Five reasons why Donald Trump should not be considered as a useless president

The US Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a bid by Texas to overturn the results of the presidential election, which Republican Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, in a fresh setback for the outgoing president.

The longshot suit lodged late Tuesday against four states key in the November 3 vote -- Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- challenged Biden's victory in each jurisdiction.&nbsp;

The justices in a brief order rejected the bid by Texas to file the extraordinary challenge targetting Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin directly with the Supreme Court, as is allowed in some instances of litigation between states under a legal doctrine called "original jurisdiction."

The order said Texas did not have a legal standing to bring the claim.

"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court said in the unsigned order.

The case was filed on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas, a Trump ally, against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Republican president on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene and become a plaintiff.

It was backed by 106 Republican lawmakers and 17 state attorneys general.

Texas had asked the justices to throw out the election results in the four states. Biden won all four states. Trump had won them in the 2016 election.

Biden spokesman Mike Gwin said the ruling was "no surprise."

"Dozens of judges, election officials from both parties, and Trump's own Attorney General have dismissed his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election," he said.

Texas alleged that the results in the other four states were "unconstitutional" because of their heavy use of "fraud-prone" mail-in votes during the coronavirus pandemic. It offered no proof of significant fraud, and didn't challenge the use of mailed ballots in states Trump won.

The suit cited numerous alleged examples of potential fraud already rejected by lower courts.

Trump's campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results. Trump has falsely claimed he won the November 3 election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud and a system "rigged" against him.&nbsp;

State election officials have said they have found no evidence of such fraud. Lawyers for Trump and his allies have failed to present evidence in court of the type of fraud he has alleged.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court also refused his bid to overturn his loss in Pennsylvania.&nbsp;

Trump had hoped that the high court, whose bench he has tipped solidly to the right, would intervene in his favour.

In 2000, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida, where George W Bush was only 537 votes ahead of Democrat Al Gore, allowing the Republican to win the election.

The lawsuit came as all 50 states plus Washington, DC have formally certified their vote tallies, opening the way to convene the Electoral College.

Biden, in the November 3 vote, snagged 51.3 percent of the ballots compared to Trump's 46.9 percent, a seven million vote margin.&nbsp;

The Electoral College is set to affirm Biden's win on December 14, and he will be sworn in on January 20.

(with inputs from agencies)

The US Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a bid by Texas to overturn the results of the presidential election, which Republican Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, in a fresh setback for the outgoing president.

The US Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a bid by Texas to overturn the results of the presidential election, which Republican Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, in a fresh setback for the outgoing president. The longshot suit lodged late Tuesday against four states key in the November 3 vote -- Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- challenged Biden's victory in each jurisdiction. The justices in a brief order rejected the bid by Texas to file the extraordinary challenge targetting Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin directly with the Supreme Court, as is allowed in some instances of litigation between states under a legal doctrine called "original jurisdiction." The order said Texas did not have a legal standing to bring the claim. "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court said in the unsigned order. The case was filed on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas, a Trump ally, against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Republican president on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene and become a plaintiff. It was backed by 106 Republican lawmakers and 17 state attorneys general. Texas had asked the justices to throw out the election results in the four states. Biden won all four states. Trump had won them in the 2016 election. Biden spokesman Mike Gwin said the ruling was "no surprise." "Dozens of judges, election officials from both parties, and Trump's own Attorney General have dismissed his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election," he said. Texas alleged that the results in the other four states were "unconstitutional" because of their heavy use of "fraud-prone" mail-in votes during the coronavirus pandemic. It offered no proof of significant fraud, and didn't challenge the use of mailed ballots in states Trump won. The suit cited numerous alleged examples of potential fraud already rejected by lower courts. Trump's campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results. Trump has falsely claimed he won the November 3 election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud and a system "rigged" against him. State election officials have said they have found no evidence of such fraud. Lawyers for Trump and his allies have failed to present evidence in court of the type of fraud he has alleged. On Tuesday the Supreme Court also refused his bid to overturn his loss in Pennsylvania. Trump had hoped that the high court, whose bench he has tipped solidly to the right, would intervene in his favour. In 2000, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida, where George W Bush was only 537 votes ahead of Democrat Al Gore, allowing the Republican to win the election. The lawsuit came as all 50 states plus Washington, DC have formally certified their vote tallies, opening the way to convene the Electoral College. Biden, in the November 3 vote, snagged 51.3 percent of the ballots compared to Trump's 46.9 percent, a seven million vote margin. The Electoral College is set to affirm Biden's win on December 14, and he will be sworn in on January 20. (with inputs from agencies)

US Supreme Court dismisses Trump's bid to overturn election result

The next few months will be terrible. Several thousand Americans are now dying from COVID-19 every day; given the lag between cases and deaths, the daily toll will almost certainly rise through the end of this year, and if people are careless over Christmas it could surge even higher in the new year. Economic recovery has stalled, with employment still down almost 10 million from pre-pandemic levels.

The most we can hope for at this point are policies that mitigate the suffering, getting us through the horror while we wait for widespread vaccination. And a few days ago it seemed possible that we would in fact get some good news on the economic front. A bipartisan group of senators seemed close to agreement on a COVID relief bill that would fall far short of what we should be doing, but would be much better than nothing.

Then the lame-duck Trump administration intervened — destructively.

Before I get to what’s wrong with the administration’s proposal and why it may do a great deal of harm, let’s talk about what the goal of economic policy ought to be right now.

I still keep seeing news reports that frame congressional arguments about relief bills as a debate about “stimulus.” But stimulus is what you do when unemployment is high because people aren’t spending enough. And that’s not the problem we face.

Think about it. Why are there still 2 million fewer workers in “food services and drinking places” than there were before the coronavirus struck? It’s not because people can’t afford to eat out or go to bars. It’s because eating out and gathering in bars are dangerous activities. In many parts of the country these activities are, rightly, either banned or sharply restricted; even where they’re allowed, many people, understanding the risks, choose to stay home.

The role of economic policy in this situation isn’t to bring those jobs back while the pandemic is still raging — we actually don’t want a resurgence of employment in high-risk sectors until vaccines are widely available. What we should be doing, instead, is minimizing the suffering while we wait. That is, the issue isn’t stimulus, it’s disaster relief.

What should this relief involve? It should provide support for the unavoidably unemployed, sustain businesses through the dark months ahead and aid state and local governments that are suffering severe declines in revenues and that will otherwise be forced to make drastic cuts in essential services.

And no, this last problem isn’t restricted to blue states. In fact, six of the seven states expected to face the biggest revenue declines have Republican governors.

House Democrats have always been willing to pass a relief bill along the lines I’ve described. And as I said, until a few days ago the Senate appeared to be moving toward a bill that, while much smaller than Democrats wanted, would be better than nothing. The main obstacle seemed to be the determination of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, to include a poison pill — a blanket exemption of businesses from any liabilities related to exposing their workers to COVID-19 risks. But observers were hopeful that an agreement could still be reached.

Then came the Trump administration intervention — a proposal from Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, that McConnell quickly endorsed even though it was disastrously wrongheaded.

I’m not sure whether the coverage of this discussion has fully explained just how bad Mnuchin’s proposal is. Many headlines emphasized the cost, a bit over $900 billion, which was similar to that of the emerging bipartisan bill, suggesting that the administration was weighing in with something positive.

In fact, however, the administration proposal completely eliminated the most important piece of any relief deal — expanded benefits for the unemployed — replacing it with one-time $600 checks that would be sent to everyone.

Again, think about it. For Americans who won’t be able to return to work while the pandemic is still raging, a one-time payment of $600 is grossly inadequate, while for those who haven’t lost their jobs it’s unnecessary. It’s true that people might spend some of the grant, boosting overall demand — but overall lack of demand isn’t the main problem right now.

So what is Mnuchin thinking? We can’t rule out sheer ignorance. It is, sad to say, entirely possible that, nine months into the pandemic slump, administration officials still don’t understand the basic logic of relief. Or they may be in thrall to the thoroughly debunked myth that unemployment benefits actually cause high unemployment.

Or maybe this proposal reflects the expiring administration’s special combination of delusion and cynicism. President Donald Trump is still trying, in ever more desperate and destructive ways, to overturn the results of the election. And in his madness he may imagine that he will gain more politically from sending everyone another check with his name on it than from helping those truly in need.

Whatever the motivation, Mnuchin’s proposal couldn’t have come at a worse time. It may well undermine the economic relief millions of Americans need.

The next few months will be terrible. Several thousand Americans are now dying from COVID-19 every day; given the lag between cases and deaths, the daily toll will almost certainly rise through the end of this year, and if people are careless over Christmas it could surge even higher in the new year.

The next few months will be terrible. Several thousand Americans are now dying from COVID-19 every day; given the lag between cases and deaths, the daily toll will almost certainly rise through the end of this year, and if people are careless over Christmas it could surge even higher in the new year. Economic recovery has stalled, with employment still down almost 10 million from pre-pandemic levels. The most we can hope for at this point are policies that mitigate the suffering, getting us through the horror while we wait for widespread vaccination. And a few days ago it seemed possible that we would in fact get some good news on the economic front. A bipartisan group of senators seemed close to agreement on a COVID relief bill that would fall far short of what we should be doing, but would be much better than nothing. Then the lame-duck Trump administration intervened — destructively. Before I get to what’s wrong with the administration’s proposal and why it may do a great deal of harm, let’s talk about what the goal of economic policy ought to be right now. I still keep seeing news reports that frame congressional arguments about relief bills as a debate about “stimulus.” But stimulus is what you do when unemployment is high because people aren’t spending enough. And that’s not the problem we face. Think about it. Why are there still 2 million fewer workers in “food services and drinking places” than there were before the coronavirus struck? It’s not because people can’t afford to eat out or go to bars. It’s because eating out and gathering in bars are dangerous activities. In many parts of the country these activities are, rightly, either banned or sharply restricted; even where they’re allowed, many people, understanding the risks, choose to stay home. The role of economic policy in this situation isn’t to bring those jobs back while the pandemic is still raging — we actually don’t want a resurgence of employment in high-risk sectors until vaccines are widely available. What we should be doing, instead, is minimizing the suffering while we wait. That is, the issue isn’t stimulus, it’s disaster relief. What should this relief involve? It should provide support for the unavoidably unemployed, sustain businesses through the dark months ahead and aid state and local governments that are suffering severe declines in revenues and that will otherwise be forced to make drastic cuts in essential services. And no, this last problem isn’t restricted to blue states. In fact, six of the seven states expected to face the biggest revenue declines have Republican governors. House Democrats have always been willing to pass a relief bill along the lines I’ve described. And as I said, until a few days ago the Senate appeared to be moving toward a bill that, while much smaller than Democrats wanted, would be better than nothing. The main obstacle seemed to be the determination of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, to include a poison pill — a blanket exemption of businesses from any liabilities related to exposing their workers to COVID-19 risks. But observers were hopeful that an agreement could still be reached. Then came the Trump administration intervention — a proposal from Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, that McConnell quickly endorsed even though it was disastrously wrongheaded. I’m not sure whether the coverage of this discussion has fully explained just how bad Mnuchin’s proposal is. Many headlines emphasized the cost, a bit over $900 billion, which was similar to that of the emerging bipartisan bill, suggesting that the administration was weighing in with something positive. In fact, however, the administration proposal completely eliminated the most important piece of any relief deal — expanded benefits for the unemployed — replacing it with one-time $600 checks that would be sent to everyone. Again, think about it. For Americans who won’t be able to return to work while the pandemic is still raging, a one-time payment of $600 is grossly inadequate, while for those who haven’t lost their jobs it’s unnecessary. It’s true that people might spend some of the grant, boosting overall demand — but overall lack of demand isn’t the main problem right now. So what is Mnuchin thinking? We can’t rule out sheer ignorance. It is, sad to say, entirely possible that, nine months into the pandemic slump, administration officials still don’t understand the basic logic of relief. Or they may be in thrall to the thoroughly debunked myth that unemployment benefits actually cause high unemployment. Or maybe this proposal reflects the expiring administration’s special combination of delusion and cynicism. President Donald Trump is still trying, in ever more desperate and destructive ways, to overturn the results of the election. And in his madness he may imagine that he will gain more politically from sending everyone another check with his name on it than from helping those truly in need. Whatever the motivation, Mnuchin’s proposal couldn’t have come at a worse time. It may well undermine the economic relief millions of Americans need.

Trump tries to kill COVID relief

US President Donald Trump lashed out at US Supreme Court after it dealt what is perceived as a final and fatal blow to his claims of fraud in US Presidential Election 2020. US Supreme Court rejected lawsuit by Texas and other states that demanded&nbsp;throwing out of election results in four states. Trump called the decision a 'legal disgrace'.

"The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!" wrote Trump, adding in a later Tweet, "It is a legal disgrace, an embarrassment to the USA!!!"

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“We’ve not gotten any court to judge this (the vote) on its merit.” <a href="https://twitter.com/DanPatrick?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DanPatrick</a> of Texas. It is a legal disgrace, an embarrassment to the USA!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1337634953211817984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

The decision by US Supreme Court has cleared way for US electoral college to cast its votes and formally certify Joe Biden's victory. The Electoral College will meet on Monday (December 14)

Biden, a Democrat, has amassed 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.

The four states in question - Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - contributed a combined 62 votes to Biden's total. To win the White House, 270 votes are needed.

Trump is yet to concede the election. Ever since it was certain that Joe Biden had defeated him in presidential elections, Trump has made baseless claims of election fraud without providing any evidence. Even when he suffered number of legal defeats prior to Supreme Court verdict, he was not willing to concede.

Trump's goal had long been for a case to reach the Supreme Court, where he had placed three new justices in his first term and where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. The lawsuit brought by Texas and supported by 17 other states and more than 100 Republican members of Congress gave him that opportunity.

In the run-up the Nov. 3 election, Trump had pushed for the swift confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, with the publicly stated hope that she could be in a position to help rule on an election challenge.

But Barrett and the two other justices appointed by Trump - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - signed onto the court's order derailing the Texas suit without comment.

(With Reuters inputs)

US President Donald Trump lashed out at US Supreme Court after it dealt what is perceived as a final and fatal blow to his claims of fraud in US Presidential Election 2020.

US President Donald Trump lashed out at US Supreme Court after it dealt what is perceived as a final and fatal blow to his claims of fraud in US Presidential Election 2020. US Supreme Court rejected lawsuit by Texas and other states that demanded throwing out of election results in four states. Trump called the decision a 'legal disgrace'. "The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!" wrote Trump, adding in a later Tweet, "It is a legal disgrace, an embarrassment to the USA!!!" “We’ve not gotten any court to judge this (the vote) on its merit.” @DanPatrick of Texas. It is a legal disgrace, an embarrassment to the USA!!! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020 × The decision by US Supreme Court has cleared way for US electoral college to cast its votes and formally certify Joe Biden's victory. The Electoral College will meet on Monday (December 14) Biden, a Democrat, has amassed 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population. The four states in question - Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - contributed a combined 62 votes to Biden's total. To win the White House, 270 votes are needed. Trump is yet to concede the election. Ever since it was certain that Joe Biden had defeated him in presidential elections, Trump has made baseless claims of election fraud without providing any evidence. Even when he suffered number of legal defeats prior to Supreme Court verdict, he was not willing to concede. Trump's goal had long been for a case to reach the Supreme Court, where he had placed three new justices in his first term and where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. The lawsuit brought by Texas and supported by 17 other states and more than 100 Republican members of Congress gave him that opportunity. In the run-up the Nov. 3 election, Trump had pushed for the swift confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, with the publicly stated hope that she could be in a position to help rule on an election challenge. But Barrett and the two other justices appointed by Trump - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - signed onto the court's order derailing the Texas suit without comment. (With Reuters inputs)

'Legal disgrace', says Trump as US Supreme Court gives final blow to his election fraud claims

The Senate in USA passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - a $740 billion bill which cuts out the policy for the country’s Department of Defense.

This is specifically important due to President Donald Trump’s recent wishes to veto the act. With the overwhelming majority, the Senate has bypassed the scope of Trump’s interference.

The vote recorded in the Republican-controlled Senate was 84-13, which is more than the two-thirds majority in the house, necessary to override a veto.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-executes-another-inmate-before-trump-leaves-office-349209" hreflang="en">US executes another inmate before Trump leaves office</a>

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives, under Democratic control supported the NDAA by 335 to 78 votes.&nbsp;

The bill has become a law for the last 59 years, and critics think that bipartisan support for the bill could inspire Trump to rethink his position the matter.

A Republican chairman explained what the bill does.

"It's simple, what this&nbsp;bill&nbsp;does," said Senator Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.&nbsp;"It makes our country more secure, and it supports our troops who defend it”, he added.

But the White House claims that Trump’s position remains unchanged. Starting now, Trump has ten days to either veto or sign it. He can also allow it to become law without his signature.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-supreme-court-dismisses-trumps-bid-to-overturn-election-result-349183" hreflang="en">US Supreme Court dismisses Trump's bid to overturn election result</a>

Trump objects to the NDAA because of the protections enshrined in it for big tech companies.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook from liability for what is shown on their platforms.

Many feel that tech measures have nothing to do with defence. Additionally, they feel that Trump’s concerns should not kill legislation which is a result of a year-long work.

(With inputs from Reuters)

The Senate in USA passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - a $740 billion bill which cuts out the policy for the country’s Department of Defense.

The Senate in USA passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - a $740 billion bill which cuts out the policy for the country’s Department of Defense. This is specifically important due to President Donald Trump’s recent wishes to veto the act. With the overwhelming majority, the Senate has bypassed the scope of Trump’s interference. The vote recorded in the Republican-controlled Senate was 84-13, which is more than the two-thirds majority in the house, necessary to override a veto. Also read: US executes another inmate before Trump leaves office Earlier this week, the House of Representatives, under Democratic control supported the NDAA by 335 to 78 votes. The bill has become a law for the last 59 years, and critics think that bipartisan support for the bill could inspire Trump to rethink his position the matter. A Republican chairman explained what the bill does. "It's simple, what this bill does," said Senator Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It makes our country more secure, and it supports our troops who defend it”, he added. But the White House claims that Trump’s position remains unchanged. Starting now, Trump has ten days to either veto or sign it. He can also allow it to become law without his signature. Also read: US Supreme Court dismisses Trump's bid to overturn election result Trump objects to the NDAA because of the protections enshrined in it for big tech companies. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook from liability for what is shown on their platforms. Many feel that tech measures have nothing to do with defence. Additionally, they feel that Trump’s concerns should not kill legislation which is a result of a year-long work. (With inputs from Reuters)

US Senate passes NDAA with enough margin to overcome Trump's veto

The United States is poised to impose sanctions on&nbsp;Turkey&nbsp;over its acquisition last year of Russian S-400 air defense systems, according to a report in Reuters, a move likely to worsen already problematic ties between the two NATO allies.

The long-anticipated step, which is likely to infuriate Ankara and weigh on&nbsp;Turkey's relations with the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, is expected to be announced this week, sources have said.

The sanctions would target&nbsp;Turkey's Presidency of Defence Industries and its head, Ismail Demir, sources have said. They would be damaging but narrower than the severe scenarios some analysts have outlined.

Two sources familiar with the matter, including a US&nbsp;official speaking on the condition of anonymity, said President Donald Trump had given aides the blessing for the sanctions.

The Turkish lira weakened as much as 1.4 per cent&nbsp;following the news. US&nbsp;sanctions could harm a Turkish economy struggling with a coronavirus-induced slowdown, double-digit inflation, and badly depleted foreign reserves.

A senior Turkish official said sanctions would backfire and hurt ties between the two NATO members.

"Sanctions would not achieve a result but be counter-productive. They would harm relations," the official said. "Turkey&nbsp;is in favor of solving these problems with diplomacy and negotiations. We won't accept one-sided impositions," he said.

The decision will have repercussions far beyond&nbsp;Turkey, sending a message to US&nbsp;partners around the world that might consider buying Russian military equipment and have been warned repeatedly about US&nbsp;sanctions.

Turkey's leader, President Tayyip Erdogan, had hoped to prove US&nbsp;threats hollow, betting the relationship he developed with Trump would insulate Ankara from punitive US&nbsp;action.

Having forged a working relationship with Erdogan, Trump long opposed US&nbsp;sanctions against&nbsp;Turkey&nbsp;despite the advice of advisers. Officials in his administration internally recommended sanctions against Ankara in July 2019, when the Turkish government started taking delivery of the S-400s, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

But sanctions appeared likely even if Trump did not act, the sources said.

The final version of the $740 billion annual US&nbsp;defense authorization legislation, which the Senate is expected to vote on as early as this week, would force Washington to impose sanctions within 30 days.

One of the U.S. officials said one of the reasons Trump was finally willing to move ahead with&nbsp;Turkey&nbsp;sanctions was to "decouple" the issue from NDAA bill, which carries a provision that would require him to impose measures on Ankara. This way, Trump can avoid looking like his hand is being forced, the official said.

Kicked out of F-35 program

Still, increasing US&nbsp;pressure is not without risk. Washington does not want to push Erdogan even closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose goal is to weaken and divide the NATO alliance.

Russia delivered the ground-to-air S-400s last year and&nbsp;Turkey&nbsp;tested them as recently as October. Ankara said they would not be integrated into NATO systems and pose no threat, and has called for a joint working group on the issue.

But the United States maintained that the S-400 does pose a threat, and announced last year it was removing&nbsp;Turkey&nbsp;from the F-35 fighter jet program over Ankara's decision.

Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth fighter jet is the most advanced aircraft in the US&nbsp;arsenal and is used by NATO members and other US&nbsp;allies.

The US&nbsp;State Department could still change plans and widen or narrow the scope of planned sanctions against&nbsp;Turkey.

However, sources said the announcement of the sanctions in their current form was imminent.

The United States is poised to impose sanctions on Turkey over its acquisition last year of Russian S-400 air defense systems, according to a report in Reuters, a move likely to worsen already problematic ties between the two NATO allies.

The United States is poised to impose sanctions on Turkey over its acquisition last year of Russian S-400 air defense systems, according to a report in Reuters, a move likely to worsen already problematic ties between the two NATO allies. The long-anticipated step, which is likely to infuriate Ankara and weigh on Turkey's relations with the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, is expected to be announced this week, sources have said. The sanctions would target Turkey's Presidency of Defence Industries and its head, Ismail Demir, sources have said. They would be damaging but narrower than the severe scenarios some analysts have outlined. Two sources familiar with the matter, including a US official speaking on the condition of anonymity, said President Donald Trump had given aides the blessing for the sanctions. The Turkish lira weakened as much as 1.4 per cent following the news. US sanctions could harm a Turkish economy struggling with a coronavirus-induced slowdown, double-digit inflation, and badly depleted foreign reserves. A senior Turkish official said sanctions would backfire and hurt ties between the two NATO members. "Sanctions would not achieve a result but be counter-productive. They would harm relations," the official said. "Turkey is in favor of solving these problems with diplomacy and negotiations. We won't accept one-sided impositions," he said. The decision will have repercussions far beyond Turkey, sending a message to US partners around the world that might consider buying Russian military equipment and have been warned repeatedly about US sanctions. Turkey's leader, President Tayyip Erdogan, had hoped to prove US threats hollow, betting the relationship he developed with Trump would insulate Ankara from punitive US action. Having forged a working relationship with Erdogan, Trump long opposed US sanctions against Turkey despite the advice of advisers. Officials in his administration internally recommended sanctions against Ankara in July 2019, when the Turkish government started taking delivery of the S-400s, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. But sanctions appeared likely even if Trump did not act, the sources said. The final version of the $740 billion annual US defense authorization legislation, which the Senate is expected to vote on as early as this week, would force Washington to impose sanctions within 30 days. One of the U.S. officials said one of the reasons Trump was finally willing to move ahead with Turkey sanctions was to "decouple" the issue from NDAA bill, which carries a provision that would require him to impose measures on Ankara. This way, Trump can avoid looking like his hand is being forced, the official said. Kicked out of F-35 program Still, increasing US pressure is not without risk. Washington does not want to push Erdogan even closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose goal is to weaken and divide the NATO alliance. Russia delivered the ground-to-air S-400s last year and Turkey tested them as recently as October. Ankara said they would not be integrated into NATO systems and pose no threat, and has called for a joint working group on the issue. But the United States maintained that the S-400 does pose a threat, and announced last year it was removing Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program over Ankara's decision. Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth fighter jet is the most advanced aircraft in the US arsenal and is used by NATO members and other US allies. The US State Department could still change plans and widen or narrow the scope of planned sanctions against Turkey. However, sources said the announcement of the sanctions in their current form was imminent.

US to impose sanctions on Turkey over Russian S-400 defense system

Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help.

Morocco joins other Arab nations agreeing to normalize Israel ties

China said on Friday&nbsp;that US&nbsp;claims about risks to national security were completely false, following a US&nbsp;decision to halt&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom US&nbsp;operations.

The US&nbsp;Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Thursday&nbsp;it had begun the process of revoking&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom's authorisation to operate in the United States as it took further steps to crack down on&nbsp;China's role in US&nbsp;telecommunications.

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"We once again urge the US&nbsp;to stop generalizing the concept of national security, stop suppressing specific Chinese companies unreasonably, and to truly provide a fair, just, and non-discriminatory environment for normal cooperation between the countries," said Hua in a regular news briefing.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai noted several US&nbsp;government agencies had recommended the revocation citing national security concerns. Pai said there are "significant concerns" that&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom will be forced to comply with the Chinese government's requests for information, including communications intercepts.&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom, the largest Chinese telecommunications company, has had authorisation to provide telecommunications services for nearly 20 years.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/after-united-kingdom-sweden-bans-huawei-from-upcoming-5g-networks-336623">After United Kingdom, Sweden bans Huawei from upcoming 5G networks</a>

The FCC in April had warned it might shut down the US&nbsp;operations of three state-controlled Chinese telecommunications companies, citing national security risks, including&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom Americas as well as&nbsp;China&nbsp;Unicom Americas, Pacific Networks Corp, and its wholly-owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC.

The US&nbsp;Justice Department and other federal agencies in April called on the FCC to revoke&nbsp;China&nbsp;Telecom's ability to operate in the United States.

In May 2019, the FCC voted unanimously to deny another state-owned Chinese telecommunications company,&nbsp;China&nbsp;Mobile Ltd, the right to provide services in the United States, citing risks that the Chinese government could use the approval to conduct espionage against the US&nbsp;government.

The FCC also on Thursday rejected a petition from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd asking the agency to reconsider its decision to designating the Chinese company as a U.S. national security threat to communications networks.

The FCC said in June it had formally designated&nbsp;China’s Huawei and ZTE Corp as threats, a declaration that bars US&nbsp;firms from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies. The FCC affirmed its ZTE designation last month.

The FCC on Thursday also finalized rules that require carriers with ZTE or Huawei equipment to "rip and replace" that equipment and created a reimbursement program to subsidize smaller carriers to remove and replace those services and equipment.

Pai noted the commission "can’t actually implement the reimbursement program unless and until Congress appropriates the necessary funding."

Huawei said in a statement it "is disappointed with the FCC’s decision to force the removal of our products from telecommunications networks. This overreach puts US&nbsp;citizens at risk in the largely underserved rural areas – during a pandemic - when reliable communication is essential."

China said on Friday that US claims about risks to national security were completely false, following a US decision to halt China Telecom US operations. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Thursday it had begun the process of revoking China Telecom's authorisation to operate in the United States as it took further steps to crack down on China's role in US telecommunications.

China said on Friday that US claims about risks to national security were completely false, following a US decision to halt China Telecom US operations. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Thursday it had begun the process of revoking China Telecom's authorisation to operate in the United States as it took further steps to crack down on China's role in US telecommunications. "We once again urge the US to stop generalizing the concept of national security, stop suppressing specific Chinese companies unreasonably, and to truly provide a fair, just, and non-discriminatory environment for normal cooperation between the countries," said Hua in a regular news briefing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai noted several US government agencies had recommended the revocation citing national security concerns. Pai said there are "significant concerns" that China Telecom will be forced to comply with the Chinese government's requests for information, including communications intercepts. China Telecom, the largest Chinese telecommunications company, has had authorisation to provide telecommunications services for nearly 20 years. Also read: After United Kingdom, Sweden bans Huawei from upcoming 5G networks The FCC in April had warned it might shut down the US operations of three state-controlled Chinese telecommunications companies, citing national security risks, including China Telecom Americas as well as China Unicom Americas, Pacific Networks Corp, and its wholly-owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC. The US Justice Department and other federal agencies in April called on the FCC to revoke China Telecom's ability to operate in the United States. In May 2019, the FCC voted unanimously to deny another state-owned Chinese telecommunications company, China Mobile Ltd, the right to provide services in the United States, citing risks that the Chinese government could use the approval to conduct espionage against the US government. The FCC also on Thursday rejected a petition from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd asking the agency to reconsider its decision to designating the Chinese company as a U.S. national security threat to communications networks. The FCC said in June it had formally designated China’s Huawei and ZTE Corp as threats, a declaration that bars US firms from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies. The FCC affirmed its ZTE designation last month. The FCC on Thursday also finalized rules that require carriers with ZTE or Huawei equipment to "rip and replace" that equipment and created a reimbursement program to subsidize smaller carriers to remove and replace those services and equipment. Pai noted the commission "can’t actually implement the reimbursement program unless and until Congress appropriates the necessary funding." Huawei said in a statement it "is disappointed with the FCC’s decision to force the removal of our products from telecommunications networks. This overreach puts US citizens at risk in the largely underserved rural areas – during a pandemic - when reliable communication is essential."

China says US claims about national security risks from telecom are false

WASHINGTON — No longer restrained by President Donald Trump’s affection for Turkey’s authoritarian leader, U.S. officials and Congress are using the waning days of his presidency to ready sanctions and strike a strident tone against the strategic but unreliable ally.

Turkey, a member of NATO, has vexed the administration almost since its start. That has been as much Trump’s doing — and his admiration for its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — as that of actions by the government in Ankara, which has abused human rights, imprisoned Americans and journalists, and muscled into confrontations from Syria to Libya to the Caucasus to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Watch |&nbsp;

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&nbsp;

The redirection of U.S. policy also will require President-elect Joe Biden to carefully bring Turkey back into the West’s embrace and keep from pushing it closer to Russia.

“For years, President Trump has personally shielded Erdogan and Turkey,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. He said the incoming Biden administration “will be an important check on Erdogan’s efforts to expand his influence at our expense, in a way that undermines our interests.”

“It’s a little bit of a crossroads for Erdogan,” Van Hollen said in a recent interview. “He’s going to have to make a decision — is he going to be the faithful NATO ally, or is he going to go it alone in the region?”

Congress is poised this week to approve economic sanctions against Turkey for buying Russian missile defense systems early in Trump’s term, potentially exposing NATO military technology to Moscow. Trump stalled the sanctions last year, after the defense systems were delivered to Turkey.

For the first time, and after Ankara tested the system this fall, White House officials have informed Turkish diplomats that the Trump administration will not oppose the congressional sanctions, according to two people involved in the discussions.

Instead, they said, the sanctions are meant in part to warn Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia and other nations that have signaled interest in purchasing Russian military equipment.

At a meeting of foreign ministers from NATO nations last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Turkey on several fronts, according to a person briefed on his comments. His statements — against Turkey’s defense purchases, its exploration of natural gas in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and its support of foreign forces in external conflicts such as Libya — showed that Pompeo had wearied of trying to temper rising tensions among European allies and American lawmakers.

“We are concerned about some of the Turkish behavior,” Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “The idea that you could put a Russian-made missile defense system in the middle of our alliance is out of bounds.”

The European Union is weighing its own sanctions against Turkey as retaliation for separate disputes with Greece, Cyprus and Germany in a decision that could come as soon as Thursday, according to a European diplomat in Washington.

Taken together, Turkey is feeling increasingly isolated, according to a senior official in its government.

Last month’s basing of a U.S. Navy expeditionary ship at Souda Bay, off the Greek coast, signaled that Turkey was no longer the key U.S. ally in the Eastern Mediterranean, the senior official said.

The Abraham accords brokered this fall by the Trump administration — fostering normalized relationships among Israel and three Arab states, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates — harnessed Middle Eastern countries that are hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist movement is supported by Erdogan.

The senior Turkish official also described feeling snubbed by Pompeo’s visits this fall to rivals in Cyprus and Greece and then his tour of Istanbul with his wife in November instead of going to Ankara to meet with government leaders.

The expected sanctions are sure to hammer Turkey’s already strained economy and may force Erdogan to pull back from most of his military missions abroad. (One exception would be in neighboring Syria, where Turkey is battling Islamic State militants and American-backed Kurdish fighters; Erdogan considers both of the groups to be terrorists and is unlikely to retreat.)

Experts warn that this could push Turkey into Russia’s arms if Biden is not careful.

“Relations with Turkey will be a major, urgent question for the Biden administration,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq who retired last month as the State Department’s special envoy for Syria policy and the coalition to defeat the Islamic State.

“Given the country’s size, location, economic and military power, and the pro-Western sentiments of the population — if not its president — does it make sense to sideline Turkey or push it into the Russian camp?” Jeffrey said.

He noted that Turkey and Russia have been on opposite sides in ongoing conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. It also remains a critical NATO ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, and opposes Iran’s regional advances.

The senior Turkish official described Erdogan’s interests as ultimately having more in common with the West than with Russia. But, he said, how the Biden administration approaches the dispute over the missile defense systems will be a first test.

It is far from certain a compromise can be struck. But the Turkish official said Biden’s advisers have indicated in low-level discussions they were open to considering compromises as they are proposed, including convening a NATO working group to look at whether Russia could indeed penetrate Western military systems through the missile defense systems.

A spokesman for Biden’s transition team declined to comment.

The senior Turkish official also said that Biden’s advisers have made clear they will engage with Turkey through traditional and technical diplomatic channels — and not rely on the kind of spontaneous and direct lines of communication that marked the relationship between Trump and Erdogan.

That was welcome news to the Turks, the senior official said.

WASHINGTON — No longer restrained by President Donald Trump’s affection for Turkey’s authoritarian leader, U.S. officials and Congress are using the waning days of his presidency to ready sanctions and strike a strident tone against the strategic but unreliable ally.

WASHINGTON — No longer restrained by President Donald Trump’s affection for Turkey’s authoritarian leader, U.S. officials and Congress are using the waning days of his presidency to ready sanctions and strike a strident tone against the strategic but unreliable ally. Turkey, a member of NATO, has vexed the administration almost since its start. That has been as much Trump’s doing — and his admiration for its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — as that of actions by the government in Ankara, which has abused human rights, imprisoned Americans and journalists, and muscled into confrontations from Syria to Libya to the Caucasus to the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Watch | The redirection of U.S. policy also will require President-elect Joe Biden to carefully bring Turkey back into the West’s embrace and keep from pushing it closer to Russia. “For years, President Trump has personally shielded Erdogan and Turkey,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. He said the incoming Biden administration “will be an important check on Erdogan’s efforts to expand his influence at our expense, in a way that undermines our interests.” “It’s a little bit of a crossroads for Erdogan,” Van Hollen said in a recent interview. “He’s going to have to make a decision — is he going to be the faithful NATO ally, or is he going to go it alone in the region?” Congress is poised this week to approve economic sanctions against Turkey for buying Russian missile defense systems early in Trump’s term, potentially exposing NATO military technology to Moscow. Trump stalled the sanctions last year, after the defense systems were delivered to Turkey. For the first time, and after Ankara tested the system this fall, White House officials have informed Turkish diplomats that the Trump administration will not oppose the congressional sanctions, according to two people involved in the discussions. Instead, they said, the sanctions are meant in part to warn Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia and other nations that have signaled interest in purchasing Russian military equipment. At a meeting of foreign ministers from NATO nations last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Turkey on several fronts, according to a person briefed on his comments. His statements — against Turkey’s defense purchases, its exploration of natural gas in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and its support of foreign forces in external conflicts such as Libya — showed that Pompeo had wearied of trying to temper rising tensions among European allies and American lawmakers. “We are concerned about some of the Turkish behavior,” Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “The idea that you could put a Russian-made missile defense system in the middle of our alliance is out of bounds.” The European Union is weighing its own sanctions against Turkey as retaliation for separate disputes with Greece, Cyprus and Germany in a decision that could come as soon as Thursday, according to a European diplomat in Washington. Taken together, Turkey is feeling increasingly isolated, according to a senior official in its government. Last month’s basing of a U.S. Navy expeditionary ship at Souda Bay, off the Greek coast, signaled that Turkey was no longer the key U.S. ally in the Eastern Mediterranean, the senior official said. The Abraham accords brokered this fall by the Trump administration — fostering normalized relationships among Israel and three Arab states, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates — harnessed Middle Eastern countries that are hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist movement is supported by Erdogan. The senior Turkish official also described feeling snubbed by Pompeo’s visits this fall to rivals in Cyprus and Greece and then his tour of Istanbul with his wife in November instead of going to Ankara to meet with government leaders. The expected sanctions are sure to hammer Turkey’s already strained economy and may force Erdogan to pull back from most of his military missions abroad. (One exception would be in neighboring Syria, where Turkey is battling Islamic State militants and American-backed Kurdish fighters; Erdogan considers both of the groups to be terrorists and is unlikely to retreat.) Experts warn that this could push Turkey into Russia’s arms if Biden is not careful. “Relations with Turkey will be a major, urgent question for the Biden administration,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq who retired last month as the State Department’s special envoy for Syria policy and the coalition to defeat the Islamic State. “Given the country’s size, location, economic and military power, and the pro-Western sentiments of the population — if not its president — does it make sense to sideline Turkey or push it into the Russian camp?” Jeffrey said. He noted that Turkey and Russia have been on opposite sides in ongoing conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. It also remains a critical NATO ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, and opposes Iran’s regional advances. The senior Turkish official described Erdogan’s interests as ultimately having more in common with the West than with Russia. But, he said, how the Biden administration approaches the dispute over the missile defense systems will be a first test. It is far from certain a compromise can be struck. But the Turkish official said Biden’s advisers have indicated in low-level discussions they were open to considering compromises as they are proposed, including convening a NATO working group to look at whether Russia could indeed penetrate Western military systems through the missile defense systems. A spokesman for Biden’s transition team declined to comment. The senior Turkish official also said that Biden’s advisers have made clear they will engage with Turkey through traditional and technical diplomatic channels — and not rely on the kind of spontaneous and direct lines of communication that marked the relationship between Trump and Erdogan. That was welcome news to the Turks, the senior official said.

US takes tougher tone with Turkey as Trump exits

US President&nbsp;Donald Trump announced on Thursday that&nbsp;Morocco is the latest Arab state to recognise Israel.

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Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1337067073051238400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Calling it a ''historic breakthrough'', Trump said ''Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!''

As part of the agreement, Trump changed the longstanding US&nbsp;policy and recognised Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Western Sahara is a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory.

The White House said Trump and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI had agreed in a conversation that Morocco would resume diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel and expand economic and cultural cooperation to advance regional stability.

As his time in office winds down, Trump said Israel and Morocco would restore diplomatic and other relations, including the immediate reopening of liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv and the eventual opening of embassies. US&nbsp;officials said it would also include joint overflight rights for airlines.

The Republican took to social networking site Twitter and said ''Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!''

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Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1337067019385057290?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Earlier,&nbsp;Morocco’s constitution recognised&nbsp;the country’s Jewish heritage and permitted&nbsp;Israelis to visit the country, but&nbsp;the two countries did not have formal diplomatic relations.

It comes after&nbsp;a high-profile Moroccan security delegation visited Israel and agreed to cooperate with the Jewish state on a series of issues.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Morocco is the fourth Arab nation to recognise Israel as the administration seeks to expand its Abraham Accords framework, which began over the summer with an agreement between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates.

Bahrain and Sudan have followed suit and administration officials have also been trying to bring Saudi Arabia into the grouping.

Much of the momentum behind the deal-making has been to present a united front against Iran and roll back its regional influence.

Palestinians have been critical of the normalization deals, saying Arab countries have set back the cause of peace by abandoning a longstanding demand that Israel gives up land for a Palestinian state before it can receive recognition.

With Trump due to leave office on Jan. 20, the Morocco deal could be among the last his team, led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and US&nbsp;envoy Avi Berkowitz, will negotiate before giving way to President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration.

Kushner told reporters on a conference call it was inevitable that Saudi Arabia would eventually strike a similar deal with Israel.

Washington had supported a 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and Western Sahara's Polisario Front independence movement that called for a referendum to resolve the issue. Last month, after a border incident, the Polisario pulled out of that deal and announced a return to armed struggle.

The Trump White House has tried to get Saudi Arabia to sign on to a normalisation deal with Israel, believing if the Saudis agreed other Arab nations would follow, but the Saudis have signaled they are not ready.

One more Middle East breakthrough is possible. Last week Kushner and his team traveled to Saudi Arabia and Qatar seeking an end to a three-year rift between Doha and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

A tentative deal has been reached on this front but it was far from clear whether a final agreement to end a blockade of Qatar will be sealed. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt have maintained a diplomatic, trade, and travel embargo on Qatar since mid-2017.

While Biden is expected to move US&nbsp;foreign policy away from Trump's "America First" posture, he has indicated he will continue the pursuit of what Trump calls "the Abraham Accords" between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations.

The news broke as Jews marked the first night of the Hanukkah festival of lights, commemorating the 2nd century BC victory of Judah Maccabee and his followers in a revolt in Judea against armies of the Seleucid Empire and the ensuing restoration of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that Morocco is the latest Arab state to recognise Israel. Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!

US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that Morocco is the latest Arab state to recognise Israel. Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020 × Calling it a ''historic breakthrough'', Trump said ''Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!'' As part of the agreement, Trump changed the longstanding US policy and recognised Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara. Western Sahara is a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory. The White House said Trump and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI had agreed in a conversation that Morocco would resume diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel and expand economic and cultural cooperation to advance regional stability. As his time in office winds down, Trump said Israel and Morocco would restore diplomatic and other relations, including the immediate reopening of liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv and the eventual opening of embassies. US officials said it would also include joint overflight rights for airlines. The Republican took to social networking site Twitter and said ''Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!'' Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020 × Earlier, Morocco’s constitution recognised the country’s Jewish heritage and permitted Israelis to visit the country, but the two countries did not have formal diplomatic relations. It comes after a high-profile Moroccan security delegation visited Israel and agreed to cooperate with the Jewish state on a series of issues. Morocco is the fourth Arab nation to recognise Israel as the administration seeks to expand its Abraham Accords framework, which began over the summer with an agreement between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain and Sudan have followed suit and administration officials have also been trying to bring Saudi Arabia into the grouping. Much of the momentum behind the deal-making has been to present a united front against Iran and roll back its regional influence. Palestinians have been critical of the normalization deals, saying Arab countries have set back the cause of peace by abandoning a longstanding demand that Israel gives up land for a Palestinian state before it can receive recognition. With Trump due to leave office on Jan. 20, the Morocco deal could be among the last his team, led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and US envoy Avi Berkowitz, will negotiate before giving way to President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration. Kushner told reporters on a conference call it was inevitable that Saudi Arabia would eventually strike a similar deal with Israel. Washington had supported a 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and Western Sahara's Polisario Front independence movement that called for a referendum to resolve the issue. Last month, after a border incident, the Polisario pulled out of that deal and announced a return to armed struggle. The Trump White House has tried to get Saudi Arabia to sign on to a normalisation deal with Israel, believing if the Saudis agreed other Arab nations would follow, but the Saudis have signaled they are not ready. One more Middle East breakthrough is possible. Last week Kushner and his team traveled to Saudi Arabia and Qatar seeking an end to a three-year rift between Doha and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. A tentative deal has been reached on this front but it was far from clear whether a final agreement to end a blockade of Qatar will be sealed. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt have maintained a diplomatic, trade, and travel embargo on Qatar since mid-2017. While Biden is expected to move US foreign policy away from Trump's "America First" posture, he has indicated he will continue the pursuit of what Trump calls "the Abraham Accords" between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations. The news broke as Jews marked the first night of the Hanukkah festival of lights, commemorating the 2nd century BC victory of Judah Maccabee and his followers in a revolt in Judea against armies of the Seleucid Empire and the ensuing restoration of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Donald Trump announces Morocco latest Arab state to recognise Israel

If you think only US President Donald Trump can have the honour of high-rise towers being named after him around the world, you might be in for a surprise. President-elect Joe Biden has a municipal swimming pool in Delaware named after him.

Biden has been a US senator for nearly four decades and vice-president under Barack Obama. He's hardly unknown. But his humility strikes a chord with many in his hometown.

His son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, is buried at Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic church. So are Biden's first wife Neilia and their infant daughter, Naomi, killed in a 1972 car crash.

But there's a self-promotion vibe too, which somehow, if not fully, matches with Trump's.

Take the three most prominent Biden landmarks found in Delaware:

- Joseph R Biden Jr Aquatic Center (the Wilmington swimming pool where he worked as a lifeguard in his youth).

- Joseph R Biden Jr Railroad Station (Wilmington's Amtrak stop, which the soon-to-be 46th president used every day while in the Senate to get back to his family at night).

- And last but not least, the Biden Welcome Centre, a stopoff with toilets and fast food for motorists on the Interstate-95 motorway.

Also, Wilmington -- Biden's hometown -- isn't famous for much. But efforts are underway to revitalise the depressed downtown.

Talking of Trump, he has emblazoned his name in huge capital letters -- often in gold for good measure -- on buildings and swanky properties all the way from Las Vegas to Scotland.

In New York City alone there's Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, Trump Plaza, The Trump Building, Trump Parc, Trump Park Avenue and Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Then there are the Trump books, like "Trump: How to Get Rich," the Trump golf courses, Trump casinos and more.

So enamoured is the Republican with his own name that he has a habit of referring during speeches to "Trump" in the third person, as if standing back to admire himself.

So, in comparison, to say that Biden is grounded in Wilmington is no exaggeration.

But there's surely this vibe -- that reeks of self-promotion. Maybe it comes with being the most important person in the most important country. After all, a president's got to do what he ought to do.

(with inputs)

If you think only US President Donald Trump can have the honour of high-rise towers being named after him around the world, you might be in for a surprise. President-elect Joe Biden has a municipal swimming pool in Delaware named after him.

If you think only US President Donald Trump can have the honour of high-rise towers being named after him around the world, you might be in for a surprise. President-elect Joe Biden has a municipal swimming pool in Delaware named after him. Biden has been a US senator for nearly four decades and vice-president under Barack Obama. He's hardly unknown. But his humility strikes a chord with many in his hometown. His son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, is buried at Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic church. So are Biden's first wife Neilia and their infant daughter, Naomi, killed in a 1972 car crash. But there's a self-promotion vibe too, which somehow, if not fully, matches with Trump's. Take the three most prominent Biden landmarks found in Delaware: - Joseph R Biden Jr Aquatic Center (the Wilmington swimming pool where he worked as a lifeguard in his youth). - Joseph R Biden Jr Railroad Station (Wilmington's Amtrak stop, which the soon-to-be 46th president used every day while in the Senate to get back to his family at night). - And last but not least, the Biden Welcome Centre, a stopoff with toilets and fast food for motorists on the Interstate-95 motorway. Also, Wilmington -- Biden's hometown -- isn't famous for much. But efforts are underway to revitalise the depressed downtown. Talking of Trump, he has emblazoned his name in huge capital letters -- often in gold for good measure -- on buildings and swanky properties all the way from Las Vegas to Scotland. In New York City alone there's Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, Trump Plaza, The Trump Building, Trump Parc, Trump Park Avenue and Trump International Hotel and Tower. Then there are the Trump books, like "Trump: How to Get Rich," the Trump golf courses, Trump casinos and more. So enamoured is the Republican with his own name that he has a habit of referring during speeches to "Trump" in the third person, as if standing back to admire himself. So, in comparison, to say that Biden is grounded in Wilmington is no exaggeration. But there's surely this vibe -- that reeks of self-promotion. Maybe it comes with being the most important person in the most important country. After all, a president's got to do what he ought to do. (with inputs)

Move over Trump Tower. Think Biden municipal swimming pool now

President Donald Trump and 17 US states have thrown their support behind a lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn the result of the November 3 vote.

They have asked the US Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four states.

The Republican president lost to Democrat Joe Biden in the recently concluded election, and also in the four election battleground states after winning them in the 2016 election.

Trump filed a motion with the court asking the nine justices to let him intervene and become a plaintiff in the suit filed on Tuesday by Republican-governed Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If the justices let Trump join the lawsuit, it would create a very extraordinary circumstance of a sitting US president asking the top American court to decide that the millions of votes cast in the four states did not count.&nbsp;

To this end, Trump tweeted, "This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!"

In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri's Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the justices to hear the case.

Election law experts have said the Texas lawsuit stands little chance of success and lacks legal merit.

The lawsuit, the latest in a series of election challenges brought by Trump's campaign and supporters that so far have failed in numerous courts, was brought by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and an ally of the president.

In addition to Missouri, the states joining Texas were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. All of the states were represented by Republican officials in the filing. All but three of the states have Republican governors.

Trump has falsely claimed he won re-election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud. Election officials at the state level have said they have found no evidence of such fraud.

Officials from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy. It was filed directly with the Supreme Court rather than with a lower court, as is permitted for certain litigation between states.

The New York Times, quoting an unnamed source familiar with the discussion, reported that Trump has asked Republican US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to argue the case if the Supreme Court agrees to hear it.

Trump's filing with the court said the four states "conducted the elections according to unauthorised rules," adding that it was "not necessary for the Plaintiff in Intervention (Trump) to prove that fraud occurred" to have the election results thrown out.

Trump brought his motion in his personal capacity, rather than through the US Justice Department or his campaign.

Trump is represented by John Eastman, a conservative legal scholar who drew criticism for falsely questioning whether Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is eligible to serve as vice president because her immigrant parents were born outside the United States.

The Texas suit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful. Texas asked the Supreme Court to immediately block the four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College.

Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes - far higher than the necessary 270 - compared to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the election's outcome. The four states contribute a combined 62 electoral votes to Biden's total.

Texas also asked the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 date for Electoral College votes to be formally cast, a date set by law in 1887.

President Donald Trump and 17 US states have thrown their support behind a lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn the result of the November 3 vote. They have asked the US Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four states.

President Donald Trump and 17 US states have thrown their support behind a lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn the result of the November 3 vote. They have asked the US Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four states. The Republican president lost to Democrat Joe Biden in the recently concluded election, and also in the four election battleground states after winning them in the 2016 election. Trump filed a motion with the court asking the nine justices to let him intervene and become a plaintiff in the suit filed on Tuesday by Republican-governed Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If the justices let Trump join the lawsuit, it would create a very extraordinary circumstance of a sitting US president asking the top American court to decide that the millions of votes cast in the four states did not count. To this end, Trump tweeted, "This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!" In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri's Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the justices to hear the case. Election law experts have said the Texas lawsuit stands little chance of success and lacks legal merit. The lawsuit, the latest in a series of election challenges brought by Trump's campaign and supporters that so far have failed in numerous courts, was brought by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and an ally of the president. In addition to Missouri, the states joining Texas were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. All of the states were represented by Republican officials in the filing. All but three of the states have Republican governors. Trump has falsely claimed he won re-election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud. Election officials at the state level have said they have found no evidence of such fraud. Officials from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy. It was filed directly with the Supreme Court rather than with a lower court, as is permitted for certain litigation between states. The New York Times, quoting an unnamed source familiar with the discussion, reported that Trump has asked Republican US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to argue the case if the Supreme Court agrees to hear it. Trump's filing with the court said the four states "conducted the elections according to unauthorised rules," adding that it was "not necessary for the Plaintiff in Intervention (Trump) to prove that fraud occurred" to have the election results thrown out. Trump brought his motion in his personal capacity, rather than through the US Justice Department or his campaign. Trump is represented by John Eastman, a conservative legal scholar who drew criticism for falsely questioning whether Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is eligible to serve as vice president because her immigrant parents were born outside the United States. The Texas suit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful. Texas asked the Supreme Court to immediately block the four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College. Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes - far higher than the necessary 270 - compared to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the election's outcome. The four states contribute a combined 62 electoral votes to Biden's total. Texas also asked the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 date for Electoral College votes to be formally cast, a date set by law in 1887.

Trump, 17 states back Texas bid to overturn US election result at Supreme Court

US President Donald Trump has not conceded the election to Joe Biden, he and Republican Party are receiving setbacks after setbacks in courts across US. He is still no ready to offer evidence and is making baseless claims. And now, it has come to light that US First Lady Melania Trump is quietly making plans for her life after White House as she 'just want to go home'.

Multiple US news outlets have quoted sources who have said these words about Melania Trump. While she agrees with her husband Donald Trump who says that the US elections were rigged and that he's hopeful to continue as president, Melania Trump has reportedly 'tasked an emissary' to discreetly find out what's available for her in budget and staff allocation for her life after White House.

It has also been reported that it may not go down well with her if Donald Trump announces plans to run for president in 2024.

Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-attorneys-office-is-investigating-my-taxes-says-joe-bidens-son-hunter-biden-348707">US attorney's office is investigating my taxes, says Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden</a>

Melania Trump is said to be focussed on her legacy and said to be considering a book though it is likely to be a photo-centric book.

"Mrs. Trump is focused on her role as the first lady. Monday she unveiled her most current effort in preserving the White House by announcing the completion of the tennis pavilion. She also recently unveiled a new piece of art in the newly renovated Rose Garden. Her office just revealed this year`s Christmas decor. Her schedule remains full with her duties as a mother, wife and first lady of the United States," the first lady`s chief of staff Stephanie Grisham told CNN

US President Donald Trump has not conceded the election to Joe Biden, he and Republican Party are receiving setbacks after setbacks in courts across US. He is still no ready to offer evidence and is making baseless claims.

US President Donald Trump has not conceded the election to Joe Biden, he and Republican Party are receiving setbacks after setbacks in courts across US. He is still no ready to offer evidence and is making baseless claims. And now, it has come to light that US First Lady Melania Trump is quietly making plans for her life after White House as she 'just want to go home'. Multiple US news outlets have quoted sources who have said these words about Melania Trump. While she agrees with her husband Donald Trump who says that the US elections were rigged and that he's hopeful to continue as president, Melania Trump has reportedly 'tasked an emissary' to discreetly find out what's available for her in budget and staff allocation for her life after White House. It has also been reported that it may not go down well with her if Donald Trump announces plans to run for president in 2024. Also Read: US attorney's office is investigating my taxes, says Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden Melania Trump is said to be focussed on her legacy and said to be considering a book though it is likely to be a photo-centric book. "Mrs. Trump is focused on her role as the first lady. Monday she unveiled her most current effort in preserving the White House by announcing the completion of the tennis pavilion. She also recently unveiled a new piece of art in the newly renovated Rose Garden. Her office just revealed this year`s Christmas decor. Her schedule remains full with her duties as a mother, wife and first lady of the United States," the first lady`s chief of staff Stephanie Grisham told CNN

US First Lady Melania Trump 'just wants to go home'

In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the justices to hear the case.

US Election 2020: Donald Trump pins his last hope on Texas lawsuit

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a dispute between shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants, and the Treasury Department over $124 billion in payments the two lenders were required to make to the government.

The shareholders said the law creating the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which put the two lenders into conservatorship in 2008, violated the Constitution because it insulated the agency’s director from presidential oversight. A decision by the court in June concerning the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested that it may agree that the structure of the housing agency violated the separation of powers.

But several justices seemed wary of the sweep of a second aspect of the shareholders’ arguments, which said the lack of presidential supervision of the housing agency’s director meant that a 2012 agreement between the agency and the Treasury Department must be undone, requiring the repayment of vast sums.

The two sides agreed that the law creating the housing agency was unconstitutional because it barred the president from firing its director without cause. Because there was no dispute between the parties as to that, the court appointed Aaron L. Nielson, a law professor at Brigham Young University, to defend the law.

Nielsen said the new case, Collins v. Mnuchin, No. 19-422, differed from the one in June concerning the consumer bureau. The shareholders in the new case challenged a 2012 agreement between the housing agency and the Treasury Department, he said. But that agreement had been made by an acting director of the agency, who was subject to removal at will in any event, making academic the question of the status of the agency’s director.

The laws creating the two agencies were also different, Nielson said. Before the court’s decision in June in the case on the consumer bureau, its director could be fired only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance,” a demanding standard. By contrast, the director of the housing agency may be fired only for cause, which Nielson said “provides the weakest protection in removal law and can easily be read to allow removal based on policy disagreement with the president.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she saw “vast differences” between the agencies. The housing agency’s “most notable power, and the reason we are here today, is that they can put certain government-affiliated companies under conservatorship.”

“This is not a wide-reaching power that affects many entities,” she said. “It’s one company at a time, essentially, unlike in the CFPB.”

But Justice Samuel Alito said that the housing agency wields great power. “The way in which the agency carries out its responsibility as conservator has a profound effect on the housing market and, therefore, a profound effect on ordinary people,” he said.

Nielson said the logic of the parties’ position would undermine much of the federal government.

“The Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel, the Federal Reserve, the Civil Service, will all be subject to constitutional attack,” he said, “and that’s just the beginning.”

Justice Elena Kagan elaborated on that point in an exchange with David H. Thompson, a lawyer for the shareholders. The Social Security Administration, she said, “has been led by a single commissioner since 1994 and, ever since then, it’s rendered 650,000 decisions every year, so that’s about 17 million decisions.”

“Are we really going to void all of those decisions?” she asked.

Thompson replied that the agency’s actions, unless subject to the statute of limitations, “should be void.”

He said the actions of the housing agency had crossed a line. “The companies have been nationalized,” he said.

Chief Justice John Roberts questioned the assertion. Government aid during the housing crisis “was a lifeline thrown to your clients," he said, adding that he had done some recent financial research.

“I checked this morning,” the chief justice said, “and Fannie Mae was trading at $2.69 and Freddie Mac at $2.56,” he said, “and your shares are not worthless."

Hashim M. Mooppan, a lawyer for the federal government, said the housing agency, acting as a conservator, had been entitled to restructure their financial obligations. “That is what conservators do day in and day out,” he said.

Mooppan added that the parties to the 2012 agreement — the acting director and the Treasury secretary — could both be fired by the president for any reason or no reason.

“Courts cannot set aside a multibillion-dollar contract on the ground that it was unconstitutionally insulated from presidential supervision even though both of the officials who signed it were removable at will by the president,” he said.

But Thompson, the lawyer for the shareholders, said the law creating the housing agency, with its tenure protections for the agency’s director, “reduces the president to the cajoler in chief.”

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a dispute between shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants, and the Treasury Department over $124 billion in payments the two lenders were required to make to the government.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a dispute between shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants, and the Treasury Department over $124 billion in payments the two lenders were required to make to the government. The shareholders said the law creating the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which put the two lenders into conservatorship in 2008, violated the Constitution because it insulated the agency’s director from presidential oversight. A decision by the court in June concerning the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested that it may agree that the structure of the housing agency violated the separation of powers. But several justices seemed wary of the sweep of a second aspect of the shareholders’ arguments, which said the lack of presidential supervision of the housing agency’s director meant that a 2012 agreement between the agency and the Treasury Department must be undone, requiring the repayment of vast sums. The two sides agreed that the law creating the housing agency was unconstitutional because it barred the president from firing its director without cause. Because there was no dispute between the parties as to that, the court appointed Aaron L. Nielson, a law professor at Brigham Young University, to defend the law. Nielsen said the new case, Collins v. Mnuchin, No. 19-422, differed from the one in June concerning the consumer bureau. The shareholders in the new case challenged a 2012 agreement between the housing agency and the Treasury Department, he said. But that agreement had been made by an acting director of the agency, who was subject to removal at will in any event, making academic the question of the status of the agency’s director. The laws creating the two agencies were also different, Nielson said. Before the court’s decision in June in the case on the consumer bureau, its director could be fired only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance,” a demanding standard. By contrast, the director of the housing agency may be fired only for cause, which Nielson said “provides the weakest protection in removal law and can easily be read to allow removal based on policy disagreement with the president.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she saw “vast differences” between the agencies. The housing agency’s “most notable power, and the reason we are here today, is that they can put certain government-affiliated companies under conservatorship.” “This is not a wide-reaching power that affects many entities,” she said. “It’s one company at a time, essentially, unlike in the CFPB.” But Justice Samuel Alito said that the housing agency wields great power. “The way in which the agency carries out its responsibility as conservator has a profound effect on the housing market and, therefore, a profound effect on ordinary people,” he said. Nielson said the logic of the parties’ position would undermine much of the federal government. “The Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel, the Federal Reserve, the Civil Service, will all be subject to constitutional attack,” he said, “and that’s just the beginning.” Justice Elena Kagan elaborated on that point in an exchange with David H. Thompson, a lawyer for the shareholders. The Social Security Administration, she said, “has been led by a single commissioner since 1994 and, ever since then, it’s rendered 650,000 decisions every year, so that’s about 17 million decisions.” “Are we really going to void all of those decisions?” she asked. Thompson replied that the agency’s actions, unless subject to the statute of limitations, “should be void.” He said the actions of the housing agency had crossed a line. “The companies have been nationalized,” he said. Chief Justice John Roberts questioned the assertion. Government aid during the housing crisis “was a lifeline thrown to your clients," he said, adding that he had done some recent financial research. “I checked this morning,” the chief justice said, “and Fannie Mae was trading at $2.69 and Freddie Mac at $2.56,” he said, “and your shares are not worthless." Hashim M. Mooppan, a lawyer for the federal government, said the housing agency, acting as a conservator, had been entitled to restructure their financial obligations. “That is what conservators do day in and day out,” he said. Mooppan added that the parties to the 2012 agreement — the acting director and the Treasury secretary — could both be fired by the president for any reason or no reason. “Courts cannot set aside a multibillion-dollar contract on the ground that it was unconstitutionally insulated from presidential supervision even though both of the officials who signed it were removable at will by the president,” he said. But Thompson, the lawyer for the shareholders, said the law creating the housing agency, with its tenure protections for the agency’s director, “reduces the president to the cajoler in chief.”

US Supreme Court weighs President’s power to fire head of housing agency

With a key deadline passing Tuesday that all but ends his legal challenges to the election, President Donald Trump’s frenzied campaign to overturn the results has reached an inflection point: Certified slates of electors to the Electoral College are now protected by law, and any chance that a state might appoint a different slate that is favorable to Trump is essentially gone.

Despite his clear loss, Trump has shown no intention of stopping his sustained assault on the American electoral process. But his baseless conspiracy theories about voting fraud have devolved into an exercise in delegitimizing the election results, and the rhetoric is accelerating among his most fervent allies. This has prompted outrage among Trump loyalists and led to behavior that Democrats and even some Republicans say has become dangerous.

Supporters of the president, some of them armed, gathered outside the home of the Michigan secretary of state Saturday night. Racist death threats filled the voice mail of Cynthia A. Johnson, a Michigan state representative. Georgia election officials, mostly Republicans, say they have received threats of violence. The Republican Party of Arizona, on Twitter, twice called for supporters to be willing to “die for something” or “give my life for this fight.”

“People on Twitter have posted photographs of my house,” said Ann Jacobs, the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who alerted her neighbors and the police about the constant threats. She said another message mentioned her children and said, “I’ve heard you’ll have quite a crowd of patriots showing up at your door.”

Trump himself has contacted numerous Republican state officials, pressing them to help him overturn the election he clearly lost. He has subjected others to repeated public shamings, lambasting governors to take action they are not legally allowed to take to keep Trump in power.

But absent a single significant victory in his dozens of lawsuits — and with a key defeat delivered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday — the president’s crusade is now as much a battle against the electoral process itself, as he seeks to cast doubt on free and fair elections and undermine Joe Biden before he takes the oath of office.

“There is long-term damage when this kind of behavior is normalized,” Jeff Flake, a former Republican senator from Arizona, said on Twitter. “It is not normal, and elected Republicans need to speak out against it.”

Last week, a top Republican election official in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, implored the president to stop attacking the voting process in the state, saying it had prompted threats against officials and poll workers.

Tuesday’s procedural deadline, known as safe harbor, serves as something of a guarantee that Congress must count the slate of electors certified by the deadline, and acts as an accelerant to resolve any outstanding election disputes. It also likely limits further legal challenges to halt or disrupt the official certification of electoral votes that Biden needs to claim the presidency.

The president, however, dismissed the date as insignificant, saying on Tuesday that the true deadline arrives on Jan. 6 when Congress meets to approve certification.

Many Republican leaders in critical swing states are standing behind the president’s false narrative, unwilling to contradict his claims. Along with the president, their stance is further convincing tens of millions of Americans that the electoral process is too corroded to legitimately deliver the presidency to anyone whose name is not Trump.

Those supporters have started to flood the voicemails, cellphones and inboxes of dozens of elected officials across the country with angry messages and threats, as well as countless officials who handle local elections. The tenor has seemed to grow more menacing as Trump’s efforts appear even more unlikely to succeed, some officials said.

“They’re getting more angry, and we’ve been getting emails all the time, all hours of the day and night,” said Jennifer O’Mara, a Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania. She said her staff had been subjected to threats, as had her Republican colleagues. “A lot of calls are saying we won’t be forgetting.”

Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan, said she had just finished putting up Christmas decorations with her 4-year-old son when she heard dozens of Trump supporters shouting outside her home. Some chanted “Stop the Steal” and demanded an audit of Michigan’s election results, which showed Biden winning by roughly 154,000 votes.

“Ever since the president first tweeted at me and every time there is an additional attempt to spread false information, you see an uptick in the threats,” Benson said in an interview Tuesday. “And now apparently, they’re in front of my house, in the dark of night, in this very private, quiet residential neighborhood. We are concerned not only for the safety of my family, but my neighbors as well.

“This challenging, divisive moment that we find ourselves in, the only way to get out of it is for elected officials on both sides of the aisle to condemn what’s happening.”

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Pennsylvania, said he received dozens of emails every day. “It’s a bit more pronounced when you’re Black and queer like I am, that they go down the rabbit hole of parroting all the nastiness and vitriol that we see from the president all the time,” he said.

He said one person created a fake email address under his own name and then sent him profane threats.

Darrin Camilleri, a Democratic state representative in Michigan, said he had received one email that said, “Be prepared to take your last meal,” and another that read, “We’re looking forward to bring back firing squads.”

Camilleri said his parents were also receiving harassing and threatening calls. “We’ve sent more than 20 death threats to the House sergeants to look into,” he said.

The safe harbor deadline all but ensures Biden will receive the 270 votes in the Electoral College he needs to win the presidency, and most likely wind up with 306, the same total Trump won in 2016 (two defected, however). Though Congress will determine which states meet the safe harbor deadline, it is traditionally considered met when a state certifies its votes.

As of Monday, all but one state — Hawaii — had certified their elections.

Though the safe harbor deadline is technically about the relationship between states and Congress, it also largely insulates states that have certified their election results from legal challenges

“It plays into litigation because courts are aware of this deadline and want to give the states this benefit, so they do their best to try to comply with it,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

But despite more than a century of precedent, allies of the president are continuing to file baseless lawsuits seeking to upend the election. On Tuesday, the Texas attorney general filed an audacious lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four other states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — with more claims of election irregularities, and no evidence to support them.

Texas asked the justices to put its case on an exceptionally fast track, but the court has acted with measured deliberation in considering similar requests and may defer consideration of whether to hear the suit until it can have no practical impact.

And the Republican legal efforts were dealt yet another loss late Tuesday afternoon, when the Supreme Court rejected a request by Republicans in Pennsylvania to overturn election results in the state.

There were no dissenting opinions.

With a key deadline passing Tuesday that all but ends his legal challenges to the election, President Donald Trump’s frenzied campaign to overturn the results has reached an inflection point: Certified slates of electors to the Electoral College are now protected by law, and any chance that a state might appoint a different slate that is favorable to Trump is essentially gone.

With a key deadline passing Tuesday that all but ends his legal challenges to the election, President Donald Trump’s frenzied campaign to overturn the results has reached an inflection point: Certified slates of electors to the Electoral College are now protected by law, and any chance that a state might appoint a different slate that is favorable to Trump is essentially gone. Despite his clear loss, Trump has shown no intention of stopping his sustained assault on the American electoral process. But his baseless conspiracy theories about voting fraud have devolved into an exercise in delegitimizing the election results, and the rhetoric is accelerating among his most fervent allies. This has prompted outrage among Trump loyalists and led to behavior that Democrats and even some Republicans say has become dangerous. Supporters of the president, some of them armed, gathered outside the home of the Michigan secretary of state Saturday night. Racist death threats filled the voice mail of Cynthia A. Johnson, a Michigan state representative. Georgia election officials, mostly Republicans, say they have received threats of violence. The Republican Party of Arizona, on Twitter, twice called for supporters to be willing to “die for something” or “give my life for this fight.” “People on Twitter have posted photographs of my house,” said Ann Jacobs, the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who alerted her neighbors and the police about the constant threats. She said another message mentioned her children and said, “I’ve heard you’ll have quite a crowd of patriots showing up at your door.” Trump himself has contacted numerous Republican state officials, pressing them to help him overturn the election he clearly lost. He has subjected others to repeated public shamings, lambasting governors to take action they are not legally allowed to take to keep Trump in power. But absent a single significant victory in his dozens of lawsuits — and with a key defeat delivered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday — the president’s crusade is now as much a battle against the electoral process itself, as he seeks to cast doubt on free and fair elections and undermine Joe Biden before he takes the oath of office. “There is long-term damage when this kind of behavior is normalized,” Jeff Flake, a former Republican senator from Arizona, said on Twitter. “It is not normal, and elected Republicans need to speak out against it.” Last week, a top Republican election official in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, implored the president to stop attacking the voting process in the state, saying it had prompted threats against officials and poll workers. Tuesday’s procedural deadline, known as safe harbor, serves as something of a guarantee that Congress must count the slate of electors certified by the deadline, and acts as an accelerant to resolve any outstanding election disputes. It also likely limits further legal challenges to halt or disrupt the official certification of electoral votes that Biden needs to claim the presidency. The president, however, dismissed the date as insignificant, saying on Tuesday that the true deadline arrives on Jan. 6 when Congress meets to approve certification. Many Republican leaders in critical swing states are standing behind the president’s false narrative, unwilling to contradict his claims. Along with the president, their stance is further convincing tens of millions of Americans that the electoral process is too corroded to legitimately deliver the presidency to anyone whose name is not Trump. Those supporters have started to flood the voicemails, cellphones and inboxes of dozens of elected officials across the country with angry messages and threats, as well as countless officials who handle local elections. The tenor has seemed to grow more menacing as Trump’s efforts appear even more unlikely to succeed, some officials said. “They’re getting more angry, and we’ve been getting emails all the time, all hours of the day and night,” said Jennifer O’Mara, a Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania. She said her staff had been subjected to threats, as had her Republican colleagues. “A lot of calls are saying we won’t be forgetting.” Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan, said she had just finished putting up Christmas decorations with her 4-year-old son when she heard dozens of Trump supporters shouting outside her home. Some chanted “Stop the Steal” and demanded an audit of Michigan’s election results, which showed Biden winning by roughly 154,000 votes. “Ever since the president first tweeted at me and every time there is an additional attempt to spread false information, you see an uptick in the threats,” Benson said in an interview Tuesday. “And now apparently, they’re in front of my house, in the dark of night, in this very private, quiet residential neighborhood. We are concerned not only for the safety of my family, but my neighbors as well. “This challenging, divisive moment that we find ourselves in, the only way to get out of it is for elected officials on both sides of the aisle to condemn what’s happening.” Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Pennsylvania, said he received dozens of emails every day. “It’s a bit more pronounced when you’re Black and queer like I am, that they go down the rabbit hole of parroting all the nastiness and vitriol that we see from the president all the time,” he said. He said one person created a fake email address under his own name and then sent him profane threats. Darrin Camilleri, a Democratic state representative in Michigan, said he had received one email that said, “Be prepared to take your last meal,” and another that read, “We’re looking forward to bring back firing squads.” Camilleri said his parents were also receiving harassing and threatening calls. “We’ve sent more than 20 death threats to the House sergeants to look into,” he said. The safe harbor deadline all but ensures Biden will receive the 270 votes in the Electoral College he needs to win the presidency, and most likely wind up with 306, the same total Trump won in 2016 (two defected, however). Though Congress will determine which states meet the safe harbor deadline, it is traditionally considered met when a state certifies its votes. As of Monday, all but one state — Hawaii — had certified their elections. Though the safe harbor deadline is technically about the relationship between states and Congress, it also largely insulates states that have certified their election results from legal challenges “It plays into litigation because courts are aware of this deadline and want to give the states this benefit, so they do their best to try to comply with it,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. But despite more than a century of precedent, allies of the president are continuing to file baseless lawsuits seeking to upend the election. On Tuesday, the Texas attorney general filed an audacious lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four other states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — with more claims of election irregularities, and no evidence to support them. Texas asked the justices to put its case on an exceptionally fast track, but the court has acted with measured deliberation in considering similar requests and may defer consideration of whether to hear the suit until it can have no practical impact. And the Republican legal efforts were dealt yet another loss late Tuesday afternoon, when the Supreme Court rejected a request by Republicans in Pennsylvania to overturn election results in the state. There were no dissenting opinions.

As Trump rails against loss, his supporters become more threatening

Current US President Donald Trump said he was hopful that he would be the next US president on the same day Republican Party's assertion of election fraud was rejected by US Supreme Court. In spite of ample indication of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in US Presidential election 2020, Trump has continued to make unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud.

"Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration, a continuation -- which has led us to the highest stock markets we've ever had, the best employment numbers we've ever had, a rebuilt military," Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday (local time) during a vaccine summit.

Trump was responding to a question on why he did not invite members of the Biden transition team to the meeting, which deliberated on his plans to distribute COVID-19 vaccine in the US.

Trump said because of the "great work" he did, he was "rewarded" with a victory.

On Tuesday itself, Republican Party's attempts to invalidated election results in Pennsylvania were thwarted by US Supreme Court

The lawsuit was brought-in by US congressman Mike Kelly, a Trump ally and other Pennsylvania Republicans. They said that state's 2019 expansion of mail-in voting was illegal under state law.

Trump had won the state in 2016 presidential elections but this time Biden clinched the state by 80,000 votes.

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-supreme-court-throws-out-trumps-claim-of-election-fraud-in-pennsylvania-348430">US Supreme Court throws out Trump's claim of election fraud in Pennsylvania</a>

Pennsylvania has already certified election results in favour of US President-elect Joe Biden.

Trump's attempt to invalidate elections results via legal routes has not been successful and he or Republican Party have suffered defeat after defeats in various courts in the US.

(With agency inputs)

Current US President Donald Trump said he was hopful that he would be the next US president on the same day Republican Party's assertion of election fraud was rejected by US Supreme Court.

Current US President Donald Trump said he was hopful that he would be the next US president on the same day Republican Party's assertion of election fraud was rejected by US Supreme Court. In spite of ample indication of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in US Presidential election 2020, Trump has continued to make unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. "Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration, a continuation -- which has led us to the highest stock markets we've ever had, the best employment numbers we've ever had, a rebuilt military," Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday (local time) during a vaccine summit. Trump was responding to a question on why he did not invite members of the Biden transition team to the meeting, which deliberated on his plans to distribute COVID-19 vaccine in the US. Trump said because of the "great work" he did, he was "rewarded" with a victory. On Tuesday itself, Republican Party's attempts to invalidated election results in Pennsylvania were thwarted by US Supreme Court The lawsuit was brought-in by US congressman Mike Kelly, a Trump ally and other Pennsylvania Republicans. They said that state's 2019 expansion of mail-in voting was illegal under state law. Trump had won the state in 2016 presidential elections but this time Biden clinched the state by 80,000 votes. Also Read | US Supreme Court throws out Trump's claim of election fraud in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania has already certified election results in favour of US President-elect Joe Biden. Trump's attempt to invalidate elections results via legal routes has not been successful and he or Republican Party have suffered defeat after defeats in various courts in the US. (With agency inputs)

Hopeful I'll remain US president, says Trump on same day of legal defeat in US Supreme Court

The White House has unveiled a $916 billion stimulus proposal in a final dash to break a months-long deadlock over new aid for the coronavirus-stricken US economy before President Donald Trump leaves office in January.

This happened after congressional Democrats shot down a suggestion for a pared-down plan from the Senate's leading Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday announced the plan, which he said includes "money for state and local governments and robust liability protections for businesses, schools and universities."

The proposal comes weeks before Trump is slated to hand over power to President-elect Joe Biden and a new Congress takes office.

The United States is currently struggling with the world's worst Covid-19 outbreak that has caused the worst economic downturn in a century.

The new proposal is slightly larger than a $908 billion compromise unveiled by a bipartisan group of senators last week.

Mnuchin said he presented the package to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and had reviewed it with Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The Democrats' rejection once again casts uncertainty on the adoption of a new stimulus package before Biden's inauguration on January 20. And time is running out, as federal and state assistance for millions of Americans expires on December 26.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress, along with the Trump administration, have been negotiating for months but have been unable to agree on a successor bill to the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed earlier this year to support the American economy.

The CARES Act included a programme of loans and grants for small businesses, one-time payments of as much as $1,200 to all Americans, and an expansion of the unemployment safety net, which economists credited with preventing an even worse downturn.

But much of that aid has expired, and Republicans and Democrats for months have sparred over how much to spend in another bill, and what to spend it on.

Earlier on Tuesday, McConnell suggested that lawmakers pass a targetted coronavirus relief plan that did not include the liability protections or the state and local government aid, as those have been among the more contentious provisions during months of arguments in Washington about a fresh coronavirus package.

But both Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed McConnell's idea and accused him of trying to obstruct bipartisan efforts to reach a deal.

Late on Tuesday, Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement it was progress that McConnell had signed off on the $916 billion offer, but bipartisan talks were the best hope for a solution.

Lawmakers enacted $3 trillion in COVID-19 aid earlier this year but have not been able to agree on fresh relief since April. Both House and Senate leaders have said they will not leave town this year without approving more help.

President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, said on Tuesday that Congress should immediately fund vaccine distribution this month in case early efforts by the Trump administration stall.

(with inputs from agencies)

The White House has unveiled a $916 billion stimulus proposal in a final dash to break a months-long deadlock over new aid for the coronavirus-stricken US economy before President Donald Trump leaves office in January.

The White House has unveiled a $916 billion stimulus proposal in a final dash to break a months-long deadlock over new aid for the coronavirus-stricken US economy before President Donald Trump leaves office in January. This happened after congressional Democrats shot down a suggestion for a pared-down plan from the Senate's leading Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday announced the plan, which he said includes "money for state and local governments and robust liability protections for businesses, schools and universities." The proposal comes weeks before Trump is slated to hand over power to President-elect Joe Biden and a new Congress takes office. The United States is currently struggling with the world's worst Covid-19 outbreak that has caused the worst economic downturn in a century. The new proposal is slightly larger than a $908 billion compromise unveiled by a bipartisan group of senators last week. Mnuchin said he presented the package to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and had reviewed it with Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Democrats' rejection once again casts uncertainty on the adoption of a new stimulus package before Biden's inauguration on January 20. And time is running out, as federal and state assistance for millions of Americans expires on December 26. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, along with the Trump administration, have been negotiating for months but have been unable to agree on a successor bill to the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed earlier this year to support the American economy. The CARES Act included a programme of loans and grants for small businesses, one-time payments of as much as $1,200 to all Americans, and an expansion of the unemployment safety net, which economists credited with preventing an even worse downturn. But much of that aid has expired, and Republicans and Democrats for months have sparred over how much to spend in another bill, and what to spend it on. Earlier on Tuesday, McConnell suggested that lawmakers pass a targetted coronavirus relief plan that did not include the liability protections or the state and local government aid, as those have been among the more contentious provisions during months of arguments in Washington about a fresh coronavirus package. But both Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed McConnell's idea and accused him of trying to obstruct bipartisan efforts to reach a deal. Late on Tuesday, Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement it was progress that McConnell had signed off on the $916 billion offer, but bipartisan talks were the best hope for a solution. Lawmakers enacted $3 trillion in COVID-19 aid earlier this year but have not been able to agree on fresh relief since April. Both House and Senate leaders have said they will not leave town this year without approving more help. President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, said on Tuesday that Congress should immediately fund vaccine distribution this month in case early efforts by the Trump administration stall. (with inputs from agencies)

White House proposes new $916 bn stimulus plan for COVID-19 aid

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that prioritises Americans' access to COVID-19 vaccines before the country potentially begins helping other nations.

If necessary, Trump said, he is ready to invoke the Defence Production Act to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines first get to the Americans.&nbsp;

The Defence Production Act allows a president to force private manufacturers to ramp up production and give the federal government priority on any orders it places.

American companies, he said, were the first to produce a verifiably safe and effective vaccine.

"Together, we will defeat the virus, and we will soon end the pandemic, and we will save millions and millions of lives, both in our country and all over the world. And we've already started," Trump said during signing the executive order on Tuesday at a White House event celebrating 'Operation Warp Speed', his administration's effort to produce and distribute safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19.

Trump told reporters that his administration provided a total of USD 14 billion to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development and to manufacture all of the top candidates long in advance.

As a result of this "unprecedented investment", both Pfizer and Moderna have announced that their vaccines are approximately 95 per cent effective, he said.

Pfizer has developed its vaccine outside of 'Operation Warp Speed', but is collaborating with the US government on manufacturing and distribution.

The UK on Tuesday began its vaccinations with the first set of people injected with their first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.

The deadly virus has so far killed more than 285,000 Americans and some 1.5 million people worldwide.

As per the executive order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is directed to provide priority access to COVID-19 vaccines to Americans.

"Through this action, Trump is putting the health and safety of Americans, the viability of our economy and the security of our nation first," the White House said.

The US has led and will continue to lead the world's public health and humanitarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.

The Trump administration is prepared to ship COVID-19 vaccine doses to every corner of America within 48 hours of the issuance of an Emergency Use Authorisation by the US Food and Drug Administration, the White House said.

Trump said more companies are in the pipeline of the vaccine announcement soon. 
"We have some companies like Johnson &amp; Johnson and others. They are all coming in, and they're coming in very quickly. We expect to have some news on that very shortly. We have worked very well with the companies, but if for any reason we have any problems, we will be instituting the Defence Production Act, and we will make sure that we don't have any problems for very long," he said.

Johnson &amp; Johnson is a one-dose, one-shot vaccine, he said, adding that all the vaccines are showing tremendous promise.

Trump said he is hopeful that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will authorise the Pfizer vaccine within days and Moderna vaccine almost immediately thereafter.

If these vaccines are authorised, tens of millions of vaccine doses will be available this month. "We will get it distributed very quickly. We have that all set. And hundreds of millions more will quickly follow," he said.

"Every American who wants the vaccine will be able to get the vaccine," Trump said, asserting that the plan put forward by his administration prioritises the elderly and patients with underlying conditions, as well as healthcare workers and first responders.

This will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalisations, he noted.

"And within a short period of time, I think we want to get back to normal... Get back to where we were a little more than nine months ago. We were doing incredibly. And in many respects, we're still doing incredibly with our stock markets and everything else, which are hitting all new highs," Trump said.

The president said his administration has already finalised a partnership with Walgreens and CVS and they will deliver vaccines directly to nursing homes as soon as the states request them to do so.

Asserting that the US is more prepared than ever before to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, the White House said the country will soon deliver vaccines that will help defeat the pandemic and help support the global return to prosperity.

In just seven months since the President coalesced the full power of the federal government, private sector and scientific community into 'Operation Warp Speed', this once-in-a-generation effort has developed vaccines five times faster than any other vaccine in history, it said.

"Without cutting corners in safety or effectiveness, our nation is now on track to receive emergency use authorisation for two lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year," the White House said.

Notably, officials from US President-elect Joe Biden's transition team, which will oversee the bulk of the vaccination programme in the US once he takes office on January 20, were not invited to the White House event.

When asked why no member from the Biden team was invited, Trump said, "Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration, a continuation -- which has led us to the highest stock markets we've ever had, the best employment numbers we've ever had, a rebuilt military."

(with inputs from agencies)

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that prioritises Americans' access to COVID-19 vaccines before the country potentially begins helping other nations.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that prioritises Americans' access to COVID-19 vaccines before the country potentially begins helping other nations. If necessary, Trump said, he is ready to invoke the Defence Production Act to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines first get to the Americans. The Defence Production Act allows a president to force private manufacturers to ramp up production and give the federal government priority on any orders it places. American companies, he said, were the first to produce a verifiably safe and effective vaccine. "Together, we will defeat the virus, and we will soon end the pandemic, and we will save millions and millions of lives, both in our country and all over the world. And we've already started," Trump said during signing the executive order on Tuesday at a White House event celebrating 'Operation Warp Speed', his administration's effort to produce and distribute safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19. Trump told reporters that his administration provided a total of USD 14 billion to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development and to manufacture all of the top candidates long in advance. As a result of this "unprecedented investment", both Pfizer and Moderna have announced that their vaccines are approximately 95 per cent effective, he said. Pfizer has developed its vaccine outside of 'Operation Warp Speed', but is collaborating with the US government on manufacturing and distribution. The UK on Tuesday began its vaccinations with the first set of people injected with their first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab. The deadly virus has so far killed more than 285,000 Americans and some 1.5 million people worldwide. As per the executive order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is directed to provide priority access to COVID-19 vaccines to Americans. "Through this action, Trump is putting the health and safety of Americans, the viability of our economy and the security of our nation first," the White House said. The US has led and will continue to lead the world's public health and humanitarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it said. The Trump administration is prepared to ship COVID-19 vaccine doses to every corner of America within 48 hours of the issuance of an Emergency Use Authorisation by the US Food and Drug Administration, the White House said. Trump said more companies are in the pipeline of the vaccine announcement soon. "We have some companies like Johnson & Johnson and others. They are all coming in, and they're coming in very quickly. We expect to have some news on that very shortly. We have worked very well with the companies, but if for any reason we have any problems, we will be instituting the Defence Production Act, and we will make sure that we don't have any problems for very long," he said. Johnson & Johnson is a one-dose, one-shot vaccine, he said, adding that all the vaccines are showing tremendous promise. Trump said he is hopeful that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will authorise the Pfizer vaccine within days and Moderna vaccine almost immediately thereafter. If these vaccines are authorised, tens of millions of vaccine doses will be available this month. "We will get it distributed very quickly. We have that all set. And hundreds of millions more will quickly follow," he said. "Every American who wants the vaccine will be able to get the vaccine," Trump said, asserting that the plan put forward by his administration prioritises the elderly and patients with underlying conditions, as well as healthcare workers and first responders. This will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalisations, he noted. "And within a short period of time, I think we want to get back to normal... Get back to where we were a little more than nine months ago. We were doing incredibly. And in many respects, we're still doing incredibly with our stock markets and everything else, which are hitting all new highs," Trump said. The president said his administration has already finalised a partnership with Walgreens and CVS and they will deliver vaccines directly to nursing homes as soon as the states request them to do so. Asserting that the US is more prepared than ever before to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, the White House said the country will soon deliver vaccines that will help defeat the pandemic and help support the global return to prosperity. In just seven months since the President coalesced the full power of the federal government, private sector and scientific community into 'Operation Warp Speed', this once-in-a-generation effort has developed vaccines five times faster than any other vaccine in history, it said. "Without cutting corners in safety or effectiveness, our nation is now on track to receive emergency use authorisation for two lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year," the White House said. Notably, officials from US President-elect Joe Biden's transition team, which will oversee the bulk of the vaccination programme in the US once he takes office on January 20, were not invited to the White House event. When asked why no member from the Biden team was invited, Trump said, "Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration, a continuation -- which has led us to the highest stock markets we've ever had, the best employment numbers we've ever had, a rebuilt military." (with inputs from agencies)

Trump signs executive order prioritising COVID-19 vaccine for Americans

US president-elect Joe Biden has laid out a plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic during his first 100 days in office -- according to which his first few months will likely be dominated by the pandemic, which is straining hospitals amid a nationwide resurgence.

He has vowed his administration would vaccinate 100 million Americans.

At a briefing in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, Biden said he needed Congress to fully fund delivering vaccines to all corners of the United States.

Getting children back to school will be a national priority in the first 100 days, Biden said.

"In 100 days, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better," said Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20. "Whatever your politics or point of view, mask up for 100 days."

The coronavirus has killed more than 283,000 Americans and caused millions to lose their jobs.

Biden, who formally introduced his public health team on Tuesday, also announced he would nominate retired Army General Lloyd Austin as the country's first Black defence secretary.

He also picked US Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio to be the second Black woman to lead the Housing and Urban Development Department, and Tom Vilsack, the former agriculture secretary, to fill the same role again, according to news reports on Tuesday.

Biden introduced California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Latino former congressman, as his nominee for secretary of health and human services. Becerra has a long record of supporting the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Jeff Zients, an economic adviser known for his managerial skills, will serve as Biden's coronavirus "czar," overseeing the pandemic response, including the vaccine distribution.

"Help is on the way," Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said after Biden's new healthcare team members introduced themselves. "And it is long overdue."

Trump has so far refused to concede his November 3 election defeat, citing unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. On Tuesday, Texas filed a lawsuit petitioning the US Supreme Court to throw out the results in four other states in a long-shot bid to help Trump reverse the election's outcome.

The Trump campaign and allies have filed numerous lawsuits seeking to challenge vote counts in multiple states but have met with little success. State officials have said they have found no evidence of widespread fraud.

The rest of Biden's top public health advisors include Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who will run the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who will also be Biden's chief medical adviser on the virus; and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general, who will reprise that role under Biden.

US president-elect Joe Biden has laid out a plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic during his first 100 days in office -- according to which his first few months will likely be dominated by the pandemic, which is straining hospitals amid a nationwide resurgence.

US president-elect Joe Biden has laid out a plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic during his first 100 days in office -- according to which his first few months will likely be dominated by the pandemic, which is straining hospitals amid a nationwide resurgence. He has vowed his administration would vaccinate 100 million Americans. At a briefing in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, Biden said he needed Congress to fully fund delivering vaccines to all corners of the United States. Getting children back to school will be a national priority in the first 100 days, Biden said. "In 100 days, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better," said Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20. "Whatever your politics or point of view, mask up for 100 days." The coronavirus has killed more than 283,000 Americans and caused millions to lose their jobs. Biden, who formally introduced his public health team on Tuesday, also announced he would nominate retired Army General Lloyd Austin as the country's first Black defence secretary. He also picked US Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio to be the second Black woman to lead the Housing and Urban Development Department, and Tom Vilsack, the former agriculture secretary, to fill the same role again, according to news reports on Tuesday. Biden introduced California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Latino former congressman, as his nominee for secretary of health and human services. Becerra has a long record of supporting the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Jeff Zients, an economic adviser known for his managerial skills, will serve as Biden's coronavirus "czar," overseeing the pandemic response, including the vaccine distribution. "Help is on the way," Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said after Biden's new healthcare team members introduced themselves. "And it is long overdue." Trump has so far refused to concede his November 3 election defeat, citing unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. On Tuesday, Texas filed a lawsuit petitioning the US Supreme Court to throw out the results in four other states in a long-shot bid to help Trump reverse the election's outcome. The Trump campaign and allies have filed numerous lawsuits seeking to challenge vote counts in multiple states but have met with little success. State officials have said they have found no evidence of widespread fraud. The rest of Biden's top public health advisors include Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who will run the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who will also be Biden's chief medical adviser on the virus; and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general, who will reprise that role under Biden.

Biden vows 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations in his first 100 days in office

An Israeli official has claimed that Aliens have made contact with humans and Donald Trump knows all about it.

Gravitas: Israeli official says aliens exist

WASHINGTON — One president all but declared victory over the pandemic, hailing new vaccines as a “medical miracle” and congratulating himself for doing what “nobody has ever seen before.” The next president declared the pandemic deadlier than ever, calling it a “mass casualty” event that is leaving “a gaping hole” in America with more misery to come.

“We’re here to discuss a monumental national achievement,” President Donald Trump boasted on one screen. “From the instant the coronavirus invaded our shores, we raced into action.”

“We’re in a very dark winter,” President-elect Joe Biden said minutes later in his own speech on another screen. “Things may well get worse before they get better.”

Rarely has there been a single hour on a single day that saw such discordant messages emanating from Washington in a time of national crisis. In the middle of a transition of power that has already proved more unsettling than any in more than a century, the departing and incoming presidents on Tuesday offered the American people vastly divergent assessments of the state of their union.

The split-screen speeches beamed from the White House and the headquarters of the next administration in Wilmington, Delaware, could hardly have underscored the differences between the 45th and 46th presidents more starkly. Trump offered told-you-so triumphalism as he bragged about the “incredible,” “amazing” and “unprecedented” development of vaccines for the coronavirus. Biden projected feel-your-pain empathy, urged resisters to wear masks and warned that “this mess” would not end quickly.

At Trump’s event, dozens of officials and guests crowded into an auditorium, most of them wearing masks, which is a change for this White House. But they were still not socially distant. The president himself, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October, wore no mask as 15 members of his team gathered behind him for the signing of an executive order meant to prioritize the vaccine for Americans over people in other nations.

At Biden’s event, where he formally announced his top health care nominees and advisers, only a handful of people were present, all masked and sitting far apart. Some of those whose appointments he announced beamed in their remarks remotely. Shortly before the event, the Biden team made its regular announcement that the president-elect had once again tested negative for the virus.

The contrast comes at a perilous moment for the United States as coronavirus cases keep rising to new peaks, hospitals are overwhelmed with sick patients and the number of virus deaths is spiking. The new vaccines developed on Trump’s watch may be approved within days. But only health care workers and the most vulnerable Americans will get inoculated in the short term, and most Americans will likely not get access to lifesaving shots until spring.

The American tradition of one president at a time during the 10-week period between election and inauguration days has fallen by the wayside as Biden seeks to assert moral leadership even without the instruments of power. Trump spreads evermore outlandish claims about an invented conspiracy to steal the election and evermore desperate efforts to overturn the will of the people.

More than 53,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States since the Nov. 3 election, and at the current rate 97,000 more could die by Jan. 20 when Biden takes over — roughly the equivalent of every man, woman and child living in Albany, New York, or Dearborn, Michigan, or Erie, Pennsylvania.

But Trump, who repeatedly claimed during the campaign that the pandemic was “rounding the corner,” has shown almost no interest in talking about it since then. Nor has he offered any guidance to Americans about how to protect themselves beyond trumpeting the new vaccines.

“People that aren’t necessarily big fans of Donald Trump are saying whether you like him or not, this is one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine or any other medicine, any other age of medicine,” Trump said during his “Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit” on Tuesday.

Intent on claiming credit and disproving his critics, the White House played a videotape mashing together clips of pundits and doctors — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump’s own coronavirus task force — cautioning against expecting fast action on a vaccine. The tape did not note that many experts warned that any vaccine would not be widely available until next spring, which is the timetable now envisioned, nor did it show Trump promising as far back as March that a vaccine would be available almost immediately, which it was not.

But Trump was correct that with his administration prodding Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine was developed faster than any has been produced before in medical history. It represents a major breakthrough that should change the course of the pandemic, even if not as quickly as the president has previously claimed.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

“Nobody thought it was even remotely possible to do what we’ve done in a period of less than nine months,” Trump said. “And we took a lot of heat when we said this is our goal.”

Now, he said, “we want to just get back to normal, get back to where we were a little more than nine months ago, when we were doing incredibly, and in many respects, we are still doing incredibly, with our stock markets and everything else, which are hitting all new highs.”

The new highs he did not want to talk about were the coronavirus cases. When a reporter asked about the message to Americans as they wait for the vaccines to become available, Trump brushed it off, noting that protocols devised by public health experts “are very important guidelines” before quickly pivoting back to the vaccines. “The vaccine was our goal,” he said. “That was No. 1 because that was the way it ends.”

He likewise dismissed concerns about Christmas parties that he has been hosting in recent days at the White House with crowds far larger than public health guidelines dictate. “Well, they’re Christmas parties and frankly, we’ve reduced the number very substantially as you know,” he said. “And I see a lot of people at the parties wearing masks.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

From his own stage in Wilmington, Biden presented the situation quite differently, painting a grim picture of grief and suffering. He noted that last week the coronavirus was the No. 1 cause of death in the United States and that Black, Hispanic and Native American people were dying in far greater numbers proportionately.

Unlike Trump, who made no mention of the victims of the pandemic, Biden addressed them directly. “For families and friends left behind, there’s a gaping hole in your heart that will never be fully healed,” he said. “As a country, we’ve been living with this pandemic for so long, we’re at risk of becoming numb to its toll on all of us. You know, we’re resigned to feel that there’s nothing we can do, that we can’t trust one another, that we must accept death, pain and sorrow.”

Biden said that he would “credit everyone” involved in developing the vaccine without mentioning Trump, but said that “developing a vaccine is only one herculean task.” He also expressed concern that under the Trump administration plan, vaccinations would stall after the initial doses are administered unless Congress approves more money.

Waiting for a shot, however, is not enough, he said. He vowed to require mask wearing on federal property and on interstate planes, trains and buses while encouraging Americans in other settings to also cover their faces at least for the first 100 days of his presidency to break the back of the outbreak.

“We need your help,” he said. “Wear a mask for just 100 days. It’s the easiest thing you can do to reduce COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Help yourself, your family and your community. Whatever your politics or point of view, mask up for 100 days once we take office, 100 days to make a difference. It’s not a political statement. It’s a patriotic act.”

But as he faces the prospect of taking over a country afflicted by disease, he sought to leaven his grim message with hope, promising to channel hardship into commitment for action. “Out of our collective pain,” he said, “we’re going to find collective purpose, to control the pandemic, to save lives and to heal as a nation.”

WASHINGTON — One president all but declared victory over the pandemic, hailing new vaccines as a “medical miracle” and congratulating himself for doing what “nobody has ever seen before.

WASHINGTON — One president all but declared victory over the pandemic, hailing new vaccines as a “medical miracle” and congratulating himself for doing what “nobody has ever seen before.” The next president declared the pandemic deadlier than ever, calling it a “mass casualty” event that is leaving “a gaping hole” in America with more misery to come. “We’re here to discuss a monumental national achievement,” President Donald Trump boasted on one screen. “From the instant the coronavirus invaded our shores, we raced into action.” “We’re in a very dark winter,” President-elect Joe Biden said minutes later in his own speech on another screen. “Things may well get worse before they get better.” Rarely has there been a single hour on a single day that saw such discordant messages emanating from Washington in a time of national crisis. In the middle of a transition of power that has already proved more unsettling than any in more than a century, the departing and incoming presidents on Tuesday offered the American people vastly divergent assessments of the state of their union. The split-screen speeches beamed from the White House and the headquarters of the next administration in Wilmington, Delaware, could hardly have underscored the differences between the 45th and 46th presidents more starkly. Trump offered told-you-so triumphalism as he bragged about the “incredible,” “amazing” and “unprecedented” development of vaccines for the coronavirus. Biden projected feel-your-pain empathy, urged resisters to wear masks and warned that “this mess” would not end quickly. At Trump’s event, dozens of officials and guests crowded into an auditorium, most of them wearing masks, which is a change for this White House. But they were still not socially distant. The president himself, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October, wore no mask as 15 members of his team gathered behind him for the signing of an executive order meant to prioritize the vaccine for Americans over people in other nations. At Biden’s event, where he formally announced his top health care nominees and advisers, only a handful of people were present, all masked and sitting far apart. Some of those whose appointments he announced beamed in their remarks remotely. Shortly before the event, the Biden team made its regular announcement that the president-elect had once again tested negative for the virus. The contrast comes at a perilous moment for the United States as coronavirus cases keep rising to new peaks, hospitals are overwhelmed with sick patients and the number of virus deaths is spiking. The new vaccines developed on Trump’s watch may be approved within days. But only health care workers and the most vulnerable Americans will get inoculated in the short term, and most Americans will likely not get access to lifesaving shots until spring. The American tradition of one president at a time during the 10-week period between election and inauguration days has fallen by the wayside as Biden seeks to assert moral leadership even without the instruments of power. Trump spreads evermore outlandish claims about an invented conspiracy to steal the election and evermore desperate efforts to overturn the will of the people. More than 53,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States since the Nov. 3 election, and at the current rate 97,000 more could die by Jan. 20 when Biden takes over — roughly the equivalent of every man, woman and child living in Albany, New York, or Dearborn, Michigan, or Erie, Pennsylvania. But Trump, who repeatedly claimed during the campaign that the pandemic was “rounding the corner,” has shown almost no interest in talking about it since then. Nor has he offered any guidance to Americans about how to protect themselves beyond trumpeting the new vaccines. “People that aren’t necessarily big fans of Donald Trump are saying whether you like him or not, this is one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine or any other medicine, any other age of medicine,” Trump said during his “Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit” on Tuesday. Intent on claiming credit and disproving his critics, the White House played a videotape mashing together clips of pundits and doctors — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump’s own coronavirus task force — cautioning against expecting fast action on a vaccine. The tape did not note that many experts warned that any vaccine would not be widely available until next spring, which is the timetable now envisioned, nor did it show Trump promising as far back as March that a vaccine would be available almost immediately, which it was not. But Trump was correct that with his administration prodding Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine was developed faster than any has been produced before in medical history. It represents a major breakthrough that should change the course of the pandemic, even if not as quickly as the president has previously claimed. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) “Nobody thought it was even remotely possible to do what we’ve done in a period of less than nine months,” Trump said. “And we took a lot of heat when we said this is our goal.” Now, he said, “we want to just get back to normal, get back to where we were a little more than nine months ago, when we were doing incredibly, and in many respects, we are still doing incredibly, with our stock markets and everything else, which are hitting all new highs.” The new highs he did not want to talk about were the coronavirus cases. When a reporter asked about the message to Americans as they wait for the vaccines to become available, Trump brushed it off, noting that protocols devised by public health experts “are very important guidelines” before quickly pivoting back to the vaccines. “The vaccine was our goal,” he said. “That was No. 1 because that was the way it ends.” He likewise dismissed concerns about Christmas parties that he has been hosting in recent days at the White House with crowds far larger than public health guidelines dictate. “Well, they’re Christmas parties and frankly, we’ve reduced the number very substantially as you know,” he said. “And I see a lot of people at the parties wearing masks.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) From his own stage in Wilmington, Biden presented the situation quite differently, painting a grim picture of grief and suffering. He noted that last week the coronavirus was the No. 1 cause of death in the United States and that Black, Hispanic and Native American people were dying in far greater numbers proportionately. Unlike Trump, who made no mention of the victims of the pandemic, Biden addressed them directly. “For families and friends left behind, there’s a gaping hole in your heart that will never be fully healed,” he said. “As a country, we’ve been living with this pandemic for so long, we’re at risk of becoming numb to its toll on all of us. You know, we’re resigned to feel that there’s nothing we can do, that we can’t trust one another, that we must accept death, pain and sorrow.” Biden said that he would “credit everyone” involved in developing the vaccine without mentioning Trump, but said that “developing a vaccine is only one herculean task.” He also expressed concern that under the Trump administration plan, vaccinations would stall after the initial doses are administered unless Congress approves more money. Waiting for a shot, however, is not enough, he said. He vowed to require mask wearing on federal property and on interstate planes, trains and buses while encouraging Americans in other settings to also cover their faces at least for the first 100 days of his presidency to break the back of the outbreak. “We need your help,” he said. “Wear a mask for just 100 days. It’s the easiest thing you can do to reduce COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Help yourself, your family and your community. Whatever your politics or point of view, mask up for 100 days once we take office, 100 days to make a difference. It’s not a political statement. It’s a patriotic act.” But as he faces the prospect of taking over a country afflicted by disease, he sought to leaven his grim message with hope, promising to channel hardship into commitment for action. “Out of our collective pain,” he said, “we’re going to find collective purpose, to control the pandemic, to save lives and to heal as a nation.”

Two presidents, two messages, one killer virus

The US Supreme Court denied a last-minute attempt by President Donald Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, a blow to the president’s continuing efforts to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Scotus denies Trump allies' attempt to overturn results

An independent US federal ethics watchdog called Monday on President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> to take disciplinary action against his own trade adviser, Peter Navarro, for attacking election rivals while in his official government role.

In a letter to the outgoing US leader, Henry Kerner, head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), said that Navarro had repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch officials from engaging in political activity.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/chadwick-boseman-donald-trump-and-pop-group-bts-dominate-twitter-in-2020-348246">Chadwick Boseman, Donald Trump and pop group BTS dominate Twitter in 2020</a>

"From May 26 through October 19, 2020, during at least six media interviews where he appeared in his official capacity as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office on Trade and Manufacturing Policy, Dr Navarro repeatedly attacked presidential candidate Joe Biden and/or vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris," the OSC said in a report dated November 18.&nbsp;

The agency also stressed that Navarro, 71, used his Twitter account on multiple occasions to attack Biden and Harris, who won the November 3 election, targeting in particular their stances on trade ties between the US and China.&nbsp;

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/neil-young-ends-copyright-suit-against-donald-trump-348251">Neil Young ends copyright suit against Donald Trump</a>

The OSC said that Navarro was aware of the violations and had been notified of the issue as early as July, but had deliberately chosen to ignore the office's calls to order.

Navarro has not yet responded to the agency's charges.

Under US law, he can face disciplinary measures ranging from a fine of up to $1,000 to dismissal from his post.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/the-places-that-had-the-biggest-swings-toward-and-against-trump-348192" hreflang="en">The places that had the biggest swings toward and against Trump</a>

It seems unlikely, however, that Trump will choose to punish Navarro before he leaves office on January 20, 2021.

The agency has previously warned Trump about members of his administration violating the Hatch Act, including his former adviser Kellyanne Conway, who suffered no punishment from her ex-boss.

An independent US federal ethics watchdog called Monday on President Donald Trump to take disciplinary action against his own trade adviser, Peter Navarro, for attacking election rivals while in his official government role.

An independent US federal ethics watchdog called Monday on President Donald Trump to take disciplinary action against his own trade adviser, Peter Navarro, for attacking election rivals while in his official government role. In a letter to the outgoing US leader, Henry Kerner, head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), said that Navarro had repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch officials from engaging in political activity. Also read| Chadwick Boseman, Donald Trump and pop group BTS dominate Twitter in 2020 "From May 26 through October 19, 2020, during at least six media interviews where he appeared in his official capacity as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office on Trade and Manufacturing Policy, Dr Navarro repeatedly attacked presidential candidate Joe Biden and/or vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris," the OSC said in a report dated November 18. The agency also stressed that Navarro, 71, used his Twitter account on multiple occasions to attack Biden and Harris, who won the November 3 election, targeting in particular their stances on trade ties between the US and China. Also read| Neil Young ends copyright suit against Donald Trump The OSC said that Navarro was aware of the violations and had been notified of the issue as early as July, but had deliberately chosen to ignore the office's calls to order. Navarro has not yet responded to the agency's charges. Under US law, he can face disciplinary measures ranging from a fine of up to $1,000 to dismissal from his post. Also read| The places that had the biggest swings toward and against Trump It seems unlikely, however, that Trump will choose to punish Navarro before he leaves office on January 20, 2021. The agency has previously warned Trump about members of his administration violating the Hatch Act, including his former adviser Kellyanne Conway, who suffered no punishment from her ex-boss.

US govt watchdog calls for sanctions on Trump adviser

With Donald Trump losing the 2020 presidential election, singer-songwriter Neil Young has decided not to pursue him any longer in court over the playing of 'Rockin’ in the Free World'&nbsp;and 'Devil’s Sidewalk'&nbsp;at a campaign rally.&nbsp;

According to a report in Billboard, on Monday, papers were filed that dismissed the copyright case.

Young filed suit back in August with the allegation that<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/neil-young-slams-donald-trump-for-playing-his-music-at-4th-july-event-this-is-not-ok-with-me-310819"> Trump’s campaign lacked a performance license.</a> The complaint was the culmination of years of dissatisfaction by Young over Trump’s use of his music.

Notably, Young almost sued back in 2016 but ended up not doing so after being told that the campaign venues had obtained public performance licenses from ASCAP and BMI. After these PROs attempted to limit political uses of music, songwriters have flooded Trump’s campaign with objections.&nbsp; 
The suit by Young has now been dismissed with prejudice, meaning that claims can’t be renewed. The notice of dismissal came on the day in which Trump was due in court to respond to Young’s claims.

Trump is still facing another copyright suit over music, although that other case entails the use of a song in a campaign commercial, which requires a different type of license. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/the-history-of-musicians-chastising-trump-for-using-their-music-at-his-rallies-309497">That lawsuit is being pursued by Eddy Grant over “Electric Avenue,” and Trump is attempting a fair-use defence.</a> 
 
&nbsp;

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This is NOT ok with me... <a href="https://t.co/Q9j9NRPMhi">https://t.co/Q9j9NRPMhi</a>
— Neil Young Archives (@NeilYoungNYA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NeilYoungNYA/status/1279213965990678528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

In February, Neil penned down an open letter to Trump and wrote, ''You are a disgrace to my country. Your mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment, and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable. Our first black president was a better man than you are''.

"' 'Rockin in the Free World' is not a song you can trot out at one of your rallies… Every time ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ or one of my songs is played at your rallies, I hope you hear my voice. Remember it is the voice of a tax-paying U.S. citizen who does not support you. Me,"he had added.

Young, who became a US citizen this year, said he began his path to US citizenship because he wanted to vote against Trump in the 2020 election.

With Donald Trump losing the 2020 presidential election, singer-songwriter Neil Young has decided not to pursue him any longer in court over the playing of 'Rockin’ in the Free World' and 'Devil’s Sidewalk' at a campaign rally.

With Donald Trump losing the 2020 presidential election, singer-songwriter Neil Young has decided not to pursue him any longer in court over the playing of 'Rockin’ in the Free World' and 'Devil’s Sidewalk' at a campaign rally. According to a report in Billboard, on Monday, papers were filed that dismissed the copyright case. Young filed suit back in August with the allegation that Trump’s campaign lacked a performance license. The complaint was the culmination of years of dissatisfaction by Young over Trump’s use of his music. Notably, Young almost sued back in 2016 but ended up not doing so after being told that the campaign venues had obtained public performance licenses from ASCAP and BMI. After these PROs attempted to limit political uses of music, songwriters have flooded Trump’s campaign with objections. The suit by Young has now been dismissed with prejudice, meaning that claims can’t be renewed. The notice of dismissal came on the day in which Trump was due in court to respond to Young’s claims. Trump is still facing another copyright suit over music, although that other case entails the use of a song in a campaign commercial, which requires a different type of license. That lawsuit is being pursued by Eddy Grant over “Electric Avenue,” and Trump is attempting a fair-use defence. This is NOT ok with me... https://t.co/Q9j9NRPMhi — Neil Young Archives (@NeilYoungNYA) July 4, 2020 × In February, Neil penned down an open letter to Trump and wrote, ''You are a disgrace to my country. Your mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment, and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable. Our first black president was a better man than you are''. "' 'Rockin in the Free World' is not a song you can trot out at one of your rallies… Every time ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ or one of my songs is played at your rallies, I hope you hear my voice. Remember it is the voice of a tax-paying U.S. citizen who does not support you. Me,"he had added. Young, who became a US citizen this year, said he began his path to US citizenship because he wanted to vote against Trump in the 2020 election.

Neil Young ends copyright suit against Donald Trump

It was a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, and one of his aides had a delicate question: Wasn’t there going to be a backlash when it became known that the inauguration had spent donors’ money at Trump’s hotel in Washington, even though other places would cost much less or even be free?

“These are events in P.E.’s honor at his hotel, and one of them is with and for family and close friends,” Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, then an event planner for Trump, wrote in an email to a colleague in December 2016, referring to Trump as the president-elect and saying she raised the issue to “express my concern.”

As Trump’s presidency comes to a close, expenditures like those are receiving renewed legal scrutiny in the form of a civil case being pursued by the attorney general for the District of Columbia.

At the heart of the case is a question — whether Trump and his family have profited from his public role, sometimes at the expense of taxpayers, competitors and donors — that has been a persistent theme of his tenure in the White House.

More than 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments patronized Trump’s properties during his presidency while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Sixty of them spent $12 million at his properties during the first two years he was in office.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/i-hope-republicans-vote-against-very-weak-ndaa-which-i-will-veto-trump-348395" hreflang="en">I hope Republicans vote against very weak NDAA which I will veto: Trump</a>

The Trump family business has received millions of dollars in payments by the Secret Service, the State Department and the U.S. military to Trump properties around the country and the world. The president has visited his properties on at least 417 days since taking office, at times with world leaders. And he and his affiliated political committees spent more than $6.5 million in campaign funds at his hotels and other businesses since 2017, including a $1 million final burst in the weeks before the election last month.

In the lawsuit moving forward, Attorney General Karl A. Racine of the District of Columbia is arguing that Trump’s inaugural committee illegally overpaid his family business by as much as $1.1 million for events held at the Trump International Hotel in the city in January 2017. Ivanka Trump was deposed in the case last week.

The lawsuit asks the court to order the inauguration to recover the $1 million paid to the Trump hotel and to redirect it to a “proper public purpose” such as “another nonprofit entity dedicated to promoting civic engagement of the citizens of the United States.”

Questions about spending, influence and lobbying around the 2017 inaugural have also drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors from two different offices in New York, with charges filed against at least one donor.

But for all the attention focused on the issue, Trump is set to leave office without a clear resolution of what limits there should be on a president’s ability to profit from his public role.

Lawsuits brought by nonprofit groups and attorneys general in Washington and Maryland claiming that Trump had violated the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution were never resolved during his term and now face potential dismissal once he is out of power.

“It is more than just frustrating,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, who has been involved in the emoluments litigation. “The most serious questions about the abuse of presidential power and the use of the presidency as a center of personal gain and profit remain unresolved. The wheels of justice clearly ground more slowly than some would have hoped.”

The issue played out especially visibly at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which opened in late October 2016, two weeks before Trump was elected.

The hotel became a focal point for lobbyists, White House aides, Republicans in Congress and hundreds of others who sought a way to impress Trump, even though tax records obtained by The New York Times show that the property continued to lose money through at least 2018.

The Trump family had tried to sell its lease at the hotel last year before reversing course when the coronavirus pandemic hit. With revenue sure to have declined this year, Trump will have to decide whether to put the property back up for sale after he leaves office, or perhaps hope its value will increase if he runs again.

“Fifty percent of the people still will not go into the hotel,” said William W. Moyer, a hotel broker, noting that many potential customers who were not supporters of Trump avoided the property. “And the other 50% wanted to go there. You are not going to turn on or off people’s loyalties like a light switch.”

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/trump-administration-announces-another-arms-sale-to-taiwan-china-threatens-countermeasures-348352" hreflang="en">Trump administration announces another arms sale to Taiwan; China threatens 'countermeasures'</a>

The case Racine is pursuing is moving ahead after he spent several years collecting evidence about the arrangements between the presidential inaugural committee and the hotel.

Trump’s inauguration was unlike any other in U.S. history: He raised more than $107 million, twice the previous record, as corporate donors poured tens of millions of dollars into the inaugural committee. Spending also took place at a record rate.

At the Trump hotel, the inaugural committee and guests attending the inauguration were already planning to fill most of the 263 rooms, which Racine argued meant that ballroom space would typically be offered for free or at least at a major discount.

But when the hotel initially asked the inaugural committee to pay $450,000 a day to rent the ballrooms and other common spaces, it provoked immediate questions from both Wolkoff, who has since broken with the Trump family, and Rick Gates, then the inaugural committee’s deputy chair, who would go on to plead guilty to charges stemming from the special counsel’s investigation.

“First, the cost itself seems quite high compared to other property buyouts for the week,” Gates wrote in an email to Ivanka Trump 38 days before the inauguration. “Second, I am a bit worried about the optics of PIC paying Trump Hotel a high rent fee and the media making a big story out of it,” he added, referring to the presidential inaugural committee.

Trump wrote to Mickael C. Damelincourt, the hotel’s general manager, and asked him to call Gates to negotiate a better deal for the inaugural committee. “It should be a fair market rate,” she said in a follow-up email, which soon led to a new offer of $175,000 per day.

Still, Wolkoff raised concerns.

“In my opinion, the max rental fee should be $85,000 per day,” she responded to Gates and Trump in an email where she also noted that other properties, such as Union Station, had offered their spaces for the inauguration at no charge.

This series of emails — filed in court documents as part of the lawsuit — is at the heart of the case that Racine, a Democrat, is pursuing.

The inaugural committee paid $220,000 for rooms at the hotel, including $75,259 to rent out the so-called Trump Townhouse, marketed as an ultraluxurious suite.

On two of the days that the inaugural committee paid the hotel $175,000 to rent the ballroom, it had no events that used it, the lawsuit said. And on a third day when it actually used the ballroom for a luncheon — again paying $175,000 — another nonprofit group had paid just $5,000 to rent the same presidential ballroom space for an inauguration-related event that morning.

The committee also paid the hotel for costs associated with a “friends and family” event for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. that their father was not expected to attend. The inauguration staff was so uncomfortable sponsoring the gathering that they tried to cancel it, court documents showed. But Damelincourt objected.

“Rick … just heard that the Friday night reception had been canceled. Is it accurate?” Damelincourt wrote. “Tough on us if it is as it was a lot of revenue.” The event was then rescheduled and took place the night Donald Trump was sworn in.

Ivanka Trump was questioned for five hours last week about the matter, in one of a series of depositions that has also included Damelincourt and Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a major donor to Donald Trump who was the chair of the inaugural committee. Wolkoff will be questioned under oath this week and Gates this month.

Documents were also subpoenaed from Melania Trump, the first lady, but she has not been called to testify.

After her deposition, Ivanka Trump condemned the inquiry, as did her brother Eric Trump, who oversees operations at the hotel.

“This is a game stemming from a political vendetta,” Trump said in an interview, echoing his sister, who said on Twitter that the case was “another politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness &amp;amp; waste of taxpayer dollars.”

So far, Judge José M. López at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia has sided with the attorney general, rejecting a motion by the Trump Organization and the inaugural committee to dismiss the case. López has authorized the parties to move ahead with depositions and other discovery until March to prepare for a possible trial.

The civil suit being pursued by Racine is distinct from two separate cases raising the constitutional issues about the intersection of Donald Trump’s public role and his businesses. The two cases focused on the Constitution's emoluments clause will be on shakier ground once he leaves office, lawyers involved in the cases said.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled in one of the emoluments suits in March 2018 that Maryland and the District of Columbia had the right to pursue their cases challenging whether Trump’s businesses could take payments from other governments. And for the first time, the court defined what an emolument is, accepting the broader definition advocated by Maryland and the district that it represented just about any payment from a foreign government to the president’s businesses instead of a payment made to the president explicitly in exchange for an official action he would then take, as he had argued.

But one of the remedies their lawsuit sought was an order that the president stop accepting these payments. Once he leaves office, that outcome will effectively have been achieved, perhaps undermining the case.

“We are having high-level discussions around the viability, survivability of the matter,” Racine said about the emoluments case.

Equally unresolved is the future of the Trump hotel in Washington.

The hotel bar is open again after closing in the spring when the virus first peaked. But traffic is slow, in part because the hotel is limiting entry to only those with reservations because of virus restrictions.

Zach Everson, who runs an online newsletter that tracks activities at the hotel, said its fate might be determined in part by how much of a power broker Trump remains.

“Any business that is sustained in some part by people wanting to get in his favor, once you take the official power he had to grant that favor, I am not sure how they can sustain it,” Everson said. “But with Donald Trump, he has been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat before.”

On Friday, White House-related business was still coming in.

Jason Miller, a Trump campaign aide, showed up at lunchtime without his name on the list. He told a security guard at the hotel entrance that he was there for a meeting with lawyers Eric Hershmann and Justin Clark, two other aides to Trump.

For a moment, Miller was prevented from entering.

“I work for the president,” he told the security guard, before finally being let in.

It was a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, and one of his aides had a delicate question: Wasn’t there going to be a backlash when it became known that the inauguration had spent donors’ money at Trump’s hotel in Washington, even though other places would cost much less or even be free?

It was a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, and one of his aides had a delicate question: Wasn’t there going to be a backlash when it became known that the inauguration had spent donors’ money at Trump’s hotel in Washington, even though other places would cost much less or even be free? “These are events in P.E.’s honor at his hotel, and one of them is with and for family and close friends,” Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, then an event planner for Trump, wrote in an email to a colleague in December 2016, referring to Trump as the president-elect and saying she raised the issue to “express my concern.” As Trump’s presidency comes to a close, expenditures like those are receiving renewed legal scrutiny in the form of a civil case being pursued by the attorney general for the District of Columbia. At the heart of the case is a question — whether Trump and his family have profited from his public role, sometimes at the expense of taxpayers, competitors and donors — that has been a persistent theme of his tenure in the White House. More than 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments patronized Trump’s properties during his presidency while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Sixty of them spent $12 million at his properties during the first two years he was in office. Also read: I hope Republicans vote against very weak NDAA which I will veto: Trump The Trump family business has received millions of dollars in payments by the Secret Service, the State Department and the U.S. military to Trump properties around the country and the world. The president has visited his properties on at least 417 days since taking office, at times with world leaders. And he and his affiliated political committees spent more than $6.5 million in campaign funds at his hotels and other businesses since 2017, including a $1 million final burst in the weeks before the election last month. In the lawsuit moving forward, Attorney General Karl A. Racine of the District of Columbia is arguing that Trump’s inaugural committee illegally overpaid his family business by as much as $1.1 million for events held at the Trump International Hotel in the city in January 2017. Ivanka Trump was deposed in the case last week. The lawsuit asks the court to order the inauguration to recover the $1 million paid to the Trump hotel and to redirect it to a “proper public purpose” such as “another nonprofit entity dedicated to promoting civic engagement of the citizens of the United States.” Questions about spending, influence and lobbying around the 2017 inaugural have also drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors from two different offices in New York, with charges filed against at least one donor. But for all the attention focused on the issue, Trump is set to leave office without a clear resolution of what limits there should be on a president’s ability to profit from his public role. Lawsuits brought by nonprofit groups and attorneys general in Washington and Maryland claiming that Trump had violated the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution were never resolved during his term and now face potential dismissal once he is out of power. “It is more than just frustrating,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, who has been involved in the emoluments litigation. “The most serious questions about the abuse of presidential power and the use of the presidency as a center of personal gain and profit remain unresolved. The wheels of justice clearly ground more slowly than some would have hoped.” The issue played out especially visibly at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which opened in late October 2016, two weeks before Trump was elected. The hotel became a focal point for lobbyists, White House aides, Republicans in Congress and hundreds of others who sought a way to impress Trump, even though tax records obtained by The New York Times show that the property continued to lose money through at least 2018. The Trump family had tried to sell its lease at the hotel last year before reversing course when the coronavirus pandemic hit. With revenue sure to have declined this year, Trump will have to decide whether to put the property back up for sale after he leaves office, or perhaps hope its value will increase if he runs again. “Fifty percent of the people still will not go into the hotel,” said William W. Moyer, a hotel broker, noting that many potential customers who were not supporters of Trump avoided the property. “And the other 50% wanted to go there. You are not going to turn on or off people’s loyalties like a light switch.” Also read: Trump administration announces another arms sale to Taiwan; China threatens 'countermeasures' The case Racine is pursuing is moving ahead after he spent several years collecting evidence about the arrangements between the presidential inaugural committee and the hotel. Trump’s inauguration was unlike any other in U.S. history: He raised more than $107 million, twice the previous record, as corporate donors poured tens of millions of dollars into the inaugural committee. Spending also took place at a record rate. At the Trump hotel, the inaugural committee and guests attending the inauguration were already planning to fill most of the 263 rooms, which Racine argued meant that ballroom space would typically be offered for free or at least at a major discount. But when the hotel initially asked the inaugural committee to pay $450,000 a day to rent the ballrooms and other common spaces, it provoked immediate questions from both Wolkoff, who has since broken with the Trump family, and Rick Gates, then the inaugural committee’s deputy chair, who would go on to plead guilty to charges stemming from the special counsel’s investigation. “First, the cost itself seems quite high compared to other property buyouts for the week,” Gates wrote in an email to Ivanka Trump 38 days before the inauguration. “Second, I am a bit worried about the optics of PIC paying Trump Hotel a high rent fee and the media making a big story out of it,” he added, referring to the presidential inaugural committee. Trump wrote to Mickael C. Damelincourt, the hotel’s general manager, and asked him to call Gates to negotiate a better deal for the inaugural committee. “It should be a fair market rate,” she said in a follow-up email, which soon led to a new offer of $175,000 per day. Still, Wolkoff raised concerns. “In my opinion, the max rental fee should be $85,000 per day,” she responded to Gates and Trump in an email where she also noted that other properties, such as Union Station, had offered their spaces for the inauguration at no charge. This series of emails — filed in court documents as part of the lawsuit — is at the heart of the case that Racine, a Democrat, is pursuing. The inaugural committee paid $220,000 for rooms at the hotel, including $75,259 to rent out the so-called Trump Townhouse, marketed as an ultraluxurious suite. On two of the days that the inaugural committee paid the hotel $175,000 to rent the ballroom, it had no events that used it, the lawsuit said. And on a third day when it actually used the ballroom for a luncheon — again paying $175,000 — another nonprofit group had paid just $5,000 to rent the same presidential ballroom space for an inauguration-related event that morning. The committee also paid the hotel for costs associated with a “friends and family” event for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. that their father was not expected to attend. The inauguration staff was so uncomfortable sponsoring the gathering that they tried to cancel it, court documents showed. But Damelincourt objected. “Rick … just heard that the Friday night reception had been canceled. Is it accurate?” Damelincourt wrote. “Tough on us if it is as it was a lot of revenue.” The event was then rescheduled and took place the night Donald Trump was sworn in. Ivanka Trump was questioned for five hours last week about the matter, in one of a series of depositions that has also included Damelincourt and Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a major donor to Donald Trump who was the chair of the inaugural committee. Wolkoff will be questioned under oath this week and Gates this month. Documents were also subpoenaed from Melania Trump, the first lady, but she has not been called to testify. After her deposition, Ivanka Trump condemned the inquiry, as did her brother Eric Trump, who oversees operations at the hotel. “This is a game stemming from a political vendetta,” Trump said in an interview, echoing his sister, who said on Twitter that the case was “another politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness &amp; waste of taxpayer dollars.” So far, Judge José M. López at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia has sided with the attorney general, rejecting a motion by the Trump Organization and the inaugural committee to dismiss the case. López has authorized the parties to move ahead with depositions and other discovery until March to prepare for a possible trial. The civil suit being pursued by Racine is distinct from two separate cases raising the constitutional issues about the intersection of Donald Trump’s public role and his businesses. The two cases focused on the Constitution's emoluments clause will be on shakier ground once he leaves office, lawyers involved in the cases said. A U.S. District Court judge ruled in one of the emoluments suits in March 2018 that Maryland and the District of Columbia had the right to pursue their cases challenging whether Trump’s businesses could take payments from other governments. And for the first time, the court defined what an emolument is, accepting the broader definition advocated by Maryland and the district that it represented just about any payment from a foreign government to the president’s businesses instead of a payment made to the president explicitly in exchange for an official action he would then take, as he had argued. But one of the remedies their lawsuit sought was an order that the president stop accepting these payments. Once he leaves office, that outcome will effectively have been achieved, perhaps undermining the case. “We are having high-level discussions around the viability, survivability of the matter,” Racine said about the emoluments case. Equally unresolved is the future of the Trump hotel in Washington. The hotel bar is open again after closing in the spring when the virus first peaked. But traffic is slow, in part because the hotel is limiting entry to only those with reservations because of virus restrictions. Zach Everson, who runs an online newsletter that tracks activities at the hotel, said its fate might be determined in part by how much of a power broker Trump remains. “Any business that is sustained in some part by people wanting to get in his favor, once you take the official power he had to grant that favor, I am not sure how they can sustain it,” Everson said. “But with Donald Trump, he has been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat before.” On Friday, White House-related business was still coming in. Jason Miller, a Trump campaign aide, showed up at lunchtime without his name on the list. He told a security guard at the hotel entrance that he was there for a meeting with lawyers Eric Hershmann and Justin Clark, two other aides to Trump. For a moment, Miller was prevented from entering. “I work for the president,” he told the security guard, before finally being let in.

As his term ends, Trump faces more questions on payments to his hotel

China on Tuesday said it&nbsp;will take firm countermeasures against&nbsp;US&nbsp;sanctions on officials&nbsp;involved in the clampdown on Hong Kong, calling the move "crazy and vile".

The Trump administration on Monday froze any US assets and barred travel to the United States for 14 vice-chairs of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which spearheaded a tough new security law in Hong Kong.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-imposes-new-sanctions-on-14-chinese-officials-over-hong-kong-crackdown-348233/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was holding Beijing accountable for its "unrelenting assault against Hong Kong's democratic processes."

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying slammed the move's "vile intention to grossly interfere in China's internal affairs."

Also see:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/china-wields-patriotic-education-to-tame-hong-kongs-rebellious-youth-345603">China wields patriotic education to tame Hong Kong's rebellious youth</a>

"The Chinese government and people express strong indignation over and strongly condemn the United States' rude, unreasonable, crazy, and vile behaviour," Hua said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday.

China's rubber-stamp parliament pushed through the draconian new security law in June.

Critics say it decimates the freedoms once enjoyed in Hong Kong, enshrined in an agreement made before the 1997 handover from British colonial rule back to China.

China says the law and prosecution of critics are needed to restore stability after last year's huge and often violent protests.

The United States has already slapped sanctions on Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, and has declared that it will no longer treat the financial hub as separate from China.

On Monday, Hong Kong police cited the law to arrest three people who last month chanted slogans at a university campus.

China on Tuesday said it will take firm countermeasures against US sanctions on officials involved in the clampdown on Hong Kong, calling the move "crazy and vile".

China on Tuesday said it will take firm countermeasures against US sanctions on officials involved in the clampdown on Hong Kong, calling the move "crazy and vile". The Trump administration on Monday froze any US assets and barred travel to the United States for 14 vice-chairs of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which spearheaded a tough new security law in Hong Kong. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was holding Beijing accountable for its "unrelenting assault against Hong Kong's democratic processes." China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying slammed the move's "vile intention to grossly interfere in China's internal affairs." Also see: China wields patriotic education to tame Hong Kong's rebellious youth "The Chinese government and people express strong indignation over and strongly condemn the United States' rude, unreasonable, crazy, and vile behaviour," Hua said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday. China's rubber-stamp parliament pushed through the draconian new security law in June. Critics say it decimates the freedoms once enjoyed in Hong Kong, enshrined in an agreement made before the 1997 handover from British colonial rule back to China. China says the law and prosecution of critics are needed to restore stability after last year's huge and often violent protests. The United States has already slapped sanctions on Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, and has declared that it will no longer treat the financial hub as separate from China. On Monday, Hong Kong police cited the law to arrest three people who last month chanted slogans at a university campus.

China blasts 'crazy' US sanctions over Hong Kong; vows 'firm countermeasures'

A second US federal judge has suspended a <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Trump</a> administration executive order threatening to ban TikTok in the United States.

The preliminary injunction granted late Monday by judge Carl Nichols in a district court in Washington DC comes more than a month after a similar decision in Pennsylvania.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-plans-to-not-extend-tiktok-divestiture-deadline-347609">US plans to not extend TikTok divestiture deadline</a>

Nichols said TikTok's lawyers had demonstrated that the Commerce Department likely overstepped its authority by seeking to ban the popular social media app and "acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing to consider obvious alternatives."

The <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a> claims TikTok is a national security risk because of potential links to the Beijing government through its Chinese owner ByteDance.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with ByteDance -- effectively setting a deadline for a sale of the app to a US company.

Also read|<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-pakistani-imam-used-tiktok-in-france-to-propagate-terror-345945">&nbsp;How Pakistani imam used TikTok in France to propagate terror</a>

Trump's order said the action was necessary to "protect our national security" and claimed the personal data of TikTok users could be used by Beijing.

TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data transfers to the Chinese government, saying it stores user information on servers in the United States and Singapore.

The latest order follows an October 30 ruling by a federal court in Pennsylvania which issued a temporary injunction blocking Trump's ban.

Also read|<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-grants-tiktok-owner-bytedance-new-extension-of-sale-order-345426">&nbsp;US grants Tiktok owner ByteDance new extension of sale order</a>

After a complaint from three TikTok content creators, Judge Wendy Beetlestone ordered the US administration not to prevent other companies from providing essential services to the platform, such as online hosting.

Beetlestone had considered that the August 6 presidential decree should be suspended.&nbsp;

At the end of September, judge Nichols had also issued a temporary injunction stopping the US from banning downloads of the app, which he said would cause "irreparable harm" to TikTok, but he refused to rule on its total ban in the United States.

TikTok has a further fight on its hands over an August 14 executive order from Trump to force ByteDance to sell its US operations to an American buyer.

The US Treasury has repeatedly extended the deadline for the Chinese group to divest, and indicated on Friday it would continue negotiations to resolve the dispute.&nbsp;

TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and 700 million worldwide.

Washington is in a tense trade battle with Beijing, and Trump's administration has stepped up warnings about China's growing economic and military power.

A second US federal judge has suspended a Trump administration executive order threatening to ban TikTok in the United States. The preliminary injunction granted late Monday by judge Carl Nichols in a district court in Washington DC comes more than a month after a similar decision in Pennsylvania.

A second US federal judge has suspended a Trump administration executive order threatening to ban TikTok in the United States. The preliminary injunction granted late Monday by judge Carl Nichols in a district court in Washington DC comes more than a month after a similar decision in Pennsylvania. Also read| US plans to not extend TikTok divestiture deadline Nichols said TikTok's lawyers had demonstrated that the Commerce Department likely overstepped its authority by seeking to ban the popular social media app and "acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing to consider obvious alternatives." The White House claims TikTok is a national security risk because of potential links to the Beijing government through its Chinese owner ByteDance. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with ByteDance -- effectively setting a deadline for a sale of the app to a US company. Also read| How Pakistani imam used TikTok in France to propagate terror Trump's order said the action was necessary to "protect our national security" and claimed the personal data of TikTok users could be used by Beijing. TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data transfers to the Chinese government, saying it stores user information on servers in the United States and Singapore. The latest order follows an October 30 ruling by a federal court in Pennsylvania which issued a temporary injunction blocking Trump's ban. Also read| US grants Tiktok owner ByteDance new extension of sale order After a complaint from three TikTok content creators, Judge Wendy Beetlestone ordered the US administration not to prevent other companies from providing essential services to the platform, such as online hosting. Beetlestone had considered that the August 6 presidential decree should be suspended. At the end of September, judge Nichols had also issued a temporary injunction stopping the US from banning downloads of the app, which he said would cause "irreparable harm" to TikTok, but he refused to rule on its total ban in the United States. TikTok has a further fight on its hands over an August 14 executive order from Trump to force ByteDance to sell its US operations to an American buyer. The US Treasury has repeatedly extended the deadline for the Chinese group to divest, and indicated on Friday it would continue negotiations to resolve the dispute. TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and 700 million worldwide. Washington is in a tense trade battle with Beijing, and Trump's administration has stepped up warnings about China's growing economic and military power.

Second US judge blocks Trump's TikTok ban

Black Lives Matter: When a single death unleashed full fury of the movement

With most of the slow-to-report votes tallied, we finally have a clearer picture of last month’s presidential results. Despite the high polarization in the country that carried over to the reaction to the results — with 70% to 80% of Republicans still saying they disbelieve that Joe Biden won — in some respects the vote itself was less polarized than in 2016.

Compared with 2016, in 2020 there was less difference by race or ethnicity, and urban areas and suburban areas voted more alike. But the economic and education partisan divides widened. Biden gained in well-educated suburbs and exurbs, often in places that have tended to vote Republican in recent decades, like the Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix areas.

In addition to these broad patterns, some specific shifts reflected local political loyalties.

As of Sunday, reporting was complete enough to look closely at nearly all individual counties and metropolitan areas (which consist of one or more counties). Though some important patterns may show up only in more fine-grained precinct or individual survey data, counties make it easy to compare the entire country, over time, though many lenses.

These near-final county totals confirm a few patterns in the 2020 vote.

Stability

For all the ways that this election broke with precedent, the county-level vote pattern in 2020 was overwhelmingly similar to that in 2016. The correlation between counties’ vote margins for President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 was 0.99. (A correlation of 1 represents a perfect relationship, and 0 represents no relationship.)

Strikingly, the vote was slightly less polarized than in 2016, breaking a pattern of increasing geographic polarization in the 2000s. The standard deviation measures how much an individual county’s vote typically deviated from the national average; this measure was a bit lower in 2020 after rising steadily from 2000 to 2016.

Furthermore, this year the vote in many counties was a small shift toward the center. The bigger that Trump’s victory was in 2016 in a given county, the more ground Biden picked up in 2020 relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016. In counties that voted for Trump in 2016, the 2020 margin shifted 3.2 percentage points toward Biden, versus a 1.9-point shift toward Biden in counties that voted for Clinton in 2016.

Education

Among metropolitan areas with a population over 250,000, three Colorado metros — fast-growing Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins — topped the list for swings against Trump in two-party vote share. Colorado has one of the nation’s highest rates of people with a four-year college degree, and this year it solidified its status as a blue state. Colorado’s shift against Trump was 8.6 points, second only to Vermont’s 9 points.

A part of conservative-leaning Kentucky posted one of the bigger anti-Trump shifts. The Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, metropolitan area, which flipped from red to blue and is home to the University of Kentucky, has the highest percentage of college graduates in the region and is in the top fifth of metros for college attainment.

And what about the big swing in the Huntsville area in deep-red Alabama? Fast-growing places with brighter economic prospects — correlated with a higher number of people with college degrees and more jobs in professional, tech and creative fields — moved toward Biden. A highly educated workforce in Huntsville, first put to use in industries like aerospace, has become attractive to other businesses in recent years.

Suburban areas in Nebraska swung significantly toward Biden. Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes well-educated Omaha, contributed one electoral vote to Biden’s tally. It “swung against Trump more than any swing state,” according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report. The swing was 8.8 points, as the district flipped from red to blue.

The Hispanic Swing

Most metro areas swung Democratic, but the most extreme swings were toward Trump, and the biggest of those were in heavily Hispanic metros, like Miami and areas along the Texas border.

Initially it appeared that Trump’s strength in 2020 relative to 2016 in heavily Hispanic counties might have been specific to South Florida and Texas border areas, despite the very different national origins and identities in those two regions. But data from later-reporting counties points to a national trend.

The correlation between a county’s percent Hispanic population and its swing toward Trump was 0.41. Even excluding Miami-Dade County and all of Texas, the correlation is still 0.30. The Bronx, New York; Los Angeles; Osceola County near Orlando, Florida; and Hudson and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey are all at least 40% Hispanic and swung toward Trump by at least 5 percentage points.

Urban versus Suburban

Biden’s gains were largest in suburban areas, as was immediately apparent after the election. But because many urban counties have been among the slowest to report their votes, the picture in these counties has become clear only recently.

Trump did better in 2020 than 2016 not only in Miami-Dade, Los Angeles and the Bronx, but also in New York's Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the counties encompassing the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco.

Though urban counties remain overwhelmingly Democratic, Trump’s margin improved by 1.1 percentage points in these counties — an even bigger pickup than Trump achieved in non-metropolitan counties, which are largely rural. Thus, the urban-suburban divide narrowed in 2020 — and the urban-rural divide did as well.

Regional Factors

Some regional and local patterns offer other possible explanations for 2020 swings.

— Home-state loyalties: Arkansas is one of only a half-dozen states that swung toward Trump. It’s possible that Clinton benefited in 2016 from some residual good feeling in the state based on her decadelong term as first lady of Arkansas — something that Biden couldn’t compensate for. (The Fort Smith, Arkansas, area was among the top 25 metro areas that swung toward Trump.)

On the other hand, Biden appeared to receive a home-state bonus in Delaware, which had the third-biggest swing against Trump of any state.

New Castle County, with Wilmington as its county seat, moved almost 8 points toward Biden. Why did the Salisbury, Maryland, metro area have such a big swing against Trump? One possible reason is that a little more than half of the population of the metro area is across the state border, in Sussex County in Delaware.

— Religion: Trump enjoyed big gains in the Utah metros of Provo-Orem and Ogden-Clearfield, but much of it can be explained by the drop in third-party voting. Evan McMullin won 21.5% of the vote in his home state in 2016, but he didn’t run this year. Utah, the home of a large Mormon population, had the largest decline in third-party vote share in the nation.

There were sizable swings toward Trump in areas with high percentages of Orthodox Jews, like Rockland County, New York, and parts of Brooklyn — perhaps because many Orthodox Jews were angered by coronavirus-related restrictions.

— Military presence: Overall, Biden performed well relative to Clinton’s 2016 showing in the Northeast, particularly in smaller metro areas, like in upstate New York and in places like Portland, Maine, and Norwich-New London in Connecticut. Connecticut and Maine each moved about 6 points toward the Democratic ticket.

But there’s another possible reason for the swing in Norwich-New London. New London County; the Bremerton, Washington, area; the Virginia Beach metro; and Colorado Springs (home of the Air Force Academy) have military bases and a fair share of military veterans. Counties classified as military posts by the American Communities Project swung by around 6 points against Trump, still voting for him in 2020 overall but by a smaller margin than in 2016.

Some of the correlations are hard to untangle. What we do know more clearly is that there has been about a 2.4-point swing nationwide toward Biden relative to Clinton’s 2016 showing and a similarly modest swing in many of the critical battleground states. But even modest shifts in a roughly evenly divided nation can be decisive.

With most of the slow-to-report votes tallied, we finally have a clearer picture of last month’s presidential results. Despite the high polarization in the country that carried over to the reaction to the results — with 70% to 80% of Republicans still saying they disbelieve that Joe Biden won — in some respects the vote itself was less polarized than in 2016.

With most of the slow-to-report votes tallied, we finally have a clearer picture of last month’s presidential results. Despite the high polarization in the country that carried over to the reaction to the results — with 70% to 80% of Republicans still saying they disbelieve that Joe Biden won — in some respects the vote itself was less polarized than in 2016. Compared with 2016, in 2020 there was less difference by race or ethnicity, and urban areas and suburban areas voted more alike. But the economic and education partisan divides widened. Biden gained in well-educated suburbs and exurbs, often in places that have tended to vote Republican in recent decades, like the Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix areas. In addition to these broad patterns, some specific shifts reflected local political loyalties. As of Sunday, reporting was complete enough to look closely at nearly all individual counties and metropolitan areas (which consist of one or more counties). Though some important patterns may show up only in more fine-grained precinct or individual survey data, counties make it easy to compare the entire country, over time, though many lenses. These near-final county totals confirm a few patterns in the 2020 vote. Stability For all the ways that this election broke with precedent, the county-level vote pattern in 2020 was overwhelmingly similar to that in 2016. The correlation between counties’ vote margins for President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 was 0.99. (A correlation of 1 represents a perfect relationship, and 0 represents no relationship.) Strikingly, the vote was slightly less polarized than in 2016, breaking a pattern of increasing geographic polarization in the 2000s. The standard deviation measures how much an individual county’s vote typically deviated from the national average; this measure was a bit lower in 2020 after rising steadily from 2000 to 2016. Furthermore, this year the vote in many counties was a small shift toward the center. The bigger that Trump’s victory was in 2016 in a given county, the more ground Biden picked up in 2020 relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016. In counties that voted for Trump in 2016, the 2020 margin shifted 3.2 percentage points toward Biden, versus a 1.9-point shift toward Biden in counties that voted for Clinton in 2016. Education Among metropolitan areas with a population over 250,000, three Colorado metros — fast-growing Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins — topped the list for swings against Trump in two-party vote share. Colorado has one of the nation’s highest rates of people with a four-year college degree, and this year it solidified its status as a blue state. Colorado’s shift against Trump was 8.6 points, second only to Vermont’s 9 points. A part of conservative-leaning Kentucky posted one of the bigger anti-Trump shifts. The Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, metropolitan area, which flipped from red to blue and is home to the University of Kentucky, has the highest percentage of college graduates in the region and is in the top fifth of metros for college attainment. And what about the big swing in the Huntsville area in deep-red Alabama? Fast-growing places with brighter economic prospects — correlated with a higher number of people with college degrees and more jobs in professional, tech and creative fields — moved toward Biden. A highly educated workforce in Huntsville, first put to use in industries like aerospace, has become attractive to other businesses in recent years. Suburban areas in Nebraska swung significantly toward Biden. Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes well-educated Omaha, contributed one electoral vote to Biden’s tally. It “swung against Trump more than any swing state,” according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report. The swing was 8.8 points, as the district flipped from red to blue. The Hispanic Swing Most metro areas swung Democratic, but the most extreme swings were toward Trump, and the biggest of those were in heavily Hispanic metros, like Miami and areas along the Texas border. Initially it appeared that Trump’s strength in 2020 relative to 2016 in heavily Hispanic counties might have been specific to South Florida and Texas border areas, despite the very different national origins and identities in those two regions. But data from later-reporting counties points to a national trend. The correlation between a county’s percent Hispanic population and its swing toward Trump was 0.41. Even excluding Miami-Dade County and all of Texas, the correlation is still 0.30. The Bronx, New York; Los Angeles; Osceola County near Orlando, Florida; and Hudson and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey are all at least 40% Hispanic and swung toward Trump by at least 5 percentage points. Urban versus Suburban Biden’s gains were largest in suburban areas, as was immediately apparent after the election. But because many urban counties have been among the slowest to report their votes, the picture in these counties has become clear only recently. Trump did better in 2020 than 2016 not only in Miami-Dade, Los Angeles and the Bronx, but also in New York's Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the counties encompassing the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco. Though urban counties remain overwhelmingly Democratic, Trump’s margin improved by 1.1 percentage points in these counties — an even bigger pickup than Trump achieved in non-metropolitan counties, which are largely rural. Thus, the urban-suburban divide narrowed in 2020 — and the urban-rural divide did as well. Regional Factors Some regional and local patterns offer other possible explanations for 2020 swings. — Home-state loyalties: Arkansas is one of only a half-dozen states that swung toward Trump. It’s possible that Clinton benefited in 2016 from some residual good feeling in the state based on her decadelong term as first lady of Arkansas — something that Biden couldn’t compensate for. (The Fort Smith, Arkansas, area was among the top 25 metro areas that swung toward Trump.) On the other hand, Biden appeared to receive a home-state bonus in Delaware, which had the third-biggest swing against Trump of any state. New Castle County, with Wilmington as its county seat, moved almost 8 points toward Biden. Why did the Salisbury, Maryland, metro area have such a big swing against Trump? One possible reason is that a little more than half of the population of the metro area is across the state border, in Sussex County in Delaware. — Religion: Trump enjoyed big gains in the Utah metros of Provo-Orem and Ogden-Clearfield, but much of it can be explained by the drop in third-party voting. Evan McMullin won 21.5% of the vote in his home state in 2016, but he didn’t run this year. Utah, the home of a large Mormon population, had the largest decline in third-party vote share in the nation. There were sizable swings toward Trump in areas with high percentages of Orthodox Jews, like Rockland County, New York, and parts of Brooklyn — perhaps because many Orthodox Jews were angered by coronavirus-related restrictions. — Military presence: Overall, Biden performed well relative to Clinton’s 2016 showing in the Northeast, particularly in smaller metro areas, like in upstate New York and in places like Portland, Maine, and Norwich-New London in Connecticut. Connecticut and Maine each moved about 6 points toward the Democratic ticket. But there’s another possible reason for the swing in Norwich-New London. New London County; the Bremerton, Washington, area; the Virginia Beach metro; and Colorado Springs (home of the Air Force Academy) have military bases and a fair share of military veterans. Counties classified as military posts by the American Communities Project swung by around 6 points against Trump, still voting for him in 2020 overall but by a smaller margin than in 2016. Some of the correlations are hard to untangle. What we do know more clearly is that there has been about a 2.4-point swing nationwide toward Biden relative to Clinton’s 2016 showing and a similarly modest swing in many of the critical battleground states. But even modest shifts in a roughly evenly divided nation can be decisive.

The places that had the biggest swings toward and against Trump

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled an executive order prohibiting US&nbsp;investments in Chinese companies that Washington says are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, ramping up pressure on Beijing after the US&nbsp;election.

The order, which was first reported by Reuters, could impact some of China's biggest companies, including China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd,&nbsp;and surveillance equipment maker Hikvision&nbsp;

The move is designed to deter US&nbsp;investment firms, pension funds, and others from buying shares of 31 Chinese companies that were designated by the Defense Department as backed by the Chinese military earlier this year.

Starting Jan. 11, the order will prohibit purchases by US&nbsp;investors of the securities of those companies. Transactions made to divest ownership in the companies will be permitted until Nov. 11, 2021.

"China is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses," said the order released by the White House.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a stock exchange filing, China Telecom said it estimated the executive order might impact the price of its shares, which closed down 7.8% in Hong Kong on Friday, and American depository shares, adding that it would "closely monitor" developments.

Another telecom operator, China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, said companies affected by the order would include its parent, China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd.

China Unicom also said in its filing, it expected an impact on its shares, which fell 6.7% on Friday, and American depository shares, adding it was "considering appropriate steps to protect its and its investors' lawful rights".

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro estimated that at least half a trillion dollars in market capitalization was represented by the Chinese companies and their subsidiaries.

"This is a sweeping order designed to choke off American capital to China's militarization," he told reporters on a call.

The move is the first major policy initiative by President Donald Trump since losing the Nov. 3 election to Democratic rival Joe Biden and indicates that he is seeking to take advantage of the waning months of his administration to crack down on China, even as he has appeared laser-focused on challenging the election result.

Biden has won enough battleground states to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the next president, but Republican Trump has so far refused to concede, citing unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud.

Thursday's action is likely to further weigh on already fraught ties between the world's top two economies, which are at loggerheads over China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its move to impose security legislation on Hong Kong.

Biden has not laid out a detailed China strategy but all the indications are that he will continue a tough approach to Beijing, with whom Trump has become increasingly confrontational in his last year in office.

WALL STREET INTERESTS

The order echoes a bill filed by Republican senator Marco Rubio last month that sought to block access to U.S. capital markets for Chinese companies that have been blacklisted by Washington, including those added to the Defense Department list.

"Today's action by the Trump administration is a welcome start to protecting our markets and investors," said Rubio, a top congressional China hawk. "We can never put the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and Wall Street above American workers and mom and pop investors."

His comments were echoed by Republican Congressman Jim Banks, who described the order as "one of the wisest and most significant foreign policy decisions President Trump has made since he entered office".

Rubio's bill and the order are part of a growing effort by Congress and the administration to thwart Chinese companies that have the backing of U.S. investors but do not comply with U.S. rules faced by American rivals. It also shows a new willingness to antagonize Wall Street in the rivalry with Beijing.

In August, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury officials urged Trump to delist Chinese companies that trade on U.S. exchanges and fail to meet its auditing requirements by January 2022.

Thursday's move received a cool reception on Wall Street, where shares were already pulling back from recent gains. The iShares China Large-Cap ETF &lt;FXI&gt; extended falls.

"The market is probably worried that President Trump is going to increase tensions with China and Iran in his last two months as president," said Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer of the Independent Advisor Alliance.

Still, it was unclear how investors would react. The order bans transactions, which it defined as "purchases," so investors would technically be able to hold onto current investments.

While the document does not spell out specific penalties for violations, it gives the Treasury Department the ability to invoke "all powers" granted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which authorizes the use of tough sanctions.

Questions also remain about whether Biden, who is set to take office just nine days after the order goes into effect, would enforce it or simply revoke it. His campaign declined to comment.

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled an executive order prohibiting US investments in Chinese companies that Washington says are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, ramping up pressure on Beijing after the US election.

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled an executive order prohibiting US investments in Chinese companies that Washington says are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, ramping up pressure on Beijing after the US election. The order, which was first reported by Reuters, could impact some of China's biggest companies, including China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd, and surveillance equipment maker Hikvision The move is designed to deter US investment firms, pension funds, and others from buying shares of 31 Chinese companies that were designated by the Defense Department as backed by the Chinese military earlier this year. Starting Jan. 11, the order will prohibit purchases by US investors of the securities of those companies. Transactions made to divest ownership in the companies will be permitted until Nov. 11, 2021. "China is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses," said the order released by the White House. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a stock exchange filing, China Telecom said it estimated the executive order might impact the price of its shares, which closed down 7.8% in Hong Kong on Friday, and American depository shares, adding that it would "closely monitor" developments. Another telecom operator, China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, said companies affected by the order would include its parent, China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd. China Unicom also said in its filing, it expected an impact on its shares, which fell 6.7% on Friday, and American depository shares, adding it was "considering appropriate steps to protect its and its investors' lawful rights". White House trade adviser Peter Navarro estimated that at least half a trillion dollars in market capitalization was represented by the Chinese companies and their subsidiaries. "This is a sweeping order designed to choke off American capital to China's militarization," he told reporters on a call. The move is the first major policy initiative by President Donald Trump since losing the Nov. 3 election to Democratic rival Joe Biden and indicates that he is seeking to take advantage of the waning months of his administration to crack down on China, even as he has appeared laser-focused on challenging the election result. Biden has won enough battleground states to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the next president, but Republican Trump has so far refused to concede, citing unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud. Thursday's action is likely to further weigh on already fraught ties between the world's top two economies, which are at loggerheads over China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its move to impose security legislation on Hong Kong. Biden has not laid out a detailed China strategy but all the indications are that he will continue a tough approach to Beijing, with whom Trump has become increasingly confrontational in his last year in office. WALL STREET INTERESTS The order echoes a bill filed by Republican senator Marco Rubio last month that sought to block access to U.S. capital markets for Chinese companies that have been blacklisted by Washington, including those added to the Defense Department list. "Today's action by the Trump administration is a welcome start to protecting our markets and investors," said Rubio, a top congressional China hawk. "We can never put the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and Wall Street above American workers and mom and pop investors." His comments were echoed by Republican Congressman Jim Banks, who described the order as "one of the wisest and most significant foreign policy decisions President Trump has made since he entered office". Rubio's bill and the order are part of a growing effort by Congress and the administration to thwart Chinese companies that have the backing of U.S. investors but do not comply with U.S. rules faced by American rivals. It also shows a new willingness to antagonize Wall Street in the rivalry with Beijing. In August, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury officials urged Trump to delist Chinese companies that trade on U.S. exchanges and fail to meet its auditing requirements by January 2022. Thursday's move received a cool reception on Wall Street, where shares were already pulling back from recent gains. The iShares China Large-Cap ETF <FXI> extended falls. "The market is probably worried that President Trump is going to increase tensions with China and Iran in his last two months as president," said Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer of the Independent Advisor Alliance. Still, it was unclear how investors would react. The order bans transactions, which it defined as "purchases," so investors would technically be able to hold onto current investments. While the document does not spell out specific penalties for violations, it gives the Treasury Department the ability to invoke "all powers" granted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which authorizes the use of tough sanctions. Questions also remain about whether Biden, who is set to take office just nine days after the order goes into effect, would enforce it or simply revoke it. His campaign declined to comment.

Trump bans US investments in companies linked to Chinese military

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