isn’t going to happen I don’t see evidence of a turnaround. It isn’t as though, say, Biden won by 10 percent. It is tempting to think that everything will go back to normal, but I don’t think this is going to happen. Populists have their ups and downs but the trend is upwards,” he said. 
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Biden Presidency Will Face Historic Challenges

After winning a close election, President-Elect Joe Biden now shifts focus to governing a deeply divided nation that is grappling with a deadly pandemic and a struggling economy. VOA’s Brian Padden reports that for the incoming moderate Democratic president, success will likely hinge on both finding common ground with conservative Republicans while maintaining support from progressives in his own party.
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Harris Makes History as First Black and Indian American Woman VP

Vice president-elect Kamala Harris made history this week when she became the first woman ever to win election on a presidential ticket. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on the path that brought Harris to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government.Camera: Adam Greenbaum                   Produced by: Katherine Gypson,  Jesse Oni 
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